Chapter Twelve: The Survivors
John waited by the window. It was still light. His pack lay beside him filled with medical supplies, some food, and water. He had swapped out his shotgun for a machine gun; it would be better to fire at the Terminators from a distance with. In his mind he could see his target and how to get to it. The white Resistance van was waiting for him—for anyone—in an alley on the other side of the structure, and its retrieval was of the utmost importance. He would go around the structure, giving it a wide berth, and staying as hidden as possible. He would move slowly and hide in buildings for hours if he needed to. The real danger would come if he could get the van working. As soon as the engine was running, he would need to flee as quickly as he could and hope that no drones would follow him. Lost in his thoughts, John blinked and seemed to see the window for the first time. It was now dark outside.
Lifting the bag onto his back, he grabbed his machine gun and headed downstairs towards the front door. The houses around him were black against the dull, softly-glowing sky and John had to strain to see the details of the street that he walked down. The garage of the house next to his stood open and empty; John planned to hide the van inside it. Dead silence and a cold breeze surrounded him as he walked steadily northwards, aiming for the soft white glow of the structure, hidden low amongst the empty city buildings.
Dead leaves and litter skittered across the ground, making John flinch and strain his ears for any sounds of movement, though none ever came. Onwards he walked up those dead streets towards the glow until he could hear the factory hum of droning machinery. He turned west and began to walk towards the coast where the half-sunken cruise ship still lay on its side in the distance, giving the structure a wide berth by several blocks, staying in the shadows of the long-empty buildings. His progress was slow as he was in no hurry, and there would be no second chances if he were to stumble carelessly across a squad of patrolling Terminators. Every street corner he approached was met with caution and he would steal a glace around the dark edges of the buildings, looking around the corners and waiting for any sound of heavy, clanking footfalls.
Eventually, after what felt like half of the night, John was north of the structure in another residential area lined with dull pastel-coloured houses guarded behind black iron fences. In the absolute darkness John at first believed with a pang that he was back in the southerly neighbourhood where he had started from, but as he progressed nearer to the distant structure, machine gun in hand, he began to recognise the houses as those he had seen earlier with the drone. This was the road. At the other end, where the metal wall stood firm, the six dead bodies still lay. John kept low as he moved closer, ducking into yawning archways and behind rendered brick walls every chance he got to stay out of view. The red glowing eyes of drones were now visible as they drifted low above the streets, in and out of view as they moved from behind the dark rooftops. The factory sounds were loud. He had to be careful of anything masked by the noise.
A red eye above him disappeared from view and John took his chance. Stepping out onto the pavement, he hurried silently past more houses towards the alleyway that he was sure was up ahead on the left. He ducked under cover behind a car just as a drone drifted back into view and turned towards him, moving steadily up the street in his direction before turning off down an intersection. John watched the empty street for a moment before moving closer. There was no hurry. There would be no second chances. Something caught his attention, and John found himself staring fixedly at a dark rooftop ahead of him to his right.
He was being watched. He was sure of it. Not by Skynet, not by the Terminators, but by something living, of flesh and blood. A chill ran down his spine and a deep, primal fear gripped him as his mouth dried and his heartbeat quickened. The machines were more like security cameras. You didn't feel them as they surveyed the world, couldn't feel them staring at you with intent or with interest. The difference between a dead Terminator and an active one was simply if it was moving or not. What John felt now as he hid behind a dust-covered car, staring up at a single point on a nearby rooftop, was real observation by someone—or something—that was watching him. Despite his sudden cold sweat and his mind's primal scream of danger, there was nothing there to see. The rooftop was empty.
Though John never looked away, he became inexplicably sure that whatever he thought had been there was now gone. Visually, nothing was different and he had seen no movement, but he now felt that the empty space on that rooftop was indeed empty. John blinked, heard the loud hum of the metal structure only two blocks away from him once again, and remembered where he was. The van. He needed to get to the van up ahead, in the alley on the left.
He looked all around him to make sure the coast was clear. There was nothing on the road behind him, and nothing in front. He had to move now. With one last glance at the empty rooftop, John hurried out from behind the car and ran as quietly as he could down the pavement, completely exposed and in the glow of the light for several paces. As he neared the alley, a row of Terminators appeared marching along the metal wall at the end of the street. John reached the alley and leaped into the darkness just as the first Terminator in the row turned in his direction. The glowing red eye in the centre of its face seemed to bore into him in that split second, and John was sure that it had seen him.
The white van was halfway down the alley, its rear facing him, and John hurried towards it. The sound of clanking footsteps was close by behind him, but it was hard to discern if they were approaching him directly or if they were going about their usual patrol route. The pace never changed. There was no definite sign that they had seen him. He reached the van and hoped with all his heart that the dead soldiers out on the street had seen no reason to lock it. The van had barn style doors on the rear, opening outwards from the middle, and he grabbed at the handle. It opened.
He climbed in quickly, closing the door as quickly as he could, but not hard enough—the door was loose. Scrambling, he opened it again and pulled it shut with force, closing the door firmly and plunging himself in complete darkness. He held still, heart thumping, holding onto the handle and keeping his head out of view of the window. He stayed low, listening to the clanking footsteps move slowly down the street behind him as the Terminators marched on their route. One of them seemed different. One of them was getting closer.
Clank!
Clank!
Clank!
A single Terminator was indeed marching down the alley towards the van. It had seen John go down this way, but had it seen him climb into the van? John shook where he was, holding the van door shut with all of his might, knowing full well that if that thing decided to pull the door open, it would have no problem ripping it right off the hinges. He had hurried. There would be no second chance. The footsteps got nearer and seemed to slow down, but they didn't stop, and instead kept moving past the van, only mere feet away from where John was. Hiding in the dark interior, he suddenly realised that he couldn't see if the van had side windows or not and braced himself for the Terminator to spot him from the side. The footsteps continued on down the alley and he let out a sigh of relief.
In the long moments of silence that followed, John had time to consider his situation. He was less than two residential blocks away from the structure, right in the path of the Terminators' patrol routes. It was the dead of night, so Skynet's presence was somewhat minimal compared to what it would be during the daylight hours when there would be the added threat of the HK-Aerial. Regardless, the few Terminators that were patrolling nearby now would be too many for him to escape if he were to be found by them. He thought of the six dead bodies that lay only a block away towards the structure. They had been found. John considered getting out and climbing into the front cab of the van and driving out of there as quickly as he could but was glad that he waited as he then heard the heavy footsteps returning to him. They again passed him by slowly and returned to the street, their sound fading off into the distance.
At last John felt safe enough to open the door. He climbed out slowly, peering out into the blackness, the dimly lit houses across the road the only source of light, aware that a Terminator only needed to stand still in this darkness for John to stumble in front of it, unaware that it was even there. He pushed the door shut and heard it clunk into place then walked around to the driver's side door. It too was unlocked and John was struck with the image of the van's previous occupants parking and rushing out quickly to get to where they were going, to get a closer look before being ambushed by an unknown number of Terminators rounding the corner, their movements masked by the factory drone that still filled the air.
John climbed up into the seat and closed the door quickly, the sound of the door once again threatening to reveal his location, and felt around for the keys. His heart sunk as his fingers grasped thin air at the ignition and for a moment he imagined himself having to go back out onto the street to rifle through each of the bodies, one by one. His fears were quelled as, in a desperate act, he lowered the sun visor and heard the keys fall out into his lap. Easy money! He slid the key into its slot and prepared himself for what he was to do next.
The engine shook into life under his seat and he felt it smoothing out as it idled in the cold air. This was it; he had to move now. Hoping that the sound of the engine was muffled by the sound from the structure, John put the van into gear and began to roll it forwards. Not yet putting the headlights on, he kept his head low behind the steering wheel as he watched the dimly lit buildings beyond the end of the alley come closer. Slowly John drove the van, hoping that any drones watching from up above wouldn't notice its gradual roll towards the street. Tall, blocky silhouettes moved by at the end of the alley, moving to the right towards the structure, and John's breath hitched in his throat. The Terminators continued on. They hadn't seen him.
He reached the end and stopped, noticing in the mirror that the van had no working brake lights. The previous owners were well prepared for keeping hidden in the shadows. The next street lay before him, stretching out side to side, the left side fading off into darkness. That was where he needed to go. John ducked his head behind the dashboard and slowed his breathing. He just had to go forwards, turn left, and stomp on the gas if he saw anything. The drones. The Terminators were slow, but they would be relentless, especially if a drone was pointing them in the right direction. He would have to shake off any drones that might follow him. He swallowed. Just like last time.
Keeping his head low and out of sight, he let the van roll forwards until it was entirely bathed in the light from the structure, lighting the cab, then he lifted his head slightly to see. The view to his right was empty. Pure chance. He turned the steering wheel to the left and began to drive. All was clear in front of him. He had crawled the van halfway to the nearby intersection—about thirty feet—when he saw a red dot appear in the sky, moving from right to left. He stopped and ducked down again, not daring to look for too long lest it see his face and recognise him as human. He waited, not sure how he would know when to look up again. Then he heard it. Clanking, metal footsteps, relentless in their duties. He killed the engine and slid down from the seat onto the floor as they got nearer.
John's mind raced. Would they recognise that the scenery had changed and that there was now a vehicle on the road that hadn't been there before? Would they check the van? The first one had seen him and had come to investigate, but was not at all thorough. Hopefully these ones hadn't seen him and would just walk by on their programmed route. Closer. Behind him. More than one. More than a few. John aimed his machine gun at the passenger side window, ready to fire at any glowing red eyes that might peer in. Next to him now, that procession of metal men moved on the other side of the door. Staring at the faint square of light through the passenger window, John listened as the footsteps moved away from him, in the direction that he needed to go. He felt surrounded, in darkness, yet in plain view. He felt like he was trapped in a trench, in a foxhole, and if he lifted his head up it would be met instantly by bullets from all angles. But he couldn't stay there forever. If daylight came and he was still there, he would absolutely be found.
Heart thrumming in his chest, he slowly climbed back onto the driver's seat and peered out through the windows into the darkness. He started the engine and again put it into gear, allowing the van to roll forwards without him pressing any of the pedals. The van crawled, past the intersection now, and the slow crossing was excruciating as he was exposed on all sides by long, dark roads. Onwards he crawled into the darkness, becoming less able to see anything ahead of him. He considered flashing the headlights for a second, but still felt that he was too close to the structure and the machines that patrolled it. The factory hum was quieter now and John thought he could hear the clanking footsteps of the Terminators near him. He kept his head low and crawled on, ready to hit the gas at the first sound of gunfire.
None came.
The Terminators kept close to the structure at night, patrolling only the nearby blocks, as did the drones. John was now out of their reach and he hadn't drawn attention to himself, hadn't attacked them, wasn't being followed. He still didn't dare turn the lights on, not even the dashboard, until he had reached the end of this long empty road, the structure still visible behind him in the mirror. In the blackness of apocalyptic night, his headlights would be a beacon to Skynet.
The drive back was slow, once again giving the structure a wide berth of several blocks as he went around it, occasionally flashing the headlights to orient himself when he was certain that he was concealed by enough buildings. He reached his street and, unable to believe his luck, kept looking all around him, expecting to have been followed. He parked the van in the open garage of the house a few rows down from the one he currently occupied, though due to its size was unable to close the roller door. If Skynet didn't notice it, scavengers surely would. It was a chance he would have to take.
John returned to the house, jumpy and expecting to be suddenly surrounded by Terminators, and entered the front door. For a moment he felt as though he had just returned home late from a hard day's work and everyone was asleep upstairs. In a way, he had. John went up to his bedroom and tried to sleep, though found it impossible. He spent the night listening out for any mechanical sounds, any floating drones, but the night outside the house was silent.
-xxx-
The next morning John sought to better conceal the van. Paranoia had gripped him and he was sure that it was only a matter of time before Skynet got a fix on him and moved in on his location. He got to work loading the van with all of his supplies from the truck and trailer, carrying them from one house to the other for the sake of silence, and tied them down so that there was an aisle down the middle. He removed the divider between the cab and the back, allowing for quick access to his weapons if need be.
The van offered no information on the Resistance, much to John's annoyance. Unsure of what he was looking for, he had gone through every inch of the van looking for a name, a radio, any means of communication or any hints to their location. He suspected that they had kept the van devoid of information in case it ended up in the hands of Skynet—something that he would have done. John's plan now was to watch the structure for any Resistance activity, knowing that they were aware of it and apparently regarded it with interest. He would observe it from up on the hill that he and his mother used to view it from. Old habits die hard.
Later, as he watched the landscape from above, nestled under the dead bushes that dotted the hilltop, John found himself almost nodding off to sleep. His nerves had been stretched thin ever since acquiring the white van, and he found himself unable to sleep at night, or during the day, certain that he was going to slip up in some way. Every night he would sleep in a different house after booby-trapping the entrances with explosives, but none of it gave him any comfort. He would hide away within the walls, always expecting a sudden barrage of bullets to find him if he looked outside. He had to get away from the city. The old bodies scattered absently around the streets—many of them now skeletons—only reminded him of the mass grave he left behind at the base. The city stank of death.
Here on the hilltop, under the shelter of the dead bush with a light breeze filtering through between the branches, John almost felt at peace. If he closed his eyes, the reality of the world before him seemed almost to be a dream. He could have only been camping, or hunting out in the land, later sleeping tonight in a tent facing a small campfire. John opened his eyes and stared into the reality that faced him through his rifle scope.
The structure lay before him in full view, and he could partially see over the wall into the metal building beyond. From his surveying over the last few days, he knew that a landing pad lay just beyond the wall out of sight where HK-Aerials would come and land throughout the day before lifting off and heading north again. John had no idea whether they were delivering supplies or restocking munitions. If they were bringing something in, John dreaded to think what. Four large spotlights shone from it, their glow darkening the distant surrounding cityscape into absolute blackness. Terminators patrolled the perimeter and the surrounding city blocks while drones floated in the sky above them. They were not searching for people; they were defending the structure.
The night was still. The night was clear. It was the same as it had been on the last three nights that John had come out and watched from the hill. He didn't quite know what he was looking out for, but this felt like the right place to be. It reminded him of listening to the radio in the bunker. His best bet was that the Resistance was also watching the structure and were planning on making a move on it. He wanted to be there when that happened.
It happened quickly.
In an instant, an explosion ripped through the central building within the structure's walls and the power went out. The night was suddenly silent, the droning factory hum no longer ringing through the air. With the entire block now hidden in pitch-black darkness, the only thing John could make out were dozens of red dots moving around as the machines continued their march. So, he picked them off. One by one, just like last time, he fired at the drones floating in the air with his rifle, taking each one out with a bullet through the glowing eyepiece. After a while it was hard to discern between the drones and the Terminators, but John knew that this might be his only chance to really hit Skynet hard. He had no idea what had caused the explosion, but he saw his chance in the middle of the chaos and took it. This had to be it. This had to be the Resistance attacking.
With the area cleared of red, glowing eyes, John rushed back down the hill towards the van and jumped in. Headlights blazing, he tore off down the dirt road and headed through the dark streets towards the structure, a rush of fury and adrenaline surging through him. Skynet was damaged—attacked somehow—and he wanted to join in the fight and do as much damage as he could. He imagined himself joining the Resistance members that were attacking it right now, storming the walls and pulling the building apart piece by piece.
He was reckless. He was focused. All of his paranoid energy over the last few days had now translated into a sharp, steady rage, and as he saw the Terminators marching along at the end of the road he was on, he lowered his head and put his foot down, aiming his machine gun out the window. One of them turned to face him as he sped towards it, its clunky movements an insult to him. Is this your best, Skynet? Are these your best attempts at mocking humanity? When the red eye came into proper view, John fired at it, the machine gun rattling and shaking in his hand as it barked loudly into the night. The red eye went out with a spark and the Terminator fell. John drove over it where it lay and the van shook violently, the sound of grinding metal loud from underneath the chassis. More gunfire from up ahead, and as bullets whizzed past, some scraping the side of the van and one cracking the windshield, John saw two more red dots further ahead up the street.
He swung the van towards the right, out of the line of fire, down a side street and stopped. Reaching for his grenades and pulling the pins while still holding them, he opened the door and leaned out, waiting for the two Terminators to reach the corner. The two red dots appeared, looking like a googly-eyed monster in the dark, and John threw two grenades towards the Terminators as they took aim and fired at him. He pulled himself back into the cab and stayed low, hearing the bullets hit the back of the van, banging and pinging loudly against the metal. The two grenades exploded, half a second apart from each other, and in the side mirror John saw the Terminators blast apart into pieces in those brief flashes. Looking ahead of him again, he now saw a drone up in the air, watching him. Rage came over John and he climbed out of the van.
He raised his machine gun and lined the red eye up in his sights, thinking only of the night he and his mother were cornered in that house, drones just like this one watching them, directing the Terminators as they swarmed the street. He lined it up, followed its irregular, sideways movements, and held the trigger as he squeezed. The gun vibrated into his shoulder, the empty shells scattering onto the ground as they were spat out from the side, and the drone fell in a satisfying heap onto a nearby rooftop before sliding down the wall and finishing on the ground. John quickly climbed back into the van. More would be coming.
That was stupid, John thought as he continued driving down the side street just as a Terminator came into view in the beam of his headlights at the end of the road, crossing his path and stopping before turning to face him. They always moved like that, John thought. They never turned quickly when they approach from a corner, so he always had a view of them from the side for a few seconds. He slowed the van and fired at it with his machine gun, the bullets running up its body from the pelvis to its head, and it fell as John drove past it. He turned left and continued on towards the structure, its outer wall now a reflective silver band in the view of his headlights.
Once he reached it, he turned and drove along the wall, seeking out the one entrance to the inside where the Terminators came and went. It was a subtle door—an out-of-place rectangle along the western wall—that would lift only occasionally via some automatic means that John did not know enough about to hack or fool. Nevertheless it was his best option if he were to find any Resistance members or survivors. Three sets of red eyes came into view in the darkness ahead, quickly accompanied by flashes of machine gun fire just below them, and the bullets sprayed the front of the van, then the side as John swerved. The crates in the back shook loudly but were held firmly in place by the ropes and straps that he had used. The van came to a stop on the pavement, facing the buildings head on as the engine stalled, and John was forced to duck out of view as the three Terminators approached steadily, firing relentlessly.
He was stuck where he was. Out of their view, the Terminators had stopped firing but were getting closer to the van. Their loud, clanking footfalls drew nearer as John crawled into the back towards the weapons crate and opened it. He had seconds to raise his pump-action shotgun up towards the back doors as the first one approached, the red eye glinting from behind the cracked glass. A loud thud banged from the other side as it grabbed the handle hard, pulling the door open quickly and violently. The Terminator came into view and John fired, aiming at the red eye in the centre of its face, blowing its head apart at such a close range and knocking it backwards. Momentarily deafened by the sound of the blast which echoed in the confined space, John looked around him in a panic, unsure of where the other two were going to come from.
Gunfire rang out from nearby the van and for a moment John thought that he was a goner, but he quickly realised that the two remaining Terminators were not firing towards him and were actively moving away from him back towards the structure. There are others! There are others, and they were drawing the fire! The Terminators were still close and as they moved away from the van, leaving him, John took his chance and fired at them through the open doors, one after the other. They fell forwards onto the ground, splaying out onto their fronts, the backs of their heads resembling blown-out craters. John pulled the door shut and climbed back towards the driver's seat, shuffling through the tight aisle that ran through the collection of crates.
After starting the stalled van, John reversed it and quickly turned it around to face the direction that the Terminators had been firing at. What John saw changed everything and gave him hope for the first time in many years. Six people—four men, two women—were illuminated in the beam of his headlights as they ran towards him. One of the women was leading the group with a look of certainty on her dirty face, her long dark hair a tangled mess behind her, her worn-out jacket swaying. John drove towards them and stopped, waving them in. The woman climbed into the passenger seat next to him as the others went around to climb into the back and as she looked at John, he saw her do a double-take.
"You're not… who are you?" she asked with a Mexican accent, as though she were expecting him to be someone else.
"John Connor. You?"
"Rosa Chavez. Get us out of here! Get us to San Diego, but don't go along the coast—they patrol along there. We gotta go inland, east towards Tecate, then we can go on from there."
"To San Diego?" John asked, driving quickly away from the structure, away from the clustered buildings of Ensenada towards the dark, empty countryside. "Why there?"
"I know some people there that can help us."
