Chapter Eleven: Leaving Home
John didn't sleep much that night. The excitement had kept him awake and he instead got to work loading the truck with every remaining crate of supplies from the bunker—food, water, clothes, toilet paper, weapons and ammo, and fuel. There was more left than he realised and he had to haul over an old trailer to hook onto the back to fit the excess onto. It was mid-morning when he had everything carefully secured and tied down, and when he stopped he realised just how exhausted he was. Lifting crates up out of the bunker via the pulley system beside the ladder was hard work and by the end of it, his arms and legs were screaming at him to stop.
Hunger overcame him not long after and he went back down into the bunker to heat up his next meal—another can of beef soup that he had left on the kitchen table—and to finally rest. The radio had remained on but there had been no further communications from the mystery people up north whom John had overheard. He wondered who they were and what they had discovered about the structure and if they were indeed part of the Resistance. He had visions of armed soldiers storming the structure, guns blazing, knocking down the metal walls and destroying everything inside, but the reality was that the continued silence from the radio was beginning to fill him with dread.
The small generator hummed and rattled gently in its room, still powering the lights and appliances in the bunker after ten years. Only twice had it ever needed maintenance, and when John was ready, he turned it off one final time and drained the remaining fuel from it. Fuel, John knew, would be a precious commodity in the outer world and it would be a sin to spill or to waste any. He also knew that him driving a vehicle loaded with supplies and weapons would make him a target to both Skynet and to any surviving human factions, but either way, he had to leave the bunker. There was simply nothing left for him there. He climbed the ladder one last time and closed the hatch to keep it hidden, admiring the effectiveness of the iron sheet camouflage, and headed to the truck to pour the remaining fuel in. What fuel he had left would only be enough to get him perhaps to the border, and he would have to scavenge it wherever he could.
When he was done, the only things remaining in the bunker were Enrique's white hat still up on the wall in the radio room, Sarah's letters to Kyle which John thought too dangerous to bring with him lest Skynet learn everything therein, and Paco's chalk drawings which lined the walls of the corridor—a shrine to the family which had once lived there, where now was only silence. Standing at the mass grave of his loved ones one last time, waiting for the sky to darken, John felt the closing of a chapter in his life happening around him. Finally, it was time to go out into the world and join the fight against the machines. The voice on the radio may or may not have been the Resistance, but it was the best lead that he had, and if there were soldiers in Ensenada surveying the structure, they would be his best chance at joining them. No longer protected by his mother's defences, John now had to leave and try to be the man that he was fated to be. He looked up at the sky—it was getting dark. Time to move.
The final drive north was by now a familiar one, but this time had a tense quality to it. There would be no coming back. The usual landscape now appeared sinister as John realised that tonight, at the end of his drive, he would have to find somewhere to hide out during the daylight hours, when Skynet patrolled with much greater frequency. The old engine knocked and shook threateningly as John entered the farmland south of Ensenada, frustratingly close to the shelter of the clustered buildings. Finally the headlights dimmed and turned off as the engine went silent and the view before him faded away to black. John swallowed, his hands tightly gripping the steering wheel. He knew what had happened—the alternator had finally died and was no longer charging the battery. Stupid. He should have checked. The truck had done too many miles with too few checks. He was alone and completely exposed in the open, his entire worldly possessions bundled together behind him.
Quickly, he climbed out and lifted the hood. He checked the little glass window on the battery and saw that it was black, confirming his suspicions. He unclasped it and lifted it out and placed it on the driver's seat, then rifled through his belongings in the trailer for the battery charger that he was sure he had packed with him. Listening out for any drones in the black sky, he found the charger and yanked it out from its crate, spilling spanners and other tools onto the ground. Then, he hooked it up to the car battery and plugged the power cord into the battery pack that he had built out of Terminator batteries. It turned on. It had charge.
As the battery charged on the seat, John got to work removing the alternator. After struggling with the bolts and the fan belt, he removed it and inspected it, and saw that the regulator rods inside it were worn right down to nothing, no longer creating a charge as it spun. It was as he suspected, but he had no means of repairing it. The best he could hope for now was to charge the old battery as full as he could and run the truck directly off of that and hope that it had enough charge to get him into the city. It would be slow and he would have to minimise his use of the electronics, but it was the only choice that he had. He had to get his truck hidden before sunrise.
The glass window on the battery finally showed a hint of green and John knew that that was the best he was going to get. He re-inserted it into its slot and connected the clamps, then got back behind the steering wheel and turned the key. The starter motor turned with a healthy whir and the engine started, and John wasted no time in getting moving again.
He drove on in darkness, not daring to turn the headlights on again out of fear of draining the battery and was forced to drive slowly while watching the white lines on the road. As dark as it was, he felt like a sitting duck in the open in his overloaded truck and trailer, two hulking dark objects crawling along the highway, and feared he would stand out to any Skynet drones that he was more and more likely to encounter as he travelled nearer to the city. Eventually, the flat horizon before him, now more visible as the morning light crept across the sky, was disrupted by the blocky silhouettes of buildings as he entered the southern suburbs of Ensenada.
The sky was becoming light grey as John looked for a place to hide himself and his supplies. He didn't want to get too close to the structure that lay further north, but he figured that any Resistance members that were nearby would most likely be near it. Onwards he drove along the familiar streets that he and Sarah used to drive and he was nearing the turn to the right that would take him to the hiking paths up on the hills that overlooked the city. He did not want to go that far; he had been spotted there before. The engine shuddered indicating that the battery was losing charge and John was forced to pull up as close as he could to the nearest house that he could see.
Opening the double-garage, John was relieved to see that it was empty, and got to work unhooking the overloaded trailer and wheeling it—with great effort—inside. Once that was done, he had the more difficult task of pushing and steering the truck into the garage while keeping his eyes open for any movement on the streets around him. With his haul eventually inside, he closed the roller door gently and locked it. The familiarity of the whole scene was eerie and John searched the house quietly, room by room, remembering what had happened the last time he thought the house he was in was empty. When he was sure that he was safe, he sat himself down on a bed in one of the upstairs bedrooms and felt a wave of exhaustion wash over him. He had made it back. It was time to rest.
-xxx-
For the first time in many years the world felt normal. In those first few minutes of waking in a bed, in a house, in a street, in a city, the reality of the world just outside the window seemed to be a dream. John lied awake on the bed under the blankets and tried to hold onto this temporary serenity, but the absence of any ambient sound—bustling traffic, the TV in the living room downstairs—made the reality of the world creep further and further into his mind. There were no birds chirping. The cracks on the walls became more obvious and the smell of damp emptiness was becoming harder to ignore. He closed his eyes for a moment and tried to hold onto that dream feeling, then reluctantly lifted the blanket off himself.
The view outside the window was empty, grey, and bleak. John stared through the glass and tried to imagine being the person who lived in this house during Judgement Day and wondered if they had stared out of this window as the world outside was lit with an immense light as further north Los Angeles was destroyed. He tried to imagine the family that lived in this house and what they did over those next few weeks. What had happened to the people of these neighbourhoods who were not directly bombed but were left to wait for rescue by a government that they weren't even sure existed anymore? Had they waited in their houses, keeping away from the dirty air outside as the sky was blotted out by thick smoke that blanketed the sky? Had they gotten desperate as their food and water ran out and their utilities still hadn't been restored? Had they resorted to looting their neighbours houses for supplies, or had they themselves become victims to their neighbours as they came knocking through their front door, weapons in hand? This empty house that John now inhabited told no stories and gave no hints as to what actually happened.
Though John had slept through most of the day, the sky was still light and the streets outside would provide minimal cover for him if he were to venture out, so instead he decided to use his drone again to get a gauge for how dangerous the city now was. He placed it in the secluded back yard and went back inside the house before operating it with his computer. It wound up to a steady, loud hum and he quickly directed it up into the sky where he could see the crumbling roads criss-crossing out towards the main city. He picked a street and moved the drone towards it, swooping it lower in a downward arc for a closer view. Litter blew lazily across the ground, but nothing stirred within the dark windows of the rows of faded pastel houses. There was simply no sign of human life. Further north, towards the structure where a distant HK-Aerial roamed along with drones like glinting dots, the remains of the occasional T-200 were strewn about across the street, evidently shot down where they stood, but many of them were left in a position that made John anxious.
Of the inactive T-200's that he found, many were standing upright and in apparent perfect working order, still holding their weapons. The only thing wrong with them was that their batteries had died. What worried John about this disregard by Skynet of its own Terminators was the thought that this model wasn't in use anymore and was now obsolete. What worried John now was the unknown model that now replaced them. The drone's range was reaching its limit and John was forced to turn it around and return it to the backyard outside. He would have to get closer and try to find one of the new models that he could study.
John's best chance of finding any Resistance members was to search near the structure in the city, but it was too far for his drone to reach, so he was forced to venture out under the cover of darkness. He travelled light with only his shotgun and pistol, and his backpack filled with first aid equipment. The residential streets were almost pitch-black, but the dull glow from the structure to the north made it easy to know which way to go. Silently, John walked through the empty streets, wondering absently at the untold events of the residents that had once lived in each of the houses that he passed. The only sound was his footsteps on the concrete sidewalks, and even that seemed to him to be too loud. Taking note of the street signs so he knew which way to go to get back, he gripped his shotgun tightly as the glow of the unseen spotlights drew nearer in the sky.
He was close enough now to hear the sound of rumbling machinery coming from the structure, and he realised that he still didn't know what exactly it was for. Since Sarah had first witnessed the ground that it was built on being levelled by the HK-Aerial, neither of them had been able to determine why it was made. The question was deemed no longer important the night that Sarah was shot and since then, John hadn't ventured back. His recent trip up to collect Terminator batteries had been the closest that he had gotten, but he had had no intention of going near the thing then. Even now, he wasn't intending on approaching it. His mission was to find and join the Resistance.
The buildings around him changed and became more commercial as he got nearer to the city centre. Cafés, shops, bars, and restaurants now stared back at him from their dark interiors, many no longer hidden behind windows long since smashed by raiders looting anything they could. Any of these buildings could be used as a hideout for any groups of well-hidden survivors, but John had a feeling that Skynet would have had the same idea. He strode on past the buildings and continued on, unsure of what he was looking for but knowing that he had to look.
A breeze whistled through the buildings and John stopped to listen as something moved ahead of him around a street corner. A sound of heavy mechanical movement, of clanking footsteps, came from ahead and John knew that he only had moments to get out of sight. He dashed into the building to his right—an empty restaurant with its chairs and tables scattered about—and hid behind a long, upturned table. It was hard to see inside and his efforts resulted in scurried noises of his own, but as everything went silent, he heard the clanking units clearly and knew that they were the new model.
What John heard moving out on the dark street outside were not the T-200's that he had known. These were different, more sure-footed and heavy. Hidden within this abandoned restaurant, enclosed by darkness, John felt safe enough to try to catch a glimpse of the new metal men that were marching on by past him, and he peeked out past the edge of the table. Four tall figures were marching by in a square formation. The sound of their clanking movements echoed threateningly across the crumbling concrete and in the dull light of the nearby structure John could just make out their silhouettes, and a small red glow from each of their faces.
As they marched past, John could just make out something on their left shoulders. They looked almost like mounted turrets, and John rose higher to get a better look, more sure of his safety with their backs now to him. The things on their shoulders appeared to be swivelling around back and forth, and one of the Terminators stood still suddenly as its shoulder-mounted appendage appeared to stop and point directly at him. He ducked back behind the sideways table as the Terminator turned, catching a glimpse of its single glowing red eye as he hid from its view. The clanking, solid footsteps resumed, quickly moving in his direction.
He had been spotted.
John heard it cross from the street outside into the restaurant, walking solidly with a loud crash through the loose low brick wall below the large empty window frame and felt its weight creaking on the wooden floor. He heard tables and chairs being kicked aside as it drew nearer and John had only a few seconds to slide himself under the tablecloth of the upright table behind him. The sideways table that he had been hiding behind was grabbed and swung aside and John waited in tense terror as the thing on the other side of the cloth stopped moving. Under the edge of the tablecloth, he could see the faint glow of the red eye moving as it scanned the spot where he had been crouching only a moment ago. He waited, and the Terminator didn't leave. Nor did it continue searching for him. John knew that a more advanced model Terminator would have thought to search every inch of the building, starting with the table he was hiding under now, and the fact that its movements were unpredictable to him made it all the more terrifying.
It turned, finally, and the loud clanking of its movements filled the room so suddenly that John flinched, almost setting off the shotgun that he held tightly in his hands. It left the empty restaurant and John could hear its clanking movements fade off into the dark street outside. He didn't leave his spot for some time and as he sat there, hidden in the darkness, he mulled over the glimpse of the Terminator that he had seen. It was too dark to see anything properly. They were tall—around seven feet—and they had one large red eye on their faces, suggesting better vision than the T-200's that he had known, particularly night-vision. The appendages mounted on their left shoulders, however, had at first been a mystery to him until that one had swivelled and pointed at him directly. He thought they might have been a type of weapon, but now realised that it was a secondary eye to compensate for their slow turning movements. These Terminators could literally see all around themselves at once.
When he was sure that everything was quiet—save for the constant mechanical noises coming from the structure only a few blocks away—John stood to leave. The restaurant had already been a mess, most likely due to looting, but now it was apparent that something very large and heavy had come through here. It had strolled in with ease, kicking through any rubble that lay in its path. The tables and chairs had been parted, forming a path directly to him, and the brick wall under the window had been knocked in, the bricks scattered inwards across the wooden floor. Whatever this new model was, John needed to find one and study it. Tentatively, he crept out through the gaping opening of the restaurant and looked all around him at the dark buildings before leaving.
He had seen enough. It was time to head back.
-xxx-
John's appearance near the structure that night did not go unnoticed. Surveillance was increased as drones now swooped up and down the criss-crossing streets in central Ensenada, and the number of patrolling Terminators seemed to double. All of this John observed during the day with the use of his own drone from a hiding spot nearer to the structure. He sat in a third-floor hotel room, on a chair in the bathroom with his computer open in its suitcase on the bench beside the sink. From his grainy screen he could make out two HK's patrolling the skies in regular patterns near the structure, many drones up high searching the landscape carefully, and groups of the new Terminators marching up and down the streets.
In the glare of the cloudy daylight, John could see them clearly. They were larger than the 200 series and were much more surely built. They were blocky, better armoured, and walked more steadily with real weight behind each step that the previous model lacked. Their single red eye and the secondary eyepiece on their shoulder gave them a dangerous range of sight from all angles, and they would be very hard to sneak up on. Their main drawbacks that John could see were that the red eye stood out from quite a distance and their movements were too loud for them approach stealthily. He would still need to obtain a CPU chip and see what information he could glean from it to really know what he was up against, and how far along Skynet was with its mission.
John's search for the Resistance—or rather, the people whom he had overheard on the radio—came to an end when his drone revealed a scene only a block away from the structure on the northern side. Six dead bodies lay scattered across the road, spread out far from each other, all dressed and armoured the same. Two of them were in the open, completely exposed and in view of the metal wall of the structure, while the rest were further from it, back behind cars or within the doorways of the houses. All of them had been shot at from the direction of the structure. They were wearing large coats, each with a red band on the left arm, and to John they looked more like a rag-tag guerrilla faction than the well-equipped military that he was expecting. Each of them had been shot squarely in the chest.
Disheartened but not ready to give up, John continued to operate the drone around the area, searching the alleyways and side streets for any sign of survivors. From what he remembered them saying on the radio, they were able to see the structure from a distance and were going in for a closer look before evidently being shot at and taken out, one by one. The low-hovering drone floated further north up the shadowed streets, revealing nothing but the rubble-strewn road beneath it, until the scrambling image on the computer screen showed a large white van parked in an alley, tucked away out of view. It was cleaner than the other vehicles that filled the city—windows fully intact, tyres still full of air—and looked recently used. It didn't match the dirty, dust-covered scenery around it. There was only so much John could see with the drone and he knew that he would need to get to it himself to see if there was any information about the Resistance inside. At the least, he needed a new vehicle, and this would hold his supplies better.
With nothing else to inspect, he flew the drone back to the hotel room, carefully manoeuvring it over the balcony, and made his way back to the house. It was still dark when he returned.
