Chapter Nine: One Last Goodbye

Sarah's health declined rapidly over the next few weeks. The trip to Ensenada had been a strain on her, both physically and mentally, and they had not gone up there since. The two of them on their own simply weren't prepared for it. John had cleaned and stitched the bullet wound in Sarah's shoulder, though her arm still remained useless in a sling as the tendons had been too damaged and it was painful to move. She was thin and she was finding it harder to move each day, spending more time bedridden in her bunk and less able to climb the ladder to the surface on her own.

John was not prepared for her rapid decline. He always thought that she would be there with him for years to come, always there to guide him through whatever obstacle might come their way. He always though that she would be the true saviour of mankind. He tended to her every need, firmly believing that she would get better and they would be able to continue to hunt and scavenge, and eventually find other survivors to form a militia to take on the machines. He had pictured them and their band of yet-unknown survivors storming the structure to the north, destroying the Terminators and stealing their weapons and technology. It would have been a huge win for the Resistance and mankind. But in the back of his mind, looking at her frail, thin face half-hidden behind her long, greying hair, he knew that she would not get better. It was Enrique all over again.

Time went by and the war outside progressed without them. They did not leave the bunker and had no time to spare any thoughts for the structure that loomed far away to the north. Still the grainy static of the radio played its endless, empty tune, and despite what they had learned from the salvaged Terminators, they felt as though they had made no progress at all.

None of it mattered.

John spent most of his time in the radio room listening to the endless void from the speaker, hearing the occasional wet, hocking cough from his mother in the other room. She would call to him and he would check in on her, comforting her however he could. He would feed her, give her water, and help her on the slow walk to the latrines and back. He felt an empty rage building in him. He was angry with her for getting sick. He was frustrated that she wasn't getting better. It wasn't supposed to be like this. The worst part about it was that he couldn't even blame the machines. It was leukemia that was poisoning her blood and her bones. It was simple, common cancer that was taking her from him. She had been so careful with avoiding radiation and the contaminants of the burned world around them, but in the end it had been her own body that had turned against her.

There was nobody to blame, nobody to hurt, nobody to take his rage out on except for an army of soulless Terminators that were simply following Skynet. Even if he did one day destroy Skynet, it would never fear him, he would never be able to cause it any pain, and he would never be able to impress upon it the gut-wrenching devastation that it had caused. Of all the deaths that had happened across the world at its command, Sarah's wouldn't be one of them.

Time went on, and Sarah got sicker. No voices ever came from the radio to offer help or to ask for it. The surface world was more and more being monitored by Skynet. They were completely alone in this dead, burned up world. Sarah was still alive, but John had already felt her presence leave him. To him, she was a living shell, an old skin that hadn't completely let go it the life that had once inhabited it. It was painful to see, and he hated her for it.

They spoke of the past. They spoke of the future. They spoke once again of John's father, and how for years Sarah had debated with herself on whether or not to tell John about him. If John knew who Kyle Reese really was, would that affect his decision to one day send him to the past to protect Sarah? Would John's special knowledge of him then put Kyle's life in danger? But if John didn't know who he was, he would never know if the person he ends up sending back to 1984 was the right one. He could still end up not being born, or being born as someone else entirely, and it was impossible to know just how fragile the fabrics of reality, time, and fate were. Sarah eventually decided that it had always been her fate and it was now up to her to make sure that that fate would play out in the past and in the future.

She told him about Kyle. She told him that in the future, just after the Resistance had finally won the war in 2029, Skynet sent an Infiltrator—a Cyberdyne Systems model T-101 skin grown over the frame of a T-800 Terminator—back to 1984 to kill her so that John would never be born. She told him that John then sent Kyle, a twenty-two year old Resistance soldier who was fiercely loyal to him and to the Resistance, to the same time to serve as her protector. Kyle wouldn't be born for another two years, and it was Sarah's greatest regret that she wouldn't live long enough to see him again, even to glimpse him from a distance.

One morning Sarah woke in her bunk and decided that today was the day. She had spent weeks in private grief and self-pity and was now coming to accept her end. The last twenty years of her life spent preparing for a battle that she would no longer be able to fight now felt like a waste. All those years of living off the grid, hiding out in South America, making sure that she and her baby son would never end up on any system that would later be accessed by Skynet to find them, had now felt like nothing more than a waste. But now, she realised, it had all mattered. Skynet had never found them. There was only ever the one Terminator that had been sent back to 1984. There were no others sent for John and there had been no way to track him down. She had hidden him, and he was better off for it. None of her efforts had been a waste.

Sarah looked at John for a moment, taking in his appearance. He was no longer the twelve-year-old boy that had rushed down into the bunker with her when the bombs went off eight years ago. He was now a twenty-year-old young man with stubble on his face and dirt on his clothes from the unhappy task of digging a hole big enough for her on the surface next to Enrique's. He had towered over her for some time now but when Sarah looked him in the eyes, she could still see the young boy that she had trained and watched grow.

At her request, John helped Sarah up out of the bunker. It was an awkward and painful task involving the pulley system and a sling and her stepping up the ladder one foot at a time. Sarah was glad that she would only be doing this trip once.

The pair sat out the front of the old shack on two folding chairs, Sarah with a blanket on her lap watching John as he filled two small glasses with Tequila. He handed one to her as he sat down beside her and they both looked out over the dry landscape around them, the scrap heaps now rusted and slowly buried in the shifting sand. The dead trees and shrubs scattered across the desert bent stiffly in the breeze, almost silhouetted against the glare of the bright, overcast sky. More than anything else in the world, Sarah wanted only one last cigarette like the ones she used to have. Her supply had been used up some time ago when the skies were still dark and the graves of the Salceda family members had still been fresh.

The pain in her bones was immense and the climb up had her on the verge of exhausted tears. The Tequila would only really help her with the pain when she passed out. John sipped his drink as Sarah took large gulps from hers, and the liquor burned on the way down as it scolded her weak stomach. She didn't care and held up her empty glass for John to refill it. She just wanted to stop hurting.

There was nothing much to do that afternoon other than listen to Enrique's cassettes on the old stereo and sip their drinks. The tapes were stretched and the songs were beginning to warp and distort, but neither of them minded. It was a reminder that all things will wear out and break eventually. Even Skynet would one day in the distant future be regarded as a horrible memory as the remainder of the world's citizens cleaned up the piles of metal scraps that it will leave scattered across the earth. There was a saying that applied well to their circumstance: This too, shall pass.

The shadows lengthened and Sarah's breathing had become quieter as she fell into a drunken sleep. John knew that from this moment on, he was alone. All the people he had known in his life who had raised him, taught him, loved him, and were there for him were gone. Most of them were in that mass grave across the yard with the freshly dug plot gaping darkly up into the sky. The Tequila made him drowsy and he realised just how tired he had been. Feeling the beginnings of a headache that he knew would become a bad hangover, John let himself nod off into sleep.

The sun was low when he woke, and with a lump in his throat, he looked over to his silent mother. Sarah was dead in the chair next to him, blood and liquor running down her chin and staining her clothes. It looked as though at some point she had woken up in a coughing fit and tried to choke it down with another drink, which John had slept through. He sat there and took in the tremendous difference that death had made to her face. Physically, she was the same, but now her blank, sunken features made her look like a poor copy of herself. He would remember it forever.

His eyes blurring with tears, John stood and drunkenly lifted the body of his dead mother. She was light and limp, and it was hard to keep her body in a dignified position as he carried her towards the open grave. Her head and limbs kept falling into what John felt were embarrassing positions and when he reached the open pit, carefully and as steadily as he could, he lowered her into it. He stood and stared down at her for a moment before grabbing the shovel. There was only one last job to do.

It was sunset when John had finished filling in the grave. The sky was a hazy red with no discernible clouds or features, and he stared at it as if seeing it for the first time. His head was pounding, and he felt sick to his stomach, but he had only now realised how much the sky had cleared over the years since Judgement Day. The dust was settling, and the sky was getting brighter. The residual effects of Skynet's first crime against humanity were at last fading, and though the days would be brighter, there was no telling what violence the supercomputer would have in store for the survivors.

Sarah Connor was dead, and everything was worse now. All that remained was the bunker that she had built, the food that she had stored, and the weapons she had hoarded. The structure to the north seemed insignificant now, and what it was for no longer mattered to John. The days may be brighter, but he had his own stretch of darkness to wade through.

John forced a wooden marker bearing Sarah's name into the ground at the top of the soft soil and stood, his chest aching with sorrow and guilt at his lack of preparedness for her passing. He had no speech prepared, and though there was nobody left to bear witness, he felt an awkward guilt at the image of him standing there with nothing to say at this junkyard burial. He felt that Sarah deserved better, but this was the best that he could do.

John walked back to the bunker, alone in the darkness, with no plan for the future. Sarah Connor died on December 4th, 2005.

-xxx-

John mourned alone in the bunker with no-one to help him process his grief. The rooms stood empty and bare and John was alone with his thoughts, the occasional drone of the small generator running on its ever-decreasing store of old fuel, and the long hissing whisper of the radio. The chalk drawings that lined the concrete corridor were a grim reminder of the family that had once inhabited this place, and the dark fate that had awaited them. John often studied the drawings and took note of the highest points which indicated how small Paco really had been when he drew them. Some of them were only drawn on the day before he and the rest of his family died.

Sarah's bunk in the bedroom had still contained her belongings around and under it, and for weeks John was able to pretend that she was out on a scavenging run up north to find out more on Skynet's progress. Every morning he woke in his bunk and he would stare at the pile, willing himself to tidy it and tell himself that today was the day to pack everything up and move on. Every morning was the same.

Some days, he would try to maintain his discipline and would attempt to find the will to exercise and to continue his weapons training and maintenance. He ate little, not often feeling hunger and no longer finding it important to track the time and continue with his routines. Time meant nothing. Often, he would listen to the radio, the one instruction from Sarah that he felt able to do regularly. Many times, while he was listening, he would grow fearful that the unnatural clicking sound would return, seeking him out. He had felt such a chill the first time that he had heard it and he was sure that whatever it was knew his exact location, though he knew that that was impossible. It was the prolonged isolation in this grey bunker that was getting to him. He was sure of it.

John never left the bunker and didn't bother to go up into the shack and work on the disassembled Terminator or drone in the workshop. Months had passed since he had climbed back into the bunker and his will to live was waning. There he sat in his empty bunker of ghosts and memories—the great John Connor, saviour of mankind and leader of a Resistance who didn't even know that he existed. He had always felt that it was bullshit, that Sarah was really the great one who would bring down Skynet in the end. She had the fearless determination to do it, and he was barely an adult who stumbled as soon as a T-200 stepped his way. All of these thoughts faded away the day that John decided to clean up Sarah's bunk.

He had awoken one morning and rolled over to stare at the vacant bunk that still bore the untucked blanket and flattened pillow, the various possessions scattered underneath and around it. Something was different this morning. Today was the day. He got up out of his bunk and shuffled across to his mother's, crouching down next to it. It smelled like her. Before he could lose his nerve, he pulled the blanket off the small, simple bed and removed the pillow, intending to wash them and place them back into storage. He looked back down at the bed and stopped. Where her pillow had been was a large envelope, fat with sheets of paper. John crouched down and picked it up, examining it before opening it. It was addressed to Kyle Reese.

John sat on the bed and pulled out the envelope's contents. A stack of letters, an inch thick, came out with Kyle's name written at the top of each one, the oldest letter dated as far back as 1985, the most recent one being November 2005. Hours passed as John read each letter, often feeling like he was violating his mother's privacy by reading what was essentially her diary, but he felt that though these letters were addressed to his father, they had actually been meant for him. The letters spoke of John's progress, beginning with his first steps as a baby all the way through to how well he was progressing with his combat training. In all of the letters, Sarah spoke of how proud she was of her son, of how far he had come, and how much he had grown. She couldn't wait for John to meet him and was sure that Kyle would be as proud of him as she was.

The letters contained years' worth of pride and affection, things that Sarah had not shown him much of over the years. Since that first encounter with the Terminator in 1984 and the knowledge of the impending, inevitable war, Sarah was determined to be more of a drill sergeant than a mother to make sure that John would grow up tough and ready for the threat that she knew was coming. She had always been careful with herself to not be too gentle or kind to him for fear that he would turn out soft, but in these letters was the evidence of a private battle of a mother who had so many things that she had actually wanted to say to him. In the last letter to Kyle, Sarah had simply written:

See you soon.

For the first time since burying his mother, John wept. The empty bunker welled with the sound of his grief, its echoes emphasising how alone he was. Eventually, his grief was replaced with renewed anger. Anger towards Skynet. This entire miserable existence, this bunker, the nukes, the dead Salceda family, the hiding underground like rats while the metal beasts roamed overhead, all of it. John's very existence he owed to Skynet's actions. It had sealed its own fate as well as his. He would destroy it, and he would revel in the twisted remains of its metal army.

He would become the John Connor that his mother wanted him to be, the one that his father had known and respected and followed. He would lead the Resistance to victory.

Author's Note

This is the end of part one. To the Terminator fans who are following this story, I hope it's been a satisfactory depiction of the often vague events following Judgement Day. To the Predator fans who are wondering when this will actually become a crossover—it's coming. I've based it largely on the original Predator movie where the characters gradually realise that there is something else, something different to their normal enemy, lurking nearby, unseen and watching. By part three, it will be front and centre as the main threat.

My original idea for this was for it to be a short, action-packed horror story featuring a twenty-something year old John Connor leading a faction of Resistance members on a search and rescue mission, only to discover a warehouse full of dead bodies, skinned and hanging upside down, killed in ways inconsistent with the Terminators, resulting in a tense battle as one by one, the soldiers are picked off by the Predator until only John remained. As I fleshed it out, I got the idea for adding the events around Judgement Day and adding Sarah as a main character, then the Salceda family came along for the ride. At this point, the whole of part one is bonus content.

Thank you for reading and following. I hope this story is, and will be, up to scratch with the original franchises.