Disclaimer: I of course…don't own any of The Terminator legend. The world and its characters belong to James Cameron and the Hollywood powers that be. I'm simply borrowing them for a while.
T4-Connor's War
Chapter 8
Mikey couldn't be completely sure. It was an emotion one just didn't see in their leader, nearly unrecognizable in those wise aged eyes. But for a split second, he thought he distinctly saw a trace of fear across John Connor's face. He dismissed it of course. John Connor didn't fear anything. Always prepared, anticipating, ready for whatever Skynet threw at them. Must have been his imagination.
Still, as Connor almost immediately withdrew after they debriefed, Mikey couldn't help a chill that went through his spine as he watched his leader's shoulders, slightly slumped, disappear down the corridor. A chill that for a moment, broke down all illusions of security and hope they felt under his command. A chill not unlike the cold dread of their truck rolling over the remains of thousands of lost souls.
He kicked a chipped rock across the dry desert, once a fertile land of greens and yellows and reds. John missed the fall. The season of false hope. The brief period of time where everything was beautiful…just before winter killed it. They were all in for a very long winter now. 26 years of winter if the original prophecy of Kyle Reese…his father…was to be believed. They were barely six months into it and already the machines had learned the first stages of human imitation.
He refused to think about the little boy, whose voice was recorded for that T-8, and then killed after serving Skynet's revolting purpose. He refused to think about the Terminator designs, already evolving faster than he anticipated. John could already see key features of the T101 in even the earliest models. He refused to think, as he kicked his fourth rock, that these weren't rocks at all…but chipped bone fragments from people he would never meet, people he didn't save.
No, John Connor refused to think as the cool wintery air grazed past his bare shoulders, kissing his cheeks ever so gently and the ghosts of Judgment Day whispered in the night air, asking why. "What am I doing here mom?" he said out loud. But she didn't answer. She never did. For 19 years Sarah Connor had taught her son what he needed to know to survive, to fight, to win…but never to grieve. It was a luxury they couldn't afford. John lived in a man-made world controlled by machines where grief…was a luxury.
This realization would make a normal man vomit. But John just stood on his mound of the dead, his eyes searching the horizon as if the autumn sun were setting on a cool November eve, wishing his mother had taught him just to fight the machines…not become one.
That night was the last time John would call to Sarah. She was dead to him now. He loved her, but refused to become her…And just as Kate was beginning to think that she'd lost him forever…he finally came.
* * *
"Is somebody there," Rico said thoughtfully and Mikey nodded. "Is somebody there," he repeated, "And it just kept saying it over and over again?"
"And it sounded real?" Dennis asked, nervously rubbing the back of his neck.
Again, Mikey nodded. "Yeah…like they recorded…" the thought was too horrific for him to finish.
But not for Kane, "Like they recorded a live kid?"
"Shit Kane, we all knew what he meant," Rico muttered.
"Fuck you, Ferrari," he snapped. The group divided up the day's rations near the barrier. No one felt truly safe enough to take a real break anymore so lunch was usually brought to whoever was on duty. They ate with rags draped over their rifles resting securely in their laps. Today, the majority of their small resistance stuck close at the perimeter, listening to Mikey's report. Only Jo and Dr. Mitchell were elsewhere.
Dennis leaned forward, taking a bite out of his hardened corn bread. "Did Connor think that was a good sign?"
Mikey reeled back, "How the hell could it be a good sign?!"
"No, he's right," Susan Wallace, who up until now had remained silent, knew where her old friend's mind was going, "If they were recording some kid's voice, that means they didn't kill him right away, right? So maybe they didn't kill him at all. Maybe they take prisoners-"
"You definitely haven't fought enough of the bastards yet," Kane grunted. "They don't take prisoners."
"We don't know that for sure. Maybe-"
"Maybe nothin'! Look, whatever kid that was is long dead, got it?"
"Hey back off, Kane. She's not the bad guy-"
"No and neither are the Terminators apparantley-"
"That's not what I said-"
"Is somebody there?"
The entire group froze and Mikey's face went white. "Is somebody there?" they heard again…and again. Lunch was over.
Dennis Missouti had known Susan even longer than he'd known her husband Danny…her husband who'd died protecting her, pushing her inside their bunker before he was struck hard on the head with debris.
They'd all met as undergrads in Ann Arbor. Dennis was pre-law and Susan and Danny were both environmental science geeks, but they all had at least one thing in common and that was touch football every season, every Saturday. And Susan had always been the hardest to beat.
He remembered that look of determination in her eye whenever she got the ball. The way she would practically leap over her opponents, thinking nothing of the bruises she was giving her then future-husband as she skirted passed him, her only goal to reach the endzone.
And as he watched her fight that machine, watched her grab the automatic out of Mikey's frozen hands and fire an entire round before Kane could reload his ammo, he wondered if it was wrong that something so terrible could remind him of something so pure.
The battle was difficult. The new modifications that Mikey and Jo had encountered in the field held firm here and it took Rico, Kane and Susan holding him back to buy him and Mikey enough time to construct a grenade with some of Jo's leftover chemicals. In the end they won out with only a few scratches and minor burns for Doc. Mitchell to patch up. Rico took the hardest beating, so Dennis took over for him while Kane walked him to the makeshift infirmary. Mikey took what was left of the rations to his sister, leaving two old friends alone again on the perimeter.
He watched as she wrapped a small cut with a shredded rag. "You ok?"
She nodded, "Fine."
Dennis fought the urge to sigh. He was used to that by now. Since she'd lost Danny, her answer to everything was "Fine."
"You fight pretty good, Lefty." For a moment, he saw the light return to her eyes at the mention of a very old nickname…a nickname Danny hadn't even known about. He watched, knowing she was reliving freshman year, the day she broke her right wrist after slipping off a ladder in the planetarium. 'Lefty' stuck for as long as she had the cast on. After that, he didn't dare use it again…until now. And now…it didn't seem to matter.
"Thanks," she said, polishing off the handle of Mikey's automatic after she reloaded the ammunition. She paused as the rag brushed over her wedding ring and the band glimmered for a moment…though there was no sun.
He knelt beside her, "Susan-"
But she shook her head, "Don't."
He nodded and backed away. And they watched and waited…for a friend that would never come home.
* * *