Disclaimer: I do not own anything associated with the movie District 9, simply the writing in this story, along with any original characters.
Warnings: strong language, violence
My thanks to Kyuubigod, ObscureWriter and Nina Modaffari for your encouraging reviews! Hopefully everyone enjoyed this instalment as well.
I would love to hear what you think about this one. It's very helpful, you know!
Sincerely,
LBS
PART I (cont.)
VII. (day one)
The riots started during the night. Wikus had snapped awake when a loud female voice pierced the air; in his dream muddled mind, it sounded as though her words played off the jagged broken window glass.
"Matthew?"
"I heard."
Sitting up, Wikus scratched his head and hissed in pain when his right side seared in pain. Looking down, he noticed his right secondary arm protruding from his side, not yet fully transformed. Begrudgingly he moved the stub around, then the left one, which was now finished growing and bent at an awkward angle, never completely folding back into its hole. After sighing in defeat, he scratched his head again. It was devoid of any hair.
"Fok off." His fingers roamed around his scalp.
"Shut up. Outside."
They stood up for a closer look and Wikus watched with wide eyes as groups of people banged against the gates holding the Prawns in from Johannesburg. Some were holding home made signs but he could not read what any of them said. The people of Johannesburg were screaming, pounding at the metal links. Some carried flashlights which they waved about erratically. Others were yelling at the people who were yelling at the aliens; alien rights activists. Wikus' pupils narrowed when the beams of light hit him directly in the face.
Matthew's hands pushed down on his shoulders and he collapsed beneath the window. "Get down! They'll see you."
Sitting on the dirt floor, breathing heavily, wondering if he would get caught tonight, Wikus said, "W-What are they doing here?"
"I don't know." The Prawn held a clawed hand up and pressed it against he wall beside the window, leaning in closer.
"Stay back!" Wikus exclaimed in panic. Matthew looked down at him oddly. "You – uh, you'll cut yourself, you idiot. That window is very, very sharp."
Matthew glanced at it. "It's my window."
"It's broken!"
"I know!"
He was sweating. His body was tingling with sensations – panic, dread, confusion. He remembered the riots that had swarmed the city when the aliens had first arrived, back when he was a child. Later he had learned more about it, when he'd become interested in the Prawns, and had stumbled onto a job for MNU, where he learned even more about the aliens and the humans who despised them. The citizens of Johannesburg had been furious and terrified and had broken through the gates. They had dragged Prawns out of the district and beaten them, killed them; some humans were killed by retaliating Prawns. They had wanted the aliens to leave. They had wanted their city and their Earth Prawn-free. And now they were back, and Wikus was on the wrong side of the fence, the one with very little grass.
"What do they want, Matthew? What are they saying?"
"I don't know. They're ang- ang—"
"Angry, yes, I know that they are angry. For Christ sake, Prawn, tell me something good!"
The alien glared at him and replied, "Keep talking so loud, they will t-take you fir-st. Then I can leave, safe."
"Fok you!" But he remained silent after that, for an hour, as the people continuously screamed and gathered. Several times Matthew peeked out the window to check what was happening – police were at the scene, including some MNU officials, he reported – but mostly he sat at the kitchen table, waiting. Wikus stayed beneath the window.
"They cannot find me," he said suddenly. "We cannot let them find me, they'll – they'll take me away, Matthew, they will kill me, you don't understand…"
"What would they d-do with you?"
"You…need to understand, Matthew, okay? That there are…many, many secrets at MNU. They…don't say a word but they tell you how to think. You turn into a bad, very bad person who…victimizes foreigners, like yourself… I thought it was okay to kill the babies, the eggs. There is a lab underground where they research you Prawns and your bodies. They want to find a way to use your weapons, yeah, and they want me to use them. But they want to kill me now, Matthew. They want my organs so that they can…manufacture things, to make your weapons useful for humans and make money. So, so you see here, we need to – we need to make sure they don't get me, because…because…"
Matthew raised a hand. "It's okay."
"I just…" His hands gripped his smooth head; fingers dug into the skin without fingernails to break through. "I need to stay here for a bit, until I finish turning into one of you, okay?"
"Okay. They won't find y—" The alien stuttered suddenly, struggling, as though choking on the word, before forcing out, "you."
VIII. (day two)
For the first time, Wikus actually stayed awake and watched himself transform. He sat beneath the broken window the entire night, listening to the muffled yelling of the people of Johannesburg, and the guards' attempts to contain the crowd. Neither he nor Matthew moved. Even as morning crept up onto the city, discarding the cold darkness that blanketed District 9 at night, Wikus stayed silent and watched his right leg mirror his left.
When his toes began to itch he rubbed them against the inside of his shoe, until he felt one of his toenails disconnect. It only stung somewhat, a sign that his foot was truly in the process of letting go of its humanity. It was only a matter of time before he would have full Prawn legs; his body wasn't putting up much of a fight, really. It seemed blissfully compliant under the black fluid's influence... Although his immune system had never been very resilient.
Sighing, a bitter taste in his mouth, Wikus pulled off his shoe and sock. (Seeing as his left leg was nearly fully transformed, there was no need for human footwear.) Over the next hour, he observed the first peeks of armoured skin; his bones morphed into something different, in an odd procedure that was uncomfortable but not terribly painful. His foot shortened and grew hard, cushioned soles. His ankle yielded to the Prawn ankle's structure. He lost muscle mass as the exoskeleton broke through the skin; where the muscle went he did not know, but it was most likely converted into something his new body would need to survive. His head thudded against the wall as he said goodbye to another limb. The transformation stopped around the knee, which would make it nearly impossible to walk. He ran his alien hand down his new alien legs. They weren't warm by any means; he felt like a plastic doll. Or a container of some sort – a hard, protective barrier holding the human Wikus within. How could Tania curl up with him when he looked and felt like such a monster?
"They will not stop," commented Matthew, standing beside Wikus at the window again.
Glancing up, Wikus squinted as sunlight blared off the jagged corners of broken glass. "What are they doing, do they just stand around and scream?"
"So far, yes and no. A few have been vare-ey angry. Pulled wea-weapons."
Wikus groaned. "Why the fok are they rioting now? The spaceship is gone, isn't it, that's what they wanted. I heard they were fokken happy about it."
Matthew made a snorting noise, one Wikus had heard Christopher use many times; it was a sound of acknowledgement rather than disbelief, as he had first assumed. "We are too far away to…read the signs."
Wikus' stomach contracted in hunger and gurgled in discontent. "Ah…" Christopher would have told him what exactly his body was doing. That his body was using up more energy than he was consuming, that his thin and soft membrane tissue was converting into harder, more complex alien tissue, and in order to do so his body needed energy in order to reshape. But Christopher was millions of miles away now, if not some light years. If Wikus remembered correctly, the Andromeda Galaxy was over two million light years away; if Christopher was going to get there and back in three years' time, he must be travelling fast, even Wikus could figure that out. No matter how fast the ship went, Wikus was horridly alone.
"You want food?"
"Do you have anything other than…cat food and raw cow meat?"
"If not," Matthew said slowly, moving towards the side of the shack deemed the kitchen, "we can look for some-something out there."
"I'm not leaving the shack, you idiot!" Wikus exclaimed. "No, if you don't have anything, you – you are going out there, or I am going to starve."
The Prawn rolled his eyes and stood at the table, looking about the shack. He reached forward and to Wikus' chagrin, picked up a scrap of tire rubber. He held it out to Wikus.
"I am not fokken eating a fokken tire, man!"
"Just chew on it."
Grudgingly, he took it. It looked interesting, enticing – if not appetizing, then something to pass the time with. "How many animals has this run over though, eh?" Inspecting it, he was about to put it in his mouth when he noticed Matthew still staring at him. "Turn around, fok," he snapped. "I will not do this with you looking at me."
The alien obediently turned away to leave Wikus in tire-chewing peace. Slowly, he stuck a corner between his teeth and bit down. Nothing interesting happened, although his stomach did feel slightly upset. He was eating a tire and he didn't quite know why. Pulling it out of his mouth and looking at it, he said, "What's so great about this anyway?"
Without glancing at him, Matthew said, "Chew it."
"I did, Prawn."
"Chew it well."
Well, the grooves in the tire did look interesting. As soon as the rubber hit his tongue, Wikus felt infinitely happier. Endorphins flooded his body as he chewed the corner of the piece of rubber, and without him knowing it, his Prawn feet began to twitch. He was not aware of how stressed he had felt until the tenseness floated away. He relaxed against the wall, no longer caring that the broken window above him. It didn't really matter that the rioting groups kept growing larger by the hour and the people were acting more violent, more desperate, for whatever it was they wanted. Wikus realized that his situation was not that bad, in reality; he was turning into a Prawn, yes, but in three years, he would become human again. He would have Tania again. Christopher would have his people back and Wikus would return to his old, normal life.
"You like it?"
He nodded fervently, chewing. Glancing down at his stubby feet, he clicked them together several times. He felt weightless and sure of himself, positive that everything would turn out just fine.
"You feel better?"
Another nod, and he took it out of his mouth to say, "Everything gets worse before it gets better," but even as he spoke the euphoria began to slip away, and so he hurriedly put the rubber back in his mouth.
Surrounding District 9, they could hear the citizens screaming, scraping objects against metal. As he sat under the window, Wikus' chest transformed through the hours of the afternoon. He sat biting his scrap of tire, while outside police began bullying the citizens back, nearly overrun. MNU guards and personnel shouted furiously back at the citizens, telling them that soon enough all the Prawns would be gone, just give them time to move their despicable alien asses two hundred kilometres away, they were going to continue moving them out during the evening. A homeless gentleman threw his shoe into the compound and it hit a young alien in the back.
"Voetsêk!" he yelled at it. Many of the citizens jeered. Surprised, the little Prawn ran to its parent, who stood some feet away; gathering its child in its arms, the Prawn hissed at the homeless man and turned to walk away.
"Bliksem where you goin'!"
"Shit," Matthew said to himself. Wikus was hardly aware of what was happening.
Setting its child back on the ground, the Prawn walked towards the nearest garbage pile. "Go home, Little One." The alien rummaged through the dump as its child scampered away, and finally held up a broken steel knife that had been thrown away, most likely by one of the meat dealers, or the Nigerian gangs. The Prawn stood up and walked towards the gate, hunched, ready to attack.
"And you," it said to the homeless man, who was earning congratulations from nearby rioters, "go to Hell, human!"
The knife launched through the air, arcing over the tall gate and into the crowd. It plummeted into the shoulder of a woman standing beside the homeless man. Screams filled the air, this time in panic, and an MNU officer shot at the Prawn but the bullet missed and the alien ran off to find its child.
"Oh, shit," repeated Matthew.
"Yeah?" Wikus mumbled through a full mouth.
"PRAWN!" the officer yelled. "We'll find you, you fok!"
"It is getting wor-worse."
But everything would get better again, Wikus wanted to say, but did not want to take the time to put the rubber down.
"It was a – a wife."
Wikus' eyes glanced up.
"A man's wife died."
Slowly, dread and doubt percolated into his euphoric world.
"There are humans in District 9."
IX. (day two; second half)
Wikus dropped the rubber the instant a flaming torch flew through the broken window. Mathew shrieked at the oncoming fire and jumped back, the ball grazing his arm. It crashed into the dilapidated kitchen table, which caught on fire, which made the chair catch on fire, from which flames reached out to the wooden shelves lining the walls and they caught on fire, too.
"Fok! Fok Matthew we need to get out of here!"
Panicked, the Prawn moved this way and that, confused by the fire eating his shack. The screams were louder, closer. Wikus' head swirled around what was happening in District 9; with the rubber clutched tightly in his Prawn hand he stumbled to his feet, but fell back down again. His right leg was half-human and half-alien; he could not stand balanced. Matthew picked him up by the shoulders and half carried, half dragged him out the front door.
Rioters had broken through the front gate – several lay dead or wounded from bullets – while others had found holes in the fence. As Wikus hopped beside Matthew, not knowing which way was best to escape, he remembered crawling under the fence days earlier, when the world had been searching for him. Men and women ran about the District in a fury, brandishing weapons and torches, lighting shacks on fire and attacking the aliens. The Prawns reacted in matched fury and tore the people apart. They threw humans into the air, pulled off their limbs, screeched at them to leave. More humans entered District 9 and attacked more aliens who killed more humans.
Wikus flinched when gunshots sounded in the compound. Matthew made clicking and whirling noises in fear and confusion, and the path they ran was very crooked.
"Matthew!" Wikus cried. "Pull up here, get behind this shack! My – my leg is changing!"
He had to repeat himself in order for the Prawn to hear and understand him.
Relatively safe behind an abandoned shack, Wikus sat on the ground and held his right leg as the transformation continued. He groaned as spikes protruded from the sides of his knee, and his thigh began to change. Matthew motioned his arms in an odd circle.
"We must move!"
"And go where, eh Prawn?" Wikus exclaimed. Bullets shot through the tin beside his head and he yelled and fell onto his side, threw himself away from the shack. "Fok! Fokken Jozi!"
Matthew pulled him up again. "We must go!"
"They're all over the damn place, Matthew, we can't just go away!" Even so, the alien dragged Wikus away.
In the space between two shacks, Matthew let go of Wikus, who could now stand relatively on his own.
"Mathew, we need – we need weapons."
After thinking for a moment, he said, "Stay h-here." He held his hands up in a placating manner. Wikus gripped the wall of the shack and hyperventilated. "I'll get the gun off of that guy."
"W-What? What guy?" Wikus craned his neck as Matthew disappeared. "What fokken guy, man! Don't just leave me here!"
When Matthew did not return straight away, and guns cracked off into the dimming evening light, Wikus shuffled to the edge of the wall, towards the street, on shaking Prawn legs. His armoured and wider chest expanded with each terrified breath he drew into his lungs. He vaguely wondered if they were still human lungs.
Peering around the corner, he observed. The remaining Prawns of District 9 ran this way and that, away from or toward the humans who had lost their minds. He crouched down in an attempt to remain hidden. Fires were everywhere, and therefore so was smoke. He coughed deeply. Everything was chaos.
"Matthew!" he yelled. "Matthew get back here you fokken Prawn!" A human arm landed in the street across from him and he shrunk back. "Fok you, Matthew!"
X. (day two; second half)
His waist was disappearing, becoming thinner, his chest was expanding, and his vision had changed. The combined firelight and sunlight were almost one and the same. Leaning back against the abandoned shack, somehow unscathed and unnoticed, Wikus imagined both of his eyes gleaming. Both orange-hazel, both larger than a human's eyes. He could see the colour green more prominently now. The sparse grass and shrubbery in District 9 stood out against the dull, dusty ground.
Behind the shack beside the one he was sitting against, Wikus spied a rope. Crawling toward it, he fingered the length for a bit before running it through the loops in his trousers and tying the ends. A compensation for his diminishing waist.
Diagonal to his position, Wikus spied a group of four humans gathered around a shack. They opened the door and let out cries of disgust, and then jeers. They set the shack on fire with their torches and a scrawny man with a gun fired into it. Wikus listened to the pops of the Prawn children trying to escape their egg sacs. He had to hold a hand to his mouth and bite down on it to muffle his sobs and quell his nausea.
They would find him, he knew. There were too many not to. He looked away from the horrendous sight of the humans laughing at the dying Prawn children. Just days earlier, he had been like them, though not as aware. He simply had not known. It was a job, a duty, to set fire to the egg shacks and dispose of the baby Prawns because District 9 was being overrun with the aliens. Was ignorance the greater or lesser of two evils, compared to swagger? But he understood now, after meeting Christopher and his son. Wikus believed that these humans were beyond comprehension, too far gone to appreciate what they were destroying. At least until they too learned their lesson, and his was turning into one of the Prawns.
He gazed upon the burning shack again when he heard growls and hisses. Adult aliens were surrounding the humans, most had guns. Both human and non-human weaponry alike. One attempted to run into the shack but two others held it back. There were no more popping sounds. The Prawns who weren't directly affected by the fire, who weren't kneeling in front of it in despair, advanced on the humans with their guns cocked. Wikus watched. His hands were shaking.
The largest alien had blue markings and shot one of the humans. The Repeater, or as MNU called it, the AMR-B05. In a split second, seven bullets ripped through the man's body and he crashed to the ground. His brothers in arms shrieked and tried to scatter, until aliens appeared at their backs.
"Why are you here?" demanded the blue Prawn. It levelled its gun directly with the scrawny man's face.
The man was silent, quivering in mortal fear, unable to understand the language. A woman spoke instead, on the verge of tears. Blue spun his attention (and the Repeater) on to her.
"Give us our city back," she said. "Your mothership is gone, you should be as well! Get out of District 9!"
"We would be gone if you gave us a way out. We do not want to be here."
"We can't understand you!" said a man who had an ARC Gun resting on the back of his neck – the weapon Wikus had taken to storm the MNU building. His ancient MNU Official mindset commented on the fact that ARC Guns were extremely rare in District 9 nowadays, and the Prawn holding it was a serious criminal. Or a lucky finder. "We try to learn your language, but you don't try to learn ours?"
"We don't want to associate with you," Blue remarked angrily.
"Fucking aliens!" yelled the man. He had an American accident, or perhaps Canadian. The Prawn behind him dug the ARC Gun harder into his flesh.
"Ray, stop!" said the woman.
"Shoot me, you filthy creature!" he threw over his shoulder.
"Don't," said a neutral coloured Prawn. It moved forward to stand in front of Blue, and lowered its axe.
"Alex?" the adolescent ARC Prawn said.
Without answering, Alex dropped his axe and picked the man up by his shirt. Holding him extremely close to the flames of the shack, making the man squirm and whimper, the alien said quietly, "Two of those eggs were mine."
"Oh fok," Wikus whispered. He crumpled even further into a ball against the wall, trying his best to be non-existent. Prawn parents were terribly protective of their eggs. MNU made videos and posters and announcements claiming that they weren't – The only reason they lay their eggs is to continue their species; once born into the world, the Prawn feels no love or connection to the egg; it was all propaganda. In MNU, every employee who worked out in the field knew not to go anywhere near an egg if the parent was around. If you were to eradicate an egg shack, you made sure any Prawns were far, far away, and you prayed you would make it home for dinner.
The man continued to struggle in the Prawn's much stronger grasp, muttering useless pleas as the flames drew close to his back.
"You killed my family, human."
"P-Please just let me d-down—"
Suddenly, Alex threw the man back into the fire. Wikus found himself thinking of little Oliver – imagined him stuck in one of the fires, imagined himself being the arsonist. Wikus found himself crying.
What should he do, what should he do, he was going to be caught!
He disappeared into his head for a while, curled up against the wall of the abandoned shack, half Prawn and half remaining human. He wondered what side he was on – human or non-human. He agreed neither with attacking the Prawns nor with attacking the humans. He didn't want to attack anybody. He wanted Christopher to come back with his cure, and he wanted to crawl back to Tania.
A knife skidded across the dirt and stopped against his foot. Wikus awoke from his dream and picked it up. He felt safer now that he was armed. Looking up, he saw that the humans around the egg shack had been disposed of. The Prawns were leaving, scattering their different ways, to try to find an exit from District 9. The fallen front gates would be the most heavily guarded by the police officers who had not flowed into the compound, and surely, there were bodies of humans and non-humans alike scattered about the entrance.
Getting to his knees, Wikus edged his way to the back of the shack, where there was a door. He could hide in the house; it would be infinitely safer than sitting in plain sight, though he had been miraculously unnoticed so far. His limbs were weak and he was unable to support himself for long, so once the door was pushed open he dragged himself inside. It was pathetic and he felt like a sissy, but strength was beyond him now. He lay on the floor for a minute until he realized his foot was still sticking out the door, and then hastily pulled it in. The door banged shut and he flinched, positive someone had heard and would come to investigate. Nobody came during the three minutes he huddled silently, motionlessly, on the dirt floor.
Pushing himself onto his elbows and knees, Wikus looked around the shack. A partially deflated air mattress was sitting in a corner, with a surprisingly comfortable looking quilt placed over it. The bed looked remarkably comfortable and he yearned to lie down in it and sleep for three years. He could pass out until the riots were over, until Christopher came back for him. He could sleep while Prawn children died and humans died so that there was no chance he would witness it.
His shirt was ripped cleanly off his left shoulder from the spikes sticking out of him, had been from his struggle in the mech suit. It was nothing more than shredded rags hanging off of him. Still desperate to hide his deformities, Wikus used the knife, then his Prawn claws when the knife turned out to be dull, to cut a hole in the quilt. He donned the blanket as a hooded shirt-poncho. To an outsider he looked like a real Prawn, albeit with a tiny head and a good foot and a half shorter.
Something came crashing through the door while Wikus' back was turned to it, and he spun around in terror to see a hulking figure rolling on the ground. It slammed the door shut behind it and stood up. A Prawn.
"Holy shit!" He fell back onto the mattress, making air whistle out of it.
The alien turned to look at him in the dimming light. The fires lit most of the district now that the sun was disappearing.
"Human?"
"No! No, I'm not one of the rioters—"
The Prawn advanced on him and knelt in front of him. It shook his head. "No, my hu-human."
Wikus relaxed. "Matthew?"
"Yes?"
"You're alive, oh fok." His relief turned to anger and he hit the alien in the shoulder. "Where the fok were you, man!" he yelled. "I have been sitting around here like a – bloody sitting duck, Matthew!"
Matthew held up two guns. "Weapons."
"Whatever. You scared the fok out of me."
"Sorry."
"I meant…when you came barrelling through that door – why didn't you just say my name? I would have recognized you."
"I do not know your na-me."
"I… No? Really?"
Matthew shook his head. "You ne-ver told me."
"It's, uh, Wikus."
"Okay." Matthew nodded.
"Look, maybe we should…use though guns, yeah? And get out of here, before we're killed or this shack here explodes?"
As they were leaving, Matthew made a "kooo" noise and grabbed a half-full can of cat food off the shelf. "For fok sake, man," Wikus called from the doorway, and Matthew hurriedly followed him (without relinquishing the cat food).
When they emerged from the shack there was a dark green Prawn near them, sitting in a dump pile. It held a skinned cow head in one hand and an extended measuring tape in the other. It watched them shuffle along the shack walls, its tendrils moving about in curiosity.
"Hello there," said Wikus. "Just…leaving, you see. Just stay right there."
The alien gestured to Wikus' poncho. "It looks like my wife's."
Enraged, Wikus grabbed the cat food from Matthew's fingers and threw it as hard as he could at the Prawn – which was much harder than he expected. Apparently he was inheriting the aliens' strength now. It hit the alien in the shoulder, but instead of injuring it, the Prawn was distracted and devoured the contents within seconds. Matthew was staring at him. "Prawns don't have wives," Wikus muttered to himself as they turned away.
Sneaking through the dirty streets, they came across both non-injured and injured humans and non-humans. Many humans they encountered simply watched them walk by with worn faces. Prawns glanced at them and continued attacking and running about, though some hissed at them. Wikus doubted many were trying to escape anymore; their mentality would not allow for it. During the initial shock of the invasion, perhaps some had tried to flee, but now they were in a war. He briefly looked at Matthew behind him, who was watching the events unfold with sad and angry eyes.
"We are going to leave here, Matthew," Wikus stated firmly. For the first time since District 9 had spiralled into chaos, he felt strength return to his limbs. He stood tall with his AK-47 pointed in front of him, and he made the decision to lead himself and Matthew out of there. "Do not shoot anyone unless they are looking like they want to kill us, all right?"
"They would dee-serve it."
"We can't be seen, okay," he said, irritated. "They don't deserve to die here."
"Okay."
"Right, now let's try to find a hole, or something, to crawl through. Over there the fence looks deserted."
He wove his way through the district by entering and exiting through side and back doors of shacks. Every once in a while there was an alien inside one, but after acknowledging each other Wikus was allowed to go on. Matthew followed closely behind him the entire time. Only once a human saw them and started shouting at them, but one sight of Matthew's alien gun made him turn tail.
They exited a shack through the front door this time (the side door would not budge). Peering around the corner, Wikus saw an alien lying motionless against the wall, right where the door would be. Turning away from the sight, he began walking straight down the street. This area of the compound was quieter. In the distance, yells still echoed. By now the sun had fallen for good and the stars were clouded by the smoke rising from the district. Helicopters droned from above.
They came upon a fallen adult Prawn lying on its back in the middle of the street. A little one was sitting beside its head, pulling on its parent's antennae, its own bent down in sadness and confusion. Matthew made a sighing noise.
Memories slipped through the barrier the rubber had placed over the events that had started the riot. Wikus thought about the Prawn protecting its child.
"Matthew," he said quietly as they walked towards the fallen alien. "What colour was that Prawn from before, the one that killed the woman?"
It took Matthew a moment to answer. His grief made it difficult to form words. "Yellow," he finally forced from his throat.
Wikus nodded. They stood at the yellow Prawn's feet, and Wikus waited to see signs of life but movement eluded his vision. The baby Prawn stared up at them and tugged harder on its parent's antennae.
"Help?" it said.
Wikus found himself lost for words, so he knelt down beside the little alien, feeling aimless.
"Father," the child said.
Tears in his eyes and his brain felt like slush. The world spun about him in odd geometric patterns. Clouds of smoke.
"It's okay, Oliver," he mumbled, rescuing his balance by placing a hand on Christopher's breathless chest. "Your father is fine. Come with me now, okay little guy?"
"But Father," it quietly said as Wikus picked him up.
"Your father is only resting right now, he's having a nice sleep here on the ground."
Matthew followed him to the fence, which was just a hundred yards away. Two humans were pacing the area, talking to each other and holding long knives.
"Wikus," warned Matthew.
Wikus nodded to him and pressed the little Prawn's face into his shirt. Matthew shot a man in the chest and his friend dropped his knife and ran, but then Matthew shot him down as well. The young Prawn twitched at the bangs and Wikus patted his head.
"How will we – get out?" Matthew asked. "Police are over th-there."
He had inherited a strange clarity in his vision and mind throughout the last few hours. Though his thoughts were muddled and he felt as though the air was thicker than it really was, as if he was swimming through the atmosphere, Wikus knew how he was going to escape District 9.
Setting the little Prawn on the ground, he knelt in front of the gate. Matthew bent down beside him.
"See here?" he said, gesturing to the bottom of the fence. "There is a small hole here. Humans may have tried to get into the district through here before." His eyes roamed over the gate. "We can shoot holes in the links, and use our claws to open a door."
"It would at-tract the guards."
"Wait a minute, here…" He stood up and looked around. "This is where I came in by, before." He walked around, searching for the hole at the bottom of the fence, and he heard quiet footsteps behind him. Turning around he saw the little Prawn following him around, never more than two feet behind him. It barely reached mid-thigh on him. Its tiny clawed hands were huddled together near its chest, and it stared up at him. "Hey, there," he said. The young Prawn's head tilted to the side. "We're just looking for a way out, okay little guy? So that you don't get hurt."
"Like Father?"
"Yeah." Wikus turned and walked away. "Like your dad."
He located the tunnel to the outside world and waved them over. Wikus crawled through first, then the little Prawn, and finally Matthew made his way out of District 9. Even as they stood outside the compound, Wikus closed his eyes and breathed deeply. It smelled like freedom.
XI. (day two; night)
The cautiously moved into the city. Police and MNU were everywhere, but so were mounds of grass and buildings and dumpsters, so they silently manoeuvred around the men with guns. Wikus had to repeatedly motion for the young Prawn to shush; it was curious, having never been outside of District 9 before. Matthew stared around in wonder as well. Most people were inside their houses, the doors and windows locked, eyes glued to the television screen for news on the break in. Streetlight shadows guided them through the city, through alleys, side roads and behind buildings. They never noticed the guards trying to find the escaped Prawns.
They halted and crouched between two dingy housing complexes. Matthew lightly tapped his fist against the wall of the grey building. "Looks nice. We should st-ay in here."
Wikus looked behind him at the cracks running down the sides of the building, the chunks missing from the walls, the cracked, barred windows. "Yeah," he muttered, "you would like it here. Coming from your old shack this looks like a royal bloody castle, eh?"
The little alien tugged on his pant leg and when it had Wikus' attention, it pointed at Wikus' transformed feet.
"Don't ask questions," he snapped. The little Prawn jumped away and went to see Matthew.
Rubbing his face against his right shoulder, which as far as he knew was still relatively untouched, Wikus thought about what they were doing. MNU would not know about their escape for a while; when they went to Matthew's house to evict him, and he was gone, they would simply assume he had been killed during the riot. However, three Prawns in the middle of Johannesburg would not be easy to hide. They would be noticed straight away unless they could find a decent hiding spot – somewhere that wasn't between two inhabited buildings.
His hands were trembling; the stress was becoming too much.
"We must find a place to hide," said Matthew. "Somewhere safe."
"I am not living my life as a fokken underground fugitive, man!" Wikus exclaimed.
Matthew's antennae twitched backward in surprise at the volume of his voice. The small Prawn hit Wikus' leg and made a shushing sound.
Kicking at the Prawn, making it scatter back, Wikus yelled, "Don't you fokken touch me, you little fokken rat Prawn!"
"Wikus!" Matthew hissed.
"You shut up!" Wikus turned away, his alien hands grasping his bald head. "Fok, fok, fok—" A light flicked on above them. A woman screamed. "—fok! Fok, run!"
Picking up the small Prawn and grabbing Matthew's arm, Wikus yelled to run again. They took off down the alley while behind them the woman screamed for police. The young alien's claws, both primary and secondary ones, seemed permanently wrapped around the fabric of Wikus' shirt-poncho. Behind them, footsteps followed.
"Hey, Prawns!" bellowed a deep voice. Wikus tripped, losing concentration of placing his alien legs properly with his still-human hips. Matthew grabbed his arm to hold him up.
Spinning around to face the MNU officer, Matthew raised his weapon and fired. The man fell instantly, and the little alien squealed into Wikus' chest. The woman screamed even louder for the police and a man named Kijana.
"There," said Matthew.
"There's probably more coming," Wikus said. "We need to get out of here and leave—"
The garbage can beside them exploded in a shower of plastic as bullets ripped through it. Both Wikus and Matthew swore and ducked to the side. Spinning around, Wikus saw a group of MNU officers racing down the alley from both directions. "Oh no," he whispered. They were caught, he was caught!
He shifted and realized that his gun was hidden under his poncho.
"Matthew," he muttered. The guards had slowed to a cautious walk, weapons raised to eye level, and were shouting at them to get on their knees. "We can get out of here. Shoot quickly, we both have automatic weapons."
Matthew seemed uncertain, his head turning backwards and forwards, pointing his gun diagonally to the ground to avoid provocation from the guards.
"Get on your knees, Prawns! Or we will shoot you in the fucking heads!"
Obediently they lowered themselves to the concrete, back to back. Wikus placed the young Prawn in between them. "Don't move," he whispered to it. It sat down and curled in a ball, staring up at him the whole time.
"Lower your weapon, Prawn!" Matthew placed it on the ground, though he did not let go. "Let go of it!"
"Take off the blanket, you freak," ordered an officer from Wikus' side. "Christ knows what you're hiding under there, eh?"
Turning slightly, pretending to be fumbling with the poncho, Wikus murmured to the little Prawn, "Don't worry, little guy, Uncle Wikus will take care of you." Lifting the front of his shirt, he raised the AK-47. "Now, Matthew!"
Sharp bangs echoed off the cracked concrete walls and street, and MNU officers stained the ground, their bodies punched through by bullets. The others who remained standing faced off with Matthew and Wikus, who had both returned to their feet. The little Prawn had scurried off to the side, scared by the flashing lights and sounds of the discharging bullets, and was currently flat against the building wall hiding behind garbage bags.
"Stand down!" yelled Wikus. "Stand back, MNU, or we will – we will shoot you guys!"
"Van der Merwe," one of the two left on his side said. "Holy shit."
"This your new best friend?" another asked bitterly, nodding towards Matthew. "You've crossed some very big fokken lines these past few days, you know that?"
"You don't know what the fok you're talking about!" replied Wikus. He held his gun in front of his face, as though it could shield him from a sudden MNU onslaught. "Just let us go. You let us go, yeah, and nobody has to die anymore."
"Get on the goddamn ground or I will blow you apart," deadpanned the first man. Matthew's gun suddenly fired again and Wikus whirled around to see the last man on the alien's side fall down, just feet away from Matthew himself.
"Stay away from m-me," Matthew grumbled.
A bullet sliced through Matthew's side, ripping a hole in Wikus' shirt-poncho in the process – an officer trying to kill the Prawn without hitting Wikus first. Matthew instantly exclaimed curse words and threats as he tried to step around Wikus, to get at the guards.
"No, no, stop it for fok sake, Matthew!" Pushing the alien aside, Wikus stepped forward with his automatic gun still ready in front of him. "Back up. Do not shoot us, all right, and we will let you live."
"On the ground or we will kill you!"
"You guys need me alive!" A last straw Wikus pulled at. "MNU needs me alive or else nobody wins."
"Get back!" Matthew yelled. His hulking, threatening figure intimated the officers, who crouched lower to the pavement and raised their guns.
"Put down your fokken weapons!" Wikus yelled. Police were on their way, sirens were blaring on the streets on Johannesburg. "We will let you live and you let us live and we go!"
The men were hesitating. They glanced at their fallen friends and then back at Matthew and Wikus, who looked haggard and incredibly desperate to get away. Perhaps they hesitated too long. Matthew shot one of them in the knee, and the man fell hard screaming. His remaining comrade backed away, his gun still raised, weighing the odds of his survival. Reaching a dim conclusion, he swore to himself and lowered his weapon, letting it hang at his side. Wikus and Matthew began creeping forward, moving to the other side of the alley to avoid him. The man watched them wearily and shook his head. Ignoring them from that point on, he knelt down beside his injured friend, holding him down when the man tried to lift his gun.
Wikus watched the two of them until he was halfway down the alley, and then he wheeled around and took off running. Matthew was right behind him, checking on the officers every couple of steps. Suddenly the alien stopped and exclaimed clicks in surprise. Wikus stumbled to a halt in front of him.
"What, what is it?"
Without answering Matthew took off back toward the guards. "Matthew! What are you doing!" Squinting in the dim lighting and taking a few steps forward, Wikus saw the young alien standing close to the garbage bags, curiously moving closer to the fallen officers. The two still alive were watching it wearily, but silently. When Matthew hastily picked the tyke up off the ground and started coming back, Wikus turned around again and ran as fast as he could. They would be right behind him the whole way.
XII. (day two; night)
He turned right at the end of the alley. Used the wooden fence to push off of, as he had built up too much momentum to control such a tight turn on his own. When he was twenty metres away he began feeling alone. He turned his head around just in time to see Matthew emerge from behind the building wall, about to turn to follow Wikus, when two bullets punctured the fence on his right side. It made Matthew panic and divert left. Wikus skidded to a stop, tripping over his alien feet. His throat was too dry to call out to Matthew. The Prawn ran for several yards but then stopped, realizing that he had gone the wrong way.
They stared at each other for a moment, breathing heavily. Footsteps were rumbling down the alley towards them.
Panting, Wikus whispered, "Okay. Okay." Blood pounded in his ears, disrupting his balance and vision. He was terrified. Climbing clumsily to his feet, he leaned against the fence and shuffled his way along, continuing the way he had been going. He caught Matthew's eye one more time, in which the little Prawn tugged on Matthew's antennae and Matthew nodded, then turned to the left and vanished into the dark backstreets. "Okay," Wikus whispered again.
He ran, and he too disappeared.
-END PART I-