by Brian Hughes
Which didn’t go down well.
A clenched fist hit him squarely on the bridge of his nose, sending him backwards into the lift doors at speed.
“Somebody get this DAMN THING TO WORK!”
At this last dramatic outburst sentinels scurried to and fro as the panels started to light up one by one and spectacularly rupture.
Ironically the reason for the engine troubles had nothing to do with anything on board. In fact the cause for the disruption was being levelled at the craft from a spot on the planet surface several miles below.
“Easy lad. Easy now...” Jack muttered to himself as he gently moved the walkie-talkie back and forth as though coaxing a giant bass into a landing net using the antenna as a rod.
Hogan adjusted the final screw that bolted the chip into the walkie-talkie, then leaned over to check the sergeant’s progress. With the knife still in his hand, an optimistic glow began to radiate about his sweating face. For some unknown reason he’d now acquired an oily smudge across one cheek. Although radio sets are not renowned for their sump it is the lot of workmen everywhere to be permanently branded with such a mark.
“Add a bit more squelch.” Hogan twiddled his fingers in a rough imitation of the operation Jack ought to perform.
Jack’s leather clad thumb obediently twisted the ‘Squelch’ button. A sharp pinging noise was instantly emitted from the whipping aerial. Moments later a microscopic oblong appeared above them, partially hidden by the cloud bank.
“WHOOAA!”
Suddenly Jack felt the transmitter jerk through his fingers. His fingertips slipped across the edge of the box, his heart missing a significant beat. Somebody aboard the Firestar had presumably attempted to lock out the transmission. He tugged back, gripping firmly, a solitary bead of sweat rolling across the ridge that linked his eyebrows together. The buggers weren’t going to get away with it that easily.
Almost with a snap, the struggle ended. The walkie-talkie slid back into the sergeant’s hands once more.
“No y’ don’t y’ murderous bastards!” he snarled through his gritted teeth. “Hook, line and sinker! You’re bloody nicked!”
Amanda Duck heard the frantic buzzing beside her left ear and felt a slight sensation of pain as a white-hot rocket launcher brushed the lobe. She decided against biting the head from the war memorial, which was fortunate really because it meant that she wouldn’t unwittingly digest a three-inch thick piecrust of pigeon droppings.
Her hooded eyebrows furrowed into one massive pleat of inflexible sinew. Her whole forehead now resembled a relief map of the Pennine Chain. Her enormous neck creaked round and the eyes focused slowly in on the struggling Firestar. So! The bloody thing was stupid enough to come back, was it? Flitting annoyingly about the tip of her upturned nose in a dangerous dance.
A leathery digit moved across the sky, as vast as a barrage balloon. It made contact with the Firestar’s front end. The cadence of the startled engines rose sharply by several octaves as the craft was sent spinning through the darkness.
Amanda turned, lifted one crooked leg and brought her foot down destructively across the centre of Dilbury Crescent.
Oddly enough mammoth creatures take enormous care when confronted by buildings, regardless of what the Godzilla films reckon. Especially buildings that look as though they might dig into your soles. Apart from the occasional parked car getting crushed, Amanda carefully navigated the streets in pursuit of the annoying craft.
The Firestar darted across the rooftops under Jack’s eagle eye.
It was like offering a carrot on a stick to a starving donkey.
At last the cellar was emptied of all the old people. Now they stood around in a gossiping circle, Constable Jaye peering down through the hole to ensure that nobody was left.
Once she was certain the young constable straightened up, only to be confronted by a ring of anxious, craggy faces. Most were dripping with green slime, some without teeth and others with red, runny eyes. It would appear that the Altarian Beasts had a taste for mature meat.
Albert Brasswick stepped forward, the straw boater still on his head. Several strands of yellow straw poked out of its battered rim. The others had elected him as spokesman. He wondered briefly whether or not he ought to sell the young policewoman the half-pound of rotten tripe mouldering in his pocket. He decided against it.
Albert coughed and adjusted his tie before speaking.
“We demand to know w’at’s goin’ on!” There was a general, high-pitched murmur of agreement from behind him. He removed his straw hat and mopped his thinning pate with one cuff. “None of us are exactly young in years...”
“Aye, that’s true enough!”
“We fought a war and for what?”
“So...” Albert continued, ignoring the rabble behind him. “We feel we ’ave a right to know exactly w’at you’re up to. Mrs. Goldsmith...” He indicated the smallest woman imaginable with a sweep of his arm. A woman so ancient that she resembled a sycamore seed. “Mrs. Goldsmith has got terrible trouble with ’er bunions and could well do without this sort o’ thing at ’er time o’ life.”
“An’ I’ve gorra hernia.” A prehistoric gentleman nodded harshly at the constable before retreating into the crowd.
“And my Tiddles needs feeding. ’Ee’ll be going spare with anguish.”
“I can’t see like what I used to, y’ know?”
“It’s not doin’ my ’emmerhoids no good neither!”
“Ee’ll ’ave ripped a big ’ole in the chase longoo be now!”
The whole group erupted into a barrage of complaints. Most of them consisted of remarks about corn plasters and who had died recently and the fact that society wasn’t as decent a place as once it was and ‘Can’t be ’avin’ none of this newfangled technology rubbish. Bloody dangerous, that’s what it was. Oughtn’t go around messin’ wi’ things w’at decent people didn’t understand!”
“Please! PLEASE! Ladies and gentlemen!” Jaye attempted to calm the growing turmoil. “There’s been a slight earth tremor...that’s all.”
Jaye hadn’t been brought up to lie and she knew that the words had come out sounding false. The conversation brought itself to a standstill as twenty-odd pairs of eyeballs all narrowed at once in her direction.
“In Greyminster?”
“Germans!” Cissy strolled up to see what was going on. She casually brushed the brick dust from her top.
“Germans?” Mrs. Wainthrop frowned angrily. “I knew those bugger’s ’ud ’ave somethin’ to do wi’ this!”
All the heads nodded in agreement. Now here was a subject they could really get their false teeth into. The conversation resumed with revitalised vigour. Cissy turned to Constable Jaye who was wearing an appreciative expression. She shrugged her shoulders, happy to oblige, and wandered away, kicking a loose stone from the twisted ground.
The mothership swung into view overhead, Sergeant Partridge making the odd adjustment to the walkie-talkie. His face was alight with contentment, the beaming smile threatening to meet around the back of his head and dissect his skull.
“The bugger’s actually flyin’!” He repeated the words over and over to himself, all the while keeping a steady gaze on each movement that the Firestar made in reaction to his controls.
At the exact moment that the craft swung itself above Patternoster Row Constable Parkins span round the corner, his features flushed and his chest expanded to compensate for his breathlessness.
“Sarge! Sarge! The monkey’s coming!”
He stopped before his superior, waited for a response of some sort, didn’t get one and followed Jack’s line of sight upwards. An ominous shadow blocked his view. A huge oblong, dark and threatening, with the giant Titan swinging its gargantuan arms behind it.
With a heavy thud Amanda Duck took another step forwards. The engines of the Firestar whined as the great slab of metal slid through the air defying all known laws of gravity.
“What do y’ think o’ that, la
d?” A faraway longing filled the sergeant’s rolling tones as he shouted enthusiastically above the deafening din. “Is that a beauty or w’at?”
There was the shred of bolts from the wall panel as Colonel Vosh ripped the protective covering from his personal escape pod. It wasn’t exactly the smartest looking pod in the universe. None of the usual luxurious accoutrements that Vosh associated with the manner of living he’d become accustomed to. It catered for only the minimum of comforts, such as keeping space on the outside. But seeing as the Emergency Shuttle had been stolen, and God only knows who had been brave enough to commit such an act of treason, the Emergency Emergency Escape Pod would just have to suffice for the time being.
By this point the Firestar was a circus of scattering guards, nobody knowing who the Hell had command anymore. Pandemonium had broken out along the entire length of the craft. Guards barrelled down corridors resembling skittles at a ten-pin bowling alley, spinning off each other and smashing into walls. Service robots probed electrical conduits and exploded in the process, showering the narrow ducts with molten parts of their own anatomy. Waldorf struggled through the hatch after his master, infiltrating the exclusive domain without invitation.
“Get OUT!”
“No, your majesty!” The air lock hissed. The oval door clamped itself shut, leaving the two of them prisoners in the large silver Smartie. “In the words of Xnargon the Great when confronted by the rebel forces of Balfazon Prime, ‘SCREW YOU!’...your imperial highness.”
He attempted to bow sardonically but discovered just how limited the pod was on space. Instead he pressed a glowing blue button beside him and with a rumble of release clamps the pod started to blast off.
Amanda Duck took one last swing, lost her footing as she toppled into the camouflaged cellar, and fell over backwards. It was a similar sensation to watching the sky tumble down. All the figures in Patternoster Row stood and stared as the enormous creature took out the surrounding back gardens. Her spectacular fall squashed fences into stratums that divided the suddenly deeper lawns, levelled rockeries and burst ponds as though they were miniature balloons. The whole of Druid’s End Cemetery was crushed beneath her buttocks.
The collapse sent a shock wave through the town with far reaching results. High on the Greyminster Fells several tenuously placed boulders that had taken millions of years to transform into tourist attractions unsteadily rocked before plummeting from their craggy perches.
The primate struggled, defiantly attempting to regain its feet.
Several events seemed to occur in an extremely short space of time.
As Amanda’s head swung gracelessly, trying to shake off the numbing sensation of the fall, Mrs. Doyle seized her opportunity to charge headlong with her walking stick raised.
“Try and ’ave me for breakfast would y’?” she yelled audaciously.
“MOTHER! NO!” Cissy, who had been watching all of this from close by, suddenly sprang forward with the agility of a panther. She leapt for the viciously whipping stick, everything seeming to happen in slow motion as the adrenaline pumped around inside her head.
Too late! The stick made contact with Amanda Duck’s ankle and the two of them followed closely with a sickening thump.
Hogan, jaw agape at the stupid heroics of the young girl, dropped his cigarette and stared up at the vast metal roof above him.
At which point the escape pod was jettisoned from the Firestar’s rump. The effect was catastrophic. The force that was required to give the pod its essential kickback sent the Firestar jolting backwards from a tremendous amount of recoil.
Sergeant Partridge rallied magnificently but no longer had control of the craft. In the medical laboratory the smaller Tachyon bombs grated against the floor, having been rocked from their stands by the sudden jolt. A bead of sweat ran down Jack’s temple. It trailed unnoticed into his collar.
Hogan ran. He reached the two prostrate bodies looking confused and panic stricken where they lay by the ape’s twisted ankle, felt the chill of the space craft as it buckled backwards overhead, and flung his exhausted form down to shield the old woman and her daughter.
The Firestar and Amanda Duck collided. It was enough to cause the Tachyon bombs to roll violently into the nearest wall.
The explosion was awe-inspiring.
Great billowing mushrooms of orange and black cloud distended upwards into the night as if the gates of Hell had been opened. Huge, angry red and purple lines that deceived the eye and convinced the brain it was watching a distant land being formed. Up and up it reached, tormented flames licking silently at the darkness.
All those who witnessed the explosion that night woke up the following morning with a suntan. One or two of the old women who were appreciative of such things started to applaud. But there was no sound. It was as though the destruction was so great it had sucked all of the noise from the surroundings, waited a few moments and then spat it back.
The screaming roar shattered the last of the windows in the neighbourhood.
And the remains of Patternoster Row buckled beneath its weight.
The Greyminster Scrapbook Part Seven
Several weeks after the events of this book had concluded Sergeant Partridge, collecting evidence, paid a visit on the mysterious new owner of Mrs. Doyle’s house. He was greeted by a tall woman with slightly bulging eyeballs but an overall physique that’d send shivers down any red-blooded male’s spine. Oddly enough, from the corner of his eye, he also noticed a balding man in a boiler suit with a smudge of oil across his nose. He was a shifty character who scurried through the lounge door as though he didn’t want to be noticed.
The householder didn’t say much but she gave Jack a card which he promptly stored with all of his other documents.
On the front of the card was a colourful cartoon. It showed an overbearing four-armed woman with eyes on stalks and a cerise coloured nose. She was dressed in a skin-tight bathing costume that was mostly red with yellow polka dots. In one of her claw-like hands she held what resembled a rolling pin.
Next to her, seated in front of a picnic blanket, was a weedy yellow man also with four arms and a purple face. He was attired in what, had it not contained so many armholes, could best be described as a string vest.
The man’s attention was obviously drawn towards a lithesome Cheetah woman who was prancing about before them in a two piece thong.
Small lines had been drawn around his head, presumably to represent worry.
Beneath this picture was a caption that read “kmmw cbha!”
On its reverse the card was divided into two sections, on both of which was some sort of writing. It was difficult to determine exactly what the writing said, having been rained upon at some point on its travels. The only visible words were, ’...ovely Tim...’
Jack had no idea what all of this meant. He kept it anyway. He recognised the lettering as being written in the same calligraphy as the name ‘Columbus’ had been on the shuttlecraft. As for the rest, well that was anybody’s guess.
But Jack had his suspicions.
Chapter Seventeen: The Effect and the Cause
When all was said and done...when all the old dears had been led away by Constable Jaye beneath a bombardment of insults...when the great clouds of soot had settled into a single black smudge heading skywards...Jack Partridge took a closer look at Patternoster Row.
He searched the rubble with his boots, overthrowing blocks of granite and upending chunks of mossy concrete where the sphagnum had shrivelled up into brown springs. He pointlessly goaded a girder with his heel as it saluted the last surviving terrace corners. It looked as though it had fallen in some battle. His hands were stuffed deeply into his overcoat pockets, his thoughts off roaming, unwilling to come home.
Where were the remains? Not the remains of the buildings, they were amassed all around him. The remains of the Firestar? Of Cissy and Mrs. Doyle? And the remains of Commander Hogan who, for all intents and purposes, had sacrificed his life for the sake of
a child?
There’s some good in all of us, Jack thought. It’s just a pity I’ve no idea where ‘all of us’ have actually gone.
Amongst the refuse something stirred. Very gradually at first, just one or two bricks sliding against each other with the sort of sound that pots leaving a dry kiln would make. Then a layer of cement began to fracture into a crack. A crack that quickly became a line. A line that turned into an edge that skirted around an indistinct shape resembling a freshly cut gingerbread man.
The shape struggled up, a scuffed face appearing, its hair plastered down and its eyes blinking painfully as though witnessing daylight for the first time. A familiar countenance with bronzed, heavily made-up features. Amanda Duck.
Jack sprinted forwards, his stalwart frame swinging from side to side so that he resembled an inflatable buoy. As he reached the struggling body he immediately went down on one knee, brushing the debris from all around her.
“What happened...?” A feeble voice emanated from a throat that sounded drier than the Arizona Desert.
“There’s been an accident, Ma’am,” Jack said reassuringly. “Nowt t’ worry yourself about. We’ll soon ’ave you out of ’ere.”
Jack glanced back across his shoulder. He spotted Parkins looking lost amongst a quantity of bricks on the far side of the road.
“Parkins!”
“Sarge?”
“Get an ambulance lad. We’ve got a survivor ’ere!”
Parkins conducted a succession of false starts before heading off towards the telephone box on Maple Leaf Drive. Sergeant Partridge took a survey of the surrounding devastation whilst meticulously prising Amanda Duck’s limbs from the clutter. And he wondered if the other bodies might be hidden amongst the ruins.
Caught up in the explosion like the people of Pompeii.