Chrysalis Young (7 page)

“No,” Chrysalis said, surprised. “I am only one Chrysalis Young amongst many who want to hatch. They will simply move on and see if another Chrysalis Young can do better elsewhere.”

“They won’t even shed a few tears for you? Get a little choked up?”

“No.”

“Chrysalis, that’s horrible,” Amanda said. “I guess we’re back to killing zombies.”

But Chrysalis had a better plan. “Instead of waiting for them to attack us. We’ll go and kill them wherever we find them and the more we kill, the more resources we get, meaning we can kill many more of them at one time.”

“And any humans that turn to zombies, I keep them off your back,” Amanda said

“Yes,”

“It’s going to take us a couple of lifetimes to deal to millions of aliens,” Amanda said. “And they’re all over the world. I might have a hard job explaining to my parents why I suddenly want to go to Africa, or Switzerland or someplace, during my semester break. And the bus doesn’t even fly. You need to rework this a little.”

“Some of the resources are very powerful. All we need to do is kill enough of the aliens so that the minder unlocks them for me.”

“You’d better hope the minder unlocks those resources real soon or we’re history. No joke intended ‘cause I don’t feel like laughing today,” Amanda said.

-oOo-

Amanda’s next performance on the show was her best yet. For some reason, she now felt less distracted. She wasn’t buying the utopia idea just yet. In fact, she didn’t believe it at all. It was too way out there. However, the talk at McCain’s had brought things sharply into focus. She had a simple job to do. Kill zombies. Watch Chrysalis’s back. Tazzie was as safe as she could make her. Her family seemed okay. It was time to get on with the job.

As she continued to deliver top performances, everyone on the show noticed the change in her.

Tracy Buckingham was especially pleased. “You’re now very much in tune with your fan base, Amanda. You’ve hit the spot and now you’ve got to stay there.”

Even Roman Harding took to making positive comments. “You must maintain this consistency. If you can do that, you’re in with a chance.”

Neither of them said that she still might win because Chrysalis was so far ahead of everyone else, the rest of the contestants were only vying for second place anyway.

Sarah said to Amanda, “I’ve written a song that would be perfect for the two of us. We could do digital distribution, even have our own label. It’s really easy to do.”

Working on the track with Sarah was lots of fun.

-oOo-

By day, Amanda was a high school senior hanging out with her friends. By night, she was a warrior girl fighting the aliens with dragon Chrysalis at her side. Well, actually, it didn’t go quite like that. She was often required during the day for the competition promos and the show always happened at night, but mostly that was how she thought of it.

Chrysalis’s new tactic threw the aliens off-balance, at least for a little while. Then they began to attack in greater numbers although this was exactly what Chrysalis wanted because the more she killed, the more access to resources she was given.

It was only a matter of time before they were caught on camera.

Chrysalis set up an attack at the dirt track at Sutherland. Sixteen thousand people were watching monster cars and trucks demolish other cars and trucks, demonstrations of blowing stuff up, and other fun events.

“Lots of aliens?” Amanda said.

“Mega aliens,” Chrysalis said. “They love watching demolition.”

Chrysalis and Amanda hid in the shadow of a side stand and changed to costume. Above their heads, 3000 people in the stand were doing the usual things people do at events like these. Amanda, as warrior girl, stepped out into the open and twirled her sword, making a small display of it. She didn’t have much choice in this as it was not possible to rest the sword anywhere because it went through anything it touched like a hot skewer through fat. Neither dragon Chrysalis nor warrior girl Amanda rated more than a passing glance from passers-by or the people in the stand. The few people who did pause to watch Amanda twirl the sword, decided that it was not particularly spectacular and moved quickly on. Some young kids, who didn’t get out much, stopped and pointed until they were dragged away.

As you would expect, that swiftly changed when Chrysalis, sitting comfortably on her massive hindquarters, started killing aliens in the stand.

Seconds later, Amanda was knee deep in zombies who were not zombies which was always in the back of her mind but let’s not go there.

The stand started to empty as the newly turned zombies flooded down the aisles. Amanda hurled fireballs and swung the sword, keeping them away from the motionless Chrysalis. The bodies piled up. Soon there were far too many of them lurching towards Chrysalis for Amanda to handle.

“Pied Piper?”
Chrysalis said through the minder to Amanda.

“Pied Piper,”
Amanda acknowledged.

All round the two of them, and up into the stand, was a mixture of zombies, people who had been freed and were sitting around vacantly, and people who had not yet been turned and were frantically trying to get out of the stand, except that all of the aisles were full of zombies and so mostly they were cowering up the back or scrambling across the seats and screaming lots. The problem was that her new resources could not discriminate between the different types of humans or simply destroyed everything in sight.

One of their new tactics to deal with this issue was Pied Piper. Amanda hurled fireballs flat out, clearing a bigger space than normal around Chrysalis. A significant chunk of the zombies were targeting herself so she turned away from Chrysalis and cut a path through the zombies to the grassy open space in front of the stand. Many of the zombies turned to follow her.

“Focusing here,”
Chrysalis said. This was to warn Amanda that she would now concentrate only on the aliens in front of her so that Amanda was on her own with the zombies that were following her to the grass at the front of the stand.

“Okay,”
Amanda responded.

Having put some distance between herself and the people who had been freed, or not yet turned, Amanda released the bomb. This was a powerful new resource. A wave of energy pulsed out from her in a circle, disintegrating anything in its path. She could control the distance it travelled from her, and there didn’t seem to be any limit on how far that could be. She stopped it before it reached the stand, a few metres away. About 40 zombies in the circle around her all but turned to ash.

“Help,”
Chrysalis said.

Amanda flicked her eyes back to Chrysalis. She was surrounded by a tightly packed, seething mass of zombies, pressing in so close that Chrysalis had resorted to clawing at their physical bodies to try and keep them off as well as trying to kill the aliens wrapped around them. Amanda sent a barrage of fireballs, clearing a space around her and then continued the barrage as she fought her way back to help dragon girl.

When Amanda felt that Chrysalis had the situation under control she said,
“Repeat Pied Piper?”

“Sure,”
Chrysalis responded.

Amanda repeated the tactic again. So far the aliens hadn’t come up with a way to counter this and Amanda hadn’t figured out, in this and other interactions with the aliens, whether they weren’t very bright, or more likely, were being alien and unknowable. It didn’t matter. It was a handy tactic. They kept working the tactic until they felt that the aliens had become distracted from the people still up in the back of the stand who hadn’t yet been turned. Now it was time for another tactic.

“Cavalry?”
Chrysalis said.

“I’m on it,”
Amanda said. She fought her way up the aisles and across the seats to a shocked and terrified group of about 400 people in the top back of the stand.

“Follow me,” she yelled to them. She cleared a path for them back down the aisle through the zombies and kept it open until those who made it down, ran screaming from the stand. Although it was good to save their lives, it also meant less ammunition for the aliens.

By now the whole of the Sutherland track was in an uproar. The events on the track had come to an uncertain stop, if only because hundreds of people, desperate to get away from the smaller stand, had climbed the fences and were all over the track.

A wave of uncertainty went through the main stand. Many of them had been staring open-mouthed at the attack on the smaller stand and to even the most hardened densest monster trucker it was now blindingly obvious that something was seriously amiss.

When people in the main stand started to turn to zombies, the stand quickly descended into total chaos. Many people died under the crush of feet as people scrambled to get out of the stand. An enormous wave of zombies flowed down from the main stand towards the smaller stand.

“Maybe we should quit while we’re ahead,”
Amanda said.

“Yes,”
Chrysalis agreed. She called Aunt Jemima.

Under the watchful eye of the television cameras, it being a live televised event, dragon Chrysalis and warrior girl Amanda headed for Aunt Jemima and a big old convertible waiting on the track. Aunt Jemima had also adopted a disguise—an insane rendition of a McCain’s restaurant staff member.

The convertible hovered several inches off the ground. It too was a powerful new resource. Amanda swung herself over the door into the front passenger seat while dragon Chrysalis clambered into the back, fully occupying it. As soon as they had climbed in, Aunt Jemima floored the accelerator and they were quickly lost in the clouds.

Amanda was grateful they were no longer travelling the city streets because Aunt Jemima’s erratic reactions to stop lights was definitely dicing with death.

-oOo-

It was not the sheer scale of the violence at Sutherland, or even the 653 people who had died there which so shocked the world. It was the zombies who were not zombies that occupied the media and conversations everywhere. After warrior girl and her dragon had left the stadium, thousands of people ceased being zombies and instead wandered around confused or woke up to their injuries and lay about everywhere crying for help.

Amanda tried not to think about the fact that it was only the presence of herself and dragon Chrysalis that had caused them to become zombies in the first place. She reasoned that she was fighting the good fight and collateral damage was unavoidable.

Arguments raged over whether the zombie apocalypse was in fact occurring or whether something else was going on. Apocalypse fandom lapped it all up.

Most people agreed with the authorities that a temporary collective madness, food poisoning maybe, had struck the people at the Sutherland dirt track. The caterers received many death threats.

Warrior girl was either a superhero saving humanity from the zombie apocalypse, or a mass murderer, depending on who you listened to. The police declared warrior girl to be a person of interest and they were undecided on the dragon. As usual, the police were caught in the middle, unable to explain why they didn’t immediately arrest either the caterers or warrior girl, or both, and the promotors of the event, definitely, because it was obvious to everyone where the blame lay.

All the girls loved dragon Chrysalis because even as a dragon she was drop-dead gorgeous and totally awesome even if she didn’t do very much.

No one could explain Aunt Jemima.

-oOo-

Within two weeks, Amanda and Chrysalis had cleared most of the city of aliens, and in each battle they were able to deploy more and more effective resources. 15,000 people died. Helping Amanda deal with her conscience at killing innocent people was a powerful new resource. Now her resources were linked with the resources available to Chrysalis. This meant that every time she killed a zombie, she also killed the alien wrapped around the zombie.

Now they found there was no need to go to Africa or Switzerland, or other places—the aliens were coming to them. The city began to fill up with aliens again as they flooded in from all over the world. Sooner or later, there had to be a showdown.

It was the night of the grand finale of the competition. The Charles Horsey Entertainment and Convention Centre was ablaze with coloured lighting. Spotlights swept the sky. On one side of the massive car park, a stage had been erected and this too was ablaze with lights as the top 20, minus Chrysalis, Amanda and Sarah, warmed up the audience packing the rest of the parking lot. Inside the convention centre, the main auditorium was filled to bursting. In pride of place in the front row were the families of Amanda and Sarah. Aunt Jemima had a cold and was unable to attend.

Usually the finale was a play-off between the final two contestants. Not this year. No one questioned that Chrysalis had already won, and Aunt Jemima, without her McCain’s disguise, had already signed the recording contract. The contest promoters were still happy, however, because the second place spot had ended up a dead heat between Sarah and Amanda. As they both had huge fan bases, they still had a play-off.

In the dressing room behind the main stage, Amanda said through the minder to Chrysalis,
“We might as well have hung a sign out saying, ‘Aliens, welcome.’”