Thanx for the reviews! If I get lots from this chapter, next time I'll put two up!
Cetanu-God of death.
Chapter 3
The Yautja lay on the rooftop for two days. By the end of those two days, he was in serious danger of dehydrating. The fever and vomiting had slowly leached the moisture from his body. It wasn't helped by the low humidity either. Guan-Thwei plummeted into delirium. He somehow climbed off the building, only falling near the end and wandered for an unknown length of time. If he had chosen any other building as his temporary lair, he would have been discovered by then. Luckily the only people who saw him were a couple of drunken bums. No one would believe them even if they had reported it. Sometime after dawn, his meager resources of energy used up, the sickened Yautja collapsed in a stinking alley.
.....
Matthew Booker pushed a clump of brown hair back as he surveyed his sister, Celia as she discussed the latest comic books.
"Naw, Spiderman could soooo kick Batman's ass."
"Shutup, Lee!" replied Matt, "Batman has better gear and weapons! He would win!"
"No he wouldn't," retorted Lee, "Ya know why?"
"No, tell me."
"I'll tell you..." Matt grinned at his sister as she proceeded to tell Matt of all Spiderman's winning attributes. She had shoulder length sun-streaked brown hair, like his but lighter. She was about a hand's width shorter than him and less skinny. Celia shoved the rolled-up bag of comic books into the pocket of her green hoody as she neared the end of her speech. He loved her; she was his only family, because their alcoholic, dead-beat dad didn't count.
"...And that is why Spiderman can beat Bat- Whoa." Lee's hazel eyes opened wide as she saw what was lying in the dirt between a dumpster and an apartment building wall.
"Holy shit." murmured Matt. "What is that thing?!?" They advanced slowly on the beast. It was a pale yellow with dark, nearly black, green mottling. The thing was roped with muscle and must have been at least seven feet tall if it was standing.
"What's that weird smell?" said Lee as she covered her nose. A strong musk was emanating from whatever that thing was. Suddenly it raised its head. The two teenagers jumped as they saw its face. Four large mandibles surrounded a small mouth and heavy, spiky brow ridges shadowed green eyes. It extended a taloned hand towards the two frightened humans.
"He-help...me." it choked out in a weak and raspy voice before its eyes rolled up into its head and it passed out again. They tiptoed closer to the thing; its skin and long dreadlocks were slick with sweat.
"Omigod omigod omigod OMIGOD! Let's get out of here!" whimpered Celia.
"No!" Matt interrupted, "We can't. Look at it; it can barely breathe. It's sick, we have to help it."
"Are ya nuts? We should...um." Celia's voice faltered under her brother's withering gaze.
"It asked for our help. Therefore it is intelligent. Therefore we must help it. What if the government gets their hands on it, they'll do horrible experiments to it. You've seen all the movies; whenever the government captures an alien, then they do things to it and the other aliens get vengeful and attack! You will help me get it home." Lee moaned and started edging towards it. They both grabbed an arm and tried to lift it.
"What if...what if Dad comes home?" Celia asked between gasps.
"He won't. H...He's, urgh, getting plastered at his girlfriend's house." After managing to stand semi-upright, the alien woke up and helped-sort of, they still had to support most of its body weight. They dragged it the tree and a half blocks home, staggering as fast as they could across the roads and staying in the alleys.
Matt fumbled in his pocket and extracted a key. The alien was still semi-conscious and gripped the railing but wove constantly. Lee made sure it didn't fall over. Matt kicked the door open and returned to carrying the alien.
"It can go in my room. I'll sleep on the floor in your room." The siblings led it to Matt's bed and it collapsed onto the bed. It creaked ominously, but held. They wiped their faces.
"Gross! I smell like it! I'm gonna take a shower." The alien rolled over and retched onto the floor. "Not my problem now, Matt. It's all yours." Celia paced out and disappeared into her room with a slam.
"Ick." After a quick search, Matt found some old towels and wiped up the vomit. He threw them in the laundry pile and fetched a bucket. Then he hurriedly scribbled a note and left.
.....
Lee threw down the note in disgust.
"Figures. Doesn't even tell me he's going out and leaves me with a seven-foot diseased alien." She stifled a hysterical giggle. A retching and coughing sound came from Matt's room. "Oh no! Why me!?!" she wailed even as her feet propelled her to the room. On a second thought, Li filled a bowl with water, figuring that it couldn't drink from a cup with its mandibles. She eased open the door. The alien was propped up on its elbow; one hand was raised up to its face, clutching an air mask. A hose led from it to a container on its belt. The other hand was clenched in a fist. Two foot blades extended from something on the forearm. Beady green eyes glared over the mask. "It's OK. I won't hurt you." She spoke slowly, like she would with a scared animal. "I have water for you, see?" It blinked and the blades retracted. The alien fell back, panting. Lee offered the bowl to it tentatively. It took it and dropped the air mask. Lee flinched when she saw the mutated insect mouth again. It balanced the bowl on its lower mandibles, hooked the upper ones over the edge and sucked back the water gratefully. The creature handed the empty bowl back to her. "Do you- Do you want more?" It nodded. She refilled the bowl several more times for the alien before it lay back.
"Thank you." rasped the alien.
.....
A short while later, Matt came home, laden with groceries.
"Omigod! Oh shit! Guess what, Matt? After you left, the alien threw up again and then I went in and it was sitting up, with the mask on and it had these huge, these really huge blades that came from its wrist and it looked at me and I looked at it and then I said I wasn't going to hurt it and then I gave it water and then, and then it said thank you!" she gasped for air after the huge, run-on sentence.
"See? I told you that it wouldn't hurt us!"
"I don't think it could right now. It looked really weak still. Matt, why did you go to the store and buy so much stuff? We can't really afford it." Matt looked a little uncomfortable.
"I went to get real food. Not hotdogs and cold cuts and frozen veggies or other crap like that. I couldn't see it eating that kind of stuff, and I thought that it shouldn't have all the processed stuff."
"Oh" Lee peered into the bag. "Since it won't be eating tonight, why don't we have a feast?" Matt grinned,
"Sure! Go dig out couple steaks. Pick out some other stuff too, when I get back from work I'll cook em up."
That night, Matt and Lee, sleeping off a large dinner had a rude awakening. A roar and some shouted words in a strange, growling, clicking tongue echoed through the night.
"JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!!!" yelped Matt. Lee shrieked and rolled off the bed onto Matt. He grunted as she squished him.
"What the hell was that!?!" Matt kicked off his blankets and ran out of the room. He opened the door to where the alien was and groped blindly for the light. The alien was leaning on the wall, two blades extended from his wrist. Matt felt Lee come u behind him. The alien and Matt glared at each other. The alien took the mask away from its face and drew in a raspy breath.
"OOMAN!" it shouted, "Where... Where I?" It shook its head, seemingly disgusted with its answer. "Where am I, ooman?" Celia whimpered and cowered.
"You're at my house, me and my sister found you unconscious in an alley. You're pretty sick." It wobbled and shut its eyes for a moment, then decided to sit.
"Who are you?" it inquired. "My-my name is Matthew Booker and this is my sister, Celia."
"M'aat-hew and Ce'lia Bu'kar." It rolled the names around in its strange mouth. "I am Guan-Thwei."
"Guan-Thwei." Matt repeated the equally foreign word. "What are you? Where did you come from?"
"I am a Yautja warrior. I come from...The Homeworld. That is the...translation of the name. I live on a clan ship most of the time though."
"I'm a human, this is Earth." Guan-Thwei nodded.
"I know. We call you oomans. You would not have a name for us. The oomans that do meet us call us Predators." He brought the air mask to his face. Matt shifted nervously, not knowing how to address a pressing question to a warrior. Guan-Thwei made a clicking noise and cocked his head to the side, raising a spiky brow ridge.
"Are you feeling better? How is your fever and stomach?" "Better. But I must rest. I was battling, Cetanu, the Black Warrior for a while." He rolled over and appeared to go to sleep instantly.
"Matt. I don't know about that alien." said Lee as they lay in the dark. Matt was dumbstruck. His normally fearless sister was afraid of the weak, sick, what was it called?-Yautja.
"Why?"
"It's a warrior and an alien. He has those weapons and the way he was acting, it was like he was doing us a favor by listening to us and we were below him. Did you see the scars on his back? He didn't get them by farming. He has scars everywhere; I think that Guan-Thwei is the one that's killing those people. What if he does that to us when he's better and doesn't need us anymore?" Matt scoffed,
"He's intelligent. He's probably some sort of bounty hunter and is going to catch whatever is mutilating those people. That's why he has all those scars. If he wanted to kill us, he would have already. He must be a good guy." Lee made a non-committal grunt. Matt was a little nervous himself.
