Cook Inlet, near Elmendorf Air Force Base, Alaska
Alaska: once a pristine, snow-white, untouched wilderness, was now marred with permanent dull greyness; the sun largely blotted out by the millions of tons of dust in the upper atmosphere, casting a lifeless dark grey hue in the sky, reminiscent of storm clouds. Even the snow on the ground seemed grey, tainted by Skynet's nuclear apocalypse.
Much of the area had been incinerated on Judgment Day in the atomic blasts; the city of Anchorage and the two nearby military installations – Elmendorf Air Force Base and Fort Richardson – had been high on Skynet's target list. Little remained of either the city or the Army and Air Force bases; reduced to smoking piles of charred, blacked rubble, twisted metal and melted glass, ruined hangars and runways, broken buildings and debris everywhere.
There were survivors, however. Several hundred men and women had survived – a fraction of the bases' twelve-thousand strong combined military population of soldiers and airmen, and the three-hundred-and-sixty-thousand civilians living in Anchorage. After the bombs had fallen the surviving soldiers and airmen had thought nothing of themselves and worked to assist the survivors in the nearby city, providing food, medical attention, and limited shelter in the few structures deemed safe enough for habitation.
The surviving population of Elmendorf had increased massively in recent days with the arrival of three vessels; the aircraft carriers USS Nimitz, the George HW Bush, and the Seawolf-class submarine, the Jimmy Carter. The three ships had arrived to take on food, fuel, and ammunition supplies, and to transport the surviving soldiers and civilians out of Anchorage. The bitterly cold climate of Alaska had been made all the worse by the dropping winter temperatures, exacerbated still by the nuclear debris blotting out the sun and dropping the winter temperature well below normal. It wasn't a fit place for human survival, and there was enough equipment and manpower to be used elsewhere. The ships' helicopters buzzed back and forth between the carriers and the air base for days, ferrying troops, supplies, and weapons to the ships, stationed in the deeper waters roughly fifty miles southwest of them, F/A-18s flying air cover to protect the carriers.
Martin Bedell sat in his Seahawk helicopter, carefully holding his bird still over the Nimitz's flight busy deck as he slowly lowered down, inch by inch. The carrier deck was a hive of activity; scores of men and women worked rapidly to stow away cargo from other helicopters hovering over the ship and dropping off supplies. Even isolated in their cockpit, hovering above the carrier, Bedell could feel the sense of urgency down there. They wanted to resupply both carriers and take on everyone and everything they could, and get out of there as soon as possible. Skynet's unmanned aircraft had already claimed a number of F/A-18Es and they didn't want to stick around to lose any more, or God forbid, the carriers themselves. They were probably the most powerful assets left after Judgment Day.
"Steady... steady..." he muttered to himself, concentrating as hard as he could on not descending too much or too fast.
"That's it, hold it there," his co-pilot said. Bedell kept his hand statue-still and held the helicopter in place as the cargo slung under his bird gently kissed the flight deck, and looked down as men rushed forward to release his burden from its harness. As soon as it was free, Bedell pulled the Seahawk upwards and turned back towards Elmendorf for what felt like the hundredth time that day.
"How many more of these runs have we got left before we get out of here?" Bedell said impatiently. Since they'd left for Alaska he'd not been in the best of moods; finding out John Connor had disappeared off the face of the earth had sent his morale plummeting and made him tetchy, to say the least. Not that not flying these missions would solve anything, but he felt more like a glorified delivery boy flying these supply runs, when he felt he should be doing something more useful. Maybe I was wrong to join the Navy, he thought. Should have stuck with the original plan; at least I'd be out there fighting the machines, instead of being stuck here doing nothing. He still felt like they were sitting on their hands while others fought and died, and it didn't sit well with him.
"Got a couple more," Sam - his co-pilot - answered. "Cap'n Wallace wants all these artillery guns on board; says people could use them."
Bedell couldn't argue with that; they'd taken on enough heavy artillery pieces from Fort Richardson to turn their carrier into an old-style battleship if they'd wanted to. They were taking the hardware whilst the George Bush took on the survivors; the Nimitz had fewer aircraft now – losing several more in skirmishes with Skynet drones during their journey up through the Cook Inlet towards Anchorage, leaving them with only half of their normal complement, and extra space in the ship's hangars for spare equipment.
"You really don't like Alaska, do you?" Sam commented. "You've had a bug up your ass for days, now. What's up; this about Connor, again? He's gone, man."
"Whatever," Bedell rolled his eyes as he flew out over the water towards the base. He didn't really feel much like talking.
They flew for half an hour in silence; Bedell wrapped up in his thoughts about John Connor, and what they'd do if he really was gone; what he would do. John and his uncle had told him he was important to the resistance, that he helped John set the whole thing up in the first place. It didn't seem to be going that way right now; Connor had done a pretty good job of getting it started himself. He was just a flyboy; no one would listen to him, even if he had the slightest clue what to do now.
Damn it, Connor; why'd you have to disappear like that? The war had seemed to be going well just a few months ago; Skynet had still been in full control but they'd been fighting back. They'd had orders, command and control, and communications, when John was there. This new guy, Perry, was very quiet and had just left them to it. Things had started to rapidly fall apart.
They eventually crossed the water and flew over dry land, buzzing over the ruins of Anchorage and toward the air base.
"Okay," Sam said positively. "Looks like they've got this one ready for us." Bedell peered out of the cockpit and saw a 155mm howitzer rolled out and rigged up to a harness, ready to be attached to the belly of their helicopter. "Makes a change, the lazy bastards normally wait until we land before doing anything. Maybe the jarheads are good for something after all."
Bedell slowly started to descend over the open ground, ready to land and pick up their cargo once more, for yet another milk run, Bedell thought glumly.
"Super-Six-One, come in. Bedell, drop what you're doing and return to the carrier immediately."
"Super-Six-One to Zero Alpha," Bedell replied to the carrier uncertainly. "What's going on?"
Before the radio operator on the Nimitz had a chance to reply, sonic booms tore through the sky like cracks of thunder, the turbulence in their wake shaking the Seahawk around like a leaf on the wind, forcing Bedell to struggle to keep them in the air as alarms shrieked around him. Four delta-shaped aircraft tore past them, little more than blurs of gunmetal grey shooting through the sky.
"That's going on!" Sam pointed at the aircraft that had just shot past them. "Skynet's going after the carriers."
"Shit!" bedell swore. "You've got four aircraft closing in on you, Nimitz."
"We're aware, Super-Six-One. Aircraft are en route to intercept and Alert aircraft are being launched. Drop what you're doing and head back to us. We're leaving."
"There's still people down there," Bedell argued. They couldn't just leave them there to fall victim to either the machines or the elements.
"It's them or all of us, Super-Six-One. Return to carrier immediately or you'll be left behind. There's nothing we can do for them."
"Roger that," he sighed, pissed off even more than ever. They were supposed to be helping people; that's what they were fighting for, wasn't it? What was the point in fighting the machines if they were just going to act like them? He knew it was war, he knew they had to make sacrifices, but it still made him feel like a complete bastard. Reluctantly, he pulled the Seahawk up into the air and turned around to the carrier, trying not to imagine the enraged faces of those down below as he abandoned them to their fates.
Jet fighters tore through the sky towards the incoming Skynet machines, outnumbering the unmanned intruders three to one. The Hornets' engines screamed as the pilots pushed their planes faster and faster, rushing out from their carriers like angry bees swarming out to defend their nest from intruders.
The Skynet UCAVs - X-47 Pegasus bombers - split into pairs and separated. The first pair unleashed all of their AMRAAMs at the defending squadron as the human fighters hastily returned fire; missiles streaked through the air, contrails crisscrossed as the weapons from both sides shot past each other and continued on to their targets. Both Pegasus aircraft were struck by several missiles each and shattered the drones in spectacular blasts, but their own weapons quickly closed the distance before the human pilots could evade. The luckiest of them managed to eject a split second before the air-to-air missiles detonated and tore eight of the planes apart in brilliant flashes of flame and shrapnel from the exploding aircraft, but he soon realised as his parachute canopy opened that he'd simply traded a quick, fiery end into a slow, cold, miserable death by hypothermia as he slowly and helplessly descended towards the icy waters of the Cook Inlet below.
On his way down he bore witness to the rest of the battle. The other two Pegasus drones shot past the one-sided aerial slaughter and accelerated to their maximum speed. Their weapons bays opened and two missiles shot forward from each aircraft as they peeled away to finish the remaining Hornets off.
The anti-shipping missiles ploughed through the air at tremendous speeds, descending to a mere fifty feet above sea level and skimming the waves as they closed in on the two carriers. The ships responded with an awesome barrage of fire as their close-in weapons systems activated and filled the air with a curtain of lead in a desperate attempt to shoot down the weapons as they rapidly closed in on the carriers.
From the cockpit of his Seahawk en route, Bedell could only listen helplessly to the frantic, frenzied radio broadcasts as the missiles flew closer and closer.
"Two missiles still inbound; ten seconds to impact!"
Cameron and Courtney followed the ragtag militia through the burnt out, wretched, decrepit remains of Carson City, through even more streets strewn with debris and dead bodies; some little more than bones with rags of cloth and flesh and blood stained to them; picked apart by carrion birds and other scavengers. They passed what had once been a clothing store on a block corner; one side of the building had collapsed in and the gaping glass display windows had been shattered into miniature shards that spilled out all over the pavement outside. The clothes inside had been burnt to blackened, charred cinders, stuck to half-melted plastic mannequins.
They passed the store and turned the corner, led by Bates. Courtney walked nervously alongside Cameron; she was going to stick close to her brunette companion no matter what. She didn't know why Cameron seemed so blasé about following these guys, when she'd been so security conscious since the moment they'd met.
As they rounded the corner they saw a pair of 4x4s parked up at the far end of the block on the other side of the road. A pack of dogs circled round a corpse on the cracked tarmac, hungrily tearing it apart and devouring the flesh greedily. The bones on the arms and legs were already picked clean and the pack fought over the contents of the torso, clamouring and clashing, snapping and growling at each other to get the lion's share of the food. The body had been so devoured and desecrated it was hard for even Cameron to tell whether it had been a man or a woman. Not that it mattered to her.
As they passed the pack snapped to attention as one, their eyes glared at Cameron and their ears pricked on end, and then launched an ear-splitting volley of rabid barks and snarls, sounding off like the hounds of Hades as they ran in unison towards her, intent on tearing her limb from metal limb.
Cameron watched as they charged her, knowing they were no threat to her at all. She was curious how dogs could always spot infiltrators; Skynet had worked hard to create machines that looked, felt, and even smelled like humans; she had sweat glands just like any human would, had bad breath if she ate particular foodstuffs, and even bruised and bled if her skin and flesh were damaged. She could easily deceive any human being, yet dogs could always tell her and other machines apart. Despite vast resources and intelligence beyond anything ever known on the earth before it, despite having vanquished the vast and mighty armies of man on Judgment Day, Skynet could never defeat man's best friend.
Courtney watched in horror as the dogs approached Cameron, intent on her blood. She pulled her rifle from her back, pointed it in the air above the dogs, and pulled the trigger. A volley of automatic fire burst from her rifle and cracked loudly through the air, stopping the dogs in their tracks. They turned tail and ran in fear from the gunfire, but not before Bates took aim with his own weapon and fired a single shot, the round struck the closest dog in the head and the impact of the round flipped it around in a shower of blood and brain matter. The group continued on to the vehicles on the other side of the road.
"Thank you," Cameron smiled at Courtney. The dogs were no real threat to her but she was grateful; nobody other than John had ever defended her. Even though she didn't need Courtney's help, it was still nice to have it. "You had the safety off," she commented, not even mentioning the fact her rifle had switched to automatic at some point. Courtney's weapon-handling was poor to the point of being dangerous; she'd have to show her how to use it after they'd got John back.
"Gee, you're welcome... I think," Courtney muttered in reply as they stopped at the 4x4s; a black, dusty GMC Topkick and a battered-looking civilian Hummer with a machine gun mounted on a tripod nailed into the roof.
"While we're on the subject," Bates turned round to them and grabbed Courtney's rifle by the barrel, snatching it out of her hands before she could react with anything more than a cry of shock. "We'll take your guns, now; you won't need them."
"What's going on?" Courtney asked as the men surrounded them
"We're not just gonna let you waltz into our base with guns, do you?" Bates asked rhetorically. "We don't know you."
"And we don't know you," Cameron replied, pulling her SCAR-H away as one of Bates' men tried to take it from her. She held it firmly, finger on the trigger, not quite pointed at them, but not away, either. She stood her ground when Bates stepped up close to her, close enough that his neck and chest filled her vision. Bates was a big man, bigger than Perry, even, and clearly knew how to use his size to intimidate. He was surprised, to say the least, that a five-foot-six teenage girl, who weighed about half as much as he did, didn't even flinch as he approached; either she was stupid or insane; it was hard to tell from the blank expression on her face, but it was clear she wasn't intimidated by him or his cohort in the least. Not like the blonde was; she shied away and hid behind Cameron; clearly the leader of the two.
"That's fine," Bates shot back at Cameron. "But we're not taking you armed to see Connor."
"You have a radio, right?" Courtney said. "Call him up and tell him Cameron's here to see him; he'll let us in." She hoped, anyway. From what Cameron had told her, John Connor would be ecstatic to see Cameron, but this wasn't the warm reception she'd expected from the guy Cameron told her about; the one she clearly admired for and cared about more than anything. She wondered again if this John Connor was as good a man as Cameron thought; killing people for taking food they'd claimed as theirs; didn't sound much like the great man she'd described. Maybe Cameron was simply naive; she did have that strangeness about her, like she wasn't quite right in the head. Or maybe John was one of those bastards that brainwashed their girlfriends and wives into thinking they were nothing without them. That seemed to be how Cameron felt, from what she'd said about her and John's relationship.
"Connor's on a mission; he requested radio silence," Bates answered, irritated.
That blonde chick was hot but she was really getting on his nerves. She had a mouth on her and he was tempted to show her how to use it, if only to shut her up. At least the brunette kept her trap shut.
"You wanna see Connor; give up the gun. Take it or leave it."
"I don't trust these guys," Courtney muttered nervously in Cameron's ear. Cameron understood Courtney's hesitation; they didn't know these men, but at the same time they knew John and they knew where he was, and they were offering to take them to him. Her choice was either to hand it over or they'd refuse to take them. She couldn't simply beat them for information on his location or to force them to take her because of the grenade launcher; it'd kill her before she could neutralise it. They had the advantage over them.
She nodded her head in agreement, flicked the safety on and handed the rifle to Bates. Courtney frowned in disapproval; Cameron had given up their only defence against them should these guys turn on them. She'd seen Cameron in action back at the high school; she didn't know how the heck she knew how to fight like she did, but she was tough. Still, no matter how good she was; she wasn't Jason Bourne or anything; without a gun they were at these guys' mercy.
"I hope you know what you're doing," Courtney said.
"I do," Cameron answered in a neutral voice. She had no choice but to do as they said, or she'd never see John again. Besides; if anything went wrong she could kill them easily enough even without a weapon. She was a weapon.
"Nice piece of hardware," Bates inspected Cameron's SCAR-H admiringly, it was much better than the bog-standard weapons they were using. How a teenage girl had gotten her hands on such a gun, he didn't know. These were normally Special Forces issue and these two didn't look like spec ops to him. Well, it was his now. "Where'd you get it?"
"Doesn't matter," Cameron said. "I did as you asked; take us to John."
"You don't tell me what to do, little girl," Bates growled. "Get in," he pointed to the Topkick as he opened the front passenger door and got in. Another of his men got in to drive and Cameron and Courtney sat in the back seat, before the two cars started and drove steadily through the war torn ruins of Carson City. The Topkick took the lead whilst the Hummer followed; Courtney could see one of the men stood up through the sunroof, to mount the machine gun on the roof. Cameron sat stock still in her seat, sitting back and her hands resting on her lap and her eyes staring straight forward, appearing to anyone who bothered to look at her like she was deep in thought. Courtney, on the other hand, kept one hand wrapped around the door handle to steady herself as the cars drove over debris, bodies, and numerous other obstacles that would have stopped a sedan in its tracks, and rattled the occupants inside around like pinballs as they gained speed.
They drove past street after street of death, desolation, and ruin; the cityscape a perfect microcosm for the rest of the world at large. They drove east, out of the city centre and through the suburban residential areas; the mighty brutes that were the Topkick and the Hummer easily picked their way over the piles of debris as they headed out through the outskirts.
"Where're we going?" Courtney asked. They'd been told to come to Carson City, and now they were leaving? This didn't make any sense.
"Just outside Virginia City; about twelve miles east of here," the driver replied.
"Why are we going there?" She asked. "We were told to come to Carson City."
"Did you have your eyes closed the whole time?" Bates laughed bitterly. "The whole place is a ruin; there's nothing left."
"Carson City isn't safe," Cameron turned to Courtney and spoke plainly.
"Because of the radiation?" That made sense to her; wouldn't be much good living somewhere after it'd been nuked.
"There's no radiation," Bates replied casually from the passenger seat in front of Cameron. "Carson City's chump change to Skynet; not worth wasting a nuke on."
"What happened?" Cameron asked, wanting to know, herself; she'd seen the ground zero wastelands of LA and San Diego in the future; over a mile of glassed earth and not much else. Everything within a mile of the detonation had been vaporised by the immeasurable heat of the fireball, which had eventually dispersed and left the following blast wave to simply flatten everything in its path for several miles around. Carson City's damage was mild in comparison to LA.
"Few days after the nukes fell, the mayor orders the National Guard units mobilised," Bates' driver continued while Bates stared out of the window, bored. "He puts all these calls out through Nevada calling for people to come to Carson City; says they'll be safe there. What a dumbass! Three months after J-Day the city's gone from fifty thousand people to five times that much and taking on new people every day; it's a fuckin' refugee camp. Food got scarce and they had to ration. Riots broke out; the National Guard spent more time backing up the cops and trying to keep the peace than they did watching out for machines.
"Whole place was at breaking point when the tin cans showed up; they couldn't have timed it any better," he gave out a short, sharp and bitter laugh.
"Then what?" Courtney asked.
"Then Skynet bombed the shit out of the place," Bates answered gruffly, twisting around to look at Courtney as he spoke, though his eyes never made contact with hers – instead they lingered on her chest, crotch, and then her thighs, making her shift uncomfortably and cross her arms over her chest defensively. She didn't know if Cameron noticed or was just ignoring it; since these guys said they knew John Cameron seemed to have stopped caring about anything else.
"How long did it take?" Cameron asked. "To destroy the city?"
"One night," Bates replied. Cameron didn't know how that was possible; that would take hundreds of HKs – more unmanned aircraft than even Nellis air base would have held at that time. It explained why they'd met such little resistance from aircraft when they'd attacked Area 51, though; they'd been busy bombing Carson City. The two events must have occurred at the same time. If Skynet hadn't bombed the city then their attack might have failed.
"It was B-52s," the driver added, once more joining the conversation. "Squadrons of them; Skynet must have flown them on remote or something. The tin cans came along later to clear out the survivors; finished off what the B-52s started."
Courtney couldn't even begin to imagine what it must have been like; to have been trapped helplessly while bombs rained down from above like a meteor shower and destroyed everything around them, and then to have survived all that, and crawled out of the rubble to find machines scouring for them, slaughtering any survivors they found.
They carried on driving out of Carson City and onto a straight desert road with signs for Virginia City. As they drew closer the two cars veered left onto a dirt road and away from the city, deeper into the desert. Cameron stared out the window, curious as to where they were going and why they were headed away from Virginia City; if she thought they were lying to her or they became a threat then she could easily deal with both of them in the car with ease; she'd force them to tell her where John was and then kill them. If they became a threat.
The two cars continued down the dirt road for some time until the two females in the Topkick saw any clue as to where they were going. Cameron saw tall metal structures just barely poking above a hilltop in the distance, gradually becoming more prominent as they approached it. They worked their way around the hill and she stared out the windshield at several cranes all around them, and a long conveyor belt led a hundred yards or so towards what looked like some kind of industrial processing plant. All around them stood abandoned mining equipment and large trucks. Some of the equipment looked almost brand new, but the isolation of the plant and the lifelessness of the whole area gave it the atmosphere of a ghost town.
The cars pulled up outside the building and the occupants exited their cars without a single word passing between any of them. The occupants of the Hummer joined them and Bates led them away from the plant and towards a mineshaft in the side of the hill that had concealed the plant from them on their approach. A pair of bored looking guards leaned against the brickwork, their rifles propped up against their shoulders as casually as if they were carrying shotguns on a weekend hunting trip. Clearly they thought the chances of Skynet finding them out in the desert were slim to none. They regarded Cameron and Courtney coolly as they approached with Bates and his men, a smirk passing between them as they nodded to Bates and let them through.
"Where are we?" Courtney asked, unsure of whether or not to go inside. She looked to Cameron for confirmation but Cameron showed no sign of concern at all. Not that that means a thing with Cameron, Courtney thought to herself; Cameron could have fallen out of an airplane with no parachute and her hair on fire, and her poker face would still probably not crack for even a moment.
"Old silver mine," one of them replied. "The cities are bombed to shit or wiped out by gas attacks; too many dead guys stinking out the place to live there. We set up here after the machines wiped everything out and started running ops."
"Inside; come on, let's go." Bates walked up to Courtney, placed a hand on her butt and pushed her out of his way as he passed her. She jerked away in shock at his touch, glaring at him in disgust. "You were in the way," he said simply, then turned back down towards the tunnel entrance and took the lead, switching on the flashlight attached to the barrel of his rifle and shining its bright beam down the black maw of the mineshaft entrance to illuminate the way for the others. The other men followed suit and turned on their own lights, while Cameron switched her vision from visible light to infrared without conscious thought.
They marched single file and in silence down the tunnel, sloping gently down as it descended deeper into the earth. The complete blackness of the shaft was punctuated further by the utter silence; not only from lack of conversation, but of any movement or life; complete sensory deprivation: Courtney wondered if this was what Purgatory was like. Bates led the way, followed by Cameron, then Courtney, and the other four men right behind them. Cameron saw why John and these men had chosen to establish a base in the mines; the entrance they'd passed through was too small for even herself and Courtney – the smallest of the group – to be able walk side by side. Larger machines such as the T-1s and T-2s wouldn't fit inside. T-70s could possibly squeeze inside but they'd have limited movement and would present easy targets to any human defenders; their fallen chasses would slow the advance of the units behind them and give the defenders a further advantage. Depending on the size of the mine complex and the number of entrances, a handful of human soldiers equipped with machine guns, grenades, and rockets could defend the mine from an army of machines for as long as their ammunition and supplies lasted.
As they progressed deeper into the mine the darkness gave way to a series of gas lamps hung from the sides of the tunnel, spaced every twenty metres and illuminating the shaft just barely enough for them to see where they were going; something that eased Courtney greatly as the only one without either a flashlight or the ability to see in the dark.
Eventually the tunnel widened and opened up into a wide cavernous area cut into the rock, filled with industrial equipment. A brief glance at the room was enough for Cameron to surmise that it had been carved out of the rock to create a storage area for heavy-duty mining equipment. An electric generator hummed in one corner of the room, inside a steel cage filled with various mining tools. Cables ran from the generator up towards lights on the ceiling and walls, illuminating the large room with a dull yellow glow. Stacked up next to the generator cage were several large drums of liquid. Cameron presumed it was gas to run the generator.
On the other side of the room was a second metal cage that housed an elevator. Bates pulled open the wire door and ushered Cameron and Courtney inside and followed after them into the small elevator, leaving the other men who Cameron presumed would follow after them. Bates pressed a switch and the elevator started to drop downwards, descending through a shaft cut into the sandy coloured rock all around them.
"I thought you said this was an old mine," Courtney said, tapping her fist against the mesh cage of the elevator. "This doesn't look that old to me." She'd thought it would be one of those old silver mines that were dotted all around the state, from Nevada's mining boom over a hundred years before.
"The mine was abandoned a long time ago," Bates explained. "Then some company claimed there was half a billion dollars' worth of silver still down there and reopened it two years ago. Fat lot of good it did them; greedy bastards. Where's their money now, eh?"
The elevator descended down thirty or forty metres and ground to a juddering halt before opening up to reveal another tunnel; this one slightly illuminated by a handful of lamps spaced out, doing little more than casting an eerie glow throughout the passage. They made their way along another twenty metres or so before the tunnel opened up into a cave with several tunnels leading in different directions like spokes on a wheel. Inside the cave was more mining equipment – all modern, almost brand new tools, piled up into a corner. There was also a small crowd of people in the cave; Cameron counted fifty-eight women and eleven children, stood, sat, or knelt on the ground, talking in hushed voices to each other or some just sitting alone. A mother clutched her two children close to her and tried to feed a third child – an infant – from a bottle. The baby simply cried loudly, it's screeching, wailing screams echoed around the cavern and, judging from the miserable, unsmiling faces of them all, was expressing what everyone else was inwardly feeling.
They all looked grimy and unwashed, and the musky, acrid odour of multiple unwashed bodies huddled together was another unpleasant sensation that assaulted Courtney's nostrils that day, though not anywhere near as bad as the stench of the corpses that had lined the shattered streets of Carson City. Unfortunately for her, she was the only one who was bothered by the smell; Bates and his men were used to the constant odour, and from the look of some of them, Courtney reckoned they simply added to the pungent tang. And unknown to her, Cameron couldn't really smell anything; she simply lacked any kind of olfactory senses. Machines didn't need a sense of smell.
"Who are these people?" Courtney asked. They looked like refugees or something; dirty, miserable and starving. She watched one woman walk up to an open barrel and stick a cup in to retrieve some water, then sipped it slowly as she regarded the newcomers with a strange, wary and knowing look that Courtney couldn't quite identify. She emptied the cup's contents down her throat and dipped it into another container; this time holding boiled rice. She took her food into a corner and ate in silence, eyeballing the two newcomers.
Cameron had seen this plenty of times in the future. Tunnel rats: civilians who lived under the protection of the soldiers but didn't fight. Food had been scarce and most of it went to those who were willing to pick up a weapon and fight the machines. Future John had told her, on the occasions he'd opened up to her when they'd been alone, that he wished it didn't have to be that way, but the soldiers needed to eat to be strong enough to fight. It made perfect sense to Cameron.
"Looks like we arrived just in time," Bates said. "Dinner's almost ready. Come on." He led them through one of the tunnels on the left, guiding them through another dimly lit passage that stretched on for twenty metres and opened up into another cave, smaller than the first one that housed all the 'tunnel rats', as Cameron called them. Inside this cave was a low table with various dishes set atop. Plates of sliced ham and beef, peas, carrots, beans, and other vegetables lined the table – all tinned foods, Cameron knew. Nothing fresh or frozen would have lasted more than a couple of weeks after Judgment Day. Two large ceramic bowls full of rice sat on each side of the table, and several platters of chocolates and candies filled up the remaining space on the surface.
"Sit," Bates told them, and sat himself down on the floor at the head of the table and beckoned Cameron and Courtney to sit next to him as several other militiamen entered the cave and sat down, followed by some of the civilians; all female, all young, and all fairly attractive, Courtney noticed. She also saw the mother who'd been trying to feed her baby was among the women escorted into the room as they sat down with the soldiers. This definitely didn't feel right to her. In total there were ten men and eleven women, including Cameron and Courtney.
"Eat," Bates told them all. He picked up a pack of Budweiser cans and opened one up for himself, before passing the pack to Courtney, on his left, who took a beer nervously and passed it onto Cameron, who likewise took a can and passed the rest on. Several six-packs went around, were opened with a distinctive crack and hiss of escaping gas, and gulped down greedily.
The men and women all set upon the table like ravenous piranhas with the scent of blood in the water, tearing through the food and piling it high on their plates, rapidly shovelling it into their mouths as if it was their last ever meal. Cameron watched them eat, noisily and sloppily, washing the food down with beer and swilling it around. She'd seen several similarities with the tunnels and bunkers in the future, since she'd arrived at the mine, but this scene was a stark contrast to her. People in the future never ate so messily. They ate quickly but they ate it all; food was so scarce in the future that people didn't waste any of it. There were no leftovers and nobody spilled their food on themselves or the ground.
Courtney took a small helping of rice, beef, and some vegetables, and ate slowly. Apart from the chocolate bar she'd eaten in the store, she'd not eaten properly in two days, and the sight and smell of the food made her stomach rumble hungrily. Something bothered her, still.
"What does everyone else eat?" She asked after she swallowed a mouthful of rice. "The people out there, I mean."
"They've got rations and water out there," Bates said with a noncommittal shrug. "We give them what we can."
"Doesn't seem fair to me," she replied quietly. People in the other room were sat around moping and starving, living on a little bit of rice and some water, whilst these guys gorged themselves and got drunk.
"When's John due back?" Cameron asked. She'd allowed them to disarm her and Courtney, they'd been led out of Carson City and into the mine, and now she wanted John. She had an almost limitless supply of patience, normally. But when it came to seeing John again and making him safe, it was a different matter.
"Soon," Bates answered as he opened another beer and downed half the can in one long gulp. He was getting annoyed with the constant questions coming from these two. "He's on a mission and he's coming back real soon, okay?"
"What mission?"
"That's classified," Bates snapped.
"I know John," Cameron said. "He trusts me."
"And I don't know you. He's never mentioned a 'Cameron' before, or a 'Courtney'.
Cameron tilted her head at his comment, confused. Why had John not mentioned her? Did he think she was dead? She'd been badly damaged by the HK's missile in Las Vegas and she was surprised that she'd reactivated afterwards. There had been a chance, before Cactus Springs, that John could have been dead, but she still told Courtney about him. She'd recruited her help to find John. What mission was he on? She knew John, and likely it would be dangerous. But there was nothing she was aware of that was valuable in Nevada, save for Area 51 and Nellis air base.
Courtney sipped her beer thoughtfully in silence. She didn't want to drink a lot of it; she wasn't a fan of beer anyway but she didn't want to ask if they had anything else.
"You're very quiet," Bates said, resting his hand on her knee and stroking her thigh slightly, sending another shiver up her spine. She didn't know what to do; Bates had looked at her funny ever since they'd met, and she had a really bad vibe from him, but she had a feeling that she couldn't just tell him to get lost; that wouldn't go down very well.
"What's John doing here?" Cameron asked, she'd noticed how uncomfortable Courtney was and asked her question, in part, to shift Bates' attention to her and not Courtney, who took a few pieces of chocolate and ate them quietly; hoping Bates would just ignore her. She wanted to ask Cameron to switch places with her, but didn't want to upset anyone and make a scene.
"Fighting Skynet, of course," Bates grinned.
"How?"
"That's the beautiful part," a young man on the other side of the table joined in their conversation, between mouthfuls of rice and beer. "We operate with impunity here; Skynet nailed the whole area with airstrikes and chemical weapons; almost everyone around here's dead, and the National Guard in Carson City left behind a lot of hardware. Right now we're securing weapons, ammo and supplies. Connor's got a plan, we trust him."
"Skynet will find you eventually," Cameron said.
"Not a chance," Bates replied. "As the kid said; everyone here's dead. The threat from Skynet has come and gone. We're safe."
Cameron frowned at Bates' words. 'No one is ever safe' had been drilled into John by his mother since he was a child. John would never feel safe anywhere. He'd told her before that he'd only ever felt truly safe with her in their quarters in Cheyenne Mountain. The machines couldn't reach him there and she could hear any human presence coming before anyone entered their room, whether or not they knocked on the door. That, plus the civilians hoarded into the other cave. Although feeding the soldiers took priority over the civilians, John wouldn't have allowed them to starve while the soldiers gorged themselves on food and alcohol.
"Did John say you were safe?" she asked, sensing something was amiss.
Before Bates could answer, a guerrilla fighter emerged from the tunnel and marched up to him, bending over and whispering in his ear. Bates smiled and dismissed the man.
"Connor's back, it seems. Corey here will take you to him. And you," he stood up and pulled Courtney to her feet as well. "Are coming with me," he grinned wolfishly. Several other soldiers got up and left out of the tunnels, each taking one of the women with them and disappearing.
"What's going on?" Courtney asked, pulling her arm out of Bates' grip and backing away.
"Fair trade," he replied and grabbed her by the wrist, pulling her away and out through one of the tunnels before she could make any further protest.
"Cameron?" she called nervously. She wanted to leave now, more than anything in the world. Her every instinct told her to run.
Cameron passed Courtney and Bates, but so intently focused was she on finally seeing John once more, that she ignored Courtney and followed Corey. She didn't see Bates and Courtney disappear down the tunnel.
Corey led her through the darkened rocky passageway; holes in the sides of the tunnel had been fitted with doors to create rooms and separate them from the tunnel proper, to give privacy to the men as they slept, Cameron assumed. Even in the future, people preferred to sleep separate from the main living areas in the tunnels and bunkers. When they could. They'd had communal bunks, normally holding ten to twenty fighters or so. Hot-bunking had also been common, since there had been more people than cots and mattresses.
Corey led her to the last partition at the end of a tunnel and knocked on the door.
"Connor, someone wants to see you." He nodded to Cameron to enter and she pushed open the door. Being a machine, she processed information several times faster than any human could. All at once she felt elation at finally having gotten to John, excitement at being with him once more, and relief that he was safe and alive. Already, before she'd even opened the door halfway, she was thinking of how she and John would return to Cheyenne Mountain to resume his leadership of the resistance, and another part of her looked forward to spending some time alone with John.
She pushed the door open and shut it behind her, slowly stepping into the darkened room, lit only by a single bulb in one corner, opposite a sleeping bag and inflatable mattress on the other side of the room. There was a single occupant inside: a tall man in his early forties, black hair and bright blue eyes, and stubble bristling on his hardened face and square jaw. He was a full head taller than Cameron. She'd never seen this man in her entire existence; past, present, or future. Her eyes narrowed in suspicion and she found her fist clenching and twitching, much like they'd done when she'd once confronted Riley in John's shed. She didn't know who this man was but she had but a single question for him.
"Who are you?"