Act 4: The Omega Man
Somewhere in West Los Angeles
A piece of Santa Monica Freeway juts out into the night air, an overpass traversing a road that no longer exists. A red light illumines the underside of the broken concrete structure, casting the twisted rebar and crumbling concrete into abstract shapes of orange and red.
The wind begins to churn, bits of dirt and ash swirling in the air atop the concrete ramp. Lightning flashes, striking the rebar and the edge of the ramp as a perfect sphere grows in the air above the edge of the ramp and slices into the concrete structure. With a final riot of electric discharge the sphere vanishes, leaving only a partial crater carved upon the bridge and the naked body of a man lying within.
The body groans and moves, his head and hand falling out of the crater and into the open air beyond the bridge. John opens his eyes, staring into a fiery abyss.
Below him, at a depth unknowable, molten rock flows in ceaseless motion, sending heat up through the vast rent in the ground. With a gasp of fear John pushes himself back onto the solid ground of the roadway and casts a look around. The chasm before him stretches as far as he can see to the left and right, a gaping wound in the world kilometers across, sliced into the earth with machine precision. John peers to the other end of the abyss an sees what appear to be waterfalls, sluices of untold size where the sea roils into the ravine and tumbles into the abyss, turning into mist and steam before it ever reaches the bottom.
John rolls onto his back, gazing up into the blood-red sky. Thunder peals across the heavens, lightning flashes. There is nothing but glowering cloud from horizon to horizon, swollen with the moisture of the vanishing oceans. He drags himself to the corner of the freeway and hauls himself up onto the cement wall of the overpass, attempting to get his bearings. Behind him a section of Los Angeles still remains, the larger broken-tooth fragments of skyscrapers visible in the scarlet distance. He looks to the north to the line of hills overlooking the city, then south to the flat expanse of ruined sprawl. There is no movement, no life, not even the cold blue searchlights of the machines.
As he watches, he sees the clouds vomit their sludge upon the dusty ruins, curtains of dirty rain sweeping toward his exposed position. Before he can catch his breath the storm is upon him, striking his wounded body like a swarm of bees. The rain is acid, its drops hissing on the corroded pavement around him with the smell of sulphur and death.
The storm sweeps over the bridge and rain falls into the chasm at his feet, and in a moment steam begins to pour from the crevasse, billowing up and obscuring everything to his west. He begins to retreat from the steam, holding onto the wall of the roadway for support as he draws in ragged breaths, each one more painful than the last.
John Connor limps across the pavement, desperately searching for escape from the stinging rain, but there is no shelter in the wrack. Looking over the side of the bridge shows only broken rocks falling away into the molten crevasse, so he soldiers on, drawing breath after ragged breath and bleeding from a dozen wounds.
Finally there is a shape in the road ahead and John limps toward it. It reveals itself as an ancient, rusted automobile, its make rendered unidentifiable by the acid rain and the years of neglect. John pulls open one of the doors and it falls in pieces at his feet. He is left holding a bit of metal from the window casing, and he scrambles in and huddles on the metal skeleton of the seat beneath a bit of roof that isn’t yet fully rusted through.
How long John remains there he doesn’t know, as the storm visits its wrath on the landscape and the lightning flashes in the murk. His eyes begin to close from exhaustion and pain and the ineffectual work of his lungs in this poisonous world.
As he drifts in and out of consciousness, he hears something over the thunder and roar of the storm. He squints his eyes and casts a look around, and can see a glimmer in the darkness, the whine of an electric motor. He grips the bit of metal window casing to him, a pathetic weapon against the oncoming vehicle. With a flash it gains the bridge, a single yellow headlight lancing through the rain. The motorcycle speeds past John’s hiding place and skids to a stop at the edge of the bridge. John tumbles out of the carseat and rises unsteadily to his feet, metal bar held ready. There is a dark form at the edge of the bridge, seemingly inspecting the still smoking crater left by his appearance back through time. John shrinks back against the rusted car, waiting.
The form turns and again mounts the motorcycle, which alights with a whine as it spins and comes for the rusted car. It stops a dozen meters from the vehicle, the headlight illuminating the wreck and throwing harsh shadows across the road. John cowers behind the car.
“Connor?” The voice rises above the storm, a high, feminine voice. John remains silent, tracking the voice as it continues. “John…I know you’re there. It’s me. It’s…Cassie.”
John smiles grimly, turning and answering in kind. “We both know that’s no proof.”
The woman’s voice is louder, closer. John can hear the sound of boots on the pavement. “I have no proof that you would accept. You can come with me now, or you can die here. Your choice.”
John shakes his head. “I’m sorry.” The voice of Cassie is now close at hand, and John rises from his hiding place, the jagged piece of metal held high. He turns and brings it down on the dark form standing beside the car, and his hand is stopped at the wrist.
The lithe form of Cassie stands in the rain, her hand gripping John’s wrist. She is wearing an old black raincoat and underneath she wears her embroidered vest with bandolier of grenades and a belt of weapons on her hip. John’s gaze rakes over her form a moment, his head swimming with the sudden effort of standing after his loss of blood.
Cassie finally responds. “I’m not.” Her other fist connects with John’s head and the man falls limp at her feet, his weapon clattering away into the dark.
Griffith Observatory
There is the sound as of a door closing with a metallic clang and John awakens with a splitting headache. There is the sound of a pair of boots on concrete, echoing through a large space. John’s vision swims and he tries to make sense of where he is, his reddened eyes staring up to the sky. A man glares imperiously back down at him, a stern, naked figure seated upon a throne with gray beard and skin, holding a staff in one hand and lightning bolts in the other. Before him is rendered a small, turbulent orb, and surrounding that strange orb is a pale pink ring.
John blinks, turning his head right and left. He’s looking at a fresco, part of a larger story painted on the ceiling above him. However, the other figures are cast in darkness or smudged with dirt and soot or cast into darkness. The source of light, recessed in the wall at the painting’s base, shines its single beam onto the imperious gray god.
John coughs and struggles to breathe, his breath rattling in his chest. He looks down at himself, and sees that the wounds on his chest and arms are bandaged and he’s wearing a tattered pair of pants. He tries to turn his head and winces with pain. He puts a hand up to his forehead but there is a clanking sound and the movement of his hand is arrested. Looking down at his hand he sees that he is handcuffed to a large brass sphere. The sphere sits on the floor beside the small metal bedframe in which he now lies. Curving walls surround him, opening up above the level of the bed into the larger domed space with the fresco and its single point of light. At the other side of the small circular space is a break in the wall, and as John’s eyes come into focus he sees that there is a darkened hallway beyond lit with a flickering light.
A distant burst of static, as if from a ham radio, echoes throughout the space. John turns his pounding head left and right, trying to localize it, but it is everywhere and nowhere. He groans, rising into a sitting position on the side of the bed, his hand still shackled to the brass ball. He stares at it levelly.
John Connor emerges from his walled prison with a grunt, the brass sphere held between his hands and the veins popping in his forehead and neck as he strains to lift it. With a final heave he slides it onto the circular wall of his prison and stands, panting, his weight resting on the wall as he surveys his greater prison.
The room is a circular foyer with a domed roof. To the left are a pair of closed and padlocked golden metal doors covered in geometric arabesques, and beside the large doors is a ticket counter, its metal grille and glass window smashed. Radiating off of the foyer are three hallways. The one ahead of John is darkened, lit only by the flickering light. Bolts of electricity arc from a device set into an alcove of the hall, and John turns his attention to the hallway behind him. That hallway is choked with debris, appearing to have collapsed at some point. He turns his attention to the final hall, and this is lit with a few dim lights. At the end of the hall is another door.
With a grunt, John picks up the brass sphere and staggers down the hall toward the door. On his left, he passes a model of the lunar surface, a black and white relief ghostly in the dim light. Bypassing the faux lunar regolith, he reaches the far door and tries the handle. Another burst of static intrudes on the scene and this time John can place the sound. It is emanating from beyond this heavy metal door. He rests the brass sphere upon the handle and it moves, opening inward suddenly.
John practically falls through the opening door, overbalancing at the sudden shift, and his foot hits the carpeted floor hard on the other side, a muffled thud in the cavernous space.
He has entered another circular room. The great dome of the ceiling extends almost to the floor, with only low walls supporting its great bulk. But to John, it doesn’t appear to be a ceiling at all. Rather, it appears that he has entered an open-air amphitheater. The air above him is filled with the soft blue and purple light of the Milky Way galaxy, spattered with innumerable stars, their light reflected in John’s weary eyes. Casting his gaze down from the heavens, he sees the source of their light. A strange, gangly machine stands in the center of the room, a tripod of metal supporting a large metal axis upon which rest two pockmarked spheres. A multitude of lenses within these spheres send light in all directions, spreading an image of the galaxy on the dome of the great round room. For a moment, John stands spellbound by the sight.
“Connor!”
The sound of Cassie’s voice breaks the spell, and John shifts his gaze to take in the quotidian aspects of the room. Cushioned seats surround the gangly projector in the center of the room, and partially hidden behind the projector is a nest of boxes, tables, books, chairs, and electronic equipment of all types. Emerging from this nest of objects is the slim figure of Cassie, now bereft of raincoat but still sporting her embroidered vest. There are slight differences between that one and the one he remembers, however. The material is different, the animals stitched in slightly different ways and in different positions. Her eyes stare out of sunken sockets, her face rimmed by a halo of graying hair.
John steps heavily toward her, the sphere held in his aching hands. Cassie moves away from the projector and her hoarded objects to watch as John half staggers, half falls, down the ramp of the amphitheater toward her. “John, stop! How the hell are you even on your feet?”
John doesn’t answer, working on getting enough air into his lungs to breathe as he heaves himself toward Cassie. She stares in astonished silence as he makes it to the center of the room and stands glowering at her, the sphere held in his straining hands in defiance of her intentions.
Cassie regards this strange, willful display with wide eyes. The two stand a dozen paces apart, engaged in a silent battle of wills. Finally Cassie breaks down and averts her eyes. She pulls a chair from behind her and sets it facing a large worktable.
John gratefully sets the brass sphere on the table with a thud and collapses into the chair, his breath coming in ragged, choking gasps. He casts his gaze around the table. On it is a collection of equipment, most prominently what looks like a large radio connected to a battery pack. A display on the side of the apparatus shows a series of numbers.
Cassie visually inspects John’s wounds, her eyebrow raised. “Where does it come from?” she asks, finally.
John glances at her, still breathing hard, frowning at her question.
“Your inability to just lie down and die.”
John laughs, grimacing as his hand goes to his head. He rubs the rising lump on his forehead, finally forming the word. “Justice.”
Cassie turns away, rummaging through some rat-gnawed cardboard boxes. “Revenge, you mean.”
John smiles darkly. “Call it what you will.” He leans back, his eyes closed. “I guess this means you’re not going to kill me.” He rattles the chain of the handcuffs. Cassie shakes her head. One eye opens a slit. “Unless you want to torture me a little first.”
Cassie frowns, turning back to her search. John nods. “So, the thought has crossed your mind.” He sighs. “How long has it been? Two years? Three?”
“Two years, ten months, and eighteen days.”
“I saw the Terminator come through…it would have appeared about a year ago from your perspective.”
Cassie grunts. “Yes.”
“Did you manage to zero it?”
The graying woman emerges from her boxes with a few dusty brown packets and places them on the table in front of John. “Pork, omelet, or beef?”
John stares at them a moment, uncomprehending. “What?”
The woman points at each brown plastic package in turn. “Pork and rice…omlete and ham…beef stew.”
John laughs with sudden mirth, pulling the omelet and ham packet toward him. “I haven’t seen an actual Vomelete in years…from ‘94…how did you find them?”
Cassie shrugs. “The end of the world happened differently here. As far as I can tell, there was no Resistance, no war. Just the bombs and the extermination. Then…whatever happened to cause…all that.” She gestures to outside the dome. “But there was still a lot of stuff left behind.”
John picks up the far right packet. “Beef.”
Cassie smiles slightly. “Good choice.”
“Perhaps you can tell me all about what I missed over dinner.”
Cassie doesn’t answer, but opens the package and removes the self-heating element.
John digs into the steaming plate of food with a brown plastic spork, spearing a chunk of beef and delivering it to his mouth with relish. Cassie stares at him with a fierce grief and John’s spork freezes on its way to the plate, a word forming around the morsel in his mouth. “What?” “You might well be eating stewed mammoth right now; both are just as extinct.”
John raises another lump of meat on his spork, his eyes flicking between the meat and Cassie sitting across the table from him. There’s something fragile about the calm of Cassie’s words, like a dam about to break. John puts down his spork. “We still have a few cattle in our world. We certainly have dogs and coyotes. I find it hard to believe that it’s so bad here.”
Cassie looks down. “It’s not that bad…it’s worse.”
John puts down his spork. “What do you mean?”
Cassie fixes him with a penetrating look. “You saw those gashes in the ground out there, the sea just pouring in, the acid rain. Tell me, did you see anything alive?”
“It was dark…pouring down rain. I didn’t see any dogs, or…”
“I don’t just mean dogs and cats and rats. I mean trees, bushes, grass. Because I’ve been up and down the coast, as far as these pits allow. And there is no sign of green. Anywhere. For over two years, I haven’t seen a single weed.”
“That’s impossible. The air would…”
Cassie’s brows go up. “The air would what? Get thinner? It would be like hiking on Everest. It saps your strength, starves your brain. And if you couldn’t adapt, you’d die. It’s poison.”
John sits a moment with that thought, then continues eating, mechanically, for sustenance, drawing the occasional deep and rattling breath to keep from blacking out.
Cassie continues as he eats. “The machines did something here once humans were gone…something to the Earth. They poisoned it, strip mined it, chewed it up.”
John pauses. “Why? They had the planet for themselves…why destroy it?”
Cassie looks up at the false sky, her eyes red. “Because I don’t think they’re here anymore. I told you I went North for a while, then East, then South, searching for anything alive. I didn’t see any machines. They didn’t need armies this time, they didn’t need tanks. Or if they did, they’re gone like the trees and rats. I think they must have left.”
John follows her gaze to the false heavens. It appears that Cassie would cry, if she had any tears left. “You think they left Earth?”
Cassie shrugs. “Maybe. Who knows? Wherever they are, they don’t seem to care about this place.”
John takes another bite, following it with a drink of stale water out of a plastic children’s mug. “And the Terminator? I notice you ignored my question, earlier.”
Cassie stands up, moving away from John to rummage around in her nest. “That thing arrived almost exactly one year ago. It took up residence downtown, in the old stadium.”
John frowns. “It didn’t try to hunt you down?”
Cassie shakes her head, her back still turned to John. “I guess it doesn’t view me as a threat. It knows I’m here…it must’ve seen me on salvage runs, monitored me hooking this place up to run on heat from the pits. It probably knows you’re here, too.”
John drops his spork, trying to stand up from his chair and knocking it to the floor. He backs away from the table but he is still cuffed to the brass sphere. He pulls at his restraint, eyes fierce. “And you were just going to keep me locked up here with that…thing…roaming around?” He turns to the door, scanning the exits. “It could be on its way now…my arrival could have changed its calculation…” He thrusts his hand toward her. “Free me! Now! Or I will be forced to…”
“To what?” Cassie has turned back to John, a backpack in her hands. She drops the bag on the table next to the radio device. “You are in no position to make demands of me, John Connor.” The words come out like dry bones falling to the floor, one after another. “That Terminator won’t abandon its position…not now. Trust me. And sit down, before you fall over.”
John is breathing heavily, swaying on his feet. He grudgingly takes the chair in his free hand and sets it back upright, sitting heavily in it once more. “What do you want from me?”
Cassie regards him sadly, mournfully, as if she’s about to break apart. She begins to shake, her hands going to her head and pulling at her hair. Only then does John see the cuts on her arms where her sleeves are fallen away, the lacerations and bruises. Finally her fists slam onto the table and she stands there, breathing hard, words forced from her unwillingly. “Connor…I…I want…I need…your help.”
John stares at her, this broken thing with her hands on the table to support her weight, her hair obscuring her hollow eyes, and he is taken aback. “Cassie…you’ve been alone for a long time…what that kind of isolation does to a person…I know how you feel.”
She glares at John. “You don’t know how I feel…how a human feels. You traded in your humanity a long time ago.” She points to her head. “I can hear them…talking to me. Pleading with me…constantly. So many voices…all dead…all still alive in here. In here!” She opens her mouth in a cry of horror, but no sound comes out. “It never ends! I need them to stop…I need the voices to stop…I can’t look at them anymore!”
John tries to reach out, to grab her hand in his, but she recoils, breathing hard. “Don’t you dare touch me, John Connor. I have enough blood on my hands without you adding to it.”
John raises his hands in a peace gesture, offering the floor to her. “Please, tell me what you need me to do.” He gestures to the radio device and the backpack. “Does it have anything to do with this?”
Cassie wipes at her already dry face, trying to regain her composure, and finally nods mutely. “This is how I planned on getting a message through the shield.” She switches on the radio and a loud static fills the room.
John cocks an ear at it. “That isn’t just background noise. That’s a jamming signal.”
Cassie turns the dial, and the same signal registers on every frequency. “The Terminator is operating some sort of powerful jamming device at the stadium. Sophisticated… and programmable. Every frequency I try, it blocks. There’s no way to get a message through.”
John nods absently. “What about a light signal, naval codes or something?”
Cassie shakes her head. “The whole stadium is walled in. It’s practically a fortress down there.”
“But there’s only one clanker guarding it, regardless of its home field advantage. A plasma rifle would make short work of it.”
Cassie shakes her head. “There’s nothing like that here. The best stuff we have was made in 1997…museum pieces at this point.”
John sits back in his chair. “Still, as far as missions go, this doesn’t seem beyond the capability of someone as resourceful as you. Why come begging me for help?”
Cassie’s haunted face turns away again, and she grips the edge of the table for support. “I tried to do it alone…again and again. I would go down there armed to the teeth, ready to zero that bastard…but each time…I…” She cries out, pressing the palms of her hands onto her ears. “The voices! It’s torture!” Her voice goes quiet, but is no less frightening. “They’re alive…they’re clawing at my mind.” She turns to John, her eyes wild, her voice barely a whisper, pleading. “Can’t you understand, I can’t go back there…that’s where the voices are loudest.”
She pulls a pistol from her belt, slamming it on the table between them, her hand on the barrel. She grimaces at John, pain and hatred vying for control of her face. “I can’t go there, John. I just can’t do it.” She turns the gun, still lying on the table, to face John. “So I need you to tell me something John, and don’t lie. I’ll know if you lie. Tell me you will go there and fix this. Tell me that you’ll warn Kyle, make him go back in time to 1984, set things right. Tell me you’ll fix it. Tell me that you wont…trigger…that…bomb.”
There is silence in the room. John can hear the minute workings of the planetarium projector as it slowly moves in rotation and the Milky Way galaxy spins slowly overhead. John slowly raises his hands again, willing everything to slow down. “Cassie, put the gun away. Please.” Cassie doesn’t move, and John sighs, looking over at the projector. “You know, my mother never took me here, when I was a kid.”
Cassie frowns, thrown by the nonsequitur. “What?”
John continues. “I never knew something like this existed, back then. We were always too busy learning about computers, about guns, about fighting. Sarah would never have allowed it.”
The old woman glowers at him. “You never took a field trip to the Planetarium?”
John shakes his head. “She was more the sanitarium type.” He chuckles at his joke despite himself, but his smile drops when he sees Cassie’s expression.
The woman still has a hand on the gun. “I still need an answer, John.”
John shifts in his seat, centering himself in front of the woman. “You know I want Reese to go back in time…it’s his destiny. It’s all I ever hoped for.”
Cassie picks the gun off the table, testing its weight in her hands. “But if that fails…if Kyle fails…what will you do?”
“I won’t fail. Nor will he.”
Cassie points the gun at him, clicking the safety off. “Not good enough. Try again.”
John’s expression doesn’t change. “How can I promise anything at the point of a gun? Cassie, put the gun away, and we can talk. We have time, surely.”
The woman glances at the lighted display on the radio. “You didn’t leave me a great deal of time to work with, when you came through that portal, Connor.”
John looks at the display again, realizing what the numbers mean. The number reads 07:10:11:59. As he watches, the display flicks to 07:11:12:00. John stares. “It’s today, then? July eleventh?”
Cassie glances at the display. “In exactly six hours, the time machine will arrive in this reality, in the middle of that stadium. That’s how I know that Terminator won’t abandon its post…and why I need your answer now.”
“And I’m telling you that you won’t get another answer from me, and that is the truth. So shoot me if you have to, and let Skynet escape and be lord over this dead Earth forevermore. Or put down the gun and let me help you fix this. For Reese…for Fritz…for everyone.”
Cassie hesitates a moment more, fighting with the voices in her head. She raises the gun to John’s head, grimacing as she tightens her finger on the trigger. With a yell she fires.
John doesn’t wince. The bullet grazes his hair, splintering the back of a chair in the amphitheater behind him. Cassie slams the gun down on the table, breathing hard. She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a small silver key, which she tosses to John, who catches it with his free hand and unlocks himself from the brass sphere. He smiles at Cassie. “Thanks.”
Cassie pulls some clothes out of an unmarked box, the clothes still entombed in airtight plastic. “Fresh from the cleaners…circa 1997.”
John pulls the tab on the plastic and air rushes into the package with a hiss, reinflating the clothing. He throws a few shirts and slacks over his shoulder and goes to the washroom to try them on.
In the washroom, John inspects his face, the harsh weatherbeaten contours of his cheeks and jaw, the scar running down his face in a red line. He grimaces, holding his head. The pain remains, and he inspects the lump on his forehead from Cassie’s fist. Shaking his head in an attempt to clear it, he pulls the clothes on, noticing that there is a spot of blood on the pure white of his shirt collar. He inspects his wounds, searching for one that is still bleeding, but gives up. There are too many to count.
Cassie, meanwhile, is laying weapons on the floor. Rifles, bandoliers of grenades, machine guns, mines, C4 explosives, boxes of ammunition.
John returns from the washroom, dressed in navy blue slacks and suit jacket with a white dress shirt underneath. He adjusts the buttons on his sleeves absently, making sure that they don’t restrict his range of motion. “I hope this isn’t a black tie event.” he quips wryly, pulling at his collar.
Cassie rocks back on the balls of her feet, still crouching next to the weapons as she looks John up and down. “You’ve ruined the collar already.” she remarks, noting the bloodstain on the back of the white collar.
“The curse of being mortal.” he repartees. He sways, holding his head and grimacing.
Cassie frowns. “You okay?”
John puts out a hand to steady himself. “I’m fine. Must be the air…and that knock you dealt me earlier. You could have been a boxer with that hook.”
Cassie grins. “Who says I wasn’t?”
John gives her a sidelong look and she waves it away. “Nevermind.” She gestures to the weapons arrayed at her feet. “What do you think?”
John kneels down on the opposite side of her and begins inspecting the weapons. “Good. Very good. Reminds me of my time with Enrique.”
Cassie tilts her head. “Enrique?”
“Just one of the lowlifes Sarah would hang out with…to toughen me up.”
Cassie sighs, opening a box of ammunition and tossing away a rusted bullet. “The more I hear about your childhood, the less I envy it. Didn’t you ever go to concerts? To school? Have friends?”
John pulls an AK-47 toward him, checking it for rust. “For a year or two…while Sarah was institutionalized for trying to blow up Cyberdyne. I had foster parents…went to school. But all that ended when Sarah escaped and took me back. By then there wasn’t much time left in the world. Everything was about that final mission…to destroy Skynet before Judgment Day. Pointless, of course. Sarah knew full well that it would happen regardless. But she needed that hope…the strength of that belief in a better world. It eventually got her killed, of course.”
Cassie is looking at John strangely. “You never really had parents, did you?”
John’s eyes flick to Cassie, then back to the weapons. “I had Sarah. She taught me everything I needed to survive.”
The woman puts down her grenades. “I understand now.” She reaches out to John, but pulls her hand back at the last moment. “I’m sorry. I always thought that…”
John looks up sharply. “That what?”
“That you chose to become…this. But that’s not it at all, is it? You were never like the rest of us because…you were never given the chance. You were never able to be a child.”
John goes back to selecting weapons. “We’re wasting time. Focus on the mission. That’s all that matters.” He picks up a pair of goggles, noting the military emblem on the side. “Night vision…US Army. This is good tech.”
Cassie nods to herself, not taking her eyes from John. “The mission. Of course.”
The radio is placed into the backpack and is slung over Cassie’s shoulders. The man and woman march out of the planetarium and down the hall, past the great foyer with the fresco of the stern gray god. As they pass the adjoining hallway, John glances around it and sees that the flickering light is caused by a metal ball that is sending tendrils of lightning out toward the walls. “It’s a Tesla Coil.” Cassie says by way of explanation. “I keep it running as a reminder.” John nods in understanding. Cassie is already a the front door, unlocking it and pushing it open.
The duo emerge into the thin air of the dying world, the great stormclouds still glowering overhead but no longer vomiting down rain. Greasy puddles stain the ground, and Cassie leads the way to the right across the dirt and down a concrete ramp to the garage at the side of the observatory.
The metal dumpsters are rusted and rotted through, the concrete pockmarked with age. Cassie goes into a shadowed underhang to retrieve the bikes while John keeps watch. He turns on the spot, looking down at his feet as he sees that he is standing within a blackened circle, like the pavement was scorched long ago. Within that circle is a patch of cement clearly used as a patch, but both the circle and the patch are old and weathered.
John steps out of the circle and walks to the edge of the crumbling cement wall separating the observatory from the cliff edge overlooking downtown. Gazing down into the wrack, John sees the seething red wounds slashed across the valley, steam rising from them and obscuring detail in their haze. Small in the distance, he sees Dodger stadium, partially surrounded by red gashes in the ground, lit from beneath by their hellish glow.
There is an electric whine behind him and he turns to see the headlight of a motorcycle shining at him through the darkness, Cassie sitting astride it. Beside her is the other bike, and John approaches it. He mounts the bike and activates the motor, which has been welded on in place of a gas engine and it starts up with an electric whine of its own. John smiles. “It’s just not the same without the roar.”
Cassie shrugs. “No, but the takeoff is quicker.” She gives the motor juice and speeds off, leaving John behind. He grins, speeding off after her through the darkness.
Downtown Los Angeles
The bikes wind their way down into the valley along Vermont Parkway, flying past the rotted husks of houses burned down to their foundations in the nuclear blast.
Reaching the valley floor, the man and woman speed side by side past the ruins of shops and businesses as they skirt one of the great open pits, weaving between rusted cars and trucks. There are no bones, no skulls, no evidence other than the buildings and cars that humans ever existed here.
They turn onto Golden State freeway, skirting a great pit that opens to their left where the Los Angeles river once ran, then head south toward what remains of Elysian Park. As the road falls away into the crevasse, they leap the barrier and continue on Riverside Drive, then turn onto Stadium Way before leaving the road entirely and climbing a low dusty hill and passing a dilapidated set of children’s jungle gyms. The bikes come to rest on a cracked helipad at the crest of the hill overlooking the last surviving structure of Chavez Ravine, and Cassie’s bike slows to a stop.
John cuts the motor beside her bike, surveying the scene. The stadium is enclosed in prefabricated metal walls, the rust not able to conceal the paint sprayed on the panels. The entrances to the stadium are demarcated with white paint. ‘ENTRANCE 4’, ‘ENTRANCE 5’, and ‘ENTRANCE 6’ are clearly visible on this side. There are no signs indicating exits.
John frowns. “The Terminator didn’t do all this. What is it?”
Cassie isn’t looking at the building, but rather down at the handlebars of the bike. “The machines didn’t build camps or facilities in this world…they just used our own.”
John’s eyes are slits. “I see.”
Cassie’s hands go to her head, her eyes closed. “They’re all in there…the voices. I can’t do it. I’m sorry.” She doesn’t look up, hunched over the seat of the bike.
John gazes on her with something approaching pity. Finally he nods. “Okay. I’ll do it. You have the radio…you can set it up here.”
Cassie looks at John, relief breaking through the pain on her face. “Thank you…John…thank you.”
John looks ahead. “Make sure the radio is on and tuned to three hundred Megahurtz. Our forces currently operate on that frequency. When I disable the jamming device…you’ll know.”
Cassie smiles weakly. “I’ll tell Kyle that I was wrong…I’ll tell him to go through the portal to 1984. We’ll fix it. Both of us.”
John gets off his bike, taking a rifle into his hands and throwing the bandolier of grenades over his shoulder. He pulls out the pair of night vision goggles and puts them over his forehead, wincing slightly with pain. “I’ll go on foot from here, though I’m sure that thing knows our location regardless.” He takes a step forward, then turns back to Cassie. “If I’m not back here in time…tell Reese…that I’m sorry.”
Cassie nods. “I will.”
John puts the goggles in place over his eyes and marches off down the hill, leaving Cassie alone with the radio and the torturous sound of the voices heard only by herself.
The Stadium
John moves quickly down the hill and drops into a crouch at the bottom, scanning the area through his goggles. The area in front of the stadium is completely clear of cars and other obstacles, making it a killing field for a robot with infrared vision. John turns away from that avenue of approach, looking instead to the left. A large fissure lights up his field of view, running across the desolate parking lot almost to the base of the stadium. Smaller cracks run in parallel to the primary fissure, breaking up the asphalt and creating ditches that a man might just be able to navigate unseen. John makes for these small fissures, dropping into one and starting off along the bottom of it, his boots squelching into oily, hissing mud.
John checks left and right as he moves, crouching, in the ditch. The cracked concrete above just covers him from view of the stadium and he keeps against the right wall as he moves. Suddenly he stops, some long-honed sense warning him of danger. He sweeps his goggles back and forth, finally noticing something pressed into the mud of the side wall.
It is a tripwire mine. The recent rain has washed it partially out of the wall, so that its bulk is just visible. John finally picks up the fine wire extending from the mine across the fissure to the opposite wall. He descends onto his hands and knees in the mud, the wet soil allowing him enough room to wriggle underneath the wire. He sits up on the other side, his body caked with mud. “First check.” He mutters to himself, moving forward again as stealthy as a snake.
John’s progress is slow. He avoids another tripwire mine and then deactivates a pressure plate, working steadily forward. Suddenly, there is an explosion from behind him. The first tripwire mine, disturbed by the rain and John’s passage, detonates, sending a shockwave through the trench. The ground shakes, and as John watches, a piece of the cleft behind him splits away from the parking lot entirely, sliding down into the molten river far below. A gout of steam rises from the wrack. After a moment, John continues forward.
Finally, John approaches the end of the fissure. Sneaking a glance above the edge of the fissure, he sees the walls of the stadium rising high on his right. He ducks down, and as he does so a shot rings out from above, striking the mud on the opposite side of the fissure. John flattens himself against the right hand wall, breathing hard. He moves forward, right to the end of the crack in the concrete. He pulls a rock out of the wall and tosses it up onto the pavement and a shot strikes the rock, pinging off of it and sending it spinning into the darkness.
John notes the angle of the strike, then scans his environment, noting a cleft in the concrete above him. He places his sniper rifle into the cleft and angles it toward the direction of the shot, selecting another rock as he does so. He places his eye to the scope, sighting to the top of the stadium wall, then tosses the rock. A tiny red glow briefly flashes in the night and the rock is struck again, and now John sees the gun and the head leaning out beyond the stadium wall. He lines up the shot, carefully calculating distance and wind speed. His opponent does the same, scanning the cleft for the glint of John’s scope. Suddenly, the high gun stops roaming, focused on John’s location. John takes his shot a fraction of a second before his opponent can fire, John’s bullet traveling through the Terminator’s scope and into its shining eye. There is the distant echo of metal impacting metal and the head disappears from the wall.
John is already on the move, leaving the sniper rifle and pulling out the AK-47 as he climbs out of the fissure. He fires with abandon at the Terminator’s last known location as he races, rabbit-like, across the final distance to the metal door marked ‘ENTRANCE 3’. He places a piece of C4 on the lock and dives away. It detonates, the lock destroyed. The door swings inward and John leaps through the gap as bullets pepper the ground where John was standing only a moment before.
Within the structure everything that John sees is cast in the dim gray-green of his night-vision goggles, the tiny amount of light and heat in the hollow halls amplified into glittering unreality. He holds his gun at the ready, noting the ghostly sweep of old human architecture, the grand stairs and escalators, the halls and merchant stalls built into the walls, everything coated in a heavy layer of dust. A large arrow painted on a scoreboard points to the right. There is no other way. John moves in that direction, beholding a set of metal gates hastily constructed across the hall, lying open. John moves through and sees that there is only a narrow path beyond that gate. On either side of the path, piled so high that the piles almost reach the ceiling of the great hall, are bags, suitcases, purses, wallets, keys. John sweeps his gun across the piles, awaiting any ambush, but there is none.
Connor’s mud-caked form moves through the interminable hall of bags and backpacks and through the next gate. Now the objects piled on either side are shoes and hats, gloves and coats, any piece of outerwear is piled in endless heaps. And still no attack comes. The arrows point again to the right, and finally John comes to a meeting of the ways, where several gates converge.
Beyond these gates is a ramp leading out onto the field. John shudders despite himself, sensing what must be beyond that ramp. John backs away from the ramp, turning in search of any other way. He inspects the metal covering the stairs leading into the offices and box seats of the higher levels, testing it with his strength. The rusted metal bends before his power and he forces it away from the stairs, climbing up and out of the abattoir.
John finds himself in a trash-strewn hall, unused by machine or man for decades. Dim red light filters down from stairs above into the hall at intervals, and he knows that he has reached at least the Loge level of the stadium seats. He chances a look up one staircase, seeing the cloudy sky above. He creeps up the steps, emerging onto the seating deck where he beholds the field.
The Terminator
For a moment John can’t process the sight that meets his eyes. He removes the night-vision goggles, relying instead on the red light of the cleft reflected off of the low clouds to reveal the scene. Where once was a baseball field, now there lies a great pit, cracked and weathered, descending dozens of meters into the ground. A collection of earthmovers sit rusting around the perimeter of the hole, and standing above it like a springboard is a tracked conveyor belt, as if this were a mining operation rather than a sporting venue.
As John’s eyes grow accustomed to the low red glare, he is able to distinguish what lies within that pit. It is an enormous pile of bones, a mountain of bleached human remains rising up almost to the level of the ground in the center of the pit where the conveyor belt ends. The enormity of it stupefies John, whose mouth opens in horror.
The grim moment passes, and John comes back to himself. He scans the stadium, trying to ignore the mountain of death that lies before him. The far side of the stadium has collapsed into the glowing chasm beyond, the metal overhanging the chasm groaning in the wind and opening one side of the pit to the vast molten gorge, backlighting the mountain of bones in red fire. There, almost imperceptible, is a power line snaking up from the gorge. John looks up to the center of the stadium rising above home plate, following the slim power line, and sees that many of the levels have collapsed in on themselves, creating a rusty metal slope down to the great pit. At the top of that rusting metal slope and overseeing the entire macabre affair is a small metal box. From that box, a light flickers.
John makes note of that humble box sitting atop the stands and hefts his gun in his hands. He places the night-vision goggles back over his eyes and retreats back into the tunnel. He ascends stair after stair, moving up toward that far flickering light. He reaches the upper reserve level of the bleachers, moving within the inner hallways, gun at the ready. Finally, he sees it: the stairs leading to the control room at the top of the stadium. He stalks forward, glancing left and right at the doorways on either side of the long curving hall.
Suddenly John’s vision goes blinding white. He tears the goggles away from his head, seeing nothing but brightness as the lights of the hallway flash on all at once, and fires blindly as he turns.
The Terminator is ready. Its skin is mottled and scarred, and one of its fleshy eyes has been shot out, revealing a glowing red photoreceptor beneath. It leaps down from the control room stairs, firing a machine gun down the hall. Only the turning of the hall protects John for a critical moment as the Terminator’s gun seeks its quarry, and John takes full advantage of that curve, diving into an open passage leading to the bleachers.
John emerges into the night, but the darkness is now illuminated by floodlights on high poles surrounding the arena. Many of the lights have burned out, but enough are still active that they cast upon John harsh shadows. He leaps up the final set of bleachers, trying to make for the covered walkway at the top of the stadium, but the T-800 emerges out of another passage. Its processors identify the warm-bodied human and its servos snap into position, raining bullets onto the furtive figure. Seats explode into plastic and metal shrapnel as John dives for cover.
John pulls a grenade from his bandolier and lobs it in the air at the Terminator. Its gun locks onto the projectile and fires, detonating the explosive in the air. However, John already has another grenade in the air, and this one lands near the Terminator. It detonates, knocking the machine off balance and sending pieces of metal tearing through the flesh of its left side. It affords John another precious moment, and he uses it to pull himself up to the walkway, where he rolls out of sight of the Terminator.
He goes into a crouch, but the Terminator has pulled itself up onto the walkway as well, its gun now useless. It tosses the weapon aside and races across the space at John, metal hands held ready. John tries to dodge aside and slip past the machine, but the Terminator catches John’s bandolier as he passes. John swings around, the bandolier caught under his arm. He grabs at a grenade as he tries to extricate himself from the bandolier, managing only to pull a pin. He lands hard on the ground, free of the bandolier and holding a pin in his hand.
As one, both combatants recognize the danger. The Terminator tosses the bandolier aside, and that movement gives John time to leap up and run for the control room. The cluster of grenades sails through the air and lands next to a rusting support beam, detonating in a wrenching explosion.
The entire top of the stadium groans, leaning forward as additional supports fail one by one. John grabs at the door of the control room, struggling to pull himself inside, where he sees the powerful radio, set to emit its pervasive jamming noise. With a final effort, John lunges forward and switches off the signal. At that moment, the room tilts on its axis as the rusted stadium fails, old trash and bits of masonry falling all around John as he falls backward out of the crumbling control room.
There is a crashing noise and the entire top section of bleachers slides forward, then suddenly stops. John sees that the Terminator is still hanging on to the edge of the structure, still moving toward him. A hundred yards below them is the rusted metal wreckage of fallen bleachers, and below that, the unimaginable pit of death.
John turns, twisting, in the air, holding onto the door handle with one hand. The Terminator still moves toward him, and John looks around for salvation. He sees that the great structure is held in place by a few fraying metal cables and bits of rebar pulling away from disintegrating concrete. He aims his pistol at one of the fraying bits of cable, muttering under his breath. “See you in hell, fucker.” He fires, snapping the cable with a rending twang.
The great metal shelf hangs there a moment, the tortured metal protesting, then it gives way. The entire structure slides down into oblivion, dragging the control room, John, and the Terminator along with it. Everything is chaos and destruction and a rolling boom as the top section of the stadium lands ignominiously at the edge of the vast pit of bones.
The ground shakes as secondary tremors from the event radiate across the stadium. Finally, the tremors subside and there is silence.
John is on his back. He lies partially buried by a pile of rubble, his torso and legs cold and numb. He sees the broken and bleeding body of the Terminator lying nearby, its arm detached from its body and its eyes dark. John struggles to move, the pain in his head unbearable. He hears his name, distantly, as if it’s only an echo. His eyes close, then the voice speaks again.
“John!”
Connor’s eyes snap open and he sees her. Cassie is making her way around the great pit, backpack in tow. John smiles weakly. “Cassie…it’s over…it’s dead.”
Cassie is racing toward him, but John’s vision is going dark. And suddenly there is movement in the pile of rubble. Red light returns to the eyes of the Terminator and servos squeal as it struggles to rise. Cassie stops cold, watching the damaged machine with wide, fearful eyes.
John sees his gun nearby, but he can’t reach it. His hand inches toward the weapon, but it is no use. He grows weaker, his vision darker. “Cassie…run!” He pulls himself from the rubble with a final heave, but his strength is completely spent. With a final shudder, John’s body goes limp and he sees no more.