Chapter Two: The Bunker

"Clothes off, everyone! Now!" Sarah had been preparing for this for years and now that it had finally happened, instead of being in shocked disbelief like the rest of them, she was able to follow the script that she had rehearsed in her head. She had placed a large laundry basket on the ground in front of them and was taking off her shirt. Though they were quite far away from the blast site, she couldn't run any risk of their clothes being contaminated with fallout dust, as unlikely as that was. For her it was better to be overly cautious. "Come on, let's go!"

Following her lead, everyone undressed their outer layers in the crammed passageway and when the laundry basket was full, Sarah took it away to a different room and returned with freshly laundered clothes for them to put on. She moved automatically, her mind floating in a fog. It had been as though for the past ten years she had been climbing up an immensely high wall, never able to see the top. As she climbed, her old life as a waitress living in a shared apartment in Los Angeles fell further and further away. She didn't even recognise that life now. It had all changed that night when Kyle Reese had saved her from that man—that machine that had been sent from the future to kill her for something that she hadn't even done yet. That was the night when she had begun her climb.

In recent weeks, with Judgement Day looming, she could more and more see the top of the immense wall. It had been getting closer every day and she had finally reached it, climbing onto the precipice of her fate. Yesterday, she had been standing at the top of that wall, ready to either fall forwards into her new life, into the unknown future, or backwards into her old life if the bombs were not to fall. The immense flash of light from the sky had sealed her fate, had pushed her forwards from the edge, and now she was falling, rushing into whatever new life lay before her. Soon the fog would clear, and she would know that she was ready.

The low rumble of recurring, distant blasts reverberated through the walls as everyone tried to come to terms with what had happened out there. This small, dark bunker was the safest place in the world for them right now. John was staring at the hatch, knowing for certain that his childhood hadn't been stolen—it had been exchanged for what was now outside. This was now their life.

The next hour was spent with everyone huddled in the radio room, piled onto the couch or on the floor, listening to the large elaborate radio system that Sarah had set up. California was silent. The radio stations in Mexico still worked for the moment, but they provided no useful information as nobody anywhere—government or otherwise—really knew what was going on. The authorities frantically advised the usual precautions: get to shelter and stay indoors until otherwise advised. This went on until, suddenly, the broadcast from Mexico City also went quiet. There was no warning, no reaction from the presenters. The radio was now silent, only the sound of hissing static filled the still, thick air of the dark bunker.

The days that followed were filled with anxious fear. Enrique thought only of his parents in La Paz, a city several hundred miles south of them at the southern end of the peninsula. It was not a major capital city, but Sarah had remained convinced that as a densely-populated area, it was surely a target for Skynet's stealth bombers. She had tried to assure him that they were already dead.

"The first machines that Skynet uses is the stealth bombers," Sarah had been pleading with him. "The first blasts will have been aimed at the major capital cities in the United States and the rest of the world. Everything else after that will be bombed one by one by its planes. It's the only way Skynet can be sure."

"Skynet this, Skynet that! It was people that did this, Sarah. People!"

"Then how do you explain that arm on the wall?"

Enrique could only stare at her. They had been friends for many years, and while he didn't quite believe the whole robot-from-the-future thing, he knew how fiercely she had believed it. And when those bombs fell on the day that she said they would, his own disbelief of the impossible future faltered. He couldn't explain the metal arm. He believed that something terrible had happened to her and that maybe she found a fake prop arm and latched onto it as proof of her delusions. He had to find his parents, and if Sarah was right about Skynet, then that was even more reason for him to go to them.

After a week in the bunker, Enrique climbed the hatch with his son, Franco, and set out to La Paz to see for himself. He didn't doubt Russia's aim towards the U.S, but he struggled to see why smaller cities around Mexico would be targeted by anyone. He had convinced himself that Sarah's radio was faulty, and that the silence on every channel was due to a malfunction on her end and that she was unwilling to go outside to fix it. There was no talking him out of going, and as the hatch slammed shut after him and his son, Sarah wept as though they had already died.

The most important part of living in the bunker right now was surviving as long as they could while they waited to hear from the Resistance on the radio. For years, Sarah had stored supplies and material for the impending Judgement Day. The bunker was set up as a long, narrow corridor lined with doors on either side.

At one end was the entrance where the ladder to the entry hatch was. Next to the ladder were some large, heavy-duty plastic bags hanging from hooks for any used disposable HAZMAT suits to be thrown into. At the other end of the corridor was the bathroom which held six bore hole latrines, each several dozen feet deep, lined up in a row. This room, like most of the others, was fitted with a filtered vent that led up to a single pipe that jutted out of the ground on the surface by a few feet.

There were eight main rooms in the bunker, sealed with metal doors, four on each side of the corridor, all separated by a foot thick wall of concrete. From the entrance looking down the corridor, on the left, was the water store, which was so full that when accessed, the door opened onto an immediate wall of twenty-litre jugs all stacked on top of each other. It was impossible to tell how big the room actually was. The next room was the same except it was filled with boxes of preserved food. Next was the fuel storage, holding as much fuel as the water store held water. At the end was the radio room which doubled as the workshop. It served as a type of living area due to its seating and small tables. It was primarily used for keeping the weapons in working order, which were stored in a large locker in the corner, and any other repairs.

Opposite the radio room was the generator room. In it was a single small generator that used minimal fuel and was used as a backup power supply. The windmill on the surface acted as the main power source, the input and output measured on the power board on the wall. If the input got too low, the generator was used to boost it. It powered the lights and the various electronics in the bunker, including the radio receiver and the stove tops in the kitchen further along. There was also a small incinerator for destroying contaminated items such as clothing.

The next room, leading back to the entrance hatch, was the washroom. Here people could clean themselves with hot water and rags, though sparingly. It doubled as a laundry room and held many spare items of clothing, including the boxes of disposable HAZMAT suits in case they had no choice but to venture out into the radioactive grounds above. It was also used as a general storeroom for many other items, including soil and plant seeds for future use to grow vegetables. Next was the bedroom, which held six small bunk beds that ran along the edges of the room, two to a wall except for the door side. After that was the kitchen, which held a small table and chairs and also medical supplies.

Sarah knew that in order to live in the bunker for any real length of time, she would have to enforce strict rationing of all the supplies. Even if everyone adhered to it perfectly, there was always the risk that she would have to venture up top to restock. An almost impossible task.

-xxx-

Time in the bunker seemed to slow down and warp. There was no day-night cycle to regulate themselves to. Only the analogue clock on the wall of the radio room measured any time, now corrected to local time. The main differences between the waking hours and the night was that the day was somewhat noisier with the Spanish chatter from the Salceda family, while at night, the only sound that could be heard was the quiet hum of the generator and the low static of the radio which was always on. Sarah kept track of time by drawing a mark each day on the blank wall of the radio room in groups of seven. So far, they had been in the bunker for two weeks with no word from the outside world. The Resistance didn't exist yet. All nearby authorities were gone. There was no help from the outside world.

Sarah didn't really sleep often, not wanting to miss anything on the radio if someone called out, and when she did sleep, she was plagued with bad dreams. Dreams of metal men walking towards her through a wall of flames, red eyes all locked onto her, always getting nearer. Dreams of metal fists clanging against the hatch of the bunker as the Terminators made their way in. Dreams of barricading herself amongst the weapons store getting ready to fight, all the while hearing the sounds of Enrique's family being torn apart in the corridor. John was nowhere to be found in these dreams, and that scared her the most. More than once, she had awoken and gone to stand under the metal hatch, shotgun in hand, to listen for several minutes for any sound. Each time, there was nothing there.

Sometimes, she dreamed of Kyle. They were kinder dreams, but they always ended up the same way—in the empty factory with the Terminator, fully exposed as it truly was, constantly hunting her down. She could never shake off those eyes. The red, glowing eyes that would always track her. Would always find her.

She didn't really sleep often.

To pass the time, Sarah would sometimes write letters to Kyle, though she couldn't decide if they were for the Kyle she had once known, or the Kyle who was yet to be born. Her goal, aside from keeping John safe, was to live long enough to one day meet him again. She would be middle-aged by then, and he would most likely be a child if they were to meet, but she just wanted to glimpse him. In the letters, she wrote of his son, John, and how she had done all that she could to prepare him for the war that Kyle had warned her about. Kyle had idolised the John Connor that he had known, and Sarah hoped that the man her John would grow up to be would live up to him.

She was steadfast and convinced of the future he had come from. Sometimes, in moments of uncertainty and lonely despair, she wondered if she were on a broad spectrum of possible futures, each path only right there next to each other, and that any wrong move could knock them onto the next path—a completely different path—and that the future she was told about would become null. Did Kyle Reese travel back through time to her in every version of the past or was the timeline that she was in the only one, in which case, his appearance will have already changed everything? Was he always John's father, and if not, who was his father in the 'original' timeline? If John could only ever have existed because of Kyle, then there could only be the one timeline, repeating itself over and over.

These redundant worries plagued her repeatedly as she waited by the radio, cigarette in hand as she smoked under the vent. None of it mattered. They were here. They were alive. They would wait for the dust to settle and then they would venture out into the ruins, ready to face the machines.