Crime Rave (11 page)

9:00 AM Spruce-Musa Hospital

T
he previous fourth floor patients are tucked away in new digs, with many of them threatening to sue the hospital for the inconvenience. This is Beverly Hills’s most elite medical establishment after all, and socialites don’t take kindly to their needs being made second tier to anyone, not even the sole survivors of a cataclysmic event.

As the recent additions to the list of Crane Massacre survivors adjust to their new surroundings, hell breaks loose. The three women CSI Stacey Chang IDed as aliens get the party started:

The cyborg, gray skin shimmering, shoots poison darts through her skin, killing the nurse attempting to sedate her.

The lizard lady—green, crocodilian, with ridges down her back and forked snake tongue that slithers out every so often—gives an orderly a concussion after knocking him through a wall with her tail.

The woman who smells like oleander puts the doctor on call into a coma after he touches her skin with his bare hands.

If Red Feather and Günn had any doubts about CSI Chang’s theory of the alien entities, they’re dispelled.

Nurse Pratchett rattles off various points from an injury waiver Detectives Red Feather and Günn need to sign before they talk with the survivors. “And you tell your people they are not to enter the rooms, under
any
circumstances. We are stretched thin as it is. Understand?”

The detectives nod and sign on the dotted lines.

“Ready?” Red Feather raises an eyebrow at his partner.

“As a Freddy. Let’s go.” Günn takes a deep breath, wishing they’d worn Kevlar vests. Red Feather feels a surge of adrenaline as if he were about to interview a perp, not a victim.

Red Feather knocks on the lizard lady’s door. “This is Detectives Red Feather and Günn. May we come in?”

“Door’s open.”

She sits in a chair by the window, looking decidedly human: a female in her late twenties with fair skin and long blonde hair in a green velour tank top and matching trousers.

Red Feather twinges with disappointment. Günn notices her hospital gown folded in a neat pile on the dresser.
Where did she get the outfit?

“Don’t look so sad. I can change back if you want,” she says, her hair rippling like seaweed as she turns her head.

“Excuse me?” Günn didn’t realize she was wearing her interest in meeting an alien on her sleeve.

“I’m a shapeshifter. See?” She takes a long look at Red Feather, closes her eyes, breathes in. As they watch she turns into his identical twin, down to the scar on his forehead from his first ever fistfight in high school. She shivers and turns into Günn’s mom, joint in hand and all.

“Whoa,” Red Feather and Günn in chorus.

She laughs. “You’ve seen
The Matrix
too many times.” The alien shivers and changes into her lizard form. “This is my true shape.” Her tail curls at the end like an iguana, and like a chameleon she has black patches indicating her discomfort. Her eyes are the color of light amber and they blink both ways. Red Feather finds it hypnotic.

“Since we’re playing show-and-tell, wanna see something else?”

She doesn’t need an answer, the eagerness in the detectives face gives them away.

“Got a pen knife?”

Red Feather fishes in his back pocket and pulls out his Swiss Army knife, the last gift he received from his Grandfather before his passing.

The alien presses the blade against her thumb and begins sawing.

“What the fuh—” Günn begins, but the alien silences her with a sharp glance.

In a quick moment she’s holding her thumb, shows the stump to the detectives who watch as it grows back. Not slowly. “Think fast,” she says, tossing the amputated digit towards the detectives. Günn catches it, horrified. “Be careful what you do with it. My blood stays active.”

“They call me Chamelia. Pleased to meet you. Sort of.” She shivers again and is back in human form, her olive skin glowing and her hair tangled. She works out the knots with long green-tipped fingernails. Günn looks at the tidy pile of hospital issue gowns and realizes the alien can shapeshift into clothes and accessories as well as other forms.

“Did you do
all this
?” Günn asks, fishing an evidence bag from the video camera case and placing the thumb inside.

“All this what?”

“Bringing everyone back?”
Maybe there’s a scientific explanation after all.

“I wish I knew what you were talking about.” The alien’s thumb finishes growing back and she wiggles it at the detectives. “Show and tell is over. What do you want?”

Red Feather clears his throat. “Um, so, we’re Detectives Günn and Red Feather. We’re here to ask you some questions about the rave last night.”
At least we know how
you
grew from the piece of your tail we uncovered at the vaporized party site.

“Fine. Get on with it. They’ll be here soon enough.” She’s resigned. “You’ll need all the time you can get to prepare.”

“Who’ll be here?” Günn asks, starting the video recorder, relieved that she can see the survivor through the viewfinder, but it’s like looking at a double exposure: Günn sees Chamelia’s ultimate form superimposed over the meatsuit of a twenty-something human woman.

“The barbarians from the Roswell Institute. They’ll want us back in our cages yesterday. And all your people here are in danger. They shoot to kill. All witnesses. But never me.”
Their program would be nothing without my intelligent blood and DNA.
She looks out the window, her hands shake.

“Ok, that’s a lot at once. Let’s just start off easy. Um, what are you?” Red Feather can find no other way to put it diplomatically.

“Not from around here.” Chamelia does not want to talk about this.

“We figured,” Red Feather says. “So…”

Chamelia looks at their expectant expression and feels more tired than she’s ever felt in her entire life. She’s fed up of explaining herself. Exhausted from this banal human curiosity with her and her people.
Will this ever end?

Günn looks at Red Feather, brow creased.

“Let’s come back to that later,” Red Feather says. “What do you remember about the rave last night?”

“I wish I remembered less. What a mess.” Chamelia shakes her head, the black patches on her skin deepen.

“Why don’t you start from the beginning?” Red Feather urges, sitting down on the edge of the bed with his notebook out. Günn stands by the recording camera, again thankful that this creature hasn’t pulled a disappearing act like the so-called vampire, Icarus Lazlo. She doesn’t know which survivor’s statement will be harder to believe.

“First, there is something very wrong with human men. I wasn’t even at the party and a security guard tried to rape me, my friends too. You’ve seen a little of what we can do; although NRG is probably devastated with guilt about the nurse she killed.”
Me, not so much.

“NRG?”

“The one with the knives.”

“Oh. She was with you?”

“Yes, and the girl with the poison skin, Secrete. We also had a human with us, a one-eyed girl named Lily Green. Did she make it?” Hope is a beautiful thing.

Red Feather looks at Günn, eyebrow raised. “Yes, she did.”

“Oh thank the Gods. Sweet child. She ran away from her orphanage after the supervisor tried to molest her.” A serious expression comes across Chamelia’s face as she studies the detectives, Red Feather especially. “Really, what is wrong with you men? You need to force yourselves on women and children? That’s how you’re taught to treat others?” Chamelia’s eyes flash red.

“Not all men are like that.” Red Feather’s shackles rise even though he knows she’s right. How many times has he seen it? He’s long since lost count.

“Yeah, but every woman has her story so you do the math,” Günn agrees. Chamelia throws her a crooked smile.

“I’ll never understand you humans.” Chamelia shakes off the line of thinking. “So, the rave. My friends and I don’t do drugs. We only go—
went—
to those kinds of parties because we could be ourselves for the night. I find this human costume exhausting. And NRG and Secrete get stared at wherever we go, which can be dangerous because they are also easily annoyed. You can imagine how that’s turned out.”

Spitting knives and poison skin, doesn’t take a genius.

“We’d been on the road for a couple weeks, never staying in the same place more than a couple days. Sometimes out in the woods when it was warm. Otherwise, motels. Switching out our license plates just in case someone spotted us. The Institute’s got moles everywhere. We picked up Lily hitchhiking a few days before the rave—thankfully it was us and not some other pervert.” She shoots another look at Red Feather, who bristles. It’s becoming personal. He’s not like that. Not one bit. Red Feather feels the urge to explain himself, how he’s worked overtime solving sex crimes, the ones that nobody cares about, the child prostitutes, the trafficked women, the missing girl cold cases he takes home to mull over, burning sage and leaving offerings for dreams that might help him crack their whereabouts. But this isn’t his story hour. Chamelia stares at the detective, who tries to keep his frustration in check, almost succeeding.

“I apologize. I think I might have unfairly judged you.” Chamelia says to Red Feather, the anger gone from her voice.

Red Feather is taken aback. Gotta work on that poker face. He’s starting to take on some of his partner’s less personable qualities.

“No need to apologize. But thank you.” Red Feather pauses, trying to remember where they were in the interview.

“We were talking about Lily before I insulted you. She was with us for a few days. We go to the party and make it past the security guards and their attempted gang rape—”

“A gang rape?” Red Feather interrupts.

“
Attempted.
We killed them. Self-defense. It was them or us; we chose us.” Chamelia holds her head high and looks the detectives straight on.

Günn smells nothing hinky.
No way
.

Red Feather starts taking it in stride. “And then what?”

“It was bizarre. They were giving away free water at the party.
Great
, we thought! It usually costs your soul for a small bottle. Then, just like that, we’re all hallucinating. The water was spiked.”

Red Feather makes a note in his pad.
Spiked water, also confirmed by Icarus Lazlo.

“I’d never been on drugs before, except the tranqs they would shoot me up with at The Institute.” She pauses. “Turned out it wasn’t so bad. Fascinating even. We met some nice women and then we were actually having fun. Can’t even remember the last time we experienced actual fun. Chatting, dancing, lovely moments shared. Should have known the euphoria couldn’t last, because all of a sudden we’re surrounded by security guards like hyenas and they try to take Lily away. We fight them, of course, so they grab all of us, too.

“Dragged us up a creepy tower that sort of appeared out of nowhere. That mansion was insane. There was an old man up there waiting to offer Lily as some kind of human sacrifice.” Chamelia is disgusted. “I thought I’d seen everything, but that was the most. He had this iron maiden all set up to drain her blood. He said now he’d live forever. One of the women with us—don’t remember her name—it looked like her vulva detached from her body and grew, like that movie in the fifties with the pink ooze?”

“You mean
The Blob
?” Günn does not believe a word of this, and even raises her head sniffing the air to see if her sixth sense is missing something. Nothing.

“Yes, that one. The pink ooze ate him up. Left only some bones. Those women were remarkable.” Chamelia looks almost nostalgic.

Red Feather has to ask: “How did you know it was her vulva that detached?” Words he never imagined would come out of his mouth, part one.

“Kudos on saying the word vulva, detective. And, well, it came from between her legs and looked like a place setting in Judy Chicago’s
Dinner Party
. Specific enough for you?”

“Judy Who?” Günn doesn’t like it when people make her feel ignorant.

“Feminist artist? Did this installation with dinner settings representing famous women through history, each plate a stylized vulva? It’s glorious.”
How do I know this shit and you don’t? I’m not even human. Or technically female. Anyway, gender is a construct.

Günn shakes her head. “Forget it.” This is not the time for an art history lesson. “So, what you’re saying that a vagina detached and turned into the blob and then killed Charles Wallace Crane?” Günn feels her temper rising, but she smells zip.
There’s no way this is true. Or this creature is the best liar I’ve ever met.

“Not a vagina, a vulva. But otherwise, yes, that is exactly what I am telling you, Detective.” Chamelia does not like her integrity questioned and anger makes her human façade shimmer, her true self wanting to come through in retribution for the slight.

Red Feather looks at Günn, who thinks her lie detector sense is crazy on the fritz. Chamelia continues.

“We go back downstairs to the party and the people are dropping like flies. The DJ was doing something with the music, making people’s brains explode. They were bleeding from the ears and convulsing. It was horrifying. That girl with the detachable vulva? She made it happen again and the pink ooze ate the DJ. She looked wrecked and collapsed into the crowd seizing on the floor. But the music was still playing. So, then, these three bird girls shot fireballs from their hands at the speakers. But the music was still everywhere. Like hardwired into the house. I heard this rumble, felt it under my feet, then BOOM. The world exploded. I woke up in that operating room, strapped to the table with a bunch of humans staring at me.” She raises her hands.
That’s all I’m holding.

A blob that begins as a vulva. Girls who shoot fire from their hands. A DJ making brains explode.
Günn thinks her own brain is about ready to explode.

At the mention of bird girls Red Feather wonders about the blonde creature down the hall who’s lost human language and gained flight. He takes out a stack of Polaroids from his pocket, pulling out the bird girl as well as Lily’s picture.

“Do you recognize these two women?”

“Yes, Lily, that’s our Lily. And that one’s one of the bird girls. What did she call herself?” Chamelia taps a long green-nailed finger on her mouth. “Galactic Canary.”

Red Feather is puzzled. “What kind of name is that?”

“Raver name, I guess. I don’t really understand either.” Chamelia shrugs. “But who am I to judge, right?”

Red Feather scribbles
Galactic Canary
on the back of the Polaroid in quotes. He pulls out another. “Do you recognize this man?” Red Feather shows her a photo of Charles Wallace Crane, mansion owner.