Chapter Two
Derek Reese was pissed off. He hated the slush on the streets because it made him drive slowly. He hated the other drivers for getting in his way. He hated the fact that it was getting later by the minute and he was getting more and more hungry.
Bet they're already tucking in to my pizzas…
He also hated cold pizza but he would force himself to eat it just to spite the metal. If it had left him any, that was. Remembering how it had eaten, no, consumed the ice cream and had apparently even enjoyed doing so, brought a scowl to Derek's face.
If it only so much as touches my pizzas…
Pushing down harder on the accelerator, Derek imagined how blissful it would be if the machine had choked on its pizza and gone into indefinite standby or something like that. He hoped that that would be its Christmas present to him, if it got him anything at all, that was.
Tired of wishful thinking, Derek sighed and looked at his watch.
Not long to go now…
He was very nearly home, it should only take him about a quarter of an hour from here, he estimated. Derek knew the road well. It wound its way through the woods on the outskirts of the city and was the quickest way back from where he had collected Charley's gear.
Soon the familiar neon lettering of the 24/7 petrol station situated at the wood's edge was visible through the forest gloom. It had a magnificent and enormous European style Christmas tree placed outside, completely covered with electric lights, blinking and glittering in many colours. The sudden brightness made Derek squint as he passed it.
Bleedin' Krauts. Always have to overdo everything. At least our lights don't blink…
"Dammit!"
Derek slammed on the brakes and made the SUV skid round in a perfect U-turn that would have done any stuntman proud.
Nearly forgot the lights…
Praying that the Kraut hadn't used them all up on his own tree, Derek turned into the petrol station and pulled up outside the shop, which actually resembled a small shopping centre.
Neat, Derek thought as he stepped inside, admiring the huge variety of household goods, foodstuff and the car care section in particular.
Wonder if they've got a spare wing mirror…
He found what he was looking for in the third row of shelves. Not his long sought-after wing mirror but a box containing electric Christmas tree lights. Making sure to pick up the non-blinking type he noticed that they were fitted with a continental European plug.
Replacing them on the shelf and wondering if the crafty bugger had bought them on the nod somewhere in his hometown to flog here, Derek found the same type with an American plug. Noticing the difference in price he nearly dropped the box.
The bastard, charging you three dollars extra for the plug…
Shaking his head over how some people scraped a living he was just about to make his way to the counter when someone bumped into him.
"Oh, tut mir leid. Entschuldigen Sie" the square-headed man said, as he looked up at Derek from the dictionary he was flipping through.
"Eh?" Derek remarked, frowning.
The man was just about to turn to his wife who was pushing a trolley load of shopping towards the counter, puffing and panting ostentatiously, when he noticed the box of lights Derek was carrying.
"Wo haben Sie denn die Lichterkette gefunden? Wir hatten schon überall danach gesucht."
Derek scratched his head, trying to remember any scraps of German he had learnt a long time ago at school before the bombs had dropped.
"Nitch verstayn" he said to the bewildered man who immediately started to turn over the thumbed pages of his dictionary again with a practiced speed that made Derek blink.
"Der lamps necklass hier. Vere haff you find?" the man asked.
Before Derek burst out laughing he noticed the place's proprietor ambling along one of the aisles.
"Oi! Fritz!" he called out to the Kraut, waving and gesticulating madly.
The owner frowned a little at Derek's choice of words to summon him, but nevertheless hurried over to him and the other man, who had instantly looked up from his dictionary at hearing Derek call his name.
"What seems to be the trouble, Sir?" the manager asked politely.
Derek pointed at the man holding the dictionary.
"He's one of your kind and I think he's after buying his wife a necklace as a Christmas present or something" Derek informed him, stepping aside. "Here, you have a bash."
With that, he left the two men to do business in their native tongue and hurried off to the counter.
Wish these foreigners would learn English…
After he had paid for his lights Derek asked the cashier where the lavatories were. He had wanted to wait until he was home but had become rather desperate.
"At the back of the store, Sir. Through the restaurant" the young woman informed a teetering Derek who was standing on one leg. "But you'll need to purchase a token."
"WHAT!" an outraged Derek roared. "Don't you come the old acid with me, darlin'. I've just bleedin' bought something in here and I'm entitled to a piddle if I want to."
Just as the young woman was about to depress the silent alarm button under the counter, the manager appeared on the scene. "What seems to be the problem now, Sir?"
Derek rounded on the man.
"I'll give you a problem in a minute. You're not implementing your Kraut ways upon me, mate. Wanting me to pay for havin' a slash indeed. I'll do it up yer bloody Christmas tree if I have to."
Noticing a somewhat manic glint in Derek's eyes and froth appearing on his lips, the petrol station's proprietor hastily retreated to the safety of his office behind the counter after having whispered something to his employee. The young woman uneasily handed Derek a token with Sanitex printed on it and wished him a Merry Christmas as he snatched it out of her hand and tore through the store seeking sanctuary.
…
"Are you okay, John?" Sarah asked, as she tore along the streets towards their house, looking in the rear view mirror at her son who was slumped in the back seat chewing his fingernails, something he hadn't done for over ten years. She just caught herself in time from telling him to stop it.
John didn't answer. All he did was vacantly stare at the machine next to him.
"Are you injured?"
Still no answer.
Sarah turned to face her son while the Jeep shot along the road towards a set of green traffic lights. "Talk to me, John. What happened?" she snapped.
"Whoa! Mom!" John shouted and pointed at the now red lights ahead, his eyes wide in alarm as he realized she had taken her eyes off of the road and was looking at him.
Sarah whipped round and slammed on the brakes, the Jeep screeching to a halt in the middle of the crossing. Luckily, the driver of the lorry just about to intersect had once been an amateur stock car racer and managed to manoeuvre his forty ton vehicle around the tiny car by mere inches. He sounded the horn furiously as the lorry roared off into the distance after the near miss and uttered oaths which, fortunately, nobody was capable of hearing.
"Jeez, Mom!" a shocked John exclaimed accusingly "You'd think you'd have learnt from last time."
"Oh, I'm sorry I'm concerned about you" Sarah retorted, putting her foot down again and immediately continuing to tear down the street.
"There's nothing wrong with me. It's Cameron you should be concerned about" John spat at his mother.
Sarah glanced in the rear view mirror at the motionless machine sitting next to her son. If it weren't for her open eyes, she would look like she was sleeping. Sarah couldn't help admitting that she did feel a stab of pity as she took in the cyborg girl's innocent appearance. She had to consciously remind herself of what the girl really was.
"What happened to her? Were you attacked?" she inquired, supposing that if they had been ambushed, then Cameron had probably been damaged while defending John. She couldn't deny her sudden genuine concern for the cyborg.
"No" John forced out, reliving the most terrible moments of his life once more.
"I don't know what happened. We were walking back home across the common when she just…" he broke off, his throat constricting again.
Sarah felt so sorry for her son, she almost physically felt the pain he was in. She would do anything she could to stop it.
"We'll be home in a minute. Then you can tell me exactly what happened before she…, well, shut down, alright?"
John merely nodded. He had been fiddling with the cover of the rear glove compartment while talking to his mother, absent-mindedly opening and closing the lid. As he now glanced inside, his attention was caught by a familiar photographic print-out of Cameron which laid amongst magazines, pens and various other odds and sods, the sort of things you'd expect to find in a glove compartment. He pulled the photograph out and stared at it.
It was one of the photos Cromartie had used to track him and Cameron down in Mexico, John remembered. The prints had been strewn across the floor of the terminator's blue Camaro they had procured together with Agent Ellison as a getaway car. On an impulse, John had at the time secretly salvaged Cameron's photo and kept it. He wondered how it had ended up in the Jeep, for he was sure he had placed it inside one of his drawers for safe keeping.
For treasuring…
Cameron's blank face stared up at him from the photograph taken long ago, reflecting every street light. John turned his head to look at her lifeless form sitting next to him. She bore that same blank expression as in the picture in his hands, although her features seemed to come to life from the peculiar shadow-play on her face with each street light they passed. As if she were watching him, smiling.
Every street lamp's her reminder…
John closed his eyes. His fingers clenched around the photograph, screwing it up, the light from other days becoming a memory she had left behind.
They turned a last corner before they drove down the quiet street to their house. Sarah manoeuvred the Jeep into the driveway and stopped right outside the front door.
The garden still looked as peaceful as it had when she and Derek had left. The frozen snow on the roof was glittering in the moonlight and the icicles hanging from the gutters were sparkling.
Sarah turned to look at her son and his cyborg. She had so desperately wanted John's first Christmas to be a happy one…
…
"Aah, that's better. I needed that" a relieved Derek announced to the petrol station's restaurant at large before he strode off towards the exit. Seeing another Notausgang sign and fleetingly wondering why on earth Germans put green signs on various doors telling you that this particular one was not an exit if it would be much easier to just put Ausgang on the appropriate one, Derek left the shop through the sign-less door and headed for his SUV.
He dumped the box of electric lights on the passenger's seat after one last disappointed glance at his shattered wing mirror and started the engine. Derek smiled to himself, glad that he would be home in about ten minutes, if he put his foot down.
Reminding himself he'd have to park in the street in order to smuggle in his presents unnoticed, Derek sincerely hoped that the metal would be occupied with his nephew. Which it usually was, apart from during its night-time wanderings while John was asleep, when it made sure Derek got no kip whatsoever.
Ghosting about the house and staring vacantly out of the windows like that. It's a misery to itself and a burden to others…
Derek actually caught himself wondering if terminators can get bored. Instantly dismissing the idiotic notion, he reminded himself that he shouldn't care less if the cyborg's superior hearing detected him arriving or not. He knew it would be watching him if it did and would presently come to investigate.
It's her loss, not mine. If she wants to spoil John's Christmas by being a sneak…
He shrugged his shoulders and concentrated on the few remaining miles. Stopping at the last set of red lights, he noticed a shoe glued to a nearby waste-bin with what looked like a large wad of chewing gum. Shaking his head over the ideas some people come up with and probably have the guts to call artistic, he pulled away as the traffic lights turned green.
"Time for me pizzas at last" he remarked as he drove down their street. Pulling up outside the Connor residence, Derek switched off the engine and waited for the usual telltale signs of a curtain being yanked aside and the cyborg's pale face appearing at a window, glaring. At least he could always be sure of the machine's lack of modesty. It would never secretly peer out of a window, hiding behind a curtain. It somehow managed to make looking out of a window resemble the way it entered a room: swinging the door wide open and purposefully standing on the threshold.
Nothing stirred though. The house was dead quiet as was the street. There was a single light on behind one of the upstairs windows in the machine's room.
"Funny" Derek muttered. "Wonder if they've already gone to bed?"
He got out of the SUV and slowly made his way to the gate carrying the presents he had obtained, pausing ever so often in the shadows to listen and scout the perimeter as if he were invading enemy territory.
Derek eventually made it unperturbed to the garden shed. Slowly opening the creaking door he made a mental note to get those hinges oiled at last and stepped inside. He slipped John's present snugly behind some tins of paint on a shelf and placed Cameron's under the workbench. Having reassured himself that the item he intended to give Sarah was still where he had left it months before, Derek stealthily withdrew from the shed and lurked in its shadows. He had a stretch of open ground to cover before he reached the front door and deemed it wise to keep a look out for any signs of mechanical movement.
Derek waited for five minutes before he set off unabashed across the snow-covered lawn towards the front door. Nothing had spotted him, apart from an owl, the hoot of which was carried eerily across the garden on the winter night's icy breeze.
Wondering why on earth they had parked the Jeep right next to the porch, Derek climbed the steps and stopped in front of the burglar alarm's keypad. He was just about to enter his code when he noticed it wasn't activated.
Drawing his newly chosen gun, Derek pressed himself with his back against the wall to the left of the door, extended his free arm and reached for the door knob. He cautiously turned the knob, then gave the door a stout push and it swung open.
I thought so. It wasn't even locked! What the hell—…
Having switched from a jovial, homecoming Uncle Derek to one of General Connor's best soldiers in the blink of an eye, he entered the house with his back to the walls, pointing his weapon in all directions as he scanned the interior for possible threats. Not daring to switch on any lights, Derek checked the rooms on the ground floor for any signs of John or Sarah or, heck, even the machine. Finding no-one, he headed for the stairs, as always keeping to the shadows. Just before he reached the flight, his feet bumped into something large and soft and rather heavy. He instantly stopped dead, fearing the worst. As he looked down he realized that the dark mass lying on the floor in front of him at the foot of the stairs was a coat. John's coat, by the looks of it, and it seemed to be soaking wet, which accounted for its weight.
A tense and rather bewildered Derek stepped over the sodden garment and silently crept up the stairs to the upper rooms, his gun at the ready.
…
