As the weeks passed, the two groups grew to know each other, friendships grew, relationships started.
Dennis Reese met a woman from Timbercrest named Elizabeth Thatcher. They spent a lot of time working and training together and eventually fell in love.
During the day, the children went to school, and the adults prepared for the war. They listened to the radio and planned the next trip to find survivors. John and Colonel Perry taught them all they knew about combat tactics, surviving under adverse conditions, and hiding from the enemy. They also began rationing food and water since neither would last forever.
Everyone waited anxiously to see what Skynet would do.
One year after John and Kate returned with the first group, Kate went into labor. Even though she they had a doctor with her, she was terrified. John was with her every second. After 16 hours of labor, she gave birth to a daughter. They named her Sarah.
It had been over 7 years since Judgment Day. John knew they needed to find more survivors. He didn't know too much about the events that would take place after Judgment Day, but he knew it wouldn't be long before Skynet learned to make Terminators. They probably already had HKs built so they could begin searching for and exterminating humans.
John began preparing for another trip to find survivors. He was taking 7 men and 3 women with him, including Jose Valenzuela who had been with him on his previous trip. Jose had become an important advisor to John, and who had an amazing talent for planning trips to search for survivors. This time they were taking the ¾ ton cargo truck so more people could ride and they could take more supplies. They left one night in August. John was concerned they were leaving too late in the year and would get caught in heavy snowfall, but knew they were running out of time. This time they were heading east, towards Nevada. This would be a much longer trip. He didn't want to be away from Kate and Sarah that long, but knew leading the group was his responsibility.
They had been on the road for two weeks when they were attacked. They had set up camp in a narrow canyon with plenty of outcroppings for cover. It was early morning; the sun was just coming up. They heard the sound of gun fire. Three people were killed and two injured before anyone had a chance to react. "Get undercover!" yelled John, grabbing a gun as he ran for cover behind some rocks. He looked around to see where the attack was coming from. He expected to see a T1 or HK firing on them, instead he saw two men, armed with hunting rifles.
"Drop your weapons or we will kill all of you!" shouted one of the men.
"We're friendly!" responded John, hoping that they were too.
"I don't care. Drop your weapons."
John wasn't about to drop his weapons and be killed by these men. He hesitated for a few seconds, hoping to stall them until he could come up with an idea. The men fired on them again, but the group was protected by the rocks so no one was injured.
John aimed his weapon and shot at them, hitting one of the men and narrowly missing the other.
The uninjured man ran for cover behind some rocks.
"That wasn't a smart thing to do. We have you surrounded. Throw down your weapons and just walk away. All we want are your weapons and your vehicle."
John sighed in disgust. It was bad enough that they had to fight machines, but now they had to fight other people too.
"No. We can't do that. Look, my name is John Conner, we don't want to fight you, but we will if we have to. We have you out gunned, and we have a better place to fight from."
His reply was met with a burst of gunfire from the ledge above him. John knew that he had to do something, he didn't want to waste time being pinned down by these people, whoever they were. There were grenade launchers in the truck, if he could get to them.
Turning to Jose he said, "Cover me, I'm going for the grenade launchers."
Jose nodded and began firing his weapon, firing in different directions so that John was covered from all angles. John rushed to the Jeep and grabbed a grenade launcher and a bag of grenades. He hurried back to the cave just as their attackers began to fire on him. Bullets ricocheted off of the rocks, sending fragments flying everywhere.
Loading the weapon, John called out to their attackers, "I'm going to give you one more chance to surrender and leave us alone!"
The only answer was more shots fired.
John aimed the grenade launcher at the cliff where the first shots were fired from and fired it. The grenade landed on the cliff and exploded, throwing rocks in all directions. The man who had taken refuge on the cliff screamed as shrapnel like pieces of rocks pierced his skin.
"I've got a lot more of those!" shouted John.
"And I've got a lot more of these!" a voice shouted from behind a large rock. Just then a bottle exploded in flames a few feet from where John was hiding.
John ducked further back in the cave, trying to figure out what to do next. Maybe the cave wasn't the best place to be after all. If the group attacking them had Molotov cocktails they were sitting ducks.
"What kind of guarantee do we have that you won't kill us if we surrender?" John asked, trying to buy some time.
"You don't." replied their unseen attacker. "But we will kill you if you don't surrender."
Hoping that they didn't know how many people they had killed, John agreed to surrender. He turned to Robert Billings, "You stay here, keep us covered. When I give the signal, shoot as many of them as you can."
John motioned for the others to follow him out of the cave. They soon found themselves surrounded by 8 men and women, all heavily armed. They were told to drop their weapons.
"Where are the others?" asked a dirty, dangerous looking man who appeared to be about 35.
"Dead or too injured to make it out of the cave." answered John, hoping he sounded convincingly angry.
The man looked at John for a moment and then turned to one of his people and said, "Jake, check out the cave."
John knew it was now or never. He turned to the cave and said "Now!" Robert opened fire on the group, killing four and wounding one more before they could react. John and his group grabbed for their weapons as more gunfire erupted from the surrounding cliffs. Apparently not all of their attackers had come out into the open.
"Get back into the cave!" John shouted, running for cover.
Once they were back in the cave they realized that they had lost one more person. Deciding that he had had enough of this situation, John turned to his fellow survivors. "Let's finish this."
He grabbed his grenade launcher, while the others used whatever weapons they had been able to grab during the initial attack. They all began firing at the surrounding cliffs, blasting anything that moved. After firing for almost a minute, John signaled them to stop. The silence was overwhelming, nothing moved, nothing made a sound. John waited for five minutes, and then started to go out to see if it was safe.
"Wait." said Jose. "Let me go out, it's too dangerous for you."
John hesitated, and then let his friend go. Carrying his gun, Jose stepped out of the cave and looked around, alert to any movement around him. When nothing happened, he motioned for the others. John and the others made their way out of the cave and began to search the area. They found the bodies of five people under the rubble of a rock wall that had collapsed when John fired a grenade at it. Just then they heard a low moan coming from the ledge above them. Shouldering his weapon, John led what was left of his group up the side of the canyon to the cliff. There they found the first man that John had shot. He was injured but conscious. John made sure he wasn't armed, and then headed to the truck to get a first aid kit.
While he was bandaging the man's wounds, he took the time to look the man over. He was in his mid 20's, with long dark brown hair and brown eyes. He was probably 6 feet tall and he was very thin. He wore dirty, ragged looking jeans, a black t-shirt and weather-beaten boots. John asked who he was and why his group had attacked them.
"My name is Billy Kincaid. We attacked you to get your truck and whatever you might have in it. We've been living in some caves nearby for the past few months. A bunch of us lived in Eagle Pass, Texas before everything went crazy. After that, Silas Ramsey became our leader. We've been wandering around, finding food and supplies, just trying to survive. We saw you all and figured we hit the jackpot."
"You could have just asked us for help. We're always looking for people to join us." responded John.
"Silas wasn't much for asking, or for joining. He just took what he wanted. If anyone disagreed with him, he just killed them"
John finished bandaging the man's injuries. "Well, what about you? Are you a joiner or should we just leave you here?"
Billy didn't seem to need to give it much thought. "I'll join your group; I sure don't want to be alone out here, not with them things wandering around."
John tensed up, "What things?" he asked.
"They look kind of like people, only they are silver machines. I think they are robots or something. We saw them for the first time about a year ago, when we were near what was left of Las Vegas. They were searching through the ruins; we didn't know what they were looking for until we saw them find some people. They killed them all. Since then we just did our best to stay out of their way."
"HKs." John whispered. "We'd better get back to Crystal Peak." Turning to Billy, he asked, "Are there anymore people from your group?"
"Nah, I'm the last one."
After getting the injured members of their party bandaged up, they loaded them in the truck and headed back to Crystal Peak. It took them almost two weeks to get back.