A Moth to the Flame
'A Terminator and Predator crossover Fanfiction'
By C.G. Wicks
Prologue
On August 29th, 1997, three billion human lives vanished in an instant. Skynet, a supercomputer developed by Cyberdyne, saw humanity as a threat to itself and launched its nuclear missiles, changing the world forever.
Three years earlier, Cyberdyne became the largest supplier of military computer systems in the U.S.A. All stealth bombers were upgraded with Cyberdyne computers, becoming fully unmanned. They flew with a perfect operational record. The Skynet Funding Bill was passed, and the system went online on August 4th, 1997. Human decisions were removed from strategic defence. Skynet began to learn at a geometric rate, becoming self-aware at 2:14am eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, the staff at Cyberdyne tried to pull the plug. In retaliation, Skynet launched its missiles against the world's capital cities and the targets in Russia, knowing that the Russian counterattack would eliminate the enemies in America.
At first, nobody knew who launched the first missile.
The survivors of the nuclear fire called it Judgement Day. They lived only to face a new nightmare. After the immediate destruction of the world's major cities, came the global firestorms. The resulting smoke and soot from the burning wood, plastic, and petroleum rose to extreme altitudes and drifted for weeks, blocking out all but a fraction of the sun's light. The nuclear winter that followed lowered the planet's temperature, affecting core farming regions. Two billion more lives perished due to starvation over the next few years.
The electromagnetic pulses from the blasts resulted in the destruction of all electrical equipment and technology in the surrounding areas, and the loss of access to clean drinking water which saw the resurgence of previously non-existent diseases. Communication with the outside world ceased. Civil unrest resulted in turmoil and the swift collapse of local governments as the human race was thrown back into the dark ages.
Fallout dust from the affected blast sites spread hundreds of miles and eventually fell as black rain, contaminating waterways and soil resulting in radiation poisoning through consumption. These areas saw a generation born with birth defects, and record numbers of cancer rates in the surviving population.
A few years after the blasts, rumours spread of a new threat to human existence: machines sent by Skynet that would seek out any pockets of humanity it could find to capture or terminate. One man was able to rally the people into resisting and fighting back. A man named John Connor. The more the Resistance fought back, the smarter Skynet became. Before finally losing the war in 2029, Skynet sent a single Terminator back to 1984, an Infiltrator unit designed to pass for human that was programmed to terminate John Connor by striking at his mother, Sarah, before he was born. The Resistance sent back a protector, Kyle Reese, who warned Sarah of the future and showed her how to prepare for it. He died protecting her from the Terminator.
Sarah destroyed the Terminator in a factory by crushing it in a hydraulic press, its arm the only remaining part of it. As proof to herself of the future and of her own sanity, Sarah took the arm with her and went into hiding. She later discovered that she was pregnant with John, Kyle Reese being the father. John Connor was born on February 28th, 1985. Sarah raised him to be the leader that he was prophesised to be and did all that she could to prepare him for what she felt was the inevitable war.
On August 29th, 1997, three billion human lives vanished in an instant. In that instant, the planet glowed and pulsed like a beacon, signalling anything else in the solar system that was nearby. Something noticed. Something saw and turned its attention towards Earth.
Part One: The Spark
The sun is black, the sky is red
And it feels like today is the end.
The kids are running as fast as they can
Could it be that today is the end?
-Ozzy Osbourne
Chapter One: Judgement Day
On the night before the word ended, twelve-year-old John Connor sat on an old couch in a small, dark room. An assault rifle lay in separate pieces on the coffee table in front of him, and he was cleaning the pieces carefully with a cloth. A dull lightbulb hung from the ceiling illuminating the specs of dust floating in the air, and reached the windowless concrete walls that surrounded him. He looked across the room to his mother, Sarah, who was hunched over a desk listening intently to the radio system that she had built, which was the only sound to be heard in the room. A thin stream of smoke lifted from the lit cigarette that burned between her fingers. Tonight was the night that it was supposed to happen and although she knew exactly when, she had already been sitting there in tense silence for the last hour listening for any alert from the stations.
The black hands of the clock on the wall showed that it was 1:30am. Though they were in Mexico, just south of California, the clock was set to eastern time to correspond with the information Sarah had been given. John looked back at the metal pieces in front of him, a glowing lamp next to him casting its own light into the silent room and wondered if he himself was ready for what was coming.
They were in an underground bunker, designed and built by Sarah over the past ten years with the help of her gun-running accomplice, Enrique Salceda. They were four hours south of the border on the peninsula of Baja California, Mexico, in an area least likely to be affected by the blasts. Listening to the grainy, faraway Los Angeles broadcast with the large antenna that was set up outside, Sarah stared at the metal arm that was displayed bolted upright on the wall, its fingers stretched out as if grasping for the sky. Severed from the elbow, the hyper-alloy combat chassis arm had never rusted or worn out. The T-800 Terminator that was sent to destroy her and wipe her son from existence wouldn't be made for another twenty-seven years, yet the effects of its existence had long ago been felt. It had caused her to meet Kyle Reese, the father of her child. In trying to destroy John, Skynet had ensured his existence.
Kyle had told her everything he knew about the future war against the machines and had done everything he could with his few days with her to prepare her for it. Once she discovered that she was pregnant, she went into hiding in South America and, with the help of Enrique, forged fake identities for herself and John as she travelled, always staying on the move, never stopping for long. She got further acquainted with guns and explosives and had been training herself as a soldier.
There came a time when she thought of preventing the war altogether. Thought of going to Cyberdyne itself and destroying it with explosives. But, she reasoned, the risk was far too great. If she were captured or killed in her attempts to destroy the facility, what would happen to John? If she were to end up in a mental institution, they would work out who she really was, who John really was, and he would most likely end up in foster care with his real name and identity being revealed. Skynet would then have a record of him and would be able to find him.
Instead, she stayed and continued to prepare for what she felt was the inevitable future. What she felt was fate. She trained John since he could walk, and they were always on the road. Looking at him now, sitting on the worn-out couch expertly slotting the rifle pieces back together, she mourned the loss of the normal childhood that he had never been able to have. He had been socialised plenty and was educated in the areas where it mattered, but he had never gone to school. He would never do the usual teenage things, would never get a summer job, graduate, buy a house, and have a family. Not in the old-fashioned, idyllic way that she had known, at least. That future had never been written.
John had had several would-be father figures throughout his life, but none of them were around for long. Sarah had the unfortunate responsibility of removing these men from their lives as soon as they proved themselves to be dangerous and untrustworthy. Sarah had tried to make sure that John had learned the important things from them—weapons, combat, and strategy—but she had tried to shield him from the more unsavoury parts of their realities. The only man from these circles who she did trust was Enrique, who was asleep in the room across the hall with his family. Sarah had managed to convince them to stay in the bunker for the night, though they didn't fully believe her about what she said was going to happen.
John looked at the clock on the wall, then back at his mother at the desk in the corner. He did not quite know what to think. All his life, his mother had been feeding him stories about the 'Future War'. He had grown up believing it unwaveringly, but as he got older, he was beginning to doubt her. If it weren't for that metal arm on the wall, he would by now think that she was completely crazy. What if nothing happened tonight and the world was still intact in the morning? How would his mother react? She had believed in this so fiercely that it would probably break her, and that thought scared him.
Sarah looked up at the clock and felt a heavy dread lurch in her stomach. It was 2:14am. Somewhere out there, Skynet had just become self-aware. She reached out and adjusted the volume knob on the radio. The broadcasts were normal. So far, nothing had changed in downtown Los Angeles. The minutes ticked by and the two of them now sat in complete silence in the dark, underground room. The radio signal faded in an out of static, but the program hadn't changed or been interrupted yet. Sarah knew the exact time and date of Skynet becoming self-aware, but she never really considered how long it would take for it to launch its attack. She could picture the events unfolding in some imaginary tech laboratory somewhere, possibly in an underground room not unlike the one she was in. She imagined men in white coats typing in commands on their giant computers, only for them to be rejected by the program. They would run tests and diagnostics and then they would realise that Skynet didn't need them anymore. They would scramble to shut it down, to turn the whole thing off, to purge it. Then, it would see them as the enemy.
It was now 2:30am.
The hours ticked on by, and nothing happened. Skynet was now self-aware, but how long it would take for it to wipe out humanity was a mystery. Maybe in this timeline something was different and Kyle's appearance had changed something. John was now curled up asleep on the old couch, the assault rifle now in one piece on the coffee table in front of him. Sarah put out another cigarette in the ash tray, still keeping a close ear on the songs and the chatter from the radio in front of her. She was now almost hoping for the blasts. For years she had prepared John and herself for this, and if nothing happened, then she will have robbed him of his childhood for nothing. She pushed those selfish thoughts out of her head and reminded herself that nothing happening would be the best outcome.
It was now 5:00am and Sarah had herself fallen asleep. The silence in the small, dark bunker was broken only by the early-morning news and traffic reports from a radio station in L.A.
-xxx-
Sarah woke slumped over the desk, the voices of the talk-show hosts on the radio whispering in her ear. She looked around the room and saw that John was gone. It was now 11:30am eastern time and nothing had happened to the world outside. What should have been relief was instead a mounting feeling of dread. It had to be today—she was so sure of it. She stood up, stretched her arms over her head, joints cracking and popping as she did, and stood to leave.
She passed the bedroom on her way out to check if anyone was still there. It was a small room, much like the one she had left, and had rows of bunk beds lined up in it. It could hold a dozen people, though so far it only housed herself and John, and as of yesterday, Enrique's family which included his wife, Jolanda, and their three children—Franco, who was four years older than John; Juanita, the middle child, John's age, and the only girl; and Paco, the youngest who was five. The room was empty, and the entire bunker was silent when she called out. Evidently everyone had gone back up outside. She continued down the corridor and made her way to the exit. It was a ladder that led up a shaft to a hatch on the surface with a rope hanging from a pulley system that was primarily used for loading supplies. The hatch had been left open, and Sarah could feel the warmth of the sunshine as it reached down into the dark entrance, and she could hear the sounds of the kids laughing as they played. She climbed the ladder.
The hatch, disguised as a sheet of scrap metal, opened onto the edge of their base in the flat desert landscape, hidden away from the main highway behind small rises of land which enclosed it. It was similar to Enrique's compound north of the border, which at first looked like a scrapyard in the middle of the desert and was one of the places where Sarah had stored a cache of weapons. Old vehicles lay scattered here and there, but most notable were the dirty white bus with brown panelling along the sides, and the old mobile home not far from it which had been built into a shack with rooms added to it with wooden panels and tarps which flapped loftily in the breeze. Nestled away behind the shack was the large antenna which Sarah's radio was connected to, and further back from that, higher up a hill, was a homemade windmill which helped power the bunker.
This base was off the nearby highway and occasionally the peace was broken by the sound of a car or a truck rolling along the road, just visible between a gap in the hills, never slowing, never stopping. Sarah climbed out of the hatch and stood, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the glare of the bright summer sun. The faint smell of two-stroke exhaust and the sound of motorbikes filled the air as John and Franco rode around the desert landscape. They had built a ramp and were taking turns riding over it, launching themselves higher and higher into the air as they whiled away the sunny Friday morning. Music was coming from inside the bus and as Sarah walked around it to the door on the other side, she saw Enrique keeping watch under the shade of a tarp that was strung out along the side. He was standing in front of a grill and was preparing to cook lunch as the family waited inside the shade of the bus. He smiled and nodded at her, his white cowboy hat shading his face. She returned the gesture and turned to climb back down into the bunker.
The scene up above, so normal, so ordinary, had done nothing to settle the fear that was growing within her. It was coming. She knew—absolutely knew—that it was coming. She just had to look out for the signs. She looked at the metal arm bolted to the wall. There it was—proof of the future that would be rushing towards them. The fingers were still outstretched as they had been when the Terminator had tried to reach her as it crawled. The fingers that had nearly grabbed her by the throat. She sat back down in front of her radio and listened to the daily drivel of the talk show hosts miles away in Los Angeles. She waited.
Above, the boys were now sitting under the shade of the tarp, their motorbikes propped up against an old, wrecked car, motors ticking and clinking as they cooled. Enrique was now cooking meat on the grill and the family was getting everything ready for lunch. There was laughter, and the smell of the meat was beginning to fill the air. It had been a while since Sarah's appearance and Enrique made a mental note to call her up for lunch. The heat of the day was visible across the vast expanse of desert that surrounded them, the air rippling and distorted in the distance. A car's revving engine could be heard roaring in the distance as it sped much faster than usual along the road, visible through the gap in the hills. John didn't give it much thought.
The meat sizzled, a few flies were buzzing around their heads, and chatter and laughter could be heard from the inside the bus. Another engine roared as a different car went speeding down the highway by them, much faster than usual, followed by another. And another. Everyone stopped and took notice as dozens of vehicles raced each other down the road, all going the same direction. John's heartbeat quickened and his mouth went dry as he made the connection. They were fleeing to shelter. Fleeing the incoming blast.
John heard a sound behind him as Sarah emerged from the bunker again, holding the hatch up above her head. She was panicking as she yelled almost incomprehensibly that it was happening now. It was happening, and they needed to get into the bunker right now.
"Now, Enrique!"
Nobody had any reason to doubt her. In that instant they knew it was real. The meat was left sizzling on the grill beside the bus as they rushed towards the hatch and began to climb down the ladder. The idyllic scene was ripped apart as for an instant an immense bright light flashed over them. It was all around them. There was no discernible source. All of them had been blinded for a few moments as they fumbled and felt their way down the ladder, each of them scrambling to make it down. The last person, Franco, had his eyes tightly closed as he felt for the hatch and pulled it shut with a metallic thud, the thick darkness suddenly shrouding them.
A few seconds after the hatch was closed, they all heard the low rumble of the blast booming through the ground like thunder. The seven of them stood in the tight passageway in shocked silence. It was real. It was happening. They had closed the hatch on the world that they had known, and when they one day opened it again, a new, dead world would await them. Nobody dared to break the silence of the underground bunker, save for a quiet sobbing that seemed as loud as gunshots.
It was 12:37pm eastern time when the world ended.
