by Miles Hurt
Then she emerged from the smoke, and rose up, impossibly high. She towered over the heads of her soldiers, and continued to rise. A metallic slithering came from the craft behind her. I saw that this apparition was half woman, half enormous mechanical snake. She rose higher, and began to rock from side to side, like she was a cobra about to strike.
She spoke to the Rambunculans cowering in the lecture hall.
Actually she didn't speak.
She shrieked in a voice so terrible and loud that I felt my skull vibrate.
'Death to the Machine!'
The Serpent Queen raised her gauntleted hands, and extended her fingers towards the Machine at the front of the lecture hall. Bolts of plasma sprang forth, crackling above the heads of the terrified Rambunculans.
The Machine was toasted where it sat, sinking in a heap of red-hot metal and burnt plastic.
The Serpent Queen's commandos picked off the remaining Programmers and Untouchables, most of whom were scrambling for the nearest exit.
And in thirty seconds, from her craft smashing through the wall, to melting the Machine, she'd performed the perfect coup.
The Serpent Queen slithered down the aisle and raised herself high above the crowd, framed by the smoke billowing from the dead Machine.
'Join the Serpent Queen,' her voice shattered again, 'or die.'
There was a moment when the citizens of Rambunculous processed this sudden turn of events. Only a moment. Then, like the group of sensible turncoats that they are, they dropped to their knees in a remarkably spontaneous act of obeisance.
She wouldn't have it all her own way. Even with the awe of her new subjects, even with her advanced weaponry and terrifying power, someone was bound to fight back. It took her almost two years to suppress the Mongoose rebellion.
But on that first day, things went pretty smoothly for her.
She beheld her new subjects.
'Hail the Serpent Queen!' they intoned. 'Long may she reign!'
I picked myself up and stepped forward, clearing my throat.
'Excuse me,' I said.
The commandos all snapped their guns in my direction. My instincts screamed at me to grovel lower than a louse's ball sack. But a part of me was aggrieved.
The Serpent Queen was shaken from her exultant pose. She noticed the little human standing just near her.
'What do you want?' she demanded of me.
'It's just that, um,' I stammered, picking at my lobster-coloured robes. 'It's just that...'
'Spit it out, worm,' she said.
'Well,' I said. 'I just won the Grand Prize in the Lottery.'
'The what?' she said.
'The Lottery,' I said. 'The Machine said I was going to spend a month in the Pleasure Dome.'
The crowd muttered. They must have thought I was senile.
She looked at the remains of the Machine.
'Do you refer to that lump of metal over there?' she said, a cruel smile playing on her lips. 'The Lottery is void. I rule now.'
The commandos stepped closer to me, their strange weapons clicking and humming.
I should have shut up. Put my face on the carpet. Let it go.
But I didn't.
'It's just that I'm really disappointed that I don't get to go in there,' I said. 'I was going to float on an inner tube. Listen to jazz records... Eat boiled sweets... Smoke pipe tobacco...'
'Silence, you gibbering fool!' she shrieked.
The Serpent Queen reared up on her coils and turned to face the Machine. The blazing energy crackled from her hands again, and the already crippled thing was obliterated.
I sighed.
The Serpent Queen swivelled around, her tail rolling over. The crowd scuttled back, pushing against the walls of the lecture hall. The Queen loomed, bringing her face close to mine, the vast crown blocking out the lights. She reached up a hand to me, the plasma cannon in the fingertips of her gauntlet crackling with charge.
I knew for sure I was going to be the first civilian killed under the new regime. Punished for my impertinence. I closed my eyes, and bunched up my face.
But nothing happened.
I squinted out of my right eye. The Serpent Queen appeared to be taking a second look at me, like she was an old acquaintance who'd bumped into me at a train station.
Not a metal colossus who'd just seized control of the city in well under a minute.
I looked into the metal orbits of the mask, into her dark brown human eyes, and recognised her, too.
'Pops Allsop?' said the Serpent Queen. 'Wow. The years have not been kind.'
THIRTY-EIGHT
I make it back to the industrial compound just as the sun sets. The Nest of the Serpent Queen looms up in silhouette against a ruby sky. The Nest is an old sausage factory that's been gutted, stripped and fortified. The brick walls are pockmarked from bullets and charred with blast marks. The signatures of the Mongoose rebels.
The frontal assault was the last roll of the dice for them.
I reach the large metal gates and wave up to the bullet-proof window of the guard tower above. The door buzzes and opens a crack. I enter.
Even though it's light for its size, I can't wait to drop off my gun, which feels like it's ripping my arm off. One of the Serpent Queen's snake-boys steps out of the guard station, a buff young guy in a tight uniform and purple beret. He gives the old man at the door a look of blank indifference.
As far as snake-boys go, he's one of the friendly ones.
He runs a practised eye over the rifle.
'The backfire mechanism has been discharged,' he says. 'This'll need to be serviced. Won't be available for a day or so.'
I smile wearily.
'I could use a day off.'
The snake-boy grunts, steps back into the guard station.
He doesn't know how important my errand has been.
Through the foyer, I enter the royal chamber. And by 'royal chamber' I mean 'sausage factory floor'. Blood red banners hang down, bearing the serpent symbol. Distant, the Serpent Queen curls atop her throne, a council of generals seated around her. They are guarded by a cadre of elite soldiers, lurking in the shadows.
I approach. The generals break off their conversation, exchange unimpressed glances. They can't understand why I'm tolerated here. To them I'm an eccentricity of the Queen, a folly they don't dare question.
The metal monster coiled above them flows down, the rippling segments of her serpentine body clinking. Atop that powerful length, from the waist up, the Serpent Queen has the form of a beautiful woman wrapped in armour.
She slithers off her throne, approaches me. Her voice is like a clockwork bird singing through a megaphone.
'Did you find what you sought?' she asks me.
I smile at her, and flip open the latches on my box. I take out the vinyl record, holding it up like a trophy.
It was near-mint. I found it in the first house I looked in that morning.
'Cornelius Chunk,' I say. 'A Matter of Opinion.'
The ashen face of the Serpent Queen brightens by the faintest shade. Not much delights her; she was paralysed in battle years ago, shot in the spine when trying to spark a revolt. Her mobility was restored by the science of Herr Doktor Ernst Plab, who turned her into a monster.
Long may she reign.
'I always liked that one,' says Rowena. 'Seminal stuff.'
THIRTY-NINE
I click the hanging light on in my quarters, which is an old shipping container in the dispatch. I like it here; it's far enough from the soldiers' barracks that I'm left alone. Plus I've got everything I need inside the container: a comfy armchair, a little bed, a small kitchen unit.
And I've got racks of the stuff that I've scavenged. Hardback novels. Framed posters and artworks. Vintage toys and games. Boxes and boxes of vinyl.
Someone has to rescue this stuff, preserve it from the endless cavalcade of maniacs trying to tear down civilisation.
My most treasured possession is, of course, my record pl
ayer.
I pause for a moment to enjoy the anticipation of listening to A Matter of Opinion for the first time in years. I examine the monochrome cover, drinking in the photo of Chunk holding his saxophone.
There's something on the cover I'd missed this morning. In the top right corner beneath the plastic sleeve is a price sticker, which bears in tiny blue print the name of the shop at which the record was sold new.
Allsop Records.
I slip the disc out of the sleeve and place it reverently on the platter. I haven't heard this recording in three decades. The needle hits the groove like a hypodermic hitting my vein, and I bliss out. Chunk's work still sounds fresh: the warm ambience of the studio, the sizzle of the hi-hats on the opening ballad, the angular piano arpeggios cascading.
The glorious buzz of the saxophone kicks in. I sink into my worn leather armchair, letting the sound vibrate through my body.
I'm home.
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