Chapter Seventeen: Daylight
The seven of them stood and surveyed their surroundings. The room was a scatter of tipped barrels, broken pallets, and splayed out Terminators and dead bodies. The others climbed out of the hole —the elderly first, then the women and the malformed children—and could only stand and stare around them. The children began to weep quietly out of fear of making too much noise. They couldn't be certain that Skynet was completely gone.
Still, as they watched and listened, they found the world around them to be silent. No rumbling from above. No marching from within. Dead silence.
"How do we get out of here?" someone whispered. John turned and saw Rosa addressing one of the locals. "How do we leave?" in Spanish. Nobody acknowledged her, they only stood and stared at their dead. To John and the rest, they were casualties of a battle, but to those that remained with them, they were friends and family. They were everything. Time had already moved too much and urgency was creeping over them. They had to find a way out, now, and if they were indeed trapped, sealed in, then their oxygen would be limited, slowly seeping away with each single breath.
"How do we—"
"Rosa," John said. "Let's just go."
They armed themselves with the guns from the fallen, guiltily in view of the other survivors, and even found a few working flashlights, though the lights were dim. They knew that the path that they had come from was destroyed, so all that was left to do was to move forwards. They headed towards the next carved-out tunnel and squeezed through, one by one, into the darkness.
They shuffled through the narrow passages quietly, their jackets brushing along the earthy walls. Each room they entered was the same: a basement of some unknown building, the entrance sealed off with rubble from above, blood-drenched bodies littered across the ground. Their lights dancing across each black room, they stepped over destroyed Terminators, careful not to scrape them or to roll them over. The silence almost felt deliberate, as though the dead Terminators around them were actually still active and were waiting for the right moment to strike. As they walked down passage after passage, room after room, John began to plan what they had to do next. They still needed the fuel which was hopefully still waiting for them in the underground carpark. They still needed to get to San Diego. First, they just needed to get out of this underground labyrinth.
All was silent as they crept. They wandered through the maze, their path ahead sometimes caved in and blocked. At times they would stop and tilt their heads slightly, ear strained, listening to the bleak silence for a sound they thought they had heard. Always, there was the incessant dread that they were being lured into a trap as they pressed on and repeatedly came upon nothing.
A room up ahead was lit, brighter than the others, and as they drew nearer towards it down the narrow path, they saw that it was lit by sunlight. The building above was one that had been destroyed by the HK-Aerial to blast out an entrance for the Terminators. As they stepped out into the concrete basement, strewn with rubble, they looked up and saw that they stood at the bottom of a crater. The white sky above seemed to glare unnaturally bright as their eyes adjusted to the outside world. How long had they been underground?
The air was fresher and the world more open, but the looming sense of danger never receded as they climbed up the loose, sloping sides of the gravelly crater, constantly aware of the possibility of there being machines just on the other side of the edge. At the top of the crater, they stood and surveyed their surroundings. Nothing was recognisable, though in the daylight the city would have looked quite different to them anyway. Plumes of grey smoke filtered up into the sky from various blast sites and the buildings that did remain intact seemed to stare back at them. John remembered how the local men had hidden in such buildings, watching them in the night. He shivered, wondering if Skynet had learned to employ the same trick.
John climbed to the top of a nearby pile of rubble and looked out over the ruins for any familiar landscape and quickly spotted the shopping centre, still intact, which they had entered the night before. Aware of how exposed he was and still uncertain whether they were being watched or not, he quickly slipped back down to the ground and joined the others.
"That way," he breathed, pointing in the direction of the shopping centre. "Hopefully we can still get our fuel."
In silence they made their way through the ruined city blocks, climbing over the rubble where it lay and always on the lookout for any movement. Their footsteps crunched and scaped along the ground and John couldn't shake the quiet, gnawing feeling that they were not alone. The daylight shone upon the flat, ruined city all around them, but nowhere were there any signs of life. Yet the feeling remained.
After stopping to check their bearings a few more times—John climbing up the highest, sturdiest buildings to check—the group found their way back at the large shopping centre. The entrance to the underground carpark yawned at them from across the street, pitch-black against the sunlit building. They looked around them before proceeding, as though checking for traffic, and then quietly made their way across the road and into the entrance.
The path sloped downwards and their flashlights were weak against the darkness, revealing only the pale concrete support beams as they ran vertically from floor to ceiling. They reached the bottom level and made their way across the low-ceilinged parking lot to the row of vans sitting at the other end, waiting for them, untouched. They reached the van and John opened the back doors. There they were—the six jerry cans filled with fuel. They each took one except for Rosa, who instead shouldered most of the weapons that they were carrying, the weapons fanned out over her back like a high collar behind her neck. They then made their way back up to surface and once more squinted against the glaring daylight. John was worried—this all seemed too easy.
They crept through the ruins, the fuel sloshing in the cans with each step, and tried to remember the way back to the van, which was hopefully still intact, spared from Skynet's sudden ambush. The cold stillness of the bright, sunlit city was broken only twice when somewhere to the side of them, they heard the faint sound of rocks tumbling onto the ground from a height. Both times they all stood still and watched, staring intently into the dark spaces within the ruins around them, the layers of leaning concrete walls and mounds of crumbled bricks potentially hiding any number of pursuers. Both times, no encounter came and the group cautiously and silently continued on their way.
There it was. The white van, though itself old and worn, still gleamed in the sunlight amongst the crumpled, wrecked vehicles surrounding it in a dusty standstill of blocked traffic. In the daylight it appeared too obvious, too new, and John could only hope that no-one else was around to see it, to consider it, and that the feeling of being watched was only an unspoken, imagined thing shared by all of them.
The cans sloshed. Their footsteps crunched. The van grew larger as they walked towards it and a feeling of dread welled within John as he watched it—the back doors weren't closed properly. He was certain that he had closed and locked it when they had all left the night before. Quickening his pace, he broke away from the group as he hurried towards it and knew that they all felt the same dread as one by one, they saw what he saw. He slowed as he neared it, putting down the fuel can and raising his assault rifle, sweeping the crosshair across the surrounding area for any sign of an ambush. Only the still air of a silent, bright day. Footsteps behind him as the others caught up. Nobody needed to say anything; they all knew what had happened. They didn't even need to look inside to know.
They had been raided. The van was empty. The food, medical supplies, toolboxes, the remaining munitions—gone. The back doors had been forced open with a crowbar and everything had been taken, even John's battery-generator. All that had been spared were John's homemade computer, opened and tossed aside onto the ground, and his drone, possibly due to their amateur, thrown-together appearance making them look useless. The only questions were who had done it, and when.
"God damn it," said Ray, echoing the group's sentiments perfectly.
They all stood staring at it, into it, the back compartment now appearing hollowed out. Their simmering anger at being robbed was threatening to boil over in a torrent of screams, but it would not be wise to draw attention to themselves.
"Come on," said Rosa, her face thunderous, her eyes dark. "Let's fuel up. We don't have that far left to go."
They piled the cans together next to the van and John got to work refilling it. The others stood guard around the van, encircling it, each of them watching their surroundings. They were well aware of just how vulnerable they were as they stood at the end of that roadblocked street, exposed to all of the dark crevices and still-intact rooms of the buildings around them.
"That's the last one," said John as he emptied the last fuel can into the van. "Time to go."
Without a word, they all turned and climbed into the van. It was much more spacious now that all of their supplies had been taken.
Martin hadn't joined them yet and John looked around to see where he was. He found him standing alone, perfectly still with his back to him, staring up at a second-floor window of nearby, partially-destroyed building. His left hand was raised towards his face and as John walked towards him, he saw that he was holding onto a small necklace that was around his neck. He was scared.
"Hey," said John, almost whispering. "What's up?"
Martin didn't answer. He only stared intently up at the empty window. It was a two-storey building, the roof and the right half of the top floor blown apart, the daylight pouring in behind the remaining window. The fear from Martin was infectious and John felt his own heartbeat begin to quicken, his throat drying. He could now see the small necklace properly as Martin twisted and turned it in his fingers. It looked like an old piece of tin, the size and shape of a thin coin, painted with a red dot in the middle. He looked up at the window again, leaning closer to Martin to try to see exactly what he was seeing.
"What is it?" he whispered.
"There's something up there."
John stared up at the window. Beyond its cracked frame, inside the room within, he could see only the peeled wallpaper on the back wall, partially lit by the daylight.
"I don't see anything."
Martin didn't reply immediately, and didn't look away from the window. "We're not supposed to."
He was gripping the necklace tight in his hand, his knuckles white. John looked back up at the window and watched, seeing only an empty room. A familiar fear began to well in him and he was reminded of that night in Ensenada when he had stopped dead in his tracks, certain that he was being watched from a rooftop. There had been nothing up there then, either.
"Connor!" Rosa called, startling him. "Let's go! You've got the keys."
He turned to her and waved. "Yep. Coming." He looked back up at the window. Empty. Truly empty. Martin, still tense, finally looked away and turned, and they headed for the van.
-xxx-
They made their way out of the city, through the roadblocked maze of fallen buildings, overturned trucks, and gaping craters, and drove through the checkpoint into what used to be the United States. The border wall stretched out endlessly on either side of them, separating two nations that barely existed anymore. The cracked, crumbling highway rumbled beneath them as they drove northwest, the sun beginning to fall lower to the horizon. Nobody spoke for a while, their minds still reeling with thoughts of the previous night's sudden ambush. For years the locals had lived there, undetected. For years they had carved out paths to connect various buildings to each other, using service tunnels and widening sewer lines. For years they had lived as a thriving community, living well enough to reproduce. For years, until last night. John tried not to think about the few that had remained, the too old and the too young. The vulnerable.
Rosa sat next to him in the passenger seat, still brooding at having been robbed. "The machines don't rob each other," she had said. "It was only people who were so lowly and vile." John had reassured her not to worry about the lost weapons; he knew where to get more. Sarah had put together many caches over the years, especially near the border, one of which buried on the way not too far from San Diego. "Convenient," she had said with a smirk. He just hoped it had remained secret this whole time.
In the back everyone was more spread out, more relaxed in the empty space, and had subsequently spread out into a circle facing each other. The back doors rattled against each bump, held together with tied rope.
"What's that necklace, Martin?" Linda had asked. He was still rolling it between his fingers, staring at nothing. He took a deep breath. It would not be a short answer, but they had time.
"When Judgement Day happened, our teacher had said that we were saved by God. This idea never really went away and over the years, it began to change. It turned into us not being saved by God, but us being spared by God. This was His Judgement Day and we were the chosen few. Of course, our teacher began to call herself our saviour, our God-appointed leader, and soon we had become her own little flock.
"The first drones came and spotted two of my classmates out in a field a fair way off, doing what teenagers do. They ran and hid, but they were killed by the HK that quickly followed. Our leader said that the drone was an angel sent to judge us, and that they had failed their judgement and so were taken away, sent to hell. Everyone feared the drones after that and after a while we believed that they really were angels sent to judge us. It was the only explanation we were ever given. Nobody dared to be judged by them because deep down, we knew that we weren't good enough. So, we hid from them.
"Then came the crucifixes out in the field. The teachers, all self-appointed high priests by this point, made it a punishment to be found and judged by the angels, and when any of us defied them—any small reason, really… we were teenagers—they would carry us out to the field and tie us to the crucifixes, leaving us there for one day and one night for the angels—the drones—to find. A lot of the time they never came. But the nights they did come… all we could hear then were their screams from up in the field as we stayed in the barn, hiding. Nobody ever passed the test.
"Well, one day it was my turn. I'd been questioning them too much, asking them why they didn't go out and allow themselves to be judged if they were so much better than us. I said to her that if she really was chosen by God to lead us, why not prove that she was worthy by letting an angel judge her. Next thing I knew, they tied me up and carried me out into the field. Many of my classmates helped, mostly out of fear, and next thing I was tied up to a crucifix like Jesus Christ himself.
"The wood was pretty old by that point and I managed to break one of the arms off and untie myself after they left. But it didn't matter. A drone came that night and it saw me, and I guess it judged me worthy to live. The HK came and landed, and Terminators came out. They didn't fire at me. Instead they dragged me into the back of the HK and took me to that work camp. Kept myself useful, so they kept me alive. When that drone showed up in that little town the other day, I just completely froze. In that moment, it was absolutely an angel judging me, damning me to hell for all eternity."
"God damned cult," said Ray from the corner.
"So what's the necklace?" pressed Linda.
"Oh yeah, that. It's the same as the Christian cross, I guess. The leaders made us wear them when the drones started showing up as a show of our faith. I can't quite bring myself to get rid of it."
He held the scrap metal pendant in his fingers for a moment, the red dot looking back at him like a drone's eye, then tucked it back under his shirt when he noticed everyone else staring at it.
John had been listening to the story as he drove, but he had only been half paying attention. Something in the door mirror, in the distance behind them, kept catching his eye, filling him with fear and apprehension for when he would have to stop the van next, something that had been there since they drove past a pulled-over pickup truck on their right maybe ten minutes earlier. They were getting closer to the cache and he was beginning to question whether he should actually stop there or not. His eyes flicked to the mirror again and the shape was still there, getting closer, the sunlight glinting off it as they drove past the trees. The conversation in the back had changed, the mood more relaxed as the group began to open up more to each other.
"Yeah, I was almost married once," said Ray, shifting to make himself more comfortable. "We got engaged. She moved in with me and after a year of living together, right down to the fuckin' day, I came back home from a job and the house was empty. And I mean completely stripped. There was nothin' left and she was a ghost. Completely blindsided me. I tell you what, that did nothing to slow down my drinkin' and that took a long time to get past."
"That sucks, man," said Martin, nodding sadly.
"What about you, kid?" Ray asked John, his voice louder over the sound of the engine. "Any special sweetheart from before?"
John was silent for a moment. He hadn't thought much about Juanita in a long time, not since Sarah died. After a while, all of the deaths blended together into one tangled mass of grief, becoming almost meaningless as his previous life felt more and more like a dream that he had once had.
"Not from before, no," he answered, his head slightly turned so that they could hear him. "But after Judgement Day, we lived in a bunker with this other family. They had a daughter my age." Don't say her name. Don't say too much. "We got pretty close for a while there, but her mom wasn't coping with being stuck in a bunker. One night she just lost her mind and tried to shoot me before my mom stepped in. She then took my girlfriend and her brother up to the surface to leave, only they didn't make it off the property. Mom found them dead in the car a few days later. Murder-suicide."
"Christ," said Ray, followed only by silence. There was not much else to say.
John looked at the mirror again. The pickup was keeping its distance, not too close, not too far. They were nearly at the turnoff to the cache and it would be their only chance to restock with weapons and supplies before reaching San Diego. He just hoped that his hunch was wrong.
The turnoff came into view—a small road turning off to the left at a sharp angle, heading southwest into unkempt countryside lined with increasingly thickening trees and scrubland. He pressed the brakes hard and spun the steering wheel left, causing the people in the back to lurch and stumble into the side as he rounded the corner.
"Woah, what the hell?" exclaimed Rosa, gripping the dashboard in front of her.
"Sorry! Sorry, everyone," John said, speeding back up as they drove down the crumbled, winding road. "Nearly missed the turn."
He ignored the grumbling in the back as he drove down the old, forgotten road, trying to remember his way to the cache. It had been many years since he had last been here, but he knew that he was on the right track. As he rounded the bends, keeping his speed up, he caught a glimpse of the pickup truck far behind them. It was getting closer.
"God damn it!"
"What?" asked Rosa.
"We're being followed."
Everyone in the back moved towards the rear doors and tried to look out the window. The road was windy and the trees around them were getting thicker, but then the road straightened long enough for the dark vehicle to come into view, right at the top of the last hill they had driven over.
"Who the hell…?" said Jimmy, but the pickup truck had fallen out of view again. They crowded the back doors, watching through the windows, while Linda crawled away towards the front where Lennie had remained. She curled up and began to bite her nails, her eyes flicking around the van, not really seeing any of it.
"Corner!" yelled John as they came up to the next turnoff. The others in the back braced themselves for the lurch as he turned to the right, the road beneath them changing from bitumen to gravel.
The van slid slightly as the surface changed, the back wheels drifting sideways before straightening out again. A trail of dust rose up from the road behind them, a hazy beacon threatening to reveal their chosen path. The van bounced and shook, the internal components rattling as they sped down the winding dirt road. The road continued, twisting and turning up through the increasingly hilly landscape, the dust lifting lazily from the grey dirt. They did not see the truck behind them, though the turns were getting tighter, and John hoped that they had lost them. He slowed down as they approached a fork in the road, then turned right, continuing around a bend.
There it was, nestled in against the crescent of trees at the end of a small clearing. The large, burned-out storage shed that he and Sarah had scoped out with Miguel all those years ago. The open doorway was scorched around the edges, the roof partially caved in, the inside black with charcoal. No time to reminisce. John turned off the road towards the shed and parked as close as he could behind it, hiding the van from the view of the road. He killed the engine and they all held still, listening for a moment for any sound of the other engine. Hurriedly, they climbed out and stood behind the shed and listened.
It was quiet, but it was there—the low, thin growl of a rattling tailpipe sifting through the trees, loud then soft as the vehicle moved along the roads. It was still far away. John began to walk towards the trees, studying the unfamiliar ground beneath him.
"What are we looking for?" asked Jimmy, catching up with him.
"A chain. It'll be buried."
It had been years, and not at all maintained. The grass was long, the scrub overgrown, and dead leaves scattered across the ground, thick enough to obscure the metal plate that they were looking for. Their movements were loud against the scrub brush. Each rustling shift through the trees, each snap of an unseen twig too loud as they tried to stay low and hidden from sight. After a moment John called for quiet.
They were all still amongst the trees, crouched, listening. The pickup was getting closer, but it was hard to tell where it was coming from. It seemed to echo unnaturally across the backcountry until they realised that there wasn't just the one truck searching for them—it was three. One of them was now drawing much closer, evidently on the correct path. The rattling of the tailpipe was getting louder, the hum of the engine growing clearer, drowning out the other two engines. John and the others dropped to the ground and hid amongst the bushy scrub at the foot of the trees and listened in terror as the vehicle drove slowly past the old shed and crawled to a stop, just on the other side. It sat there for a few, tense moments, the engine idling as clearly as if it were only feet from them. Then they heard a clunk from it as the driver put it back into gear. The engine revved and the tailpipe rattled as they slowly drove off, continuing on down the road, followed by the clear sounds of two more vehicles. Then everything went silent and nobody moved for a few moments.
"I'll go get the guns from the van," said Rosa. In their haste, no-one had thought to grab them as they climbed out. "In case they come back."
"I'll go with you," said Martin.
The two of them moved through the brush back towards the van, their movements sounding like a stampede in the urgent silence.
Tentatively, John and the rest stood up and continued to search, sliding their feet along the ground as they felt for the chain or the metal plate attached to it. After what felt like far too much time, they came upon a small clearing—one that John remembered.
"I think this is it!" he said, looking around at the ground. "Look for the chain!"
They each searched the small clearing, brushing away the leaves and the dirt. John's foot scuffed against a solid shape just under the dirt, and when he looked down, he saw the edge of the thick, rusted-over plate. He bent down and began to wipe away the leaves and dirt, properly revealing the covering. He had just found the start of the chain when he stopped, his blood running cold.
They all heard it, loud and clear, and all of them crouched low amongst the trees, terrified that they had already been seen. A single gunshot from the van, followed by the sound of several people struggling and fighting. A loud thud rang out sickly, followed by Rosa's scream.
"Martin!"
An unfamiliar, male voice then spoke to her in Spanish as other, unknown men laughed. "Well, you're a pretty one."
