District 9 - PoHA 14

Chapter 14 - Follow me

They needed to hurry. The hour had probably almost passed if it hadn't already, and they still needed to get to the bridge. Michael's mate could arrive any moment and they didn't want to be left behind.
Meanwhile, Ana spoke on her phone as they trotted through  open ground, keeping away from the road.
"Ana?" said Syrup's voice. "Where have you been? I've been calling your cell phone for two days."
"Syrup! Syrup, listen, this is gonna sound weird. Is there somewhere a few friends and I can stay for a few days?"
"Stay?"
"Look, I- it's kind of a very long story."
"Hmm. Can you give me a summary?"
Ana winced, but figured it was best not to keep secrets. Not too many…
"Basically, my alien friends and I got in very big trouble and are being hunted down by MNU."
"Wow" said Syrup's disturbingly casual voice. "That IS trouble."
"And we need a place to… hide, sort of. I know it's too much to ask for, but… Please, help us…"
"Ok."
"Ok?"
"Yeah, my aunt and uncle just moved, and their previous house is mostly empty  and they gave me the keys. You know, in case of possible buyers. They live outside Johannesburg."
"That's… that's perfect!" Ana exclaimed. "Are you sure you know what I meant by alien friends, though?"
"Yeah, it kinda fits now. Where are you?"
"Um, um, well, never mind that, actually" Ana said, finding hard not to giggle with joy.
She indicated Syrup where and when to meet and remembered to ask her roommate to bring her the charger for her phone and some warm clothes to share. Syrup kept the same interested, yet not at all surprised, attitude all throughout the rest of the conversation. They arranged on meeting near their own place with their cars. They would then follow Syrup's car to her uncle's house, out of town. Ana couldn't believe their good luck, and as soon as they hung up,  a voice called from near the road.
"Ana! Kyler!"
Jennifer was waving a hand at them, looking more active than ever. As soon as she knew they'd seen her, she started walking away, leading them to the others. They had all gathered under the shelter of the concrete structure, the traffic thundering above their heads.
They hadn't reached the group when a sound of roaring engine and the clubbing of rubber wheels on the ditch made them turn. Wearily they waited for the big pickup truck to stop near them, and Michael was the first to approach it with confidence. A young woman in her mid-twenties, with shoulder-length black hair and a skin almost paler than Amelia's,  jumped out and greeted the gigantic prawn lovingly. Amanda was several heads shorter than Michael –and she was a very tall woman. Then she addressed the rest of the group with what was clearly an American accent.
"Okay, it'll be a tight fit, we can't risk putting anybody in the back" she said with an attitude that suggested she was totally in control, opening the car doors and signaling them to get inside.
The truck was big. It could surely carry a rhino on its trunk. But it's open top left them no option but to squeeze two humans and two poleepkwa in the back seat, and lay the entire length of Amelia on their laps with little Saskia safely guarded between the sickly woman's legs. Michael sat up front, not just because of the trivial fact that he was Amanda's partner, but because his tremendous size only required him to.
"Where to, gents?" Amanda joked.
Michael coughed, uncomfortable.
"<We don't know yet, actually."
"No, actually we might!" Ana interfered, and proceeded to explain her recent conversation with her friend Syrup.
"Get out of Joburg?" Jen exclaimed, seemingly anxious with the very thought of it. "What about… everybody else at PoHA?"
Ana suspected there was something else besides PoHA that Jen didn't want to get away from. Perhaps she had in mind a certain rescue mission, which made Ana uneasy. But the rest were thrilled enough with Ana's proposal, so to Jen's dismay, the truck started and Ana led them to her neighborhood so that they could then get as far away from MNU as possible.
Michael had made sure to tell Amanda about Amelia's condition and so finally they were able to administrate with a syringe the anti-biotic that should help her. She was still pretty much unconscious and remained so for the rest of the thirty-minute ride to Ana's place, but at least now she stood a chance.
Syrup's car was waiting for them in a corner with just the lights on. It was a disaster of a car, ancient and small, but brightly decorated by Syrup herself. Oh, how Ana had missed the oversaturated colors…
Amanda parked her car behind Syrup's and Ana was the first to get off to talk to Syrup about transferring some passengers to her car. Of course, the poleepkwa wouldn't begin to fit through any of the two doors, much less sit in the back, so they agreed on getting all the humans –Ana, Amelia and Jennifer with just little Saskia –in Syrup's car. The latter was obviously very excited about meeting the rest of the non-human gang, but made do with the tiny version of a prawn that was Saskia, whose cuteness provoked  some very serious overjoyed squeeing in Syrup until Ana made a point to tell her to start the car already.
And they were off. Ana experienced relief like she hadn't felt in her life, so much that suddenly she had time to think about how cold she was. They were saved. At least for now, they were out of the district, and there were a number of jackets and blankets laying around the car. If they had done this, they could do anything. Together. She wished she had eight arms to be able to hug all her friends -friends with a capital F-, at the same time.
Jennifer didn't  match her thoughts, though. After the short period in which the perspective of getting out had given her hopes, the news about their hiding place being outside Johannesburg had taken her back to when she had just lost Sam. It became clear for her that no one had the intention of helping her rescue the person she loved.
There was a phone-ring, classical, and Ana rummaged under her seated butt-cheek to take out the device. It was her parents. The word "home" shone on the screen and in one corner, the number 34, next to the "new message" symbol, indicated the amount of lost calls.
She dropped the phone back between her feet with a shudder, terrified by the sole idea of answering it. How would she explain this? No, there'd be better moments to talk to them than this.
Amelia stirred in her uneasy sleep and Ana reached out to the back seat and laid a hand on her forehead. She was still hot. The antibiotics would take a while to do their stuff.
"Hey, Ana" Syrup said suddenly. "That's not a parade, is it?"
Ana gaped ahead in terror. An impressive display of police lights was blocking the road, forming a line of cars.


"Get down!" yelled Amanda, pushing Michael's head down to make him bend, though little could be done with his size.
"What's going on?" exclaimed Kyler in alarm the instant he noticed the police lights up ahead.
"It looks like a police control."
"Avoid it!" said Black Jack.
"I can't avoid it, it's in the road!"
"Well, can't you turn around?" demanded Jack.
"Do you know ANYTHING about traffic rules, BJ?" replied Amanda, annoyed and frantic.
"I'm not allowed to drive!"
"Stop it, you're not helping! And get down!" Michael said.
Kyler obeyed, but Jack only kept protesting.
"What's the use? It's still evident if they look inside."
As if they'd suddenly agreed with Jack's remark, the other two poleepkwa poked their heads out to look up front.
"So what do we do?"
"Turn around!" repeated Jack.
"We can't turn around, it would be too obvious! They'd see us!"
"<So what? I start shooting?" cried the angry alien, holding up the weapon.
"Don't… you dare!!" Amanda stretched out a hand to lower the tip of the gun. "I think you've done enough killing the last few days! You are in enough trouble as it is!"
Kyler sighed in resignation at his friends' argument as the police control kept getting closer and closer.


"Oh my God" Ana muttered tremulously, looking back and forth at the red and blue lights ahead and Amanda's car at their rear. More cars had gotten in line behind them, so there was no backing up. In a reflex, she took a blanket and covered Saskia with it. But she could do nothing about the aliens in the other car.
"Um… um…" mumbled Syrup hopelessly, her hands seemingly glued to the wheel.
They'd be seen. There was no escaping the inevitable. Amanda's car would not be allowed through. They were violating enough rules as it was. They would be taken to headquarters at the very least for trying to get a group of prawns outside Johannesburg. What if furthermore they recognized them as the fugitives from D9?
"We shouldn't have left Joburg" came Jennifer's angry rumble. She, like Ana, seemed to be trying to think of an escape route.
And the line was getting shorter.
"We have to turn around" Ana decided.
"How would we do that?" Syrup asked.
"Or… maybe if we… right before they let us through, what if we accelerate to make them chase us, so that Amanda's car can go through?"
"But then they'd be chasing US!" Jennifer exclaimed.
"I think I agree with what's-her-name" Syrup added in a girly fashion.
"Yeah but… I don't know, maybe we can just say… I mean it's not like speeding is punishable with jail."
"How about kidnap of a prawn child?"
"What else can we do!" Ana howled in desperation.
"Even if we made it through there's bound to be more of these around!"
"I don't know! We don't have time for a brainstorming, so why don't you contribute something!"
"There is no way we're getting out of it this time!" yelled Jennifer, and her eyes shined with desolation.
"I think an idea would be good right about now" sang Syrup, signaling towards the moving cars in front. The policemen could already be seen poking flashlights inside car windows and opening up trunks.


"<That's it. The second I hear them yell 'prawn' I start shooting."
Black Jack grabbed the gun tighter and Kyler growled to himself, fearing the worst of the worst.
"There will be no shooting!"
"<There's people everywhere and cars. And we're crammed inside a car. Someone's going to get killed for sure" Kyler added in a attempt to prevent Black Jack from causing a massacre.
" Michael, take that gun from him!" Amanda told the hooded prawn. Michael had made use of his hood in case it helped. He sighed at his mate's request.
"<The gun might be our only chance, Amanda" he said apologetically.
"Oh no, no" Amanda pleaded, shaking in terror at the concept.
Michael stared at her, imagining all the things that could happen to her if havoc broke and bullets started flying everywhere.
"<Alright" he said. "<BJ, hide that thing. This is what we'll do." He then addressed the woman at the wheel. "<As soon as you get the chance,  keep going like nothing happened. Just drive right past and get to that house."
"What? Michael, we can't!" Amanda exclaimed in disbelief. "Haven't you been listening? We can't just make a run for it. They'll go after us!"
"<Not if they're after me."
They all stared at Michael in astonishment, trying to make sense of what he had just said, when suddenly Michael burst out of the car and closed the door behind him. Amanda reached out to stop him too late. Michael was already scurrying away between the rows of cars.



"What's he doing?" Syrup said.
"What?" asked Ana, who had already resigned and was trying to appear as nonchalant as possible for when the men aimed a flashlight at her face. Now she saw Syrup was pointing at the wing mirror, at a crouching shape crawling away among the cars. She turned around to look through the rear window. She could see Amanda, her face sweaty and her eyes popping out of her head, and beside her, the empty co-pilot seat.
Then, with a cry of agitation, she watched as Michael's titanic figure climbed on top of a random car and started banging the sides of it with a pipe, cursing loudly in every language he could think of. A glass broke. There were shouts of people and honks of cars, and Michael jumped from one car to another, getting further and further away from them every time.
Ana jumped startled by a running figure that had just that moment gone past her window. The police was already after the crazed prawn, yelling for it to halt and leaving the police cars almost unattended. One man remained on the spot, but started letting the cars through without paying much attention to their contents.
"Go, Syrup!"
Syrup started the car, leaving behind all the commotion of honking cars and gunshots, and in a matter of seconds they were well past the control. With a quick glance backwards, Ana confirmed that Amanda was following them close behind, with no police car to outrun.