“I don’t know.”
As for Star, she did not care about the words that were being spoken. She did not begin to understand everything that was being said.
What mattered to the nine-year old was that somewhere, someplace, there were still others.
It had become an intermittent but highly anticipated ritual. Scattered across what remained of the western United States and parts of northern Mexico, groups of survivors gathered together to listen to the unscheduled broadcasts on motley assortments of cobbled-together radios and amateur receivers. No dearly lamented sports play-by-play, no important political speech, no jocular social commentary or international reportage was ever listened to with the rapt attention that the still-living paid to those sporadic transmissions. Knobs were turned, wires pressed together, components coddled, speakers constantly cleaned as the often intermittent, sometimes scratchy, but always mesmerizing voice of John Connor resounded through crumbling buildings, desert canyons, dense forests, and shattered lives.
“If you can’t outrun them,” declared the by now familiar voice as it spoke from its unidentified location, “you have one or two options.”
Somewhere in Utah, a group of bedraggled citizens huddled closer around a campfire, listening intently.
“The T-600s are large and pack a lot of firepower, but they’re a primitive design.” Connor’s voice hissed from the remnants of a radio.
***
In a cave in New Mexico, the senior male present stretched skyward a hand holding a makeshift antennae, fighting for every iota of improvement in the sound his family’s scavenged equipment was receiving.
“The small of the back and the shoulder joints are vulnerable to light weapons fire. As a last resort, ventilation requirements leave the motor cortex partially exposed at the back of the neck. A knife to this area will slow them down. But not for long.”
Sitting in front of the broadcast unit in the outpost, Connor halted. Many times he had delivered the irregular evening address. Many times he had fought to find the right things to say. He was not a comfortable speaker, not a natural orator. He did not intuitively know how to reassure people, how to comfort them, how to offer hope. Practice alone had made him better at it.
Practice, and necessity. Still, there were times when he just came to a dead end; out of words, out of thoughts, out of encouragement.
It was at such times that a comforting hand on his shoulder was of more help than volumes of instruction on public speaking. Seeing Kate smiling down at him enabled him to resume transmitting.
“Each and every one of you....” he continued.
Huddled around a fire near the ruins of the observatory, two determined children and one very mystified adult found themselves captivated by the broadcast.
“...above all, stay alive,” the voice on the radio emphasized. “You have no idea how important you are—how important you will become, each and every one of you.”
***
Connor paused to look up at his wife. A more personal note had begun to creep into his voice and he deliberately forced it down.
“Humans have a strength that cannot be measured by mechanical means, by the machines that struggle to understand us. Join us. Get to a safe area to avoid detection. Look for our symbol. Make yourself known. We will find you,” he murmured into the pickup. Swallowing and regaining full control of his emotions, he rushed to conclude the broadcast.
“I promise—we will win. But you, me, everyone, we all need to keep fighting. My name is John Connor. If you’re listening to this, you are the Resistance.”
Static returned, but this time the listeners did not mind. The broadcast had proved that there was more out there than devastation. More than silent, inhuman, hunting mechanisms. There were people. People who were fighting back, instead of living like the rodents and roaches they had so long disparaged. There was—hope.
Reese turned to meet Wright’s contemplative gaze.
“John Connor.” His expression and voice overflowing with unrestrained admiration, he peered over at the radio. Star was watching him intently. “I don’t know how—but we gotta find this guy.”
Off to the side the technician was checking to make sure the evening’s transmission was not being traced. Connor slumped back in the chair, rubbing at his eyes.
“Was it good?”
Kate Connor squeezed his shoulder and nodded.
“It was good, John. It’s always good. The words don’t really matter. It’s hearing the conviction in your voice that gives people reason to have faith in something.”
He nodded, reached up and pressed his hand over hers. How many were still out there, hanging on? Of those, how many had access to working receivers? Was Kate right and his irregular sermons were doing some good? It was impossible to know. Was it just possible, just maybe, one of those out there listening and trying to survive was his own father?
That too, was impossible to know.
CHAPTER SIX
Voices in his head, fire in his face. Tubes in his arms. They all liquefied together in a seething, clinging, stinking swamp of confused memories. Pain was present, too, but that did not unsettle him half so much as the melting, merging visions. Pain was something he had lived with most of his life. Pain he could deal with.
Not this.
He was being restrained, held down. Rousing himself, he tried to fight back. He would not be interned now. Or was it interred? The memories...he struggled, kicked, struck out violently.
Sat up.
His heart was pounding and his breath was coming in short, deep gasps, like the breathing of someone who had just finished a long sprint. He had been dreaming—but of what? Reality, nightmare, actual memory—he could not tell, could not sort imagination from truth. Even as he tried to pin down details they were slipping away from his recall.
He wasn’t alone in his dreaming. In the first light of dawn he saw an uneasy, softly moaning Kyle Reese sleeping sitting up, with his back against a collapsing wall. The girl Star had somehow managed to find a position that allowed her to sleep with her legs sprawled across the teen and her head on Wright’s shin. He looked at her for a long moment and as he did so, the worst of the dreaming faded away.
Reaching down, he gently eased her head off his leg, then rose and strode off into the darkness without waking either of them.
He had always preferred sunrise to the rest of the day. Before the sun was fully up the world seemed so clean, so fresh, so decent. So full of the possibilities that always seemed to lie just beyond his reach. It was the one time of the day when he could be alone without fear of the troubles that so often had seemed to follow him. He had frequently felt that was where he was best suited to live: in that narrow sliver of time before night became day. Sadly, it never lasted as long as he wished.
Surrounded by junk, trash, and debris, he set about trying to make something out of it. Of all the ruined vehicles in the observatory parking lot, the jeep was not in the best shape. But it was a jeep, and painted in camouflage. As he worked, he found better and more familiar tools than Star’s scavenged knife. Each new tool saw his work proceed faster.
The pile he was assembling alongside the waiting jeep grew steadily. Batteries, wires still flaunting their insulation, spark plugs that looked as if, given the right encouragement, they might still spark, an air filter that was less dirty than others, a fuel filter so clean it must have come from somewhere other than L.A.... Some of his finds stayed on the parts mountain while others found their way into the heart of the 4x4.
The sun was well up by the time he felt he had put together something under the hood of the jeep that might pass for an engine. Finding a battery that still had juice was hardest of all, given how long the automotive graveyard had been in existence. Satisfied that he had done the best he could with the materials available, he carried the battery over to the jeep and began bolting it onto the waiting support plate.
The necessary connections were almost complete when the bent
and rusted prop that had been holding up the hood finally gave way. He yanked his arm back sharply, but the falling metal still scraped his withdrawing arm. Blood appeared against the skin, seeping. He stared at it as if seeing it for the first time, ignoring the return of his old companion.
Pain.
Off to his right, something moved. Reaching into one of her many pockets, the girl fumbled a moment before removing a single band-aid. On it was imprinted the image of a white cartoon dog with a black nose and a contented smile. What was the character’s name? Wright tried to remember as she carefully applied the child’s bandage to the fresh wound. It was far from broad enough to cover the slash and blood continued to ooze from around the adhesive’s edge.
Stepping back, she eyed her handiwork with all the dignity and professional gratification of a surgeon who had just closed up a patient’s exposed spine.
He ought to say something, he realized. “Thank you” would probably be appropriate. They locked eyes for an instant. Then he carefully lifted up the jeep’s hood, fashioned a new temporary prop, and resumed installing the battery.
How much Reese had observed of what had just transpired between himself and the girl Wright didn’t know, and didn’t care. But there was suspicion and uncertainty in the teen’s manner as he approached the jeep. For a while he said nothing; just stood and watched as the older man connected wires and cables. Eventually curiosity overcame any attempt at appearing disinterested.
“You get it working?”
Wright spoke without taking his head out from under the hood.
“Almost. Won’t know ’til I try. Parts seem to work okay separately. Next we’ll see how well they work together. At least the gas in the tank hasn’t turned to varnish.” He indicated the assembled wrecks. “Managed to siphon enough to fill ’er up.”
Turning, Reese gazed off into the distance.
“We should head east. Into the desert. That’s the best place to get away from the machines. If we’re lucky, we might run into some real Resistance fighters.” Long-suppressed excitement crept unbidden into his voice. “Maybe they’ll give me something to fight the machines with besides spring traps.”
Wright was tightening a bolt deep within the engine compartment. It wouldn’t do to get the jeep up and running only to have some vital part fall out halfway to his destination. He doubted a call to the Automobile Club would bring much in the way of a response. If there still was an Automobile Club. If he had anything to call with.
“I’m heading north.”
That didn’t sound good, Reese decided. Not just the “north” part. The “I’m” part. He immediately protested.
“No—why—you can’t. That was one of the first places the machines took over. Machines control the whole Northern Sector. It’s Skynet Central. You can’t get in there. Why would you even want to try?”
Something went clang under the hood and Wright cursed. The expletive was short and pungent. Reese twitched while Star looked on in continued and blissful ignorance.
“I’ve got to find someone,” Wright finally responded.
It was enough to solidify Reese’s suspicions. Not “we”—“I”. He glanced at Star, whose expression was as open as ever, then turned back to the preoccupied stranger whose face still had not emerged from the depths of the jeep’s engine compartment.
“I don’t know where you came from or what you do or much of anything else about you, but I do know that there’s obviously still a lot you don’t know about Skynet. How it works, how the machines work—all kinds of stuff. Stuff that if you don’t know can get you dead. It’s too dangerous for us, for anyone, to go there.”
“What about the ‘L.A. Branch’ of the Resistance? Who’ll fight the machines here if you leave?”
Reese hesitated, uncertain if the older man was being serious, having fun at his expense, or a mix of both, and decided to take him at his word. He turned to Star.
“Come on, man. We need to get out of L.A.” He nodded at Wright, then indicated the jeep. “If you can actually make that thing go, that is.”
The girl wasn’t waiting. Clambering over the side of the vehicle, she settled herself into the passenger seat and waited. Ignoring her, Wright continued to tinker with the engine. Something coughed under the hood and sputtered to life. Half expecting it to die at any moment, he was more than a little surprised when it did not. In fact, the longer the engine ran, the smoother it sounded.
No telling how long it had been sitting busted and unmoving, he told himself.
Alone in the idling jeep, Star studied the profusion of knobs on the dash. Since no one told her not to do otherwise, she began playing with them, twisting and turning one at a time. None of them did anything until she pressed a button slightly to the right of the steering column.
That there was a CD in the player was not exactly a revelation. That the unit functioned was considerably more of a surprise. A startled Star gaped at it in amazement. Reese both looked and listened in awe.
“What is this?”
Coming around from the front of the 4x4, Wright gazed at the indicator lights on the in-dash entertainment unit.
“A CD player.”
“No, no,” Reese corrected him impatiently, “the music.”
Wright’s thoughts were ping-ponging back and forth between the inexplicable present and a less-than-inspiring past.
“Doesn’t matter. Something my brother used to listen to. ‘Us and Them’, by Pink Floyd.”
And what about me, he wondered silently. What’s happened to the world? What kind of wall am I another brick in?
The music was bringing back too many memories. Reaching in, he switched it off. When the girl gave him a cross look, he motioned impatiently for her to exit.
“Come on,” he prompted her, “let’s go.” She didn’t move, confused both by his words and his suddenly abrupt tone. He clarified his meaning for her. “Get out.”
Her eyes never left him as she slowly climbed over the far side of the jeep. At least, that was how he felt. He could not meet the wide-eyed girlish gaze.
Reese gaped at him, unwilling to countenance what he was hearing. Despite the doubts he had been feeling, the stranger’s words still left him in shock.
“You’re leaving?”
Ignoring the teen, Wright dropped the hood, made sure it latched shut.
“You’re just gonna leave?”
Reese continued as the stranger carefully collected the tools he had scavenged and put them in the back of the jeep. By this time he was crowding the older man. Wright tolerated this invasion of his space even as he ignored the increasingly accusatory teen.
“We saved your life.”
Reese wanted to grab Wright, to shake him and make him look into his eyes. It was a good thing he didn’t.
“You’re going to leave us here?”
Realization suddenly dawned and he stepped back.
“I get it. I understand. We’d just hold you back, right? Slow you down. You can move faster without us. It’ll be easier for you alone.” Somehow he kept in check the anger that had been building within him.
“You know one of the differences between us and the machines? We bury our dead. They don’t bother.” Taking the bewildered Star by the hand he started to back away from the now silent stranger, eyeing him as if he carried some incurable communicable disease.
“Go on—you go kill yourself. You’re not the first one to leave. But no one’s coming to bury you anyway.” He spat at the ground. “Star and me, we’ve got better things to do.”
Wright just nodded. In his life he had been insulted by experts and disrespected by masters. The teen’s feeble efforts had no effect on him.
What did have an effect was the expression on the girl’s face. It had shifted from hurt and confusion to one of sheer terror. Remembering what Reese had told him, Wright instantly began scanning the immediate vicinity. So did the teen. Their search was unnecessary, as a moment later the source of Star’s alarm dropped dow
n on them from above.
Compact, utilitarian, and extremely advanced, the small flying machine buzzed rapidly past the jeep before rising back into the sky and preparing itself for a second pass.
“Aerostat!” Reese was yelling even as he ran toward the jeep. As he did so, the ruddy light of a scanning laser was taking the measure of him from head to toe. The light was harmless—except for what it implied. The Aerostat would be transmitting even as it was evaluating.
Wright didn’t wait for further explication. Picking up the girl, he vaulted the side of the idling jeep to land in the passenger seat. He did this only because the driver’s seat was already occupied by Reese. The teen fumbled with the shift, managed to get the vehicle in reverse and moving away from the steep slope that rimmed that section of the parking lot.
Wright had other ideas. Reaching over the seat, he threw the jeep into drive.
“Go!”
***
Reese wanted to argue but was already mature enough to realize this was neither the time nor the place. Gritting his teeth, he floored the accelerator. Responding with welcome agility, the jeep obediently shot forward, jumped the curb, crashed through the remnants of some decorative border brush gone wild, and plunged down the embankment on the other side.
Once committed, the teen kept his foot on the accelerator and both hands on the wheel. At any moment he expected the vehicle to slew sideways and crash, go airborne and crash, or hit something unyielding and crash. He was mentally prepared for almost anything except keeping the battered jeep going straight downhill.
“Aerostat must’ve heard the music!” he yelled back without shifting his attention from the hillside down which they were careening. His hands gripped the wheel so tightly they were beginning to turn white.
“What about your gun?” Wright shouted at him.
“You’ve still got the clip!” With a boulder the size of a bulldozer looming in their path, he swung the wheel to the left. By some miracle of gravity the jeep did not roll and continued banging its way down the mountainside.
Wright dealt with the confusion calmly. Among the innumerable emotions he was not heir to was mad panic. Searching the pile of tools he had dumped in back, he picked up an X-shaped tire lug wrench. While not exactly aerodynamic, it had the virtue of being as throwable as it was solid.