Authors: John Zanetti
They had both been worrying about this for days.
“Come on, cocoon girl,”
Amanda continued,
“What’s the plan?”
“The minder is considering the situation,”
Chrysalis said. Her voice was calm but her eyes told a different story.
“Yeah, well, the super advanced alien minder better get off her butt and come up with something fast or it is going to be a real short finale,”
Amanda said.
“We can’t expect the minder to do everything. We have to make it work too,”
Chrysalis snapped back. It was the first time Amanda had ever seen Chrysalis get rattled and it scared the pants off her.
“I’m just the hired help here,”
Amanda said.
“Some dumb human in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“Do you think this red is too vivid?” Sarah said to Amanda, lifting a free end of the sash she was wearing, a worried frown on her face.
Amanda had never liked sashes. She didn’t have the waist for it. “I’d leave it off because it’s a stunning dress and less is more.”
Her worst fears confirmed, Sarah removed the sash and tossed it onto the dressing table, and then stood in front of the full-length mirrors to check the result.
“We have to present a new plan to the minder. She won’t release new resources without a new plan,”
Chrysalis said.
“If she’d tell us what the new resources can do, then we could work out a new plan to use the new resources and maybe deal with millions of them at once, or at least thousands of them anyway.”
“It doesn’t work like that,”
Chrysalis said, becoming exasperated.
“I am fully knowing that it doesn’t work like that,”
Amanda said. They had been going around in circles on this one for days.
“I totally can’t believe you super advanced aliens would get that so wrong.”
Chrysalis growled, sounding much more like dragon Chrysalis than little cocoon girl.
“You guys are not saying much tonight,” Sarah said. “Come on, nut up. We’ve done this a million times.”
Amanda was all out of ideas.
“I guess we’ll just slice and dice and see what happens.”
To Sarah, she said, “You’re amazing, Sarah. I thought we’d be scratching each other’s eyes out.”
Sarah checked her make up again. “It’s not always about winning.” She groaned, looking at her nails against her dress in the mirror. “Am I worrying about nothing? Tell me I’m worrying about nothing.”
Amanda gave her a hug. “You
are
worrying about nothing. You look great.”
A light above the door went amber. A chime sounded. They had 10 minutes before they were due on stage. Soon they were called and a minute or two later, the three of them made their grand entrance onto the stage and the audience went berserk.
By now, the rest of the top 20 had finished on the outdoor stage and were waiting in the wings, leaving the outside audience to content themselves with seeing it all on monster screens. As soon as they were on stage, Chrysalis, Amanda, and Sarah launched straight into the signature song for the show which everyone loved. Then there was some fooling around with the host, Ashley Timberlain. After the judges had said lots of nice things, the full top 20 did a dance and song routine. Thousands of fan txts began to scroll down the back screen behind them.
The aliens liked it too because they arrived in force, their dark dragon forms wrapping themselves around everyone in the audience, and the outside audience as well.
And Sarah.
“Showtime,”
Amanda said.
“There are thousands of them,”
Chrysalis said.
“Time to light the fires and kick the something, I don’t remember what.”
“Let’s not die tonight,”
Chrysalis said.
“Sword,”
Amanda said.
Warrior girl and dragon Chrysalis appeared centre stage. Sarah became a zombie. She lurched towards Chrysalis and Amanda, eyes staring, saliva from her open mouth already dripping onto her beautiful dress. The rest of the top 20 became zombies. For a brief and shocking moment the audience thought it was all part of the show. Until the audience in the auditorium turned to zombies and became part of the show too. Amanda vanished the mask. It had always got in the way and now it didn’t matter—they had just changed to their disguises in full view of the world.
Chrysalis killed every alien in the auditorium in a matter of seconds. Sarah sank to the floor looking confused. Amanda’s father, Joanna, and Beatrice were frozen in their seats, stuck in a no-man’s land of incomprehension as though they had wandered into the wrong theatre by mistake. Around them, the zombies suddenly stopped slavering and acting crazy, and sank back into their seats, staring vacantly or looking around, bewildered.
In a variation of the Pied Piper tactic, warrior girl Amanda and dragon Chrysalis headed for the side entrance to the lowest levels of the auditorium, pushing ex-zombies out of the way, until they were racing down the connecting corridor which led out into the wide, glass-lined foyer. In the foyer they skidded to a stop. Pressing up against the tall windows were hundreds of zombies, and behind them, out in the parking lot, were thousands. The only plan they had, called for them to draw the zombies away from the people in the auditorium.
“Blow the windows,”
Chrysalis said.
“It’s a done deal,”
Amanda said. Although it was going to be a little trickier than that because when she released the bomb, she had to make sure that she didn’t take out any of the supporting concrete pillars and they were still only a few metres from the doors to the auditorium behind them. She selected the widest part between the pillars and was about to rush up to the window when all of the glass shattered inwards. Blood-soaked zombies, carved up by the breaking glass, staggered towards them.
They fought their way outside, still trying to draw the zombies away from the building.
“Releasing clones,”
Amanda said.
“Let’s do a triangle pattern.”
“Okay,”
Chrysalis said.
Amanda released Amanda 2 and Amanda 3. The clones ran on automatic. A2 and A3 hurled fireballs and sliced up zombies, working their way outwards, making the borders of the triangle until they were at the two furthest points with Amanda holding the third point at the windows. Chrysalis followed along, killing aliens inside the triangle.
“We’re done,”
Amanda said, when she and the clones had finished setting the borders.
Chrysalis finished killing all of the aliens in the triangle.
“Done,”
she said. This was a particularly effective tactic because they had found that the aliens were confused by the triangle shape for reasons that were unknown and didn’t matter. They started working another triangle off one of the borders, and with all of the ‘bewildered’ clogging access to them on one side, they had a handy buffer zone.
This worked for a while until thousands more of the zombies began to pour in from side streets around the Horsey Centre. Soon all three Amandas were struggling to keep the zombies away from Chrysalis.
“A bomb would be good now,”
Chrysalis said.
“Yeah, let’s do that,”
Amanda said. She sent new instructions to A2 and A3 through the minder. All three Amandas killed their way outwards from Chrysalis and released bombs. It didn’t matter that Chrysalis was within the killing zone of the bombs—she was unaffected by them. They bombed the zombies in a trapezoid pattern which they had also found to be effective. Maybe the aliens didn’t like geometry which Amanda could certainly sympathise with.
It wasn’t enough.
“We need new thinking,”
Chrysalis said. The sheer mass of zombies had pushed them back to the shattered windows of the foyer.
“Tell me about it,”
Amanda said. She was throwing fireballs, dropping mini bombs, and swinging the sword so fast it was only a blur and she still found herself stepping backwards over the shattered glass on the floor and into the foyer. She pulled the clones back into herself because they could only run on automatic out in big open spaces. In the confined space inside the Horsey Centre, she could only use them if she directed their moves and she plain just couldn’t think fast enough. Their situation was now so bad that she had to give up trying to avoid getting the ‘bewildered’ caught in the crossfire. They no longer had that luxury. She killed every living thing around Chrysalis as fast she was possibly able to.
It still wasn’t enough.
Now they were backed up to the carpeted stairs going up to the higher levels in the auditorium.
“What’s at the top of the stairs?”
Amanda yelled.
“Don’t shout at me!”
Chrysalis said. She sounded rattled.
“Please check with the minder. Where do the stairs go?”
“To the roof,”
Chrysalis said.
“Okay. Let’s go there,”
Amanda said.
“Why?”
“Only so many of them can get up the stairs at a time. Maybe we can hold them off,”
Amanda said, although she had already decided that the two of them were toast but it paid not to think about that.
“We should get to the roof quickly because this may not be the only stairway.”
They backed up the stairs, holding off the zombies by clogging the stairway with the ‘bewildered’ and lots of flaming bodies.
At one of the landings to the higher levels of the auditorium, Amanda couldn’t resist checking on her family and poked her head through the swing doors into the auditorium.
The auditorium was still full of the ‘bewildered’ but she couldn’t see her Dad, Joanna or Beatrice.
“We’ve got to go!”
Chrysalis said. But it was too late. The stairway further up had become a seething mass of zombies. It didn’t matter to Amanda. She needed to find her family. She rushed into the auditorium. They were nowhere to be seen. Instead, clambering over the top of the ‘bewildered,’ and crushing many of them beneath them, was a solid stream of zombies flooding in from the lower level connecting corridors on both sides of the auditorium. They were all over the stage and in the wings.
“I have to find my family,”
Amanda said.
Chrysalis checked with the minder.
“They’re in those backrooms near the loading dock. The zombies are chasing them.”
“Why are they attacking my family?”
Amanda was already now down on the stage, carving a path through the zombies into the wings and to the dressing rooms. Beyond them was the maze of offices, workshop spaces and the loading dock.
“I don’t get it. You said they couldn’t turn my family.”
“They’re not trying to… I think they’re trying to kill them.”
This galvanised Amanda to even greater efforts, swinging the sword and hurling fireballs in a total frenzy until, all on her own, she had cleared a path into the rest of the complex.
“We’ve got to get to them!”
Chrysalis joined Amanda in the first of the workshop spaces, leaving a trail of ‘bewildered’ behind her.
“It’s a trap. The aliens expected me to tell you. They’re learning new tricks.”
“I have to tell you,”
Amanda said,
“that it’s going to work because, obviously…”
“It’s still a trap.”
Amanda didn’t even bother to reply and focused on getting through the workshops to the loading dock as quickly as possible. Mentally shrugging, Chrysalis joined her.
The bodies piled up. The corridors and open spaces became clogged with the ‘bewildered.’ Amanda and Chrysalis reached the loading dock.
Up on the loading dock, Amanda’s father and Joanna had found crowbars and were smashing at the wall of zombies crowding in around them. Hiding behind them was Beatrice. Behind her were the steel roller doors closing off the loading dock to the outside. They were already beginning to buckle under the sheer weight of zombies trying to get into the loading dock from the parking lot.
Amanda and Chrysalis cleared the zombies from the loading dock. Her family were still shocked and speechless, their faces white and frightened. Her father tried to say something. Amanda cut him short. It wasn’t the time for reunions.
“We’ve still got to get to the roof,”
she said to Chrysalis.
“It’s our only chance.”
The minder pointed the way. The small party set off for a maintenance stairwell going to the roof with Amanda's family between her and Chrysalis. Her father and Joanna had brought along their crowbars and they helped keep the zombies at bay.
They got to the roof. Zombies were already spilling out of other roof access doors. Amanda and Chrysalis went to work again, now able to use the full suite of resources again on the wide expanse of roof. Amanda released the clones.
It wasn’t long before Amanda realised that hardly any of the zombies were becoming the ‘bewildered.’
“Better lift your game, dragon girl,”
Amanda said as she hacked and slashed, narrowly preventing the front wave of zombies from reaching Chrysalis and her family.