Chrysalis Young (6 page)

When she returned to the main garage, Chrysalis had a surprise for her. She too now had a disguise. She was a breathtakingly beautiful dragon with the cutest baby wings. “My real body already has claws and when I hatch, I’ll have proper wings so it feels right,” Chrysalis explained, her voice deep and rasping through the dragon mouth “The aliens are dragons so my disguise might confuse them and anything that gives us an edge…”

Amanda called the sword and made a few moves.

“It is absolutely you,” Chrysalis said. She vanished the dragon costume. Amanda followed suit. Chrysalis said, “The minder has more resources for us. She has another weapon for you.” She pointed at the rusty shell of a car at the other end of the garage. “Look at that and think ‘fire.’”

“What’s going to happen?” Amanda said, alarmed.

“There’s no try before you buy,” Chrysalis said. “Pull the trigger and see what happens.”

Amanda groaned and braced herself in case there was recoil or whatever. She looked at the rusty motor vehicle and thought, Fire!

A ball of fire erupted from each of her eyes and streaked towards the car, exploding against it in a shower of firework colours and sparks. The rusty shell of the car burned furiously for a few seconds before melting away into a black smear on the concrete.

“Holy crap!” Amanda said. She felt her eyes, thinking that her eyebrows and eyelashes would have been singed to a whisper. They felt the same as they always did. “I’m going to have to be kinda careful with this until I get used to it.”

“The minder tells me that you’ll learn to fire with only one eye, or both, but in different directions if you want.”

Amanda was given no time to dwell on this. A bunch of guys sauntered in. They were dressed in jeans, white T-shirts and leather jackets, with no obvious gang insignia, tattoos, patches or colours. Didn’t matter. It was still a gang. They formed a rough circle around Amanda and Chrysalis, a couple sitting up on a workbench along one wall, another leaning against the open garage doors keeping an eye on the street. The rest adopted aggressive poses where they stood.

None of them could keep their eyes off Chrysalis.

One of them circled around Chrysalis, sniffing at her. “Jees…us, you are a pretty one.” He dropped into one of the old chairs from the office, took out a knife and made a show of picking his nails with it. When he was ready, he gazed indulgently at Amanda and Chrysalis. “Here’s the deal. First we introduce ourselves, ‘cause we like to do that. Then we rip your clothes off and throw you on a mattress.” He went around each of his boys, introducing them in turn and finishing with a young teen sitting nervously on the workbench. “Meet Bobby. Wants to be one of us so you’re going to help him with that.”

Amanda felt a flash of sympathy for Bobby, although he was already on a road to hell so…

The gang leader, Marty ‘Buckle Up’—he hadn’t explained where that came from—pointed his knife at Chrysalis and said, “You, I’m gonna take somewhere quiet and when I’m finished I’ll let the dogs have ya.”

“I’m not pretty enough for you?” Amanda said.

“Bitch, you sure got a mouth on you,” one of the other guys said. “I’m going to fill that up for you.”

“It doesn’t matter whether you’re pretty or not. We’re still going to do ya,” Marty said.

“Thanks for giving me the excuse,” Amanda said, calling the warrior girl costume and her sword.

Amazingly, they were unfazed. “Sure is some weird shit around these days,” Marty said. “That has got to be OMG.”

Maybe they were on drugs, Amanda thought. They would have to be on drugs. Didn’t matter. This was the bit where they quickly changed to running and screaming.

“These are not zombies,” Chrysalis said to Amanda. “You said we don’t kill innocents.”

“There’s nothing innocent about these scum bags,” Amanda said. “Let’s get some practice with our new resources before we have do the real thing out there.”

Chrysalis’s response was to change to her dragon costume.

The gang thought this was very cool.

Amanda twirled the sword and sliced down through the top of Marty’s head, exiting out through the bottom of the chair. The two halves of Marty and the chair stayed together until Amanda swept the sword sideways underneath the chair and removed one set of legs. The two halves of Marty and the chair fell messily apart.

Most of the gang members began to back away, shock and incomprehension on their faces.

Two of them stood their ground, pulling guns from under their jackets. Dragon Chrysalis was on one of them in a single bound of her powerful hindquarters, swiftly ripping him to pieces. Amanda took the other one with a couple of fireballs.

The running and screaming began.

They spent the next 45 minutes hunting down the rest of them in the derelict buildings, dispatching them one by one. Amanda was still glad when it was Chrysalis who killed Bobby rather than her.

Afterwards, Amanda went around cleaning up the bodies, until only black smears remained.

“I don’t think we should stay here,” Amanda said. “They’ve probably got friends who might come looking for them. We don’t want to bring the whole neighbourhood down on us.”

Chrysalis agreed. “This isn’t a good place to explain about Mt Cravat. I know a better place.”

“Are we going to Mt Cravat?” Amanda said, thinking it was probably her least favourite place to visit right now because it likely meant bad news.

Chrysalis looked up at the sky through one of the tall grimy windows. “It’s not so wet now. The best place would be Fossils Park.”

Amanda decided that she didn’t want to know why Fossils Park would be the best place to explain about Mt Cravat so she didn’t ask.

Aunt Jemima returned.

“You missed out on that tip, Aunt Jemima,” Amanda said, as she entered the bus. Aunt Jemima ignored her, sitting like a broken doll in her seat, staring vacantly out through the windshield, head bobbing on one side as it always did.

The weather had cleared somewhat as they pulled into the car park at Fossils Park although the sky was still filled with grey scudding clouds and everything was wet and sopping. Amanda got out, needing some air. There was no dry place to sit so she hung about until Chrysalis joined her.

“How long has Fossils Park been here?” Chrysalis said.

“Oh, about six months,” Amanda said flippantly.

“No. It was constructed 25 years ago when this suburb was developed.”

“Which is totally unlike Mt Cravat, so I’m told,” Amanda said. “And let’s not talk about the river and the bridges.” Although, obviously, that was exactly what they were going to talk about.

“Where is the nearest McCain’s?” Chrysalis asked. This was a hugely popular burger chain.

“Yeah, it is about time for lunch. You hungry?” Amanda said, glad of a change of subject.

“No. Where is the nearest McCain’s?”

“Okay, okay, Miss one hundred percent focused. Have you thought about a career in industry?”

Chrysalis waited patiently.

Amanda gave up. “Way over in Bedford. I don’t know why we don’t have one closer.”

Chrysalis hailed a middle-aged pot-gutted man who happened to be passing. “Excuse me. Would you tell me where the nearest McCain’s is please?”

The man gave her a look of pure lechery. “Oh, hello,” he said.

Chrysalis flashed him a pretty smile. “Do you know where it is?”

Amanda glared at him hoping he would turn into a zombie. She was thinking, maybe she should call the sword anyway, just in case, and then told herself to settle down.

The man gave directions to the McCain’s in Bedford and then reluctantly moved on.

“I guess all roads lead to Bedford,” Amanda said. “Is that where we’re going now? Unless you feel the need to check the directions again?”

“There’s no need,” Chrysalis said. “There is one right here.”

As she spoke, fully half of Fossils Park in front of them was replaced by a McCain’s restaurant. The bus was now in the burger outlet’s main car park. Around them, people were getting out of cars and going inside. The drive-through was busy. Children played in the McCain’s playground.

Despite all of the gobsmackingly strange events that had happened to her since meeting Chrysalis, and convinced she could no longer be surprised, Amanda’s jaw still gaped.

“Let’s go and have lunch,” Chrysalis said. Like a stunned mullet, Amanda followed her inside.

Before giving her order, Chrysalis said to the girl behind the counter, “I didn’t know there was a McCain’s in this part of town. How long has it been here?”

“About 12 months,” the girl said, looking at them expectantly, suggesting this wasn’t the time for a chit chat because there were people behind them, didn’t you know?

Chrysalis and Amanda took their order and sat down at one of the tables.

Although she had claimed not to be hungry, Chrysalis tucked into the food anyway. Amanda toyed with her milkshake, not bothering with the food. She kept looking around the restaurant.

“This is a small version of what happened at Mt Cravat,” Chrysalis said.

“I’m getting that,” Amanda said. “Did we really have a river going through the city and lots of bridges?”

“Yes. My parents changed all of that when they hid the ship here, six months ago.”

“But what about the history written down all over the place? What about people’s memories? Don’t tell me you’ve changed the memories of every single person who knew about Mt Cravat and everything that’s been written and recorded about it, all over the world…” She shook her head in disbelief again.

“Yes.”

Now Amanda became angry. “What makes you think you have the right to come here and…screw with us like this?” She sat back from the table, beside herself, not knowing what to think, what to say. For a moment she actually thought she was going to burst into tears. She struggled to maintain her self-control. “You have no right to do this to us,” she said.

“This isn’t anything compared to what the aliens have done to you,” Chrysalis said. “I’ve done this with McCain’s to show you that the technology exists to do this. The aliens have a similar technology.”

“Oh, this just gets better and better,” Amanda said.

“My parents had been here before, many years ago. This planet was a very different place then. Human beings lived an idyllic lifestyle in an environment that was utopia. When we arrived six months ago, my parents were surprised to find war, disease, ecological devastation, pestilence, plague, and misery. They think the aliens have been here about three or four years. The aliens changed you using the same technology that has just been used here.” Chrysalis used her burger to gesture at the restaurant around them. “They gave you nuclear weapons, armies, and warships and hatred of one another. They constructed a history for you of endless wars, famine and disease. They degraded the environment to match the new world they had constructed. Everything you have been taught about the past, even your own memories, was constructed by the aliens.”

“Three or four years ago? Are you trying to tell me that I grew up in a utopia and now I don’t know anything about it?”

“Yes.”

“But I know there wasn’t a McCain’s here. I remember Fossils Park as it was,” Amanda said.

Chrysalis pointed to the bracelet on Amanda’s wrist.

Now Amanda understood. “Is that why you told me never to take it off?” Amanda said. “It never was about protecting me, was it?”

“It did protect you. It stopped them from changing you, or worse, make it so that you never existed at all.”

“Oh,” Amanda said, suddenly feeling frightened.

“That’s why we have to fight them. Until every last one of them are dead. Only then will your world, as it was, return.”

“How many of them are there?” Amanda said.

“Millions.”

“I think I’m going to need more than a sword if I’m going to save the world,” Amanda said.

“The more we learn to fight, the more resources will be given to us by the minder.”

“Could your parents kill all of them?”

“Yes, probably.”

“If they want all of the aliens dead,” Amanda said, “why don’t they do this themselves?” Her face fell. “Oh. It’s not about saving the world, is it?”

“No. Until I prove myself, I can’t hatch into an adult.”

“You don’t even care about saving the world,” Amanda said.

“No.”

“Well, at least that’s honest,” Amanda said, deciding that maybe sometimes it was better not to be honest.

“That’s the difference between us,” Chrysalis said. “I don’t even understand how you would give up your own life to save your planet. I think that’s the most amazingly courageous thing to do. Perhaps that’s an echo of how you were before the aliens came and they haven’t been able to crush it.”

“Don’t get too carried away with that,” Amanda said. “I don’t know that I’m really into the total sacrifice thing.”

“If we don’t win here, I will die, your world will stay as it is, perhaps you’ll die too, or the aliens will change you to someone else.”

“Is that when your parents take their revenge on the aliens and we get utopia back?”