Chapter Eighteen: The Raiders
"Now tell me," said the unfamiliar voice, in Spanish, from the shed. "Why did you come out here? Have you got more things for us?"
Nobody moved. John and the others all remained crouched amongst the tangle of underbrush, the metal plate cold beneath their feet. All those guns, thought John. All those guns so close, yet so out of reach.
Rosa hadn't answered and Martin only groaned quietly.
"No? Nothing out here? Maybe you're meeting with someone? Is there anyone else out here?"
John could feel the men's eyes sweep over them as they looked out through the trees. They were less than thirty feet away and would only have to take a few steps into the brush to spot them.
This time, Rosa answered. The fear in her voice was hard to listen to, brittle and choked, as she lied to the stranger. "We were trying to get away from you. We thought we could hide back here."
Murmurs came from the other men and someone else spoke up. "Are you sure this is the guy that you saw driving? I thought she was with someone else."
A momentary silence came down upon the strangers, and John and the others listened intently, hoping that they would have no reason to search the area. He could picture them crouching down in front of Martin, looking him over, studying him intently as they tried to decide if he was the one they saw driving the van earlier. John flinched as a voice suddenly called out, louder and closer than the first one:
"If there's anyone else out here, you've got to the count of three to show yourself or we open fire! Gotta test out these new guns of ours."
Laughter. It was infuriating but also gave an indication of how many of them there were out there. It didn't matter; there were too many. John was completely frozen, his mind blank with fear as he lay still in the underbrush. Any movement from him or any of the others would make too much noise, giving them away instantly.
"One!"
Nowhere to run.
"Two!"
Not a damn thing they can do about it.
"Three!"
Gunfire. Instantaneous, deafening, a chorus of certain death. Many of the group flinched, gasping loudly as they huddled, certain that their end had come—not at the hands of the machines but at the hands of a gang of raiders, their fellow human beings. The gunfire continued, shots overlapping each other at different speeds, different calibres, Sarah's own weapons used against them. But as they lay there, huddled on the dirt, they realised that no bullets were flying towards them. What then were they firing at?
After a few more moments the gunfire stopped. Deathly silence drifted through the trees as John listened to the men's movements. Several sets of footsteps, only mere feet away. Voices, quieter as they talked amongst themselves.
"Wow," said one. "I don't even remember what he looked like before. This guy's a mess!"
John's blood ran col as he understood. They had opened fire, but they were not aiming into the trees. They had all been aiming at Martin. He could picture them all standing around his body, inspecting their handiwork as though they'd just polished a new car.
Rage, shock, and hopelessness surged through John's body. They didn't have to do it. They didn't have to do any of this. They already robbed them of everything they had; now they just wanted to see if there was any more for them to take. The group help perfectly still, knowing that the men could still just fire into the surrounding undergrowth.
"Why?!" Rosa screamed. "We're not the machines! We're not your enemy!"
"Let's take her and go, already!" someone said, his tone impatient. "I haven't had any fun in weeks!"
There was the sound of mass movement and Rosa began to scream, her voice getting quieter as she was being carried away, fighting as hard as she could. The men laughed and spoke casually to each other as though this were an everyday occurrence, their footsteps and voices fading as they left the clearing with the burned-out shed on it, nestled against the crescent of trees. Soon, all that could be heard was Rosa's wails.
Despite the silence from the clearing, nobody moved. They couldn't be certain that they truly were alone, but they couldn't stay hiding in the scrub forever. John stood, slowly. They needed to save Rosa from her fate with the raiders, and the sooner they moved, the better their chances.
The others stood up with him, cautiously peering out at the shed and the van for any of the men. All was quiet. Linda was in tears, shaky and inconsolable as she tried to control her sobs. Ray had a dull, jaded look in his eyes as though he had seen this sort of thing too many times before, while Jimmy had turned and was pacing around with his hands raised, clasped together behind his head, fighting the oncoming shock. Lennie only seemed to survey the scene with his blank, expressionless face, his eyes devoid of all life and of all fear. His face only told of the harsh reality of the world left behind by Skynet's devastation. He seemed to simply exist amongst the rest of them.
They could hear the trucks' engines starting, rumbling in the distance, moving quickly through the trees. Their hopes of finding Rosa seemed to fade with the sounds of the engines through the trees, and the overwhelming sense of finality, that she was lost to them for good, was absolute. If there really was any chance of finding her, then they needed to move fast.
"Chain," said John, gesturing to the ground. "Let's go, guys."
They all lined up behind him as he grabbed hold of the rusted metal chain, each of them taking a firm handful, the rust dusty in their palms. They pulled, feet digging into the ground, and they heard the metal plate begin to slide. It pulled away, revealing a large hole with a ladder leading down into it. They stopped and stood around the edges, looking down at the tops of the sturdy, locked crates that were stacked within. Stored alongside the substantial cache of weapons and ammunition were several bottles of fresh water, dehydrated and powdered foods, and a stash of toilet paper—a prime trading item. Glinting in the corner was—
"Is that a minigun?" asked Ray, his eyes wide as he looked down at the deadly hardware.
"Sure is," replied John. "We just need a battery to power it."
"You're full of surprises, kid."
They wasted no time hauling the goods out of the hole, the crates heavy in their arms as they carried them to the van. Then they saw it—Martin's body lying on its side close by against a tree, a bloodied, pulverised mess of meat contained in blood-soaked clothes. His face was completely destroyed, now resembling only torn meat with some teeth hanging exposed and a single eyeball staring out at them each time they walked past. The sight of it made them feel light-headed and they tried to look away. It felt wrong, improper, to not acknowledge him, to not pay any sort of respects to the man who had died so suddenly and so needlessly, but there was simply no time to waste. They couldn't linger; the others may come back for the van.
It was fortunate, perhaps, that the raiders were so hasty to return to their base, and had not made any real attempt at searching the area. John and the others would have been found immediately, and he felt that he owed it to Rosa to try his hardest to save her. The raiders were unpredictable—Martin's body proved that—and with each trip to the van, John peered carefully out at the quiet, wooded landscape around him. Despite its silence, he did not feel that they were out of danger yet.
Once the cache was empty, John had the others help him cover it up again for reasons he couldn't explain to them properly. It felt like wasted time, but he knew that he had to keep as much information as he could hidden from Skynet, knowing that it would one day develop time travel, and he didn't want to run the risk of the cache becoming a target for a different version of him to be caught with. They closed the van and paused, unsure of what to do next. Their task done, the urgency wearing off, they found themselves suddenly directionless, and the likelihood of them actually finding Rosa seemed too slim to try. Then Linda spoke up, her voice quiet.
"I know where they are." The others all turned to her.
"What do you mean?" asked Jimmy.
"I know where they are, and I know who they are. I know exactly what they are going to do to Rosa because they did the same thing to me." She looked up and met their eyes, one by one. "They kept me locked in a shack with only a mattress on the floor. There was no point in fighting them—there were just too many. I had been there so long that eventually they became relaxed around me. They knew I wouldn't do anything. The boss eventually took me into his own trailer one night, as if I wasn't still their prisoner, and afterwards, he fell asleep. I should have killed him right then and there.
"They liked their knives. I grabbed one and went right up to him. I could have done it. He was out cold—passed out, really. He had a lot of drink. But I didn't want to be like them. I put the knife on the pillow beside him and snuck out and escaped through the trees. It was dark. Nobody saw me. I hoped that when he woke he would know that I had a chance to kill him but chose not to. I hoped that he would have changed his ways, but it looks like I was wrong. They'll be worse to Rosa because she'll fight back."
"Jesus, Linda. I… Jesus," said Ray.
She looked at John, a determination in her eye that he hadn't seen there before. "So, let's go. I can take you there. Let's give those fuckers hell!"
-xxx-
Their first sign of which way to go had been an obvious one. Following the road that the raiders had gone down, they soon came across a fork where a deep set of tyre marks, arcing in a crescent of flung dirt, led them towards the right. They soon reached the highway again where Linda directed John to go right, heading back south again.
Despite the replenished stockpiles of weapons at their disposal, John began to feel that what they were doing was foolish. The adrenaline was wearing off and his righteous anger was turning into uncertainty. They did not know the layout of the base, and only Linda had been there before, and she had only seen it in full in the dark. Nevertheless, she had warned John about possible traps, about tyre spikes, about them using the landscape to their advantage. The raiders whom they were looking for had already been a deadly gang even before Judgement Day, and were now well into their element.
As John drove back down the highway in silence, the sun beginning to lower in the western sky, he could feel the fear creeping back into all of them as they sat in the back with the crates, and into himself, at the thought of what might happen to them if they were captured. He thought of Martin's body, obscenely ripped apart with an egregious barrage of bullets, embedding, tearing through, pulverising. None of them were soldiers. They were all just ordinary people trying to get by in a greyscale world patrolled by red, robotic eyes.
Linda, sitting in the passenger seat next to John, indicated that the side road was getting nearer. John slowed the van, scanning the shoulder, and saw a small, subtle gap between the low trees that lined the road on their left. It was a gravel path, grassed over with time, almost imperceptible as it rose up the rocky plane to the nearby rise of hills at the edge of the horizon before disappearing between a gap in the crumbled edge. The base was a long way in, Linda had said. John turned the van slowly onto the path, took a deep breath, and gently accelerated up over the crest, hoping that he wasn't leading them all to their deaths.
A pale dirt road wound its way around the dark, rocky mountain range, disappearing around a bend in the distance. The entire landscape was covered with small trees, growing thicker in some areas and thinner in others. There was no sign of a camp or a base, but John had the feeling that where they were right now, crawling down the path from the top of the peak, was in full view of the raiders who could easily be watching them from within the trees. The sun was in their favour, sinking behind them, keeping them in the mountain's shadow.
"We don't know how many there are," said Ray from the back.
"I know," said John, trying not to lose his nerve.
"This isn't a good idea."
"I can't just leave her there with them."
Once at the bottom, the cluster of mountains rose up around them, encircling them, shielding them from the outside world as they drove along the road. John watched the thickets of small trees, heart pounding, watching for any movement from any waiting raiders ready to open fire on them. He was sure that they would have people watching.
"Why not?" asked Ray after a minute.
"What?"
"Why can't we leave her? This is suicide. I'd rather take my chances with the machines. At least it's not fun for them."
John stopped the van and turned to look back at him. Everyone was watching Ray, and John had the feeling that they all held the same sentiment as him, but just weren't willing to say it. Now that Ray had said it, it lingered in the air amongst them, a permitted opening for defiance, and John feared that he would be overruled by the others at any moment.
"And what if they'd taken you instead? Taken you back for target practice or, hell… for food, maybe? You'd be hoping like hell that we were somehow coming to get you. Rosa's probably thinking the same thing right now." They stared at each other for a moment, the soft rattling of the idling van the only sound heard. "Or if you don't like it," John continued, "you can get out now and take your chances with the machines. Maybe you'll get lucky and they'll only take you back to a work camp."
The others seemed undecided and John knew that if they sided with Ray, then he faced the possibility of being thrown out onto the road himself. After all, they were the ones sitting closer to the crates of guns, all within easy reach. The rhythm of the van's motor seemed to count the seconds, seemed to time how long it would take for the group to make their decision, until finally Ray looked away, knowing full well that he did not exactly have good standing with any of them.
"Fine, kid. But you've just killed us all. I want you to know that."
John turned back around and put the van into gear. As he continued along the dusty, dirt path, he couldn't help but acknowledge just how right Ray was. They had no real plan of attack, and a van full of weapons wasn't going to help them if they were trapped huddled inside it if the raiders attacked, firing at them from all sides. His mouth was dry, and he was unconsciously gripping the steering wheel tight.
They rounded the next bend.
Over the rise, the road sloped downwards and they could make out the shape of a pickup truck in the distance, just like the ones that had followed them to the cache, its rear jutting out from the right. They had parked hastily. John stopped the van and put it into reverse, moving back away from the edge, out of sight. He turned off the engine and climbed out and the others did the same.
"Alright," he said to them. "Grab a gun and load up. We'll go through the trees along the road, and be as quiet as you can. Don't be too close together; we need to be spread out."
Without another word, they followed John as he crept into the bushland, keeping low as he stalked through the trees, keeping the dirt road in sight. They moved slowly to minimise noise and to listen out for any sound from the raiders, though there was nothing to hear. Large blocky shapes came into view along the edge of the clearing and John knew that it was the base up ahead. He knew what they must have been doing to Rosa at this very moment, it was why Sarah had never ventured far into Ensenada after witnessing the raiders' actions for herself. So why was it so quiet?
The edge of the clearing came into focus as they moved through the trees, the blocky shapes becoming trailers, shacks, and large tents, enclosing the clearing in a horseshoe shape. They stopped at the edge, behind a large trailer, crouched low behind the trees as they peered through the brush around it. The silence was unsettling. His machine gun held up at the ready, John crept slowly out into the open towards the trailer, and listened at the window for any sound from inside. His heart pounded in his chest and his footsteps crunched softly with each excruciatingly slow step as he stalked along the side towards the rear. The next trailer came into sight and he stopped just before the gap, readying himself to peer around the corner. He looked around.
In the middle of the clearing were several parked cars and pickup trucks and for a moment John was struck by how strongly it reminded him of Enrique's property. He stepped cautiously through the gap between the trailers, the view in front of him widening, and stopped, staring, confused at first at the massacre before him.
There were bodies—a dozen of them—strewn across the clearing. Each had their guns still in their hands, their fingers still resting on the triggers, and they looked to have been thrown carelessly onto the ground. He got closer, taking in all of the details. They didn't appear to have been shot, but rather they had slashes and deep cuts across their torsos, some of the wounds appearing to penetrate through the other side. It was recent. The blood was still wet, still dripping onto the soaked ground.
He scanned his eyes over the bodies, trying to find Rosa, but all of the victims appeared to have been raiders. Movement in the corner of his eye caught his attention and he turned to see the rest of the group creeping towards him from behind the trailer. They all stopped and stared just as he had done, and like him, none of them had any explanation for what they were seeing.
It couldn't have been Skynet. There had been no sign of machine activity in the area. There had been no drones, no HK-Aerials, no sound of clanking footfalls. The Terminators used guns of their own, leaving each corpse with a precise cluster of bullets imbedded in their chests, and if they had no weapons, would resort to clumsy melee combat which would result with evidence of bloody, blunt-force trauma, usually across the heads. If an army of T-400's had come through the base, at least some of them would have been struck down, given the number of armed raiders that were present. But there were none.
They started to search the base, checking each trailer, tent, and temporary shack. Most contained at least one dead body, struck down just within the doorway, the walls and floor coated with red blood still glistening as it slowly ran down to the floor. One room contained John's battery-generator which had an old stereo plugged into it, a stack of cassettes sitting scattered around it. John retrieved it.
They had begun speculating that it may have been the result of infighting or a rival gang that had attacked them suddenly and left just as quickly, but it was still unusual that none of the dead bore bullet wounds, only deep lacerations, and none of the bodies were carrying any sort of blade. The raiders' base was still too well-stocked to have been attacked by a rival gang. Nobody would leave those weapons behind.
The silence played on their imaginations as they walked amongst the dead bodies, hearing in their heads the screams of horror and violence that must have played out less than thirty minutes ago. Jimmy and Ray kept looking out into the trees, not convinced that the attackers were far from the site, and John was beginning to feel the familiar sensation that they were being watched. Lennie seemed to survey the area carefully, his dull eyes taking in each detail as he looked all around him with a sense of vague interest.
Linda had been focused on a particular shack on the other side of the base. A wooden structure, it appeared flimsy and had no windows, only a door that hung slightly crooked in its frame. She recognised it and knew that Rosa would be in there, but was hesitant to enter. She knew that there was an old mattress on the ground, mouldy from repeated staining. She knew that written on the inside of the door were the words Hasta la vista – 'see you later', as a taunt to the victim held inside that the captors would always be returning. She knew that it would all be the same.
John came and stood by her, and after giving her a quick nod of understanding, accompanied her as they silently walked towards the shack. They reached the door, which was ajar, and John, sensing Linda's hesitation, reached out and grabbed the handle. "Rosa? It's John. Are you in there?" There was no answer, but he hadn't expected one. He took a breath and pulled on the handle.
The daylight washed into the shack, the slanted rectangle of light revealing the bare legs of a dead man on the ground. They stepped in, letting their eyes adjust to the darkness, and looked the body over properly. Past the twisted underwear, the man's torso lay oddly misshapen in a way that made John's stomach churn. Arms splayed out on either side, the ribs appeared to have been forced into an upward angle, hanging loosely inside the chest, giving it an unnatural narrow shape. The top of the body lay at the edge of the daylight, so it was not immediately obvious that the man's head had been removed. The spine had been ripped upwards out of the torso, leaving a gaping hole down the spinal column, which explained the unusual shape of the ribcage.
Linda spotted a figure in the far corner, curled up as small as possible, blending into the blood-soaked surroundings.
"Rosa!"
She rushed towards her and embraced her in a hug, her bloody, knotted hair the only thing visible under Linda's chin. She loosened her grip, held her by the shoulders and looked at her face. Her eyes, John saw, were distant and unseeing, and she appeared to not acknowledge that they were even there. Whatever had happened here, she was the only witness, the only one spared as the attacker removed the man's head in front of her, and John could see that she was replaying the events in her mind, over and over.
"Rosa?" John asked, gently. "What happened here?"
Her eyes stared blankly, her eyes dull and lifeless, reminding him of Lennie and the way he observed the world. He wondered if he would one day wear that same look. Linda looked her directly in the eyes. "Rosa, sweetheart, what happened? Who attacked them?"
Rosa mumbled something incoherent, seeming to notice Linda for the first time. Linda leaned in closer to hear her properly, her brow furrowing at what she heard.
"What did she say?" asked John.
Linda turned to him. "I don't know; she's speaking Spanish."
"Rosa," John tried, speaking her tongue. "Who killed these people?"
Rosa looked at him, the words having an effect on her, cutting through the haze. She replied to him clearly and then began to repeat herself as she turned away to stare blankly again. John stood there, confused, looking no nearer to an answer than Linda had.
"What did she say?" asked Linda.
"She said the trees… just came alive. Came alive and killed them." He shook his head, slightly. "That doesn't make any sense."
"What about him?" said Linda, pointing at the dead man by the doorway.
"What happened to this man, Rosa?" John tried. "Who did that to him?"
A hurried response, quick and soft, as though she might be overheard. She looked down at the body as she spoke, seeing it all over again.
John turned to Linda and said, "She says it took his head because he was the one in charge—the leader. It killed them all and then took his head as a trophy."
They were silent for a moment, staring at the man's corpse. None of this made sense. It can't have been Terminators, and it didn't sound as though they were attacked simply by other men. Rosa spoke of it as though it were something else altogether.
"Why was she spared?" asked Linda. "Everyone else was killed, but she wasn't."
John thought for a moment, then said, "Maybe because she wasn't armed. She clearly wasn't the same as all the others." He looked at the headless man again and was reminded of a hunter, thinking of the trophy that was taken. "Maybe she wasn't a worthy kill."
Gently, they stood Rosa up onto her feet and redressed her, placing her jacket over her shoulders, then led her out of the shack into the fading daylight outside. There was no shielding her from the sight of the corpses that lay scattered around them, though she didn't appear to notice them as they walked by them. Lennie was watching the scene, standing by a trailer as he observed the base, while Ray and Jimmy were looking out to the trees, their guns ready.
With Rosa safe, John began to plan the next move. He had wanted to bring the van back to the base and begin loading it with the raiders' stockpiles, but he didn't want to linger any longer than he needed to, and the notion of taking from this massacre site felt like a further desecration, and the constant sensation that they were being watched only added to it. He would, however, be taking a battery from one of the vehicles to power the minigun. He got to work retrieving one from the nearest pickup truck as Linda and Rosa kept close by, huddled together.
Gunfire—the rapid spray from a machine gun—burst out from the edge of the base and the three of them dropped to the ground. John looked towards the source of the sound and saw Jimmy firing his gun into the trees, screaming wildly as he swept his gun left and right in a narrow arc. Ray ran up to him and joined him, the two of them firing into a focused sweep of the underbrush just in front of them. John, staying low and using the trailers as cover, made his way towards them and joined in, adding his own gunfire. Jimmy's eyes were wild with fear, and John knew with absolute certainty that he had seen a glimpse of the attacker. The three of them continued firing into the bushes and shrubs, though none of them could see any sign of the thing that they were shooting at, until their bullets were spent and all that was left was the resuming silence, broken only by the sound of Jimmy's panting.
"I saw it," he said. "It was there! Right there in front of me the whole time! Barely ten feet away!"
They looked carefully into the trees, scanning for any sign of their target. Ray stepped forwards into the underbrush and disappeared, searching the area for a few moments before re-emerging.
"Anything?" John asked.
"Not a thing. Not a fuckin' trace. No blood, no bodies. We hit nothing!"
"It's a god-damned ghost," said Jimmy.
"And so are we," said John. "We're out of here. Now."
Swiftly and silently, the group hurried back down the dirt road towards the setting sun, eyes constantly drawn towards the darkening shadows amongst the trees that seemed to move along with them. The van came into sight as they rounded the bend and they all climbed in, John placing the battery he had taken from the pickup truck by his feet. Only once they were back on the road towards San Diego did they begin to process the day's events, the silence from each of them a testament to the impact of the horrors that they had each faced. Martin was dead. Rosa almost faced the same fate. And now, something else had made its presence known to them. Something else separate from Skynet, capable of great and terrible violence, something with its own intentions towards the people that it encountered. Of all the questions about this new being, the most pressing one for John was if it regarded Skynet as an enemy or as an ally.
The sun set as they drove on north. San Diego was not far away, now.
