Title: Milk

Author: C. Isaac

Character(s): Four Horsemen (Sayles perspective)

Rating: T for Teen

Word Count: 1200

Summary: Future war from the perspective of Sayles. An adventure in the underground of L.A. leads to an interesting discovery.

Disclaimer: I do not own anything involved with Terminator or the Sarah Connor Chronicles. All rights belong to their respective owners, and I am making no profit from this.

Author Notes: Thank you to nikwdhmos for the assistance in beta reading and providing feedback. Thank you so very much.

Milk

"I tell you, the Cahuenga pass is just half a click south of us."

"Bullshit, Kyle. We're lost again. Why do I keep asking you to run point?"

"I don't know. Why do you?'

Derek and Kyle Reese were arguing. Again. I tried to rub the building migraine away with circular motions of my fingertips against both temples. My head hurt. My feet hurt. Hell, even my hair hurt. And we were lost.

Wisher leaned in close, whispering, "Hey, Sayles, bet you half an MRE that they don't get us home before daybreak."

"We don't have half an MRE. That's the problem." I peered up at him and gave him a rueful smile.

"Yeah, but it's nice to dream."

We were on a scavenging run. One of the worst duties you could pull. It somehow managed to be boring, dangerous, dirty, and a waste of time simultaneously. Sometimes a squad hit a jackpot and scored something really useful. Sumner had brought in working generator two months ago. That had been the best thing anyone in the whole unit had found all year.

I settled myself and my rifle against a mound of rubble to lounge and watch the Reeses continue to go at it and felt pain shoot up through my foot. I yelped and cursed and started trying to get the boot unlaced and off. Combat boots do not come off quickly.

"What is it?" asked Wisher as he set himself to reclining against the same pile of debris.

"Rock or something, I think."

Wisher was adjusting his weight when I heard something beneath him crack. "What was that?"

The world began to shift beneath our feet. Once. Twice. Then it gave way to falling and oblivion. I thought I heard the sounds of Derek yelling our names into the dark before I lost consciousness.

Armpit.

The first thought, sight, and smell as I returned to consciousness was an armpit. Billy Wisher's armpit pressed firmly into my face. If the fall hadn't killed me, this should have, so I considered it a wonder I was still alive. I shoved at the prostrate Wisher, only to have the armpit roll further back into my face and hear Wisher mutter something groggily about chess.

"Get the hell offa me, you smelly ape!" I beat on his ribs like a drum to try to wake him up.

Wisher rolled off me, finally, and found out the hard way that the actual floor was still about a foot below where we lay. I heard the grunt as he hit the ground. My back hurt like hell and I was sore all over. From the way Wisher struggled up into a crouch next to me, I could tell he felt it just as much as I did.

Light staved off some of the darkness of the room. It filtered in from some unknown source. The room was a large, square shape of some buried ruin from before Judgment Day. Rotten sheetrock hung from the walls and the floor was covered in twisted springs and cloth.

I pulled myself off whatever it was that I had ended up landing on. It turned out to be a huge, broken down mattress. In even worse shape now. Stuffing had blown out the sides when we landed. I could see a fallen sign that had 'Mattress Giant Spring Clearance – Ends April 21, 2011' written in faded lettering. The irony wasn't lost on me.

Looking back over at the bed, I told Wisher, "Landing on a mattress. This is the sort of thing you see in really bad vids."

"Really bad vids don't even resort to this." Wisher looked up towards the hidden light source. "How far down do you think we are?"

"No idea. Where are our rifles?"

"No idea."

"Great."

"So, we just 'hang in there, baby' until the Reeses find us?" Wisher looked uncertain, even with the shadows masking most of his face.

I checked the pouch on my belt and found my trusty six inch mag-lite flashlight. It had gotten me out of a dozen jams and I was glad to see it had survived the fall intact. The reassuring beam reached out to illuminate the world in front of it. I surveyed the room we were in.

The back of the store's main room had been crushed under what appeared to be a falling freeway ramp. A crushed sedan had taken up permanent residence in the storeroom. The front door remained standing, though empty of plate glass, and looked out onto a stretch of asphalt that was unmarred.

Deciding to follow my instincts, I stepped out through the shattered opening and into what had once been a parking lot. The white stripes that told vehicles where to park were still visible. One had a handicap logo in blue in it.

Wisher followed me out through the front of the building. "I think we're in some sort of cavern."

"There's no caverns in LA," I reminded him. I shined the light up and around the destroyed strip mall and towards the darkness above them. It took a lot of squinting to make out, but we finally saw what it was above us. A large office building loomed at a forty five degree angle overhead and lay propped against the fallen freeway.

We wandered forward towards the section of street that had been preserved by the building shielding it from the blast waves, time, and the elements. Cars had been strewn before it like forgotten children's toys and all were strangely empty of the usual skeletons. Doors hung open and belongings lay on the ground, but it seemed these people had gotten away, at least for a day.

"I don't think these cars have been touched since Judgment Day," I said as I looked from sedan to SUV to motorcycle.

"They should be good salvage, then. Parts. Tires. Batteries. This could be a bigger haul than that genny of Sumner's."

"If we can get some sort of pulley, we can get it out of here."

"Pulley? Since when have you ever used a pulley?" Wisher gave me a skeptical look.

"I did. Once."

"Once. Doing what?"

"Helping Harrison lower the genny down into the hole."

"It's bad enough Sumner's team finds the best shit, but you're helping to carry it for them? And all you did was tug on a rope."

"Yeah, well… I was a big help!" Well, I had been.

Wisher rolled his eyes before coming to a stop. "Hey… what's that?"

The light came to rest on a delivery truck. It had crushed the front end of a compact car, but was otherwise in good shape. The back door remained shut and a large logo could be read on the side: CARNATION.

"A flower truck?"

"Does it look like a flower truck?" Wisher smirked at me.

"I dunno. What's a flower truck look like?" In my defense, I was all of seven when Judgment Day hit.

"Well, they sure as hell don't say 'milk products' on the side. That was also a company that made powdered milk. I had to live off the stuff when I was broke as a bachelor." Wisher jogged forward and tested the latch. "Hey, it's unlocked…"

The door opened easily, revealing pallet after pallet full of shrink wrapped boxes of powdered milk. It was a long while before either of us could pick our jaws up off the ground.

From the look on his face I am sure that Derek Reese had expected blood. Gore. Mutilation. Twisted and broken limbs. Maybe even a hang nail. It had taken the Reeses hours to descend carefully into the dark and the murk and find a safe way down to where we had ended up. Instead, he found two idiots chugging milk they had made from water in their canteens and grinning like fools.

"Hey, boss," I shouted as they approached – ignoring any regard towards stealth at all, "Guess what we found?"