Title — Terminator: Prey Drive
Description — Are you hungry for more Terminator fan fiction? Read here about what happens when survivors of Judgement Day meet machines designed to seek out humans hiding in the wild.
Terminator: Prey Drive
Part 1: Humans in hiding
By Dave Trifunov
Sean Palmer hated machines before Judgement Day, which is probably why he is still alive. He had no cellphone, no iPod, and he refused to use GPS. His modest double-wide trailer in the Canadian prairie contained a toaster oven not a microwave, a "low-definition" TV without satellite, and two banged up clock-radios. He travelled to work every day from behind the wheel of a black 1999 Toyota Tundra pickup, a truck that required no special engineering degrees to change the oil.
When the combines broke down or the threshers needed to be stored for winter, Palmer would get his hands dirty, but he did not consider these machines anything more than just big tools. He did not give them girlie names and he did not talk to them. He just did his job, tilling the soil in spring and harvesting crops in fall. He was a farmer, goddammit.
When the bombs fell on April 19, 2011, Palmer travelled north to avoid the fallout. He would walk until it became too painful, the toxic sky and acid rain tearing at his lungs and eating away at the thick layers of ragtag clothing. At six-foot-three and nearly three hundred pounds, his body was able to withstand the radiation better than most, and he was helped by the fact central Canada escaped total annihilation. But, being such a big man, he found it difficult to walk for very long. Soon after the war erupted, one of his first stops was near Cold Lake, Alberta, and the military bases there, thinking it would be wise to seek out help in the form of the military. That was his first mistake.
HK-Aerials maintained heavy surveillance around all military bases in the early days, targeting any and all resistance. It was pure fortune that he escaped almost unharmed from the area. He was just cresting a small hill when an HK approached the base from the north. Oddly enough, the thing he remembers most from that day was how he was freezing, lying there on the ground, the stubbled grasses scratching his unshaven face as gunfire pounded the base. Maybe that is because he would rather think about the cold and not focus on the few remaining soldiers running for their lives from burning barracks only to be mowed down from above.
He was frozen to the ground, breathing in wisps of soft, grey dirt and ash when the shelling stopped. He lifted his head after five minutes and started walking toward the base, the heat of burning fuel making it impossible to get too close. That is when the HK returned in all its rage and noise to pick off any stragglers. He sprinted into a nearby stand of trees, getting deep enough so that when the first shell exploded near him, he was thrown to the ground and covered by displaced soil, rocks and fallen limbs and trunks. That was enough to protect him from the strafing HK and its artillery. No puncture wounds, just blunt trauma.
At that point he was still becoming accustomed to the carnage, learning from other roving survivors of a nuclear war. Was it the Russians? Yes, but only because the Americans struck first. So we were invaded by Russia? No, they are machines. They are not Russian. Nobody knows where they came from, or whose side they are on. They are just killing humans. What about our government? There is no way of knowing for sure. There are no radios, no emergency broadcasts. Consider yourself lucky to be alive.
Usually the living would form small collectives, falling back on their humanity, believing there is strength in numbers. But the machines found them easier if they were in groups, and after Palmer had watched dozens killed, he realized he was safer alone. His only companion was a stray dog he named Lucy. A black and white husky-shepherd, the dog had saved him more than once, her keen sense of smell and hearing the head-start he needed to avoid the Terminator machines.
He found her scavenging along the roadside in one of the many small towns where he attempted to find refuge in the months after Judgement Day, but she was the only survivor. Nothing but skin and bones, she initially turned on him, growling and barking and lunging. But once he uncovered a bounty of beef jerky in the basement of some wreck of a home, Lucy decided maybe he wasn't so bad after all.
Now, many months later, he was starting to regain his strength, while Lucy thrived in her ancestral role. Palmer decided to return to his hometown of Good Soil, Saskatchewan. His family moved from there when he was a teen, but he still recognized it 20 years and one nuclear attack later. The sign on the highway that welcomed visitors to town somehow remained standing. Good Soil. Home of Ron Greschner. It was big enough to contain adequate canned goods and Twinkies to live for months, but not big enough to command constant chaos from the machines. The initial blasts were the most deadly anyway.
When the machines first attacked, many stood gathered in churches, town halls, gymnasiums or arenas. The machines anticipated that, so Good Soil's St. Barnabas Catholic church—like many others—was gutted, charred human remains visible in the aisles and the pews. The stench was still there if you weren't already well accustomed to it by now. Hopefully they were closer to God now, Palmer thought to himself. The hockey arena was also flattened, along with the gas station and strip mall.
But people in this part of the world rarely went hungry. There were still a couple of burger joints, a pizza parlour and various other pharmacies, bars and convenience stores, all with non-perishable items trapped inside for those willing to search for them. Many sporting goods stores kept him supplied with water purification tablets or filters, and he had scraped together enough ammunition and guns to feel somehow safer. There was even a compound bow and arrows he used to hunt the few deer not already poisoned or killed by the radiation.
Main Street was relatively unscathed. Skynet had bigger towns to level, although the Terminators—in some form or another—eventually found their way to almost every populated area of Canada, usually dropping powerful bombs from high above, or swooping down to capture survivors for what nobody dared imagine.
He and Lucy survived in a log house hidden among the trees by a lake just outside town. It was a classic cabin you'd see in movies: giant notched lodge poles serving as the walls and mortar keeping it together. It was cold in the winter, but wasn't attracting any attention from the Terminators, which passed overhead every month looking for groups of survivors to trap or kill – or at least he believed it was every 30 days or so; time didn't meant much anymore. As long as he didn't burn too much firewood, and he didn't fire any guns, he seemed to be left alone.
Palmer was prepared to live out his days alone in the cabin. He was never very fond of strangers, and he only ever had a few friends. He guessed most of them were dead by now. To help him deal with the boredom, he hauled a couple of pickups to the cabin, and was nearly finished cobbling together spare parts to get one running. Most car dealerships were targeted by the machines, but he managed to find enough working parts and a decent frame from the surrounding farms to build a travelling fortress.
He added a camping shell to the truck bed, using a diesel generator to power a welding torch that allowed him to reinforce the sidewalls with sheet metal from bombed out grain silos or Quonset huts; then he attached plates across the tire wells and stocked the thing with a bed role, weapons, food and water. It was his insurance policy.
It must have been the torch that attracted her. A woman about 30, maybe younger, Tabitha lived on the Black Lake Nation Indian reserve, and was attempting the long journey north back home. Lucy noticed her first, and if the dog hadn't of calmed down so quickly, Palmer would have likely shot the woman dead in her tracks.
"Nice dog," she said, as Lucy craned her neck and sniffed Tabitha's hand cautiously.
Palmer believed Tabitha was Native Canadian from her dark skin tone, dark eyes and black hair.
"She might have just saved your life," he said. "The only things I see moving around here are deer, coyotes, or those machines. I usually shoot at all of them. But she seems to trust you."
"Have you got anything to eat…" she asked him before proceeding to faint and nearly bash her head on a rock.
"Goddammit," he said. She was just a waif of a girl, maybe five-foot-three and ninety pounds. Her skin was clammy, ashen, and her clothes reeked of sweat and smoke. He carried her inside, laid her on the couch, brought her some water and tried to revive her.
"What the hell," he said with obvious frustration. "Here, drink this."
She sipped from the glass, but looked no better.
"Is this your house?" she asked him in a voice that quivered.
"I'm looking after it until the owner comes back," he said, trying to sound ironic. "You're starving aren't you? Where did you walk here from?"
"I was in Wyoming at a powwow with some friends when the war started," she said. "We escaped to a ranch in the country, about 50 of us, but those machines kept on coming. Soon it wasn't safe, and five of us started walking northeast, trying to get back home up north to Black Lake. We made it as far as Great Falls when a truck we found still working was blown up. I'm the only one who survived. We thought maybe Canada would be safer."
Realizing he hadn't spoken to another human being in months, Palmer pressed her for details of the outside world.
"What do you know about survivors anywhere?"
"We heard on the shortwave radio that machines are hunting humans and taking them to experiments. There are a few people here and there, and a resistance with guys from the army, but that's about all I know. Can I have something to eat?"
He stood up, walked into the kitchen and popped the top of a can of baked brown beans with maple syrup.
"They're old, but they won't kill you," he said.
It didn't take long for her to finish the entire thing. He offered her chocolate, and gave Lucy the bean bowl to clean out.
"We don't waste anything here," he said, as Lucy buried her snout in the bowl, the tips of her floppy ears bouncing on its edges. "Did you come through Regina?"
"The city is almost gone. Nothing is left anywhere. Everybody is dead. "