Chapter Five: Early Goodbyes

It took three weeks since Enrique's return to the bunker for him to die. The radiation poisoning had slowly caused his organs to fail and had seeped into his bones, affecting his blood. There was nothing that could be done other than making him as comfortable as possible. When he was ready, Sarah and Jolanda helped him up to the surface with the pulley system and walked him towards the old bus. The air was clearer, but the black plumes of smoke still burned across the horizon, feeding into the great, overcast cloud of smoke above. Nonetheless, Sarah was uneasy about being outside. The grill was still there, the meat on it having long since burned and rotted, and further away the two motorbikes were still leaning against the old, wrecked car. They climbed into the bus and sat him down in his usual spot, the place where he would often relax back when the world was normal. A cooler sat nearby, its lid still tightly closed. He opened it and pulled out a can of beer. It was no longer chilled—the ice it was nestled in having long since melted—but the taste was much the same.

All of them sat in the bus with him. Sarah was overruled about the HAZMAT suits, as it was generally agreed that where they were had minimal risk of fallout contamination or radiation. The portable stereo inside the bus still worked and John rewound the cassette that was in it and pressed play. The familiar music reminded them all of better days and they all sat in content silence, listening to the tunes. Sarah made a mental note to bring the cassette and stereo back down with them when this was all over.

It almost felt like a normal afternoon apart from the view that was outside of the windows. The seats were comfortable and familiar, the smell of the bus's interior was the same, and the sound of the music was a pleasant memory that they had almost lost. It was as normal an afternoon as they could hope for. How desperately they wished they could go back to how it used to be. How desperately they wished they could have Franco back. Every time Enrique looked at John, he was reminded of him; the two boys might as well have been brothers.

The recreation of a pleasant afternoon, this living funeral, was interrupted by Enrique's persistent coughing. Jolanda dried her eyes regularly, and Juanita only sat in indifferent silence. She had done her mourning the moment he had come back and saw that he was already a dead man walking. She had grieved in her own way, confiding in John whenever she could. Paco only stared, taking in every detail that he could, not entirely understanding what was going on.

Juanita and John had never been particularly close. He had mainly been friends with Franco and they always got up to mischief together. Juanita would sometimes accompany them, but usually lingered in the background. She was a year younger than John, and now that they were the only two in the bunker who were the same age, neither were surprised to find that they were becoming close with each other. The grim state of her father at his return and the increasingly cold and distant moods from her mother were pushing her more and more towards John.

Enrique was ready to go.

At his word, Jolanda produced a bottle of Tequila and poured everyone a shot—except for Paco, who was much too young. Enrique spoke kindly to all of them and said his goodbyes, and toasted the memory of Franco, whose body they would never recover, but could only hope had had a proper burial. One by one, everyone returned to the bunker, leaving him alone with Sarah. It had taken much to persuade Jolanda to leave him for this next part, but he did not want her last memory of him to be of it. She would remember him smiling at her and telling her that he loved her, that he wants to do this, and that he chooses to go out his own way. Jolanda resented Sarah for getting to be part of what was arguably his most intimate moment, but she had no wish to strain his health further by arguing with him.

Enrique, still sitting in his favourite spot, reached for another can of beer from the cooler. It was difficult, and Sarah knelt down to get it for him. He waved her away and retrieved it with a groan. The can opened with a hiss and he took a long sip, a glimpse of fear flickering on his face. Sarah watched him.

"Are you sure?"

"Si, Sarah."

It had to be her. He knew that she would not falter. Would not fail him. Would not be overcome with emotion at the last second and miss. Would end his pain right now, the way he wanted. He faced away from her and stared out at the vast landscape beyond, the glow of the wildfires still burning in the distance beneath the immense black wall of smoke. She moved next to him, the cold metal of the handgun steady in her fingers, sitting out of his view as they talked. They talked about nothing of any importance, just idle chit-chat as if they had met at a supermarket, and when the time was right, when Enrique closed his eyes with a smile as he began to laugh at something that she had said, she pulled the trigger.

The sound clanged intrusively upon the peaceful quiet of the old bus, punctuating the finality of the act. His pain was over, his last moment a smile. The cassette in the stereo had reached the end of the tape, the play button popping out with a click. It was as though the song ended the moment his soul left his body.

The scene left behind for Sarah only highlighted the grim reality of the world that Skynet—humanity's greatest achievement—had brought. The blood stain dripping down the glass would be her last memory of the man she had been best friends with for the past ten years. She picked up the cooler and splashed the water from it into the window, washing away the red.

Sarah buried Enrique's body in a grave that she had dug a few days earlier, next to a marker made for Franco. She filled it in with dirt and marked it with a wooden cross that simply said 'Enrique Salceda'. She poured some Tequila on the fresh dirt of the grave, and then drank the rest of the bottle before placing it next to the marker. She made her way back to the bunker's entrance, and for the entire slow walk there, she hoped that the Tequila would soon kick in. After the day she had just had, she would need it just to sleep.

-xxx-

Time passed, and the pain of loss slowly lessened with each day. To break up the monotony of life in the bunker, Sarah had relaxed her attitude towards constantly listening to the radio. They had enough food and supplies in the bunker to last them for at least eight years, and now that their party was down by two people, that time limit had lengthened. There were few silver linings in this world, and that was one that Sarah had to hold on to. The Resistance would eventually call, but even if they did right now, it would be too dangerous to head out into the world. There were no Terminators out there yet to kill them, but the environment—or other people—would. Either way, they would have to wait until the air cleared.

To mark the weeks, every Sunday Sarah would play the album in the radio room that they had listened to in the bus on Enrique's final day. She had taken the stereo and the cassette from the bus and set it up in the radio room and, in honour of Enrique's memory, she replaced the T-800 arm on the wall with his old, white cowboy hat. Jolanda had begun to decorate the bunker room by room, and little Paco had taken to drawing on the walls with chalk, depicting childish images of castles and knights, kings and queens, and of course—dragons.

For the next year, they simply survived. The radio received no transmissions, the food stores depleted by a comparatively small chunk (they could now walk into the rooms a few paces), and John was now getting the hang of shaving. They celebrated birthdays, and they created small rituals and traditions. Every now and then, they would roll out a small TV on a stand from the store room and play some old movies while Sarah listened to the radio with a pair of headphones. Those moments were a welcome distraction and made for a nice few hours of peace, until it ended and they looked around the room they were in and remembered where they were. It had already felt like they had been there for an eternity, but the marks on the wall confirmed that it had only been twelve months. Despite the coloured chalk drawings that could by now be found on all of the walls, the bunker often times felt like a prison. They were prisoners for the crime of being human, and they knew that outside, they would one day be hunted for that same crime.

Tensions between Sarah and Jolanda continued to simmer quietly, though the energy between them that sometimes lingered in the rooms after certain discussions never waned. They were prisoners in this bunker, but Jolanda saw Sarah as the warden, as if the whole thing had been her fault and that at her desire, she could just end the whole thing and open the hatch to a normal, sunny world.

Life remained this way for the next few years until, one day, everything changed. Sarah and Jolanda were growing older, both women gaining a few grey hairs on their heads, and their children were growing up. Paco had outgrown the clothes that he had come down in, and now had to wear the spare clothes that had been stored in the bunker. He preferred to wear Franco's old clothes, such as hats or his vest, though they were much too big for him and sometimes caused a strong reaction from Jolanda when she wasn't expecting to see him dressed like that. John could now pull his guns apart and reconstruct them while blindfolded, a skill Sarah insisted he would need in the dark world above.

"The Terminators can see you in the dark better than you can see them," she would remind him. "You will need to be able to arm yourself very quickly, possibly without the luxury of sight.

John and Juanita were becoming closer, as teenagers do, especially ones who were stuck together in close quarters for as long as they had been. They spent more and more time together, often sneaking off to whichever room they determined to be least used by the others. Privacy was hard to come by, but the fuel store and the generator room seemed to be seldom visited. Jolanda either pretended not to notice or was too lost in her own head to pick up on her daughter's new habits. Sarah was more of a realist and pulled John up on his private time with Juanita straight away.

"Use these," she said to him bluntly one morning in the radio room as she tossed a box of condoms in his lap. "You be good to that girl, and don't you force her to do anything that she doesn't want to do!"

John was speechless, but he nodded his understanding. As fearful as he could be of his mother, he was much more worried about Jolanda's reaction if she were forced to face the reality of the young pair. Living in the bunker had affected her worse than the others, and a pregnancy in the bunker would be impossible to ignore.

The day their lives changed came a few months later when Sarah, almost asleep in her bunk in the dark bedroom, heard the distinct yelling of Jolanda in a fierce rage. Sarah didn't need to tune in to the Spanish to understand what was happening—Jolanda had caught them. Sarah leaped out of her bunk and burst out into the comparatively bright corridor to see Jolanda storming into the radio room towards the coffee table in the corner. John had left his recently assembled assault rifle there.

Sarah quickly hid just behind the doorway as Jolanda's back was turned, spotting John and Juanita in the generator room. She gestured for them to get out of sight and when Jolanda came back through the doorway, Sarah grabbed her and wrestled her onto the cold, concrete floor, prying the gun out of her hands.

"Fuck you," Jolanda wailed. "Fuck you both!"

Sarah pulled the magazine from the gun and tossed it aside, throwing the rifle out of reach in the other direction. She continued to restrain Jolanda on the floor in what was quickly becoming an ugly scene. There would be no normalcy after this was over. Everything would be worse, now.

Jolanda continued to thrash and scream obscenities at Sarah and continued to threaten John. Her issues with the Connors ran deeper than Sarah had ever realised, and now that the mask was off, it could never be put back on. Paco had woken from the noise and was standing in the bedroom doorway, crying silently at the distressing scene before him. Sarah had no idea how long he had been there, but his presence seemed to snap Jolanda out of it once she saw him. Sarah allowed her to stand but remained ready for another attack.

Instead, Jolanda called out for her daughter in a tone that dared defiance, and Juanita slowly and tearfully crept past Sarah towards her mother. John could only stand beyond the doorway, a mixture of panic and guilt plastered on his face.

"Pack your clothes, Juanita," Jolanda said to her in Spanish, in a low, gravelly tone. "We're leaving this place."

"But… where are we even going?"

"I said, pack your things!"

Juanita disappeared into the bedroom while Sarah tried to reason with Jolanda. She implored her to see reason, to understand that there was nothing out there for them, nothing yet, anyway. Her pleas fell on deaf ears, and she was reminded of how she had argued with Enrique. If only he could be here now, she thought. He would be able to calm her down.

Jolanda ordered her children to leave the bunker with her and for each of them to take some food and water from the store rooms as they went past. Sarah followed, pleading the whole time.

"Jolanda, please! You'll only die out there. Where will you go? Just stop and think about it first. What about your children?"

"Don't you worry about my family! You've done enough! I'd rather we all died in the blasts than be stuck down here with you and your sneak of a son. The great John Connor, leader of the Resistance! Seriously, Sarah! The arrogance! The world's destroyed and you think it's all about you two!"

Sarah could only stew in her grief as the remainder of the Salceda family made their way up the ladder, winching their goods up with them as they went, until they were climbing out of the hatch into the cold, dead world above.

It was assumed for the next week that the three of them had climbed into one of the cars up top and simply drove out of there. That assumption was only half right. Jolanda had led her children towards an old pickup truck that was parked near the mobile-home-shack. They climbed in after placing the goods in the back tray and sat close together on the bench seat for a moment. Jolanda turned the key, but nothing happened. The truck had sat there for the last few years, collecting ash and soot just like the other scrap metal that was scattered around the property, and the battery had no charge. It would not be that easy to leave.

She sat there, staring out at the dark, greyscale world around them, ash and soot falling gently to the ground like snow, and a light seemed to go out from her eyes. Then, as if struck with an idea, she climbed back out of the pickup truck and walked into the front door of the shack. A moment later, she walked back out as if in a daze. Juanita watched her, a pang of fear lurching in her stomach at the sight of her strange walk, that blank look on her face. There was something threatening about it, though she didn't know what.

Jolanda climbed back into the driver's seat, closed the door, and looked at both of her children. This world was no longer fit for either of them.

In a flash, she pulled a handgun from her pocket, the one that she had just remembered was in her bedroom in the bedside table. She pulled the trigger twice. In a spray of red, both of her children fell limp, their fears and uncertainties gone in an instant. She then put the gun in her own mouth, pulled the trigger, and everything stopped.

It was a week later when Sarah discovered the bodies. She had left the bunker to visit Enrique's grave and to put a new marker on Franco's. She intended to add the other three names, as she considered them already dead out in the desert somewhere. The dark, dirty sky loomed above her as she walked towards the gravesite on the other side of the bus. A sound kept drawing her attention. A sound that seemed out of place, coming from the shack. The front screen door was banging in the breeze. Sarah went to investigate, a feeling of dread welling up inside her that chilled her with fear.

The front door of the shack was open and she walked slowly inside, not sure what she would find. It was empty, looking just as it had the last time she had been in there. Nothing had been taken, nobody had ransacked the place. She walked back outside and noticed the pickup truck. It also hadn't been moved, but there was something off about it. She was several yards away, but she could see that there was a terrible scene just behind those stained windows.

Sarah wept silently as she carried the three bodies out, Paco affecting her the most. She spent the next two hours digging a grave big enough for the three of them, then rolled them into it as delicately as she could and piled the dirt back on.

By the time she was done, five wooden markers now lined in a row bore the names of the entire Salceda family. Sarah had failed them. She looked out over the dead horizon and thought of the future that was rushing towards her and tried to find solace in the fact that the Salcedas would not have to face it.

It was just her and John, now.

John Connor grew up that day. Every day for weeks, he would leave the bunker and visit Juanita's grave. Every time he did, he experienced a mix of emotions. Grief at the loss of his girlfriend and rage at the woman who took her from him. Guilt that it had been at the hands of her own mother, who had been angry with him. For Paco, he felt only pity. The young boy was the image of Franco and was growing to be a young man just like him, only for it to be taken away by a sudden moment of violence. He now understood what his mother had tried to warn him about years ago when they first entered the bunker. The human mind can be fragile, and when pushed too far, could be dangerously unpredictable.

It took many talks with Sarah for him to understand that what happened to the Salceda family was not his fault. Jolanda hadn't been well for quite some time, and every day they could see the cracks showing. She had never really liked Sarah. For years, as Sarah ran with Enrique's gang and earned his trust, she had felt a small gnawing of jealousy. Enrique did not have many women working for him, and the fact that Sarah rose through the ranks and grew closer to him seemingly easier than any of the others suggested to her that there was more going on. There never was, but Jolanda always had that feeling. Her world, like everyone else's, was forever changed when the bombs fell. What was worse for her was that Sarah was right. For years, Sarah had been talking about this supposed 'Judgement Day' that was meant to happen, and Jolanda always took it as crazy talk from a woman who wanted her husband's attention. She always had that to fall back on. Then the bombs did fall.

The world ended, and not long after, she had lost her husband and eldest child to the outside world. Despite this, all she wanted to do was leave the bunker. All she wanted was to get away from Sarah and John, the Americans who it seemed had shown up one day and never left their lives. When she couldn't pretend anymore that her only daughter wasn't getting too close with John, something inside her snapped.

It wasn't John's fault that Juanita died. It was her mother's.