Chapter One
Fear not the night
'The future has a way of arriving unannounced.' - George Will.
Gabriel Foster was content with life in general. As one of the youngest insurance assessors in his firm, he got the jobs that required the most long distance travel. Gabe did not mind - the truth was he liked driving in the country, especially when his company was picking up the tab for gas and mileage.
The job he was returning from was a result of a freak storm. Several houses were damaged, but only one was insured with his firm, and it only had some missing shingles and slight water damage. It had taken half the time his supervisor had allotted for him to do his assessment, which meant Gabe could enjoy the mountain scenery as he drove home along the Rim of the World Scenic byway back to LA.
In an hour and half he should be back at the office, just in time to file his report and call it a day. All in all, not a bad way to finish the week. The song on the car radio he was idly humming to finished, replaced by the country's current number one song, a song that his girlfriend Jen loved. Unfortunately, Gabe couldn't stand the overly sweet melody, so he switched to another channel. "… the White House and Joint Chiefs have yet to comment on resent reports of missile launches coming out of Iowa, this only hours after the Pentagon's much-vaunted missile defense system was brought on line. A spokesperson for..." Gabe, not really listing, kept pushing buttons until he gave up finding something he liked and switched off the radio all together.
He was just passing Silverwood Lake when his mobile started ringing. The ring tone indicated it was Jen, probably calling to ask him to pick up a bottle of wine on the way home "Hi, beautiful, what's…"
The flash came from the southeast and lit up the top of the mountain range as if the world had suddenly discovered a new dawn. Gabe yelped in surprise, dropping the phone. He gripped the steering wheel with both hands as he tried to control his rapidly slowing and unresponsive car, while simultaneously trying to blink away the afterimages that were temporally blinding him. The car went off onto the dirt verge, clipping vegetation along the way before suddenly coming to a stop when it hit a rock outcrop.
"Shit! Shit! Shit!" Gabe was more surprised than hurt; luckily he'd been wearing his seatbelt. Remembering his phone, he found it tucked up behind the accelerator pedal. Unfortunately, it was completely dead and no amount of key pressing was going to bring it back to life.
"Well, that's just great!" The words were barely out of his mouth when another flash lit up the horizon directly south causing Gabe to flinch involuntary. This one was smaller and not as intense as the first one was. In his rear-view mirror, he caught a third flash, this time from the north west. The last one was so small that he probably wouldn't have noticed if he hadn't caught it in the far right of his mirror. "What the hell is going on?" His mind was refusing to acknowledge the obvious conclusion that was flashing like a big neon sign saying "Nuke!" onto his consciousness. All he could do was sit, stunned, as he watched the large black mushroom cloud rise above the horizon, a harbinger of a million deaths and millions more to come. Then the sound hit, coming up the valley like the roar of a thousand angry freight trains.
Gabe came awake with a start. The thunder that had awakened him echoed around the landscape of twisted metal and broken concrete that sixteen years ago had been a large and prosperous city teaming with people. Those same people were still there - you could barely move through the rubble without standing on someone's remains.
He blinked away the dream that was his own personal nightmare and cursed under his breath for falling asleep while on sentry duty. That was happening a lot lately. For some reason, he had been much more tired than he should have been. Maybe I'm just getting too old for this crap! He mused. Gabe smiled grimly. More likely, it was cancer. After metal, cancer was the biggest killer of the surviving human population. Most people didn't live past fifty without dying from one or the other. Gabe figured he was about forty something; the exact figure eluded him. After Judgement Day, as it was later to be called, Gabe had ceased to celebrate birthdays. After all, another year surviving in this hellish landscape was more of a curse than a reason to celebrate.
Switching the scope to night mode on his Barrett .50 caliber sniper rifle, Gabe scanned the blasted landscape for any sign of movement. At least metal wasn't subtle. You could usually spot one of the chrome domes from a mile away. The skin jobs, on the other hand, were more adept at sneaking up on you.
Satisfied that his inappropriate naptime hadn't compromised their position, Gabe covered up the irreplaceable scope with care. Like the rest of the rifle, the scope was rapped in rags to prevent any noise, should he accidentally bump into something, thus giving away his position. Silence was golden in the land of the machine.
A female voice whispered up at him, "Hey, Foster, you still alive!"
"Yes sergeant," Gabe whispered back.
"You've been so still I thought you'd died or something." The emphasis was on the 'or something.' Gabe knew if the sergeant even suspected him of sleeping while on duty, he'd be cleaning latrines for the rest of his life. He waited to see if his indiscretion had been noticed.
"We move out in five; the lieutenant wants to be at the assembly point in two hours!"
Gabe turned and watched the small woman walk away just as the blood red sun started to rise. The ash of a destroyed world floating high in the atmosphere meant that the sunrises and sunsets were always a deep red in color; it also caused a general 20 degree drop in temperature at this latitude. So much for global warming.
As he shrugged into his pack and put on his helmet, Gabe took in the other members of his squad who were packing up camp in the culvert that had been their temporary home for the night. Nine were new and made up a three 81mm mortar section. They had been temporarily attached to the squad just for this mission.
Gabe's best friend Santiago gave a small wave as he made his way down through the rubble to join the others. They had fought together for about twelve years and he was the closest thing to family Gabe had. Santiago was cradling a M249 SAW 5.56mm machine gun, which was really too light to take on a Terminator unless you were practically in the same room as one. Standing next to Santiago, Sergeant Matheson barely came up to his shoulder, but what she lacked in stature she more than made up for in ability. The mere fact that the plasma rifle she carried was from a Terminator she had killed with a homemade pipe bomb left nobody in doubt to her effectiveness.
Their leader was the wiry Second lieutenant Washington, who despite his lack of imagination was a smart and careful planner. Gabe and Santiago both agreed he was a good if somewhat aloof leader. He also had a plasma rifle, but unlike the sergeants, his was a privilege of rank rather than a spoil of war. The lieutenant was currently talking with the last of their group; a gangly fifteen-year-old scout by the name of Kelly. Like all children born around the time of the bombs, Kelly had the almost supernatural knack of moving through the desolate landscape quickly and silently, almost as if she were a ghost. Unlike the rest of the squad, Kelly didn't have a backpack or any equipment, save for the pump action shotgun that hung over her shoulder. Scouts traveled light, as their job required them to range far ahead of a column to make sure they didn't run into any metal. Anything that would slow them down was considered unnecessary weight.
She and the lieutenant were currently studying a map. No doubt he was telling her where they would be heading to next on their way to the mysterious rendezvous point. While the lieutenant would pick the destination, it would be up to Kelly to pick the best route to get them there. She would leave marks along the way for squad to follow that only someone with a trained eye would be able to find.
With a smart salute to the lieutenant, Kelly spun round and scrambled up to the road with the agility that would make a gymnast envious. With barely a pause to look around, she quickly disappeared without so much as disturbing a pebble.
Gabe frowned when saw the direction Kelly had gone and reached into his jacket to pull out a dog eared street index that was the only thing he'd salvaged from his long ago abandoned car. Flipping through to the desired page, he traced what lay two hours' march in the direction the scout had taken and felt the blood drain from his face.
"What's the matter? You look sick." Looking up into the concerned eyes of his friend, Gabe tilted the book down so Santiago could see the place his finger still pointed at. Santiago made a hissing sound follow by a string of obscenities in Spanish. "LAX! They can't be serious. They're going to get us all killed!"
Gabe could only nod his head in agreement. The assembly point was located just outside what was generally referred to as the "triangle of death." Like the infamous Bermuda triangle for which it was named after, the triangle tended to swallow all who entered, leaving no clue as to their fate.
The points of the triangle - Hawthorn, Culver City and Huntington Park - were only general reference points, but the death to be found within those speculative boarders was real enough.
Idle gossip was that it held one or more factories. Whatever the truth was, the place was literally crawling with metal. Gabe patted Santiago on the shoulder as he moved passed to where the sergeant was impatiently waiting for them, Santiago fell into step beside him.
"Well, we knew that we were going to attack something. I guess they wanted to keep it a surprise!"
All he got was a grunt in way of a response.
When they had gathered together, the sergeant gave Gabe and Santiago an icy stare to show her displeasure at being kept waiting before addressing the squad.
"All right, you know the drill! Santiago, you have point. Foster, you'll be bringing up the rear! And Foster," the sergeant added.
"Yes, sergeant."
"Don't fall too far behind. The lieutenant wants to pick up the pace!"
"Yes, sergeant!" Gabe watched as the squad weaved between wrecked vehicles, until they reached the closest ruined building in that hunched walk-run style that everyone developed when on the surface. They paused awhile, then disappeared one by one around the corner. He would wait a couple of minutes before he would follow. As he counted off the seconds in his head, Gabe squatted down behind a burnt out Chrysler and pulled out an old worn wallet. Flipping it open, he found himself looking into the eyes of his once youthful and carefree self, which stared back at him from his drivers license. With a sigh, he turned the wallet around so he could look at the photo on the other side. His heart skipped a little, as it always did when looking at the image of the beautiful blonde woman before him. The sparkling blue eyes and Mona Lisa smile belied the quick whit and sharp intelligence, coupled with boundless energy, that was Jennifer Bourne. They had met in collage in their freshman year and from that time onward had been inseparable. Jen had wanted to get married and move out to the country, but Gabe had kept putting her off for reasons that didn't mean a thing now. "I was just scared," Gabe said, tracing his finger down the side of the faded photograph. There were worse things than death, and sometimes surviving was one of them. Gabe wished he could have been with her at the end, hold her in his arms and tell her one last time just how much she had meant to him. With his eyes closed, Gabe reached out with his free hand. Sometimes she felt so close, his fingers almost touching hers. He snapped the wallet close and put it away. Time's up, gotta move.
