T2 - 01 - The New John Connor Chronicles - Dark Futures

by Russell Blackford

  There were so many tough decisions.

  Soon, they were on the road.

  Sarah drove the Bronco carefully through the suburban streets, but not so hesitantly as to attract attention. "We'll get back to Enrique's place," she said, wincing as she glanced across at John. "You can drive some when we get out in the country."

  "Sure, Mom," he said. "Of course." He'd been driving cars and trucks for as long as he could remember, starting when other kids were in kindergarten, learning the basics from Sarah's friends and boyfriends in the various Latin American hideouts she'd taken them to, while they planned and trained.

  "We'll have to call Tarissa," she said, obviously dreading it.

  Sooner or later, Tarissa would see the news, including the death of her husband at the Cyberdyne building, or she'd call the cops and find out what happened. Somehow, John didn't think she'd act hastily. Surely she'd give them every chance to get out of the city. But she must be biting her nails. It was only fair and decent that they be the ones to tell her how her husband died, not leave it to the cops-who'd have their own spin on the Cyberdyne shootout, anyway.

  They picked up the I-10 and headed southeast towards the Mojave Desert. After about eighty miles, Sarah pulled I off at a service stop and they found a public phone. She rang Tarissa's hotel and asked for Corinne Sanders, the name Tarissa had said she'd use.

  John heard only Sarah's end of the conversation—his mother trying to be strong, just one more time, before they got back into the life of hiding he'd grown up with, which required other kinds of strength. They'd sort out a new life later on. What would it be like? "Tarissa,"

  Sarah said. "It's me."

  There was a pause.

  Sarah looked shaky. "I have bad news for you," she said. "Miles got shot. Someone sounded an alarm and they called in a SWAT team. Miles is dead." She brushed her hair away from her face in frustration, and her voice broke as she talked into the phone. "I'm so sorry."

  John reached for her hand and squeezed it.

  This time there was a long silence. Though John could not hear what Tarissa was saying, Sarah was letting her talk, letting her express her pain and anger at the intrusion that had shattered her life, broken up her family, taken away her life partner. Of course, Tarissa would blame them for her husband's death. Then again, she'd seen the T-800 Terminator. She knew it was a machine, not a man: a machine advanced far beyond anything currently available. Surely she'd understand that they'd had no choice. Cyberdyne's research had to be stopped. They'd saved humanity from a future too dark to contemplate.

  "I know how you feel," Sarah said. "1 wish I could be there with you and Danny. But we have to get away. You know it had to be done."

  There was another pause, not so long.

  "Yeah, we have the Bronco. We had to leave your car near Cyberdyne... Yeah, I know you can deal with it. I'll be in touch when it's safe. I'm sorry to finish up like this, but we can't stay here. Someone might see us. The cops are still after us. There's no way they'll believe our story, not without proof." Sarah laughed bitterly. "Maybe not even then."

  Another pause.

  "We destroyed the T-1000. It's a long story. We'll be okay. Try to get some sleep if you can. I guess that's not likely. Ring the cops in a few hours. Tarissa, once again, I'm so sorry. I understand what this is like for you."

  John knew that it was true. Sarah really did under-stand the loss. His father, Kyle Reese, had been killed back in 1984, when he and Sarah faced the first T-800.

  "Yes," Sarah said, "I know. Take care. Please take care, and don't let Danny grow up hating us." She hung up.

  John wondered how Danny, who was still just a little kid, would react to it all. How would he remember this night? It might all depend on how his mother handled it, how honest she was with him. John hoped that one day Danny might grow up to be someone who could be a friend. With the Skynet research finished and the T-1000 destroyed, that seemed possible.

  Sarah wiped the sweat from her brow, pulled her hair behind her ears. "Thank God that's done," she said with a heavy sigh. "I know."

  "Oh, what am I saying? Poor Tarissa..."

  He leant into her. "It'll be okay, Mom," he said. "You'll see. We'll both be okay."

  "Oh, John," she said. "If anything happened to you, it would kill me."

  In the darkness, John took over the wheel of the Bronco. Even with the seat all the way forward, he could hardly reach the controls, but that wouldn't matter too much, once they were cruising.

  As they moved back on the Interstate, John switched on the lights. A sign pointed to Palm Springs. Sarah dropped off to sleep beside him as the Bronco rolled along, eating up the miles. She seemed peaceful. But something was at the back of John's mind, bothering him, something he'd had no chance to think about.

  It came to him an hour later. They'd destroyed the T-800 back at the steel mill, once its mission was accomplished. But its left arm had been torn off at the elbow, fighting the T-1000. They'd never recovered the hand and forearm.

  Whatever they did, there always seemed to be something left that could help develop the Skynet technology. Perhaps they were doomed to failure. Maybe you couldn't change the future.

  John clenched his jaw as Sarah stirred in the seat beside him.

  He'd tell her about it later. Not now.

  North of Calexico, he handed the wheel back to her and got a few minutes' sleep himself while she drove the last miles to the Salceda compound. He'd never been so tired. Whatever the future brought, they would have to face it, be prepared.

  No fate, he thought to himself as sleep came over him. No fate but what we make for ourselves.

  NORTHWEST OF CALEXICO, CALIFORNIA

  As the sun rose in a pale, cloudless sky, they reached Enrique Salceda's compound in the Low Desert.

  A year seemed to have passed—it was difficult to believe that they'd come here less than twenty-four hours ago, before that fateful trip back to L.A.

  The compound was tucked amongst yucca trees, cactus, and dry scrub. By day it was hot and thirsty, cooler now in the early morning. It was dusty, and almost silent except for a gusting wind. It looked like a place where no one would want to live, and that no one would bother disturbing: a jumble of broken trailers and abandoned-looking vehicles, including the shell of an ancient Huey helicopter that might have seen service in Vietnam. There was a dirt airstrip that looked disused, but John knew it was perfectly effective.

  The Salcedas were survivalists and gunrunners from Guatemala-not the sort of people most folks would relate to easily, but they were loyal. For John, the compound was a circle of friendship and relative safety.

  Yesterday, after they'd packed the Bronco, Sarah had dozed here in the desert sun, slumping over a picnic table.

  What John had never expected was her sudden action when she woke. She'd stabbed her knife into the surface of the table and walked purposefully to the station wagon they'd stolen in L.A. and used to get here. She'd driven off alone, the car's wheels spinning and raising dust, armed with a Colt CAR-15 assault rifle and a .45 caliber handgun. John had run after the car, shouting for her to stop—"Mom! Wait!"-but she'd never looked back.

  She'd carved the words "N0 FATE" in the wood of the picnic table. Kyle Reese had brought those words back in time as a message from the John Connor of 2029. In 1984, before he'd died, Kyle had passed them to Sarah, who'd passed them to John: "The future is not set. There is no fate but what we make for ourselves."

  Sarah had made a plan to change the future-by killing Miles Dyson, the man who was going to invent Skynet.

  That had led to last night's wild sequence of events: John following Sarah to the Dysons' place, with the T-800; the raid on Cyberdyne; the final confrontation with the T-1000 at the steel mill...

  Sarah parked the Bronco just inside the compound's wire fence, well back from the trailers, then stepped out into the early morning light, hardly able to walk, dragging her injured leg. John ran on ahead of her.

  "Enrique
!" Sarah called. "Yolanda!"

  Silence... and the wind.

  She spoke again, this time in Spanish. "Enrique, come out of there. We need your help." Her Spanish was almost perfect. John had grown up in Mexico, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Argentina-he spoke the language even better than his mother, with no trace of a gringo accent.

  Franco Salceda, Enrique's teenage son, stepped out from behind a trailer, his AK-47 rifle leveled at them. John froze in his tracks. Seeing who it was, Franco nodded slowly. "All right," he said in English. "You Connors have a way of arriving unannounced." Then he broke into a smile and pointed his weapon at the ground, setting the selector to the safety position. "Hey," he called out over his shoulder, "our guests are back!"

  "Mom's hurt," John said. "She's hurt really bad." By now, Sarah had caught up with him.

  Yolanda and Enrique Salceda came out of a trailer, Enrique putting on his cowboy hat. He was a rough-looking man with a thick, dark beard that was graying in patches, and trimmed back almost to stubble. His eyes were piercing, set deep in a lined, hawk-nosed face. Yolanda was a pleasant-looking Hispanic woman in her forties, with dark hair that fell over plump, brown shoulders.

  "What kinda trouble you in now, Connor?" Enrique said in his gruff manner. "You're starting to look like roadkill."

  "That's a long story," Sarah said, reverting to English. "Yeah? And where's your big friend, 'Uncle Bob'?" He meant the T-800 Terminator.

  "Not now, Enrique." She pointed at the blood on her black military fatigues.

  "How did this happen?" Yolanda said in Spanish, looking Sarah up and down. She waved them to the trailer with quick, urgent movements. "Let me look at that leg. I can help."

  "Thanks," Sarah said, wincing. "I'm not going near a regular doctor. We're lying low." The Salcedas were well-equipped with stores and medicines, not to mention guns and other military equipment. Though their place looked humble and broken down, they were equipped to survive here in the desert almost indefinitely.

  "Don't worry, Connor," Enrique said, "you've come to the right place. You know it's a charity round here." He grinned and stepped forward in the dust to embrace them. "It's always good to see you, Sarahlita, whatever crazy stuff you've been up to." Laughing, he shook her from side to side in his strong arms, then put one arm across John's shoulders. "Come on, Big John, let's see what we can do."

  After Yolanda treated Sarah's leg and gave her a couple of heavy duty painkillers, they gathered round an old TV in one of the trailers, sitting on lounge chairs with torn upholstery. Yolanda nursed her baby boy, Paco, on her lap, while the other kids played outside, Franco watching over them.

  The morning news reported the raid on Cyberdyne, including Miles's death and the wounds or injuries received by many of the police. There was an alert throughout tin state for Sarah, John, and the mysterious male accomplice who had helped them.

  A female announcer with big hair and a perfect, toothpaste-ad smile read the story, accompanied by footage of the ruined Cyberdyne building. She cut to an interview with Cyberdyne's President, a guy called Oscar Cruz. This dude looked stressed out, like you'd expect, but he was kind of good-looking and cool, in an old way. What adults called "elegant." He had a short, neatly-trimmed beard, and wore a tweed sports jacket.

  "We're all devastated by this," Cruz said. "It's so terrible, and so pointless. But it won't stop us. This company has a lot of heart. We're all committed. We're already looking at our options-"

  Cruz got cut off at that point, and the camera returned to the big-haired announcer. "In a statement today, the | Los Angeles Police Department said that Sarah Connor is fluent in Spanish and may try to cross the border into Mexico. Authorities in all border states are on high alert for Connor and her accomplice. They are described as armed and very dangerous."

  "Connor," Enrique said, "I'd think you were crazy, except I already know you're crazy."

  "Like a fox," Sarah said quickly, then laughed. "Yeah, crazy like a fox." Enrique took a swig from a bottle of Cuervo tequila, then looked at Sarah narrowly. "I know you're as smart as anyone. You've got your reasons."

  The good thing about Sarah's friends, John realized, was that most of them were so paranoid that they accepted her as almost normal. She'd frightened away some of her boyfriends with all the stuff about Terminators and Judgement Day, but people like Enrique here, and the Tejadas down in Argentina, turned a blind eye to it, figuring was no crazier than a lot of other conspiracy theories they heard-or concocted themselves—about the government and the military. They might as well give her the benefit of the doubt.

  "John and I can't stay here," Sarah said. "We'll be safer across the border."

  Yolanda put a hand on her shoulder, almost maternally "You stay as long you need," she said in Spanish. "At least until you're better."

  "You only just got here, Connor," Enrique said. "This is home sweet home. You're not going to get a better deal in this lifetime."

  "I know. I'm grateful."

  "Mom," John said, "I like it here. We're safe. Let's not move on till you're really better. Right?" "Listen to the kid." Enrique tapped the side of his head. "He's got a lot upstairs. I'm sure you can make yourselves useful round here."

  She sighed, outvoted. "Okay-" she looked at John meaningfully "-for a few days. But we need to head south where the cops don't know us."

  "All in good time, Connor—but I can arrange it."

  She looked at Enrique questioningly. "All right."

  "There's a chopper coming here next Monday," he said. That was nearly a week away. "We'll get you over the border on Monday night."

  "That's good, Enrique. I'm grateful. That'll have to do."

  The words seemed to get forced out of her, one little burst at a time. "Thank you."

  Enrique swallowed some more tequila. "Damn right. Now cheer up and live a little."

  John thought about the future. What if you couldn't change it, no matter what you did? There was the crushed Terminator arm they'd left at the mill. He'd have to talk about it with Mom. Even if you could change the future, what if it still included Skynet? On the TV, Cruz had said that Cyberdyne wasn't washed up. Could the new future turn out just as bad as the old one? If all bets were off, could it be even worse?

  Really, though, he knew what had to be done. They'd keep doing whatever it took. Anytime, anywhere.

  No fate.

  They'd figure it out. Whatever lay ahead, it would be okay.

  It would have to be.

  CHAPTER TWO

  In another reality, however, the events surrounding the siege at the Cyberdyne complex-and the fateful confrontation with the T-1000 Terminator-took an entirely different course...

  SKYNET'S WORLD

  NORTHWEST OF CALEXICO, CALIFORNIA

  MAY, 1994

  As he fooled around with the T-800 at the Salceda compound, John was aware of Sarah watching him, though he couldn't tell what was on her mind. When she'd finished checking and cleaning the weapons, they let her rest for a minute. In her boots and military clothes, she looked almost like a Terminator herself, but also tired, drained by years of struggle and the stress of escape from the Pescadero Hospital, with the T-1000 close on their tail.

  John helped the T-800 pack the guns in the back of the Bronco, together with their maps, documents, jerry cans of gasoline, fuel siphons, radios, and explosives. If the T-1000 tracked them down. it would not find them helpless.

  The Salceda kids were playing by the trailers and vehicles that made up Enrique's compound. Their scrappy dog yapped round them happily. Everyone had told John J his mother was some kind of psycho-crazy, tried to stop him believing in her. But now that he'd seen Terminators in action, he realized that everything she'd ever said was true. The deadly T-1000 was still out there, planning how to track him down and kill him.

  John stopped work for a moment, thinking about Judgment Day. Out here in the desert, the Salcedas might escape the initial explosions and the chaos caused by the electromagnetic pulse
s, but how long could they last against fallout, nuclear winter, then the machines? There must be safer places—he and his mom would need to persuade as many of their friends as possible to move south, well away from the U.S.

  Sarah had drooped over the picnic table, with her cheek on the back of her hand. While the T-800 went on working, John walked over to her, quietly, thinking she was asleep. She looked up—she must have sensed his presence, perhaps his shadow falling over her. "I was thinking about Judgment Day," she said.

  "It's okay, Mom," John said. "We'll get through all this. We've just got to tough it out."

  She sat up, giving him a tired smile. "We have to be strong." Her jaw clenched and she picked up her knife, toying with it. Then she drove it point-first into the surface of the picnic table. She'd carved there the words: NO FATE. "We can stop them," she said.

  "Mom? What are you talking about? If it's what I think you're thinking, don't even go there. Not now. This isn't the right time."

  "Cyberdyne," she said. "This guy Miles Dyson, the guy who invents Skynet—we can stop it happening. We can blow up Cyberdyne, or take out Dyson, make sure no one can follow his research."

  "You tried that before," John said, "with that government lab last year. They put you away, remember? The cops will be expecting you to try something like that."

  Her jaw was set firm. "We have to keep trying."

  "You only just got out of Pescadero. You don't want to go back."

  "We can't just wait for Judgment Day."

  "Okay, okay. But we can try later, or try something else. But we can't just kill people, and we can't attack Cyberdyne just when the T-1000 could be expecting it."

  That struck home. Obviously, Sarah was weighing it all in her mind.

  "There's got to be another way," John said.