DISCLAIMER: The story is not mine, though what I did to it is. I have
nothing, so don't sue. Anyway, no infringement was intended and no
profit is being made so suing would get you nowhere fast.
COPYRIGHT NOTICE: This entire text and its content, is the sole property
of the author, hereby known as The Raven. It cannot be copied,
reproduced or distributed without the prior written consent of the
author.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: The story is my interpretation of what the movie might have been
like if Reese had been a woman. I own the novelizations of the movie, as
well as the movie itself and can basically quote them word perfect. This
story is an amalgamation of them both, with an original flair. Not
necessarily true to canon, and I do know that there are scenes and key
points missing. It's called artistic license...
ARCHIVING: Only with the permission of the author.
The Terminator
By The Raven
PROLOGUE
The brutally harsh landscape stretched for as far as the eye could see. Ruined, bombed out buildings, broken metal wreckage, dirt, dust and ash and worst of all, endless piles of human bones. Deep layers broken and haphazard, sculls grinning maniacally into the night, long dead, but not forgotten from a collective unconsciousness. Through this desperate wasteland, living humans moved like ants, wearing gray clothing to blend better into the concrete and looking about with furtive glances. The humans carried weapons and moved like soldiers, but they were very young, no one was more than 20, but all moved like soldiers long used to battle. Overlooking this grim battle field, there was a building long ago gutted that served as a headquarters for the soldiers who were scurrying through the night. Here, surrounded by a bodyguard, and attendants, regular soldiers and senior officers stood a woman. She wore the uniform of any soldier, but her lapels bore the rank of General she possessed the aura of supreme commander. Closer inspection would reveal veiled brown eyes and brown hair streaked with ever increasing gray. The name tag sewn onto her uniform bore the name Connor. Turning to speak to one of the people surrounding her, one could see her face, perhaps the face of a 50 year old woman, perhaps the face of someone older still, strong and proud, and bearing a large scar traveling from her jaw to the underside of her left eye. The person she spoke to, scurried to do whatever it was the General asked as she turned back the the battle field. The soldiers were not meeting any resistance from the enemy as they advanced across the bones of their long dead ancestors. They had won, now the time of reckoning had come for Sarah Connor, Commander and Chief of the human army. Turning she walked out of the overlooking room, automatically checking that she had her sidearm with her and snatching up her laser assault rifle. Ten bodyguards followed her along with 4 high ranking advisors and a unit of army regulars. Men and women, all hardened by long years of war and hardship, all determined to finish the task that they had begun.
Sometime later Connor and her entourage stood inside the headquarters of the enemy that they had fought against for so very long. The machines, the computers that had sought to destroy them and eliminate them, that they had been fighting as an organised force for over 10 years and as a species for almost 30 years. General Connor moved through the claustrophobic confines of the machine headquarters, towards her goal. All other things could wait, first there was this thing that had to be done, it was the most important thing of all for the moment, their entire past and future depended on it. The group entered a section of the headquarters that was more open and not filled with inactive Terminators. It contained a dais and a control panel and the scent of ozone and charred flesh, Connor stood before the dais and steeled herself for what she knew was going to happen next. "This is it." She announced in a low gruff voice, turning to the tech's that were already analyzing the control panel. 'Make it work, you have 30 minutes." She commanded, knowing that they would make her orders come true in less time. She had good people, she had trained them after all.
Ignoring the techs, she turned to the unit of army regulars that were the backup for her bodyguard. "You all know the history of myself, and you all know what the story is. I need a volunteer for the history to happen." Her eyes traveled neutrally over the men and women who stood nervously at attention. After a heartbeat, a woman stepped forward, her wild shock of blonde hair sticking out from under her hat and her uniform completely concealing her body. "PFC Reese, Ma'am." The woman announced evenly as she stood at attention. "At ease Private." With those words, Connor's body guard, advisors and the remaining parts of the army unit fell back to another part of the spacious room, realising intuitively that their leader would want time alone with the person who would be going back in time to save her.
General Connor looked at Private Reese for several moments before she spoke. "You know that you cannot come back and you will be facing impossible odds Private?" Connor asked the young woman, who looked at her with golden brown eyes that were too old for her young age.
"Yes Ma'am, I am aware of the mission parameters and I have been ready to volunteer for several years." The voice was even and almost detached, but had a trace of excitement and youth in it.
General Connor nodded. "Yes, I know Reese, believe me, I know. Now come closer so you can see the old face of the young woman you are going to save, and remember this Reese, you did succeed in saving me." Connor watched the young woman approach and watched Reese study her with open fascination.
After a moment Connor signaled to a tech. "Make her ready, and get that date right!" General Connor's voice was harsher than normal, but no one minded, she was after all, a living goddess, a legend walking in their midst. Ten minutes later Reese stood on the dais, covered head to toe in conductive gel and naked as the day she was born. General Connor stood nearest to the dais and looked at the young woman with unguarded eyes as the woman was looking elsewhere for now. "Ready." Came the voice of a tech. General Connor watched Reese nod to signal her readiness and then Connor said. "Do it." In an instant Reese was showered in a bright electrical light which caused her to collapse in what looked like agony and then a moment later she vanished. General Connor looked at the spot the young woman had just stood in and felt herself sag from the weight of her life and her responsibilities and the knowledge that she had carried for so long inside of her.
One of her most trusted bodyguard saw her commander collapse against the railing and rushed to her. "Are you ok?" The bodyguard asked the General.
General Sarah Connor turned eyes filled with anguish and sorrow long denied to herself as she had prepared for this moment for the past eternity. "I will be, someday..." The bodyguard was taken aback by the raw emotion in her commander's voice.
"Private Reese was a good soldier Ma'am..." The bodyguard said, sensing that the woman who had just gone to face history was the cause of her commander's anguished look.
General Connor looked at her young bodyguard with old tired eyes for a long moment. "Private Reese was the love of my life..." The words were heavy with old sorrow and decades of longing. The bodyguard looked at her commander and felt herself waver on her own feet. My god, the woman who had saved them all, had just sent the woman she had loved back into time to die to save her, so that she could save them all.
The General seemed to straighten a little. "Find the correct machine, the Terminator must now be sent back to another time!" She ordered. Half an hour later the techs came back carrying one of the Terminators on a stretcher. Sarah Connor looked at its features for a while. "Yes, this is the one. Remove its CPU and replace it with the reprogrammed one, make sure you replace all its relays and the backup sub-processor as well. We don't want me to have any nasty surprises now do we..." An hour passed and the machine now stood on the dais, ready to go back in time, to save Sarah Connor again ten years after Reese had saved her the first time. Again the dais sparkled to life and then there was silence. "Okay, rig it to explode, everything, the whole place must come down. Nothing can be left to possibly activate ever again. Make it so!" Sarah Connor's voice was sure as she spoke. Trusting her people to obey her commands, she walked out of the complex into the open air and looked around at the night sky that was begin to dawn.
For the first time in decades, she would greet the dawn without needing to run and hide. "Lynn, it was worth it, but the cost was too much my darling." She whispered to herself as she walked across the powdered and intact sculls of generations gone by and disappeared into the city to join in the reveling and to show herself to her army and her people. There would be time to grieve later, but now she needed to be what her people needed her to be, the savior of them all. They would never realise that the woman who had really saved them all, including their revered General, had just gone back into time to fulfill the destiny she had been destined to fulfill even before she was born. The woman who was a nobody in this time, would become someone essential to this times history and very existence. General Connor shut off her internal monologue, though not before reminding it that Reese was essential to herself.
THE BEGINNING
It was a normal dark Los Angeles night when the world was changed forever. Here, in a brief moment of time the future met the past and fate set gears in motion that seemed to have been waiting for this moment for a long time. While the city slept unaware, an electrical storm seemed to be brewing in the back alley of a boarded up building. Here the localized disturbance did not attract any notice as it swirled lose papers and other trash into the air. A ball of fiery electricity appeared and brightened, then dimmed, and then vanished, leaving behind a human form. Silently the figure rose, revealing the hugely muscled body of a man, capped by dark hair, with sharply angled features and dead cold eyes. The man was completely nude, but seemed to be unaware of it as he examined his surroundings. Moving silently, the large man slipped away into the night leaving no one to note his arrival or his departure.
Elsewhere in the city, where less people slept and the night was brighter and busier, another electrical storm was brewing and another fiery ball appeared soon after, depositing its cargo, before vanishing once more. Another human figure lay on the ground, not moving, not seeming to breathe even for a few moments. Movement soon appeared and with instant alertness the human form sat up, then stood up. This time the figure of a woman was revealed, again nude as the day she had been born. The woman looked around, standing on strong legs and possessing a finely contoured athletic body. The dimness of the night revealed very little about the woman, aside from a mane of wild, light coloured hair, and eyes that seemed to look at everything and nothing at the same time. The woman moved with the same fluidity and grace as the man had, but perhaps owing to her lesser bulk, the movement seemed smoother and more cat like as she vanished into the darkness of the city streets. One person witnessed her arrival and her departure, but that person reacted by looking at his half finished bottle of cheap vodka and wondering if he was finally seeing things. The old bum shook his head and finished his drink before falling asleep and dreaming of better times and other places.
The man who had appeared first with the ball of light had by now come upon a group of teenage boys who were standing at a grubby street corner laughing and talking amongst themselves and surreptitiously drinking from a brown paper bag that was being passed back and forth between them. They did not notice the approach of the nude man until he was virtually standing in their midst. There was silence for a few heartbeats, during which time the nude man seemed to be carefully appraising the group, but still his face remained dead and impassive, for all his good looks and well made body, he had no discernible personality at all. The first of the boys to speak was the obvious leader of the group, the eldest and the largest and the one with the daily need to shave. "Cold night?" The boy's voice was slightly slurred from alcohol, but it was confident as only the voice of inexperienced youth could be. The man turned his head towards the boy who had spoken and spoke, his voice void of emotion and slightly accented. "Give me your clothes." It was not a request, it was an order. For a moment, the boy thought to obey, especially when he saw death in the nude man's eyes, but then his snickering companions roused his teenage bravado and he felt for his stiletto in his pocket. The nude man tracked his movements and like a snake striking grabbed the boys arm in a hard unmerciful grip. The large man squeezed and there was the sickening sound of bones snapping and the boy screamed. "Get him!!" Instantly other knives came out and the closest boy stabbed at the large man's side. The boy had the chance to be shocked as he watched his knife blade snap off, before the large man backhanded him hard enough to send him flying. The casual blow and the broken knife caused the others to pause and then back away before turning and running into the night, eager now to go to the places that they called home that were hopefully safe from this walking nightmare. The nude man dropped the boy who he had been holding by the broken arm, by now the youth had passed out from pain, making the chore of undressing him easy. The man pulled on the oversized clothes, ignoring the smells of sweat and beer that seemed to permeate them. As an after thought, the man looked down at his fallen victim and slammed his now booted foot into the boys ribcage, instantly stopping the youthful heart. The man did not do it out of hatred, he did it to avoid possible complications and witnesses. The man moved without malice and without emotion as he stalked through the night intent on getting somewhere, anywhere, to his destination and completely ignoring any passers by.
The woman who was in another part of this big city had managed to travel several blocks before being spotted by someone who was not impaired by alcohol and did not consider her an illusion. The man looked at the naked woman standing before him in the deserted alley and licked his lips. The woman for her part regarded the man in an almost dismissive way before starting to walk again towards her own goal. The man predictably grabbed at the woman as she attempted to walk by him and was rewarded instantly with a knee to his groin and a sharp uppercut to his solar plexus. Unable to move and in total agony he curled around himself trying to resist the woman as she relentlessly pulled at his shoes and then at his pants. Moving quickly she pulled the pants on and belted them tightly before yanking off the man's shirt and pulling it over her head, the man's shoes were too large, but it was of no consequence to the woman. Now she stood over her intended rapist and regarded the alley carefully for a brief second. It was then that she saw the flash of light and heard the siren, a few moments before the police car appeared. Instincts honed from a lifetime of fighting and running like a hunter animal kicked into play and the woman ran down the alley in the opposite direction, moving on light feet, oblivious to the broken glass and filth under them. Before she reached the other end another police car had pulled in and a burly cop stepped out. He was raising his gun and starting to shout when the woman leapt up and over the car tackling him with her momentum and rolling away as the cop hit his head on the ground and became dazed. Pausing to scoop up the man's service weapon and night stick that had clattered away when he fell, the woman quickly ran across the street into the opposite alleyway. She now heard several sirens and knew that she would have to find cover and quickly or it would all be over before it had even begun. Running fast she swerved at a door way ramming her full body weight and momentum into it, causing it to crash inwards with her on top of it. Rolling to her feet she ran into the shadows of the building she had just entered and up a still escalator that marked it as a store of some sort. The thunder of booted feet followed her in as half a dozen cops flooded the shop searching for her. Long used to hiding the woman evaded the police for the hour or so that they searched and then finally came out as they had left the building. Moving on light feet the woman searched the store, looking for things she needed but knowing that she only had minutes before a hired security company would arrive to repair the door, she had overheard that bit of useful information as the police had come within breathing distance of her a few times. Grabbing a pair of shoes and a long overcoat and a handful of candy bars the woman made her way out of the building just as the private security firm arrived. Moving silently she made her way to the street and for the first time straightened out her body to look around. Spotting the parked car of the security people who had just arrived, she quickly moved over to it. The doors had been left unlocked, a stroke of luck for the woman, the first one so far. Quickly to avoid being seen or caught she opened the car and popped the trunk. In the back was a riot gun and several boxes of shells. In less than a minute the woman pocketed them and hid the gun under her coat before closing the trunk and moving away. She needed to find a place to think and organise away from the current trouble that had been caused by her arrival, and subsequent interaction with the denizens of the night.
SARAH CONNOR
Oblivious to the new arrivals to her city or to the trouble they had
caused, or might bring to her, another woman was walking up the short
path to her apartment building in a part of the city that was almost
quiet by comparison. This woman walked with the bounce of youth and
confidence it grace her and her body showed that she was not accustomed
to any form of heavy labor. Hurrying to escape the night and the unease
it caused, the woman quickly found he door and entered a warm and
inviting environment, the outside world forgotten in a heartbeat.
Smiling her greeting to the other occupant of the small home, the woman
moved towards the kitchen and asked her roommate how her day had been.
The following conversation was lighthearted and touched only briefly on
soon forgotten aspects of an unremarkable day for both the women. It was
to be the last unremarkable day and night of their lives.
In the dark city, the man with the dead eyes had already managed to
secure lodging and now was out looking for weapons. Finding a gun dealer
willing to do business at night did not prove to be much of a challenge.
As the dealer pulled out handguns and ammunition shotguns and assault
rifles, the man looked at each one, selecting 10 of the weapons and
hundreds of rounds of ammunition. The dealer could not believe his luck
as he prepared the sales slip and started filling out the necessary
paperwork. He might have done business at night, but he was an honest
man. His faith in humanity would prove to be his undoing, as the last
thing he saw before he dies was the man with the dead eyes looking at
him impassively before firing a shell from a 12 gauge sawn off shotgun
at point blank range at him. Ignoring the now dead gun dealer, the man
carefully packed his selection and moved out of the store, going back to
his lodging, really nothing except for a roach motel. He had paid a week
in advance with stolen money and warmed the proprietors not to come into
his room for any reason. The mans cold eyes and physical bearing ensured
that his wishes would be obeyed. Now entering his room, the man
carefully checked, cleaned, oiled and loaded each weapon and prepared
the ammunition, before concealing half of it in his room and moving out
of the window into the night once again, this time a bristle with
weapons. He vanished into the haze of the city and most people were
careful to step out of his way, though some who were not quick enough
found themselves brutally shoved aside with almost inhuman strength. The
night wore on and the man walked onwards towards some invisible goal
only he seemed to be able to see.
Not very far away, the woman had found a quiet spot to inventory herself
and take stock one last time before moving out on her mission. The
handgun was secured, it had a full clip in it and a round in the chamber
making eleven bullets in all. Working industriously the woman removed
the majority of the stock and the barrel of the riot gun, made sure its
7 shell magazine was full, and then filled her pockets with the
remaining shells, careful to distribute them evenly. Discarding the
night stick she had grabbed from the police officer in favor of a rough
looking knife that she tucked into the waistband of her stolen pants,
she felt ready. Eating her candy bars, removing glass from her feet and
finding some water to drink completed her task and now she moved back
onto the streets, blending with the night as surely as any other denizen
of this city. The riot gun hung ready off an old shoelace she had found
and her hip pocket had some cash in it that the man who no longer had
his pants had left in his wallet. The wallet and its other content was
discarded quickly and now the woman moved with equally determined steps
as the dead eyed man had through the night and towards her destiny.
Dawn finally arrived to the city and people begun their days, oblivious
to the events of the night and not knowing the events of the day. In
this morning bustle the woman from the apartment building was making her
way to work. A small Vespa motorcycle carried her lightly through the
traffic eventually reaching the plastic looking exterior of a fast food
restaurant, one of thousands in the country, but this one was where she
worked. After chaining her bike to a post the woman wandered inside to
face her day, nodding some greetings to acquaintances and friends and
avoiding her manager's leery glance as she moved to the locker room to
change into her uniform. The uniform would disguise who she really was
for a few more hours and then it would disappear forever. No one knew
that yet, not the woman, not her customers and not her manager, but two
others knew and those two people were fast approaching their individual
yet united goals. As the sun crept higher into the smoggy sky it
revealed more of the city beneath it, a city that seemed to be holding
its breath while it waited for something or was it that it waiting for
someone?
PFC LYNN REESE
It was while she was walking down a busy street that she got the feeling
that she was being watched, even followed. Nervous not only because of
the feeling, but because she was compelled to look around and felt
foolish in doing so, Sarah stopped and tried to catch her breath. It was
then that she noticed a very scruffy looking person who seemed to be
watching her with feral intensity. Sarah shook her head and walked
onward, thinking that for sure she was losing her mind and imagining
things. A block later she looked around again, and noticed the same
grimy person walking some distance behind her. Sarah could not tell if
the person was male or female as the person was too far away and mostly
hidden by a nondescript overcoat. All Sarah could make out was a wild
shock of short light coloured hair and an predatory look on the persons
face. Moving more quickly now, Sarah ducked into the nearest open bar
and quickly asked the bouncer if they had a phone. Though not one to
overreact, Sarah trusted her gut when it came down to brass tacks, and
her gut was telling her that she was in danger. She was waved into the
bar and forced to pay the five dollars it took to get in. Fumbling now
for a dime she advanced on the pay phone and desperately dialed the
police, all the while becoming more and more nervous. Typifying the
nature of the city's emergency services she was put on hold and it was
during that time that her attention was drawn to the small TV over the
bar. Looking more closely she saw her name flash over the screen and
then focused on what was being said. She knew that other Sarah Connor's
had been murdered, but she had not known until she heard the chilling
words that the announcer was saying, that she herself was in danger.
Desperately willing someone to pick up at the other end she looked
frantically around the bar, noting with horror that the unkept stranger
who seemed to have been following her was coming into the bar. Sarah
felt like a cornered animal and did not know what to do so it was with
almost perverse relief that she heard someone pick up. Managing to
explain her situation to the police officer on the other end, she was
told to stay put and keep in public and that a car would be there to
pick her up as soon as possible. After she hung up, Sarah realised that
her roommate did not know what was going on and that she had to warn
her, just in case the killer would go to her house and this stranger in
the bar was either a crazy or an accomplice. Ten minutes later Sarah was
sitting uncomfortably at a table in the bar, nursing a long forgotten
drink and thinking about her friend and roommate. The woman had not
answered, presumably busy with her boyfriend and Sarah was very worried
indeed. Every time she glanced at the wild looking stranger she felt
panic spill more adrenalin into her blood stream and the feeling it gave
her was making her nauseous and light headed. Sarah had no way of
knowing that the large man with the dead eyes had found her apartment
and had killed her roommate and her roommates boyfriend coldly and
efficiently. The man had also heard her frantic message into the
answering machine, telling her roommate to come and be with her and go
to the police with her so they both could be safe. The large man reacted
instantly to the message and stopped his rummaging in Sara's drawers,
moving out into the night and at full speed towards the bar where Sara's
fate was already waiting for her.
In what was only minutes the dead eyes man barged into the bar, ignoring
the employees who tried to stop him, merely swatting them aside casually
as he pulled his 9 mm handgun out, its laser sight slicing a red line
across the crowd of people. The denizens of this bar were more street
smart than the suburban Sarah Connor who had fallen to this man just
hours ago. They moved quickly out of his way, diving to the floor and
behind the half walls and bar, as if they would somehow escape what was
about to happen in this place. Sarah turned at the sound of the
commotion and now stood pinned and frozen in place as she watched the
huge man walk towards the back of the bar. Instinct kicked in and she
ducked her head down while trying to look as casual as possible so as
not to draw attention to herself, somehow. She did not notice the
scruffy stranger start to move and track the large man, nor did she see
the riot gun being raised to the ready. The dead eyes man did not notice
either, so focused he was on the fact that his quarry was in this bar.
He would find her, and she would die. Sarah felt it, felt the moment
when the large man spotted her and somehow she knew that there was no
point in trying to run or hide. She watched as the red light from the
laser sight tracked across the table and up her body and braced herself
for death. There was a huge explosion and Sarah flinched, but the pain
never came, the death never happened. Looking up she saw the large mans
body flail for a moment before it stabilized and turned as quickly as a
cat. The man fired his gun at the scruffy stranger who threw herself
over the bar, firing with the riot gun as she moved. Each time he was
hit the man jerked, but did not pause his firing and did not fall from
the injuries he received. Sarah by this time had joined the push to get
out of the back door of the bar, where frantic people were trampling
each other to get away from the gunfire that raged all around them. The
large man threw down his handgun, pulling up an Uzi from under his
jacket and firing it through the bar towards the scruffy strangers
location. The woman moved expertly to avoid the hail of hot lead,
bringing up her stolen handgun and emptying the clip into the large man,
who staggered under the onslaught. Flinging the weapon aside the woman
ran toward the back of the bar, locating Sarah Connor easily. Expertly
the woman filled the magazine of the riot gun as she ran, there was no
time to stop. Grabbing Sarah Connor's arm and pulling her away from the
crowd savagely, the woman spoke loudly and l clearly, projecting urgency
into her voice. "Come with me if you want to live." Sarah recoiled from
the iron grip and stared at the scruffy stranger, realising three things
at once, the stranger was a woman, the woman had just saved her from the
large man and the woman had ancient eyes in spite of her youthful face.
The combination of the three made the decision easy, Sarah nodded and
felt herself yanked though the bar at breakneck speed towards the front
door. The large man had taken the 30 seconds to recover and slap another
clip into his Uzi. He fired at the two women indiscriminately, hitting
several bystanders as he ran after them. The scruffy woman dragged Sarah
outside practically carrying her into an alley and throwing her into a
beat up old car that she had waiting. The huge man was only a heartbeat
behind them, spraying the air with the Uzi. The woman fired several
shells at the man and then dove into the car, starting it up and turning
the hot wired ignition. The large engine roared to life, having been
carefully examined and serviced during the long night, when the woman
was waiting for the opportunity to locate Sarah and identify her nemesis
at the same time. "Get down!" She shouted above the roar of the engine
and the concussive bursts of gunfire that were being joined by the sound
of sirens in the night. Sarah obeyed the whip of command in the woman's
voice and hid herself as the woman started the car on a frantic
backwards race away from the huge man who was now running after them.
The car sped down the alley at breakneck speed, then at the end the
woman spun the car around and stood on the accelerator making the tires
smoke as bullets hit the windows shattering them even as they sped away.
Then there was silence, or what felt like silence as the car picked up
speed. "Are you hit?" Came the barked question. Sarah looked at her
rescuer gasping for breath. "What is happening, who are you?" She
answered with a question. The ancient eyes turned to her for an instant
before turning back to the road but the woman merely repeated her
question. "Are you hurt?" Sarah could feel her temper rising as she
watched the filthy stranger drive the obviously stolen car down the
street. Not receiving an answer quickly enough, the woman took a hand
off the wheel and proceeded to run it along Sarah's body causing
immediate outrage. "Who are you, what is going on tell me now!?" Sarah
practically screamed as she tore the searching hand off her body. "I am
PFC Reese. I have been assigned to protect you. You have been targeted
for termination." The voice spoke with military precision. Sarah noted
that the woman appeared to have a local accent, something which she was
not sure if she was pleased about or not. "Termination?" Sarah could
feel panic rising in her throat, threatening to overwhelm her. "The man
who tried to kill you, is a Terminator. I had no way of knowing what he
looked like, until he made his move on you. He is a machine, a robot,
with human tissue grown over his mechanical skeleton. Indistinguishable
from humans, it sweats, bleeds and even has bad breath, it does not feel
pain and it cannot be killed. It has been programmed to kill you, it
cannot be reasoned with, negotiated with, or bargained with, and it
absolutely will not stop until you are dead." The words washed over
Sarah and triggered her panic. Reaching for the door handle she decided
that 50 miles and hour was a better choice than this lunatic. A strong
hand reached over and held her in place. "Without me, you will be dead
by the dawn. Listen to me, I am not going to hurt you, I was sent to
protect you." The voice was trying to sound soothing, but it did not
work and Sarah bit the hand that was holding. To her surprise the hand
did not let go, rather it shoved Sarah against the seat and the voice
spoke again, this time there was a chill in the tone that warned Sarah
to be more careful. "The Terminator does not feel pain, but I do, do not
do that again." Reese took her hand back and put it on the wheel, where
Sarah could plainly see her angry teeth marks standing out against the
pale but dirty skin. "Ok, this Terminator, who sent it and why?" Sarah
had decided that it was better to reason with this lunatic rather than
risk herself trying to escape without a good plan. "Skynet, they
programed it and sent it back through time, to kill you. I was sent to
protect you." Reese believed what she was saying, that Sarah could tell
that for sure. "The future? Who sent you?" Sarah knew that her voice
betrayed her disbelief but she was almost past caring anymore. "You did,
35 years from now." Reese said those last words quietly as she pulled
into a parking garage and brought the car to a stop in a parking place.
"We have to get rid of this car." Reese said as she reloaded her riot
gun and pulled Sarah out of the car. Moving quickly and quietly, Reese
selected a non rescript old fashioned car and quickly gained access.
Once inside she set about hot wiring it and kept answering Sarah's
questions in a low tone of voice. "Wait a minute, 35 years from now? Are
you insane?" Sarah tried to keep her voice low, but she could hear the
note of hysteria in it and could still feel the panic boiling just
beneath the surface of her skin, ready to burst out at any second. Reese
finished wiring the car and was about to answer when a patrol car
entered the parking garage. Reese pulled Sarah down below the dashboard
of the car and they held their breath while the car slowly crept though
the garage. The patrol car stopped near the shot up car that Reese had
abandoned and in the almost eerie silence of the garage, Sarah and Reese
could hear the cop radio the find in. The police car patrolled for a
little while longer, before exiting the garage and moving down the
street. Reese and Sarah had no way of knowing, but the report had been
intercepted by the Terminator, who had procured a police car and was now
making its way double time to the garage. Sarah looked over the
dashboard as the police car pulled and and turned back to Reese. "Are
you insane, your telling me that I sent you back in time from the
future, to protect me from a machine, called a Terminator, that is hell
bent on killing me?" Sarah felt the words tumble off her tongue and
somewhere deep inside of herself she knew they were the truth, but her
conscious mind had not yet accepted them as such. Reese looked at her
with ancient eyes that seemed to peer deep into her soul. "Yes, I don't
think you believe me, but at least believe that machine, who looks like
a man, is going to find you and is going to kill you, and I am here to
protect you." No sooner had Reese finished talking when the Terminator
drove his stolen police car into the garage. Reese knew better than to
wait around, the machine would be able to track them, and find them
quickly. She started the ignition and stepped on the gas, driving the
freshly stolen car out of the garage at what seemed to be a suicidal
speed. Sarah held on for dear life as the car careened down the road
with the Terminator in hot pursuit. The chase soon attracted other,
legitimate police cars and soon the whole, noisy, violent mass was
hurling down the streets of LA. Reese drove with a concentrated ease,
obviously very familiar with this sort of driving and she was able to
fire the occasional round though the now shattered back window without
having to look behind her. The Terminator had other plans and it was
gaining, trying to force the car that was protecting his quarry off the
road. Reese shouted to Sarah. "Drive!" With that she leaned out the
window and emptied the magasine of the riot gun at the Terminators car,
the heavy lead devastating the car,but not slowing it, or the machine
that drove it down. Reese came back into the car just as Sarah was
screaming as she lost control and the speeding vehicle slammed into a
concrete embankment. A moment later the car containing the Terminator
slammed into the same embankment, but burst into flames. Not pausing
Reese grabbed the riot gun, intent on protecting Sarah, and now knowing
what police were. They did not exist in her world. Sarah stopped her.
"No, stop, they will kill you!" The words stopped Reese, who realised
instantly that Sarah would die if she was left alone to face the
machine. The disembodied voice of a police officer of a address system
boomed in the air. "Come out with your hands up!" Reese and Sarah
carefully excited the car, both of them with their hands high and
visible. Sarah did not notice as she was cuffed and searched, all she
noticed was that the wrecked police car that had contained the man that
was chasing them, was empty, and that there was no sign of the man that
Reese called the Terminator. That knowledge sent a shiver of fear down
her spine as they were lead away to the waiting patrol cars.
THE ESCAPE
It was moments or hours later, that Sarah was in protective custody,
while Reese was being interrogated by several less than gentle Police
officers who were convinced that she had something to do with the deaths
of the other Sarah's and of at least 10 other civilian deaths not to
mention two dozen injuries spread across town. Reese was not stupid, she
only told them her name rank and serial number in answer to any question
they posed to her. She knew they would never believe, never understand
and would probably all end up being killed when the Terminator arrived.
It was only a matter of hours at most before the machine figured out
where Sarah was. The cuffs holding Reese to the chair were too tight,
cutting off the circulation in her hands and making her back cramp. They
also made it hard to breathe, but Reese barely noticed, she had been
through worse, far worse and had a lifetime of training in adversity and
evading death. These Police officers would never know that they could
not break her, no matter what they did, as they would probably never
live long enough to find out. Sarah was watching the interrogation from
another room, seeing Reese answer all questions with her name and serial
number, and feeling a pang of sympathy for the woman who had saved her
several times from the huge man who seemed so intent upon her death. The
Police officers had treated her very sympathetically once her identity
had been established and were now trying to establish a link between the
two people, the terminator and Reese. There was no record of Reese, no
fingerprints on file, no one knew anything about her as a person. Later,
while Sarah was trying to get some rest in an office and Reese was being
held in another room, the Terminator arrived. At first the machine was
almost polite in its attempt to gain access to the police station, but
then it simply drove a car through the building, smashing its way in.
The sound of breaking glass put Reese on alert, looking for any
opportunity to free herself, and it also woke Sarah from a fitful sleep.
A moment later, the sound of shouting, screaming and gunfire filled the
police station. Reese used the initial distraction caused by the
Terminator to overpower her guard and free herself from the handcuffs.
There was no time to lose, any second Sarah would die. The thought
propelled Reese into furious motion. Grabbing the unconscious officers
gun she tore out of the holding room on light feet, searching, listening
and using a lifetime of experience to avoid the Terminator that was
systematically searching and destroying humans through the entire police
station. Reese ran crouching low, using logic and battle reflexes to
find the room where Sarah was, avoiding the desperately fighting police
officers while she ran. Sarah hid herself under the desk in the room she
had been resting in, and willed herself to be quiet, almost fainting
from fear when she heard the window of the door being smashed and the
lock being fumbled. "Sarah!?" Came the yelled question from Reese.
"Here, oh God, Reese..." Sarah trained off as she was enfolded into
Reese's surprised embrace and guided out of the station, bullets and
glass flying everywhere. Outside Reese selected the most dour looking
car and quickly broke in and hot wired it, the doors barely shut when
she stood on the gas pedal and flew out of the parking lot. The
Terminator heard the sound of the engine, and focused its attention
outside, rushing to intercept the car it knew contained its target. The
Terminator would fail again, but the machine knew no impatience,
eventually it would succeed, that was all that mattered. Now it needed
to go back to its base and repair itself from this damage, or it would
be exposed as not being human. The machine also had Sarah's address book
and would be using it to its advantage over the nest few hours. Ignoring
the remaining police officers, now that the target was no longer in the
building, the Terminator moved out and mounted up on its stolen
motorbike and rode towards its base of operations.
Some hours later, the stolen can ran out of gas and Reese and Sarah were
forced to abandon it on the roadside. Sarah shivered in the night while
Reese dig through the car for anything useful before she would push it
off the road. After handing Sarah a first aid kit and a flashlight,
Reese pushed the car off the road. "We have to keep a low profile, the
police and the Terminator will be trying everything to locate us." With
those words, Reese guided Sarah off the road and they walked through the
twilight for a while, before finding a small underpass to shelter in,
designed to permit wild life to cross the road safely. By now, it has
been at least 36 hours since Sarah had last slept for more than a few
moments, and with the immediate threat gone, she felt the tiredness in
her body which in turn made the chill of the night seem positively
arctic. Reese scouted the area around the underpass, and came back
quickly with the report that there was nothing aside from the road
within visible distance. In the dim light, Sarah took the time to
examine her rescuer more closely, stress and bullets flying had made it
impossible for her to do more than glance at the woman. "Do you have a
first name?" Sarah asked after watching the woman for a few moments in
silence. Eyes that were clear and bright, even in the twilight, looked
directly at Sarah and Reese seemed to think for a few moments before
answering. "It's Lynn." The voice was softly modulated as Reese spoke.
Sarah nodded, turning the name over in her mind, before she shivered
violently in the chilly air. "Are you cold?" Lynn asked, looking
concerned. "Yes." Sarah mumbled, feeling like she was on the verge of
tears. "Come here." Lynn said, and sat on the ground, opening her
begrimed overcoat. Sarah did not hesitate, sliding into the welcome
warmth of the other woman, ignoring the strong smells of sweat and
gunpowder and stale clothing. Sarah rested her head gratefully against
Lynn's strong shoulder and found herself relaxing as the chill left her
body. After a few moments, she became aware of wetness on Lynn's
t-thirt. Curious, she reached for the flashlight and pulled away to
examine Lynn's shoulder. What she saw sent a thrill of dread through
her, Lynn was injured. "Oh my God, you're hurt!" Sarah exclaimed,
shocked at the injury, and at the fact that Lynn had not given the
slightest indication of it during the hours that they had been driving
away from the destroyed police station. Lynn looked at her shoulder, and
shrugged slightly. "Yeah, I caught one back there, it is not bad, the
bullet went right thought, not even very bloody. No major veins or
arteries were hit and the bone is ok." Lynn's voice had a dismissive
tone, for a moment forgetting that Sarah was not from her time, and that
for her, any injury was serious. In Lynn's world, this kind of injury,
could wait, or even be ignored, if it was necessary. "Not bad? What do
you mean not bad?! You've been shot, we have to get you to a Hospital!"
Sarah started to rise, but felt Lynn's strong hand stop her. "No, we
don't, the police and the Terminator are looking, I don't even exist in
this time line, and the wound is not serious anyway..." Lynn trained off
when she felt Sarah relax minutely. Sarah however, was not one to do
nothing, when she felt like she would do something. Rising she turned to
Reese. "Take your coat off, and roll up your shirt." There was a
commanding tone in Sarah's voice that Lynn smiled at, before she
complied. While Sarah worked on the wound, cleaning and bandaging it,
she asked Lynn to tell her about her future self. "You're strong, you
taught us everything we know about war, about the machines, about how to
kill the Terminators. We won the war because of you, and that is why
they sent the Terminator back to kill you. Without you, the human
resistance would never have existed, we would not have organised, we
would have been exterminated." Lynn's voice was earnest as she spoke,
her eyes shone with devotion and fervent passion. Finishing the
dressing, Sarah stood and caught her breath. "Me? All of those things, I
feel like fainting at the sight of blood, and I don't even know how to
hold a gun properly. Some world leader I am..." Lynn shrugged back into
her coat, and motioned Sarah closer to the warmth. "You're doing fine,
for someone who has never experienced anything like this before. Not a
bad dressing for a first time either." Lynn could feel the sting of the
antiseptic and the antibiotic cream, and she knew that the would would
heal fine, if she lived long enough that was. Sarah, now resting against
the other shoulder, and falling asleep, asked Lynn to tell her a little
about the world that sounded so unlike her own. As Sarah fell asleep,
Lynn filled her head with tales of the machines, and the war, of the
resistance, about her, and how from nothing, humanity had been saved.
The tales did not go on for long, but they made their way into Sarah's
dreams, where the ruined cities, and monstrous machines dominated the
landscape, and little humans ran around being squashed like insects.
Then she heard the barking of dogs, frantic, wild barking. The sound in
her dreams cape finally snapped her awake to her present reality. Lynn,
who had been resting her eyes, was instantly alert, and asked Sarah is
she was ok. "Yes, I am... It is a pretty terrible sounding world you
come from Lynn, and I was having nightmares about dogs." Sarah's voice
was thick with sleep, and she would have probably killed for a cup of
coffee. "Dogs are the only ones that can tell the difference between the
humans and the machines, at least until it is too late that is. We keep
them as alarm systems, and train them to protect us from marauders as
well. They are very important to our whole mission, and were elemental
to our success." Lynn helped Sarah to her feet, and they made their way
onto the road. It was another day and they needed to get as far as
possible from the city, towards some kind of safety, if it was at all
possible.
The Terminator had in the meantime been preparing all night to find and
kill Sarah Connor. It has repaired the holes and tears in its outer
skin, as it still could not risk being exposed for what it really was,
collected the last of its weapons and was now making its way to the most
probable person that its target was most likely to contact. If that did
not work then the Terminator had other options that it had gleaned from
Sarah's address book. Putting a large pair of sunglasses on, the
Terminator hid its damaged eyes and stepped out of the hotel room for
the last time. It would have to find another base of operations if this
didn't work, as the owners of this hotel would soon figure out that the
smell in this room, was rotting flesh and gunpowder. It was only a
matter of time, soon the machine would have its prey, nothing would stop
it, its programing simply did not permit failure.
Lynn and Sarah in the meantime had managed to hitch a lift father away
from Los Angeles and now found themselves at a dive of a motel by the
roadside. "We need to get supplies and organise, this place will work."
Lynn said to Sarah. "Do you have any money?" Sarah asked, looking at her
filthy scruffy companion. Lynn stuffed her hand into the pocket of her
pants and pulled out a wad of cash. "Get a room with a kitchen and a
back door." Lynn instructed. Sarah went and did as Lynn asked and soon
the two women found themselves in the dimly lit slightly musty motel
room. Lynn checked both doors and the windows with infinite care and
then turned to Sarah. "I am going to get supplies, don't let anyone in."
Lynn turned away but a moment later turned back, laying the gun she had
stolen from her guard at the police station on the bed. "I'll be back
soon." With those words, Lynn vanished out of the door into the noonday
sun. Sarah sat on the bed for a while, before deciding that she would
probably kill for a shower and rose at the thought. She wanted to be
done before Lynn came back, and at the same time wondered why she wanted
that. Shaking off the thoughts she quickly disrobed and went into the
bathroom, all the while thinking about her rescuer and her feelings
about the woman. Sarah was determined that she would get Lynn to take a
shower as well, the woman showed no sign of caring about her state of
dress or her body odor, but Sarah did care as it was starting to make it
hard for Sarah to be near the woman. As Sarah sat once more on the bed
after her shower, she contemplated why she wanted to be near Lynn, but
started to become very frustrated at the way her thoughts were running
in circles, and at the memory of what colour Lynn's eyes actually were.
Sarah had seen them for the first time in daylight this morning and had
noticed several things at once. Lynn had a fine scar slicing across her
brows and going down her cheek, the remnant of some unthinkable injury
for Sarah, and that the woman had almost golden brown eyes, a colour
Sarah had never seen before. The other things she had noticed about Lynn
gave her great pause right now when she rehashed them. Sarah shook
herself out of her thoughts and reached for the motel phone, she had to
let her mother know that she was ok, no one else needed to know, but her
mother was probably half dead with worry by now. A mild mannered
sounding woman answered the phone on the 3rd ring and immediately when
the woman recognised Sarah's voice, she started to badger her daughter
about how she was, where she was and what she was doing. Sarah tried to
be as vague as possible, partially so as to not worry her mother and
partially because she did not want to sound insane. Her mothers voice
sounded unusually tinny, but Sarah knew that the motels phone lines were
probably 30 years old, so it was no so surprising. Eventually Sarah's
mother managed to wheedle out of her at least the phone number to the
motel, which Sarah felt duty bound to give her and after getting her
mother to promise several times not to give the number out, Sarah said
her goodbyes and the women hung up. Feeling immeasurably better for
having talked to her mother, Sarah jumped off the bed and quickly combed
her hair and pulled her clothes back on. Maybe later she would have time
to wash at least her underwear, but for now she just wanted to be
dressed when Lynn came back, a ghost of the feeling that she had felt
when she had been observing Lynn caused Sarah to shiver slightly as she
sat down to watch the news and wait for Lynn.
The Terminator looked at the phone for a moment, feeling no emotion, as
a machine, it would never feel emotion. Picking the phone up once again,
the Terminator dialed the number that Sarah had given it when it had
posed as her mother. The machines had the ability to modulate any voice
they heard a sampling of, making it easier to trick and hunt down people
as a consequence. A gruff sounding man answered the phone, and spat out
the motels address when the Terminator asked for it. Rising the machine
looked around the devastated house, the older woman lay dead on the
floor and the whole place had been tossed over and laid to waste. Going
the maximum allowed speed, and by going faster when it could, the
machine estimated that it would take 8 hours to get to the motel. It was
time to move, before the quarry escaped again.
FINDING LOVE AMIDST DESTRUCTION
Sarah was starting to grow slightly worried about Lynn, when the woman
seemed to appear as if by magic. Sarah rose to greet the woman becoming
aware once more of the smell of sweat and staleness and dirt that
permitted Lynn's clothing. However, Sarah felt drawn to the woman and
moved close to her, wanting to examine her more closely and know her
better. Golden brown eyes turned to her, seeming to examine her
carefully and the room at the same time in a moment. "I will shower now,
otherwise I will attract too much unwanted attention from strangers."
With those words, the woman emptied her pockets of a wad of cash, some
coins, a zip lock bag of bullets and a candy bar. Tossing the pants
aside and pulling off her shirt, oblivious to her nakedness, she quickly
moved to the bathroom and disappeared into it. The sound of hot water
followed and in about 15 minutes she reemerged, scrubbed and clean, but
her hair still a wild mess. Reaching into the shopping bag, she pulled
out a new pair of jeans and a new white tank top, she quickly dressed,
then shook out her shoes and laced them onto her bare feet. She had
grownup in a time of great scarcity, underwear and socks were luxuries,
food, shelter and weapons were more important. Sarah was overwhelmed by
seeing glimpses of the naked Lynn, and now of standing near her, dressed
in clean clothing and smelling of nothing except for hotel soap and
shampoo and warm skin. Feeling like she could now really examine the
woman, specially as she wore clothes that fit her body closely and well
now, Sarah felt a warm flush crawl up from inside her short and into her
hair line. Lynn had a well toned body, it was not soft at all, but she
did not lack the curves of a woman, and though they were small, she had
what Sarah considered to be nice breasts. At that thought, Sarah shook
her head violently and turned to see what Lynn was unpacking from the
shopping bag. A motley collection of things was soon spread out across
the table, and while Sarah ate the candy bar from Lynn's pocket, the
woman explained that the strange ingredients were for making home made
explosives. "Come, you will help me, as you must learn how to do this
and many other things. Remember Sarah you are the hope for the future,
you must survive and you must learn how to be the soldier and leader
that will teach us how to survive the future." Lynn's voice was very
serious as she spoke and by this time Sarah knew that she would be wise
not to argue. Over the next couple of hours the women made rough
homemade explosive, and then filled the metal casing Lynn had bought
with it before adding homemade fuses fuses. For a whole lot of work,
there seemed to be a meager total, but Lynn seemed to be very pleased as
she packed them away into a small tote bag and they cleared up the mess.
While they had been working, Sarah had discovered that Lynn was a very
patient teacher and had a very wry but infrequent sense of humor. Her
low melodious voice showed a surprising degree of culture and
sophistication, considering that she had grow up amongst the ruins of
the world. Sarah asked Lynn to tell her about the world that was in the
future, but the woman had limited her stories to technical and tactical
aspects, saying that it was important that Sarah knew what to to expect
but did not know too much about what it was like. Lynn made Sarah
memorize what she told her if it was anything to do with weapons,
tactics or knowledge that would save the future. "You taught us this, so
you need to know it and you must learn as much as you can. You must, or
the future is lost." Lynn's golden brown eyes had been so earnest and
her face was so serious that Sarah had been compelled to touch it, just
to see if it was real. Now that Lynn was washed and in clean clothing,
Sarah could study her without being distracted by smells and
appearances. Lynn's body was finely muscled, but her skin obviously
never saw much sunlight, Sarah remembered the stories about how it was
not possible to move about during the daytime in the future. As she
watched her savior sit and guard, Sarah became aware of a huge amount of
scarring across Lynn's back. It looked like a large burn, long healed
but it must have been terrible, this caused Sarah to examine Lynn more
closely still. Her arms were cross crossed with long ago healed scars
and and then Sarah's eyes focused on a unnatural mark on Lynn's forearm,
it seemed to glitter in the dim evening light. "What is that?" Sarah
asked pointing and feeling fear of a different sort thread its way
through her. Lynn turned her forearm over, revealing another scar and
showing the full mark. "It is a laser brand embedded with metal. Before
you came along, most of humanity was in camps, being systematically
slaughtered by the machines. Those of us who were young and strong were
branded, to use as labor, the rest killed. The strong would then lift
the dead into the incinerators, until we too started to die. It was then
that you came, and taught us how to fight the machines. The generation
of children after my own generation is not branded and there are very
few older people in my world." Lynn was unconsciously rubbing the mark
as she spoke, her voice filled with the horror of her tale. Sarah felt
her heart wrench and a tear sneaked its way down her cheek as she looked
at Lynn. The woman was obviously quite beautiful, but her life had been
hard, as young as she was, probably not much older than Sarah. Her body
scarred by a war that had been raging even before she was born, her eyes
old at birth. This woman had come through time, to save her, Sarah
Connor, Lynn had given up her world and would probably die here in this
time. "What are the men like in your time Lynn?" Sarah asked, she did
not really want to know about men, but she wanted to know more about
Lynn and her world. "They are rough and gruff, like the women, no one is
treated any different, you either fight or you die. However, the men in
the army, in the resistance are good men, as are the women and the
children." Lynn's answer was short and to the point, almost devoid of
any emotion as she scanned the night once more through the window. "Do
you have anyone, in the future?" Sarah asked, watching the woman
carefully. Golden brown eyes turned to her with an unreadable look. "No,
there is no one. My parents died in the camps, if I have siblings I do
not know them. There is the army, there is the fight, there is
survival." Lynn's voice was soft as she spoke. "No, I mean
romantically." Sarah felt a flush creep over her cheeks and was
astounded to discover that she was hopping Lynn would say no. "Romance?
No, no one, I am not interested in men and almost everyone I know is
trying not to get killed. The was had only just been won, it had been
mere hours, when I was sent here..." Sarah felt her heart skip a beat,
not interested in men? Could that mean, could it possibly mean that Lynn
was interested in women. Sarah felt hope ignite in her, she had been
forcing down her attraction to this woman, not wanting to hope for
nothing. However this new relegation would need examining before her
feelings went off the scale. Also, she had only known this woman for a
few days, how could she possibly feel anything much for her, aside from
gratitude and curiosity? Sarah shook her head mentally, but could not
shake off the feelings she knew she was experiencing. "Have you ever,
had any romance?" Sarah squeezed the question out quickly before she
could stop herself. Lynn looked at her and did not speak for a long
time. "No, there has been no one Sarah. There never has been... When you
came to rescue us and when you taught us, you were in your late thirties
and I was barely even a teenager. About 2 years ago you gave me an old
photo of yourself, taken when you are about the age you are now. You
told me that one day I would understand why, the photo was melancholy
and sad looking. I kept that photo for a long time before it was
destroyed, and I would look at our face and try to imagine you at this
age. I rarely saw you in the future, only from a distance, so your older
self is somewhat unknown to me. However you always kept me in divisions
that were fighting close to you, like you wanted me near you. It was not
until I volunteered to come here, that I understood why you had given me
the photo and why you had kept my close. You knew all along what would
happen and how it would happen, you knew I would volunteer for this
mission. When you stood before me on the dais where the time machine
was, I looked into your eyes, and you had that same sad and melancholy
look in them as you did in the photo, taken almost 30 years before. I
knew then that I was going back in time, not for the future, or for
anything else, but for you. You see Sarah, there has never been anyone,
because there has only ever been you, since I was 12 and lifting dead
bodies into the furnaces and you showed up and taught us the meaning of
humanity again." Lynn tore her eyes away from Sarah and started to rise,
as if to flee, if only to the other side of the room. Sarah was not a
timid person, being from California and being on her own for quite some
time had taught her to face things head on if needed. She immediately
stood up and pursued Lynn across the room being careful not to crowd her
though. "Lynn, look at me..." Sarah gently commanded, reaching over to
lift the strong chin and noting the guarded look in the golden brown
eyes that she had grown so fond of in a seemingly impossibly short time.
"It's ok, you can tell me these things, I won't reject you. I am not
into men either, but I expect you might know that, as you know of my
future self. I care about you Lynn, it seems impossible that I care as
much as I do, but even when I was sure you were going to kill me and I
thought you were crazy, some part of me trusted you and a part of me
deep down inside knew that you were telling the truth. I was just in
denial for a little while. It is a pretty big pill to swallow all at
once" Sarah trailed off and looked into the young old eyes, seeming the
lean face and the immense pain this woman had experienced in her life
etched briefly on her fine features. "This world is unbelievable, there
is so much of everything, and I have never seen so much light or so much
green. I was never meant to see this, but i was born destined to see it,
amongst the ruins of a holocaust. Me talking to you is impossible, yet
here I stand, talking to you..." Lynn's philosophical musings were cut
off by Sarah's lips closing the distance between them and a light but
meaning filled kiss being planted on Lynn's soft lips. Lynn looked at
Sarah in a moment of stunned silence, seeming to ask a question and
evaluate the possible answer for an abbreviated eternity, before Lynn
reached out and with her calloused fingers and palm touched Sarah's face
lightly. Sarah was more impatient, and she grabbed Lynn's hand, guiding
it to be more firm, moving again to kiss Lynn, this kiss being returned
instantly as the temperature of the room seemed to rise by many degrees
all at once. The two women spent long moments gently touching and
kissing light soft kisses, seeming to feel each other out and then they
broke apart, seeming to decide without words to go back and sit down for
a while, this time on the bed with their shoulders touching and hands
linked together. Sarah knew that they only had hours before they would
have to move again, but she was determined that she would not rush them
into anything, as what was supposed to happen would happen, one way or
another. However she could feel the heat spreading through her loins
from the warmth pouring off the woman beside her, and now that she had
give her attraction voice and found it eagerly returned, her feelings
seem to have developed a life of their own and were starting to move and
were gaining speed. The sitting and holding hands lasted for some
minutes before the women were once more kissing and gently touching,
exploring cautiously, ignoring the building infernos of mutual passion
for the moment. Though they might have had only moments, it felt like
they had an eternity and the journey had only just begun...
What followed was what would define Sarah's life from that moment
onwards, and what for Lynn, was what she had been waiting to feel for
her entire life. Sarah, now that she had decided that Lynn was indeed
interested, took initiative and removed the clothes Lynn had put on
after her shower. This time, she allowed more than her eyes access to
the body she had started to covet in her subconscious, unbeknownst to
herself from the moment she had met this woman. Lynn was enraptured by
the unfamiliar feel of another's hands touching her. In her world,
people kept their distance, unless they had bonded, and most bonding was
done in what little peace and privacy there was. Lynn did not remember
her mother touching her, so this was something new to her, as was the
response her body gave to the situation. Her own curiosity getting the
better of her, Lynn started to remove Sarah's clothing, her hands
fumbling and hesitating, but her intent was firm and sure. Soon, the two
women were naked and looking at eachother in the poorly illuminated
motel room. The difference was startling, but of no consequence as they
moved towards eachother, bodies aching from the touches and kisses they
had already shared. Sarah felt something inside of her give way as she
lost all patience, she had to have this woman, and had to have her now.
Sure that her touch and feelings would be welcomed Sarah closed the
distance between them and gasped as she felt Lynn's nakedness against
her own, then felt her heart lurch when her hands ran along the terrible
scars on Lynn's back. Sarah turned her gaze inwards for a fraction of a
moment, knowing that the lurch in her heart could only mean one thing,
but finding it hard to believe that she could feel love, be in love,
with an almost stranger, from another time, who she had only just met,
but sure of it nonetheless. Turning her attention back to her new lover,
Sarah felt the sharp edge of Lynn's teeth sink into her shoulder
impulsively, a response to passion that Sarah wanted, that Sarah needed.
Lifting Lynn's head, Sarah moved in to kiss her, their mouths meeting
with passion that was threatening to immolate them both. Lynn gently
pushed Sarah, coaxing her to lay down, now looking down on the savior of
humanity, Lynn realised that what she had felt for her whole life it
seemed, her destiny, her birthright has been to survive, thrive and love
this woman. Closing her eyes against the intensity Lynn rested her
weight onto Sarah's willing body and for the moment, simply gave in to
it all.
THE TERMINATOR
The first hint of morning was appearing when Sarah was startled awake by
the feel of Lynn leaping to her feet in response to something only she
could detect. After a moment, Sarah heard it too... The frantic barking
of a dog, the dog they had both seen chained near the checking booth
when they had entered the motel's grounds. Lynn Reese cocked her head
for a moment, her battle trained senses hearing the unnatural whoosh of
air that signaled the use of a silencer on a gun that had just killed
the dog. "Get up, get dressed, get moving!" She ordered in a low voice
as she jammed her legs into her jeans, yanked on her shirt and scooped
up her overcoat, the homemade bombs and her shoes in one movement. Sarah
obeyed her lover immediately, taking her cue from the woman and jamming
her naked feet into her shoes. Reese had by this time secured the front
door with a chair and was moving towards the other exit, dragging Sarah
with her. "It's found us!" Lynn said in a loud whisper, checking the
clip of her gun as they ran behind the motel to take the long way around
to the parked cars in the front. A loud explosion conformed Lynn's
statement as the door to their room was blasted from its hinges by the
Terminator, Sarah stumbled, only to be pulled roughly to her feet by
Lynn as they pelted towards the first car in the row of parked cars.
Lynn did not pause her movement, rather she used it to drive her foot
through the drivers side window of the car and allowed her body to
driver forward so that she was halfway into the car before she stopped.
Easily maneuvering her slender frame into the car she shoved open the
passenger side door and proceeded to hot wire the car at a frantic pace.
Sarah did not hesitate and moments later they peeled away from the motel
at breakneck speed, but not before the Terminator had sprayed the side
of the car with hot lead as he or it moved towards the stolen motorbike.
The chase was on...
As Lynn drove, she yelled at Sarah to open the bag of explosives and dig
out a lighter. "Take the wheel!" She commanded as the back window of the
car exploded into a million pieces. Sarah obeyed instantly as Reese
leaned out of the broken window and threw a lit bomb back at the
Terminator, who was racing and gaining on them at breakneck speed. The
machine expertly caused the bike to twitch and the bomb exploded just to
the side of the bike with a loud bang. Reese ducked back inside of the
car to grab another bomb and felt the car shudder under the impact of
the bullets that were hitting it. The Terminator had to be stopped,
somehow, Lynn desperately hurled another bomb, but this time her aim was
thwarted by the car hitting a bump in the road that nearly threw Reese
to the pavement. Lynn decided that the driving was too dangerous for
Sarah right now and moved to get back into the car. It was while she was
doing this, that she felt the sharp impact of a bullet hitting her in
her torso, the impact turned into pain and Lynn could feel blood welling
up in the back of her throat as she jammed herself back into the car.
This was not good, she mused as she fought herself and th wildly jerking
car at the same time. Reese was not stupid, she knew the would was
mortal, unless she got treatment within the next few minutes, something
that was very unlikely at this point. Another jerk of the car caused
Lynn to gasp and lose her grip on the wheel and as she did she coughed
up a spray of bright crimson blood. Sarah had known that her lover was
wounded, but she had not known how badly. Lynn told her to take the
wheel as she gathered herself for one last go at the Terminator, who by
this time was so close that she could see its red eyes in the rearview
mirror. Just as she was heaving herself out of the window, Sarah warmed
the other woman of collision and then everything went crazy. Sometime
during the cars spinning and jerking Lynn blacked out completely, shock,
pain and blood loss having taken their terrible toll.
The Terminator was so focused on the task ahead of him, that he did not
see the semitrailer until it was upon him, the impact of the grill
causing his systems to shut down for a fraction of a second before he
fell to the ground while the trucker desperately put on the breaks. The
machine reacted instantly, clamping its hands onto the trucks underside
as it sped by him, slowly slowing down. After it had stopped, the
machine quickly climbed out from under the truck and moved towards the
trucker who was not standing outside of his cab and looking around
frantically for the motorcyclist that he had hit. The last thing he
would see in this life was the visage of the machine, flesh torn off and
death in its gaze. The blow to his chest cracked a half dozen ribs,
broke his sternum and stopped his heart. Without pausing, the machine
climbed into the cab of the truck, ignoring the limp caused by a ruined
hydraulic piston in its leg. The target was still within reach and the
Terminator was not going to fail again. At this point, it had incurred
so much damage, that remaining concealed would prove to be detrimental
enough to its mission to hamper it, perhaps permanently. The trucks
huge engine roared to life and the machine pushed the vehicle as it
strove to gain speed quicker than the manufacturer had intended. The
quarry would not get away, failure was not a option that had been
programed into the Terminators mission parameters.
Not very far down the road, Sarah frantically fought to free herself
from the wreckage of the car, she began to panic when she saw that Lynn
was not moving. Willing herself to be calm and calling upon a reserve of
strength she did not know that she possessed, she grabbed Lynn's
shoulders and heaved the woman's unmoving body onto the street. Lynn's
side was covered in blood and her face was deathly pale, but Sarah could
see the frantic beat of Lynn's pulse on her neck. Sarah did not have the
strength to carry Lynn, so she resorted to shouting and pleading with
the woman to get up, to help her, to move, finding herself swearing and
cursing as she ran out of steam. It worked, Lynn moaned and rolled over,
ignoring her nausea and the breath hissing out of her ruined lung.
Sarah, she had to be saved... General Connor had said that she would
succeed, so she pulled herself to her feet using Sarah's help and they
started to stumble through the warehouse district that they had found
them self in. Lynn heard it before Sarah did, the low rumble of a huge
engine and in just seconds, the low rumble, became a roar as the
semitrailer came barreling down on them. Sarah froze in place, fear
finally paralyzing her, but Lynn had not such problems, instead the
wounded woman pushed Sarah, screaming at her to run as the lone warrior
peeled away from the woman she had been born to protect and had learned
to love. Sarah moved as fast as she could, but trapped in between the
buildings on the narrow road, her only real way was forward, and it was
only a matter of time before the Terminator caught up with her and
crushed her. Sarah ran anyway, feeling like all she had ever done in her
life was run...
PFC Lynn Reese on the other hand, had spend her life fighting, and even
as her lifeblood flowed out of her body, from a wound that was beyond
medical attention, she fumbled through her pockets, finding one of the
homemade bombs and thumbing her lighter frantically. By this time the
semitrailer had started to pass her by, the Terminator ignoring her as
it pursued its target, making a critical tactical error, but the single
mindedness of the machines is what had allowed humanity to defeat them
in the end. Lynn pushed herself just a little harder, praying that she
had it in her, managing to light the fuse and shove the bomb into the
body of the semitrailers load, hoping that whatever liquid it carried,
that it was combustible. Lynn then slowed down and stopped near a large
dumpster, basically a large metal box filled with some sort of garbage.
Lynn was without sensibilities of any sort and she was determined to try
to survive long enough to make sure that she succeeded in saving Sarah
Connor. She felt her consciousness fade as she counted down what felt
like hour long seconds and hoped and prayed that she had managed to time
it right.
The semitrailer was gaining on Sarah Connor, impeded though it was by
the barrow street and the sharp turns. However, before it could gain
anymore ground, it abruptly exploded, the fireball threw Sarah off her
feet, causing her to slam into a nearby building. The liquid has been
combustible, but not explosively so, the resulting milieu had not been
as deadly as it could have been. Sarah felt the intense heat of the
burning truck as she lay like a broken marionette, momentarily unable to
command her body to move. Then she forced herself to stand and scanned
for Lynn, where was she, surely not consumed by the blaze or the
explosion. Sarah's eyes fell upon a dumpster, its outer paint on fire.
Lynn had to be inside of it, she just had to be...
Sarah made it to the dumpster and burned her hands getting the lid open,
uncaring she looked in side and there she was, Lynn, battered, bloodied
and looking still as death. Sarah pulled on the woman, and coaxed her
out of the scalding hot container, half carrying her away from the
blazing inferno, wanting more than anything to just run and hide and
stay hidden, somehow, forever. She stopped for breath and looked over
the wreckage of the truck, there was no sign of the Terminator, Sarah
wanted to believe that the force of the explosion and the heat of the
fire had destroyed it, but deep inside, she would believe it was truly
gone, when she saw the evidence of its destruction with her own eyes.
Almost as if bidden by her thoughts, a portion of the flaming wreckage
moved and then there was the terrible rending noise of metal bending at
the wrong angle and Sarah saw the unequivocal and absolute proof that
everything Lynn had told her was true. A hand, looking like the hand of
a metal skeleton reached up, soon joined by another and then a skull,
metal, with glowing red eyes looked in their direction. Sarah felt like
screaming, she was so tired and so afraid that she no longer felt
anything at all, she almost wanted to give in and allow the machine to
kill her, that way it would be over and done with and she could rest.
Lynn had other ideas, on seeing the deathly sight, she tugged at Lynn
and let go of her, pushing her and telling her to run, willing without
second thought to die now, if it mean that Sarah would be safe. Sarah
was having none of it, she turned back to grab Lynn and together they
stumbled and staggered, trying to find somewhere, anywhere to hide from
the machine, now standing full height and glowing with the heat of the
fire, all semblance of humanity burned away, now only the killing
machine remained and its goal was unchanged. Kill Sarah Connor...
The two women finally managed to find an open door and staggered through
it, Sarah leaned Lynn against a wall and barred the door, desperately
trying to find a direction, a way a weapon to use to escape this metal
nightmare. Lynn recognised that they were in a factory of some sort, a
large machine shop, it was as good a place as any to try to hide. She
staggered over to the control panels and hit all the buttons she could
see and reach, immediately causing a cacophony of sounds to erupt and
making the very floor vibrate. "It will make it harder for it to track
you. Now go, run, escape..." As Lynn said this, the door Sarah had just
barred shuddered under the terrible weight of the machine trying to get
through the steel reinforced wood paneling. It was only a matter of
time, maybe moments, maybe minutes until it succeeded, Lynn knew this,
and again she tried to shove Sarah away. Again, Sarah did not obey,
rather she took Lynn and pulled her along, Lynn realising that for now
it was futile to resist, allowed herself to be pulled along, managing to
stand upright by will alone. Lynn grabbed a metal pipe that lay
discarded as they scrambled as quietly as they could through the maze of
machinery, thinking that it would make a weapon, a last resort weapon,
but a weapon nonetheless.
END GAME
The Terminator had by now broken through the door, and found its
electronic senses overpowered by the noises and rumblings of the active
machinery, however, it knew that the prey was here, and it was only a
matter of time before it was found. The Terminator did not know
impatience, it only knew its mission parameters. The gleaming metal
skeleton moved quite stealthfully through the machines, searching for
any abnormality in the pattern made by the machines, or for any new or
unexpected sounds and all the while scanning for movement, body heat and
other criteria that would tell it that the prey had been found. As it
was searching, the two women crept through the factory, moving farther
away from the door, but in a confused pattern, the layout of the whole
place was unfamiliar to them and this was restricting their options. It
was during some moments of fumbling and searching that Sarah
inadvertently started up another machine, and the look that Lynn gave
her was one of despair, letting Sarah know that now it was almost
certain that the Terminator would find them.
What felt like only heartbeats later, Sarah saw her nightmare approach,
the glowing red eyes and the dragging limp making her skin crawl. Lynn
was now pulling her up some stairs, trying desperately to get some
tactical advantage over the machine and failing. The Terminator had
managed to find an alternate route to the gangplank the women had ended
up on and was now moving directly towards them. Lynn turned to Sarah and
put the full force of her voice into her words. "Runnnn!!!!!!" This time
Sarah did obey, stumbling down the metal stairs in a desperate attempt
to get away. At the bottom, she turned to see Lynn engage the
Terminator, swinging her metal pipe one handed, hitting with a force
that would have killed any man, woman, child or beast with one blow,
however, it did nothing to the Terminator save cause a slight break in
its stride and knock its head aside. Then Sarah saw the machine strike
her brave warrior lover, and Sarah saw Lynn fall, already so weakened.
Lynn took a moment to glance at Sarah, trying with one look to convey
her love before pulling out the last of her homemade bombs and lighting
the fuse. Lynn shoved the device into the skeleton of the Terminator and
hoped that it would not dislodge before the machine got to Sarah.
The Terminator had not noticed this event, focused now on Sarah Connor,
who was in visual range with her protector no longer able to protect
her. Sarah had seen what Lynn had done and was lunging for cover when
the bomb blew up. Just as she did, the deafening blast and blinding
light of the explosion filled the air, and then there was silence. Sarah
knew that her overtaxed eardrums were not working right, and that the
factory was as noisy as before, she also knew that she had tremendous
pain in her leg, hell in her whole body. Looking at her leg, she saw
that a piece of the Terminator was stuck in her thigh, and she also
suspected a broken bone too. As her hearing started to return, the agony
increased, she decided that she needed to dislodge the shrapnel and with
that decision, she grabbed it and pulled it out, the slurp of the shard
leaving her flesh sickened her, but she was more than glad to cast the
cursed thing away from herself.
It was then that she remembered that Lynn had been in the blast radius,
this fueled her as she crawled agonizingly across the floor, giving the
ruined Terminator a wide berth. Lynn lay quietly on the ground near the
ruined gangplank, obviously the force of the explosion had thrown her
down, or perhaps she had simply fallen with the structure. Sarah reached
Lynn's side, desperately feeling for a pulse or other signs of life and
finding none, the woman she loved was dead. Sarah saw that part of her
face was ruined and if the chest wound would not have killed her as it
was, the fall would have finished her off for sure. Sarah felt tears
welling up, but willed them not to fall, now was not the time, grief
could come later. Now she needed to think about the next few moments.
Her leg wound was bleeding, but not too badly and her leg was definitely
broken, she would require medical attention. However, somehow she would
have to evade incarceration, which means she had to concoct some story.
As Sarah was thinking, her hands unconsciously stroking Lynn's dead
face, she heard something that sent a fission of fear shooting down her
spine. It was a metallic sounding movement and i caused Sarah to whip
her head around to where the remains of the Terminator lay. Sarah felt
her heart stop for a moment, as her metallic nightmare that never seemed
to die, started using its arms to haul it's ruined torso towards her.
Fear gunned Sarah's motors, and she started to crawl away from the
monstrous machine, the agony and impediment of dragging her ruined leg
was almost unbearable, but so was dying at this point. Lynn had given
her life to save her, and Sarah was damned if she would repay the
service by dying now. Desperation fueled her movements as she crawled
through the factory, desperately navigating her way through the machines
and spare parts littering the floor. The metallic clank that the
Terminator made as it pursued her would haunt Sarah's nightmares, if she
survived that is.
The terminator was working on borrowed time, it's CPU was working on
auxiliary power and it's metal limbs had a finite amount of hydraulic
fluid to power them, it estimated that it had maybe 15 minutes to
attempt to catch and terminate Sarah Connor. If a machine could feel
glad, the Terminator was feeling glad. Sarah Connor was obviously
wounded and impeded by her injury, and her protector was now dead. The
odds were strongly in favor of the machine and it intended to utilize
them in all ways possible. Slowly gaining on the desperately fleeing
woman, the machine directed more power to its pistons and took its
shambling crawl up a notch. Sarah Connor was not able to respond to the
challenge and the Terminator was gaining on her, slowly but surely.
Sarah Connor could feel the machine gaining on her and knowing that she
could not out crawl it she needed to find another solution, and quickly.
Looking around the factory floor she finally sighted a possibility, now
it was a matter of getting the machine to follow her and timing it
right. Sarah changed course and started to head for the hydraulic press
she had just sighted, designed to compact machine waste into more usable
chunks of metal, it was hopefully strong enough to crush the Terminator.
Sarah slowed her crawl down and felt the machine gain on her
immediately, and then, sensing her chance, she veered off into the
press, crawling trough its claustrophobic crusher and somehow allowing
herself to be even slower than before. If she mistimes this, she would
die, and that would mean Lynn died for nothing, something which Sarah
Connor was not prepared to allow, not for anything, especially not a
hunk of malevolent metal. Just as she was halfway through the press, she
felt the machine's touch for the first time, the icy grip on her ankle
caused her to falter, before she determinedly moved forward, pain
blinding her as she did. The machine had caught her trailing broken leg
and was now squeezing her ankle hard enough that Sarah could feel the
bones press together. Calling upon her last reserves of strength, she
pulled her foot from the machines grasp with a scream of pain, the
machine needed both arms to move forward and had loosened its grip as a
consequence. Flowing out of the other side of the press, Sarah grabbed
the control module and brought the protective cage down cutting off the
machines advance and retreat. It was not caught in the press, though for
how long the cage would hold was something Sarah did not know. Gasping
and dizzy from shock, pain and exertion, Sarah fumbled with the control
module as the machine seemed to register its predicament and lashed out
of the cage with a metallic arm, the cold fingers reaching Sarah's
throat and trying to get a good enough grip to crush it. Sarah looked
into the inhuman red light that functioned as the machines eyes and
shuddered as her fingers finally found the correct button to press and
the crushers hydraulics powered up and proceeded to start to flatten the
Terminator. "Die mother fucker!" Sarah cursed the machine in a ragged
whisper, dropping the control module and resigning herself to whatever
fate would decide next.
The Terminator's single mindedness had led it into this trap, and even
now, as it felt its metal skeleton being crushed and could detect
misfires and shutdowns as its cranium was slowly crushed, it pursued its
mission of terminating Sarah Connor. Making a last ditch attempt to put
a crushing squeeze on the woman's throat, the Terminator realised in its
own machine way that it would fail, this time. As the press finally
terminated the Terminator, Sarah Connor relaxed for the first time in
what felt like months, and in doing so, became aware of her body, its
pain and the impact of what had happened to her over the past few days.
By this time, emergency vehicles, police and paramedics had found their
way into the factory and they found an unconscious woman and a dead
woman, evidence of a fight and the destruction caused by the homemade
bomb that had disabled the Terminator. The assumption was that the dead
woman was responsible and the living one was the unwilling victim. Black
and white, pure and simple... Sarah Connor regained consciousness as she
was lifted onto a gurney, and in a panic, she looked around, seeing
human faces and medical equipment and searching desperately for Lynn,
where was she? It was then that Sarah remembered, again, that Lynn was
dead. Where was her body? Sarah's mind screamed as she felt an oxygen
mask pressed to her face and the prick of an IV into her arm. Looking
around with wild eyes she finally saw the black body bag on the gurney a
few feet from her own. The coroner was zipping it up, and Sarah caught a
last glimpse of her love, her warrior, her savior, before she
disappeared forever. Sarah felt the sadness well up inside of her and
allowed her tears to start falling, she ignored the questions that the
medics were posing to her and focused her gaze inwards, already making
plans for when she was able to execute them. It was with these thoughts,
Sarah Connor slipped into unconsciousness, an unconsciousness filled
with scattered ghostly images, of red eyed machines, nuclear mushroom
clouds and the face of Lynn Reese, during her last glance, filled with
love, devotion and conviction. Lynn's face was able to banish the
nightmare images time and time again, but the nightmares would always
come back, always. It was Sarah Connor's destiny to relive them, it was
her destiny...
THE END
EPILOGUE
The jeep drove down a dusty desert highway, accompanied by nothing save
for the clouds and the sunlight, alternately battling for control of the
sky. On closer inspection, the occupants of the jeep were revealed, a
woman, perhaps about 20 years old, beautiful but sad and a dog, huge and
dangerous looking, yet while it was not looking about, chewing for
danger, it was looking at the woman with absolute devotion and the kind
of love only a dog can give.
Sarah Connor drove her jeep expertly down this lonely highway in Mexico,
her body had healed now, which left her mind. Would her mind ever heal?
In the space of 72 hours, her mother, her best friend, and her lover had
been killed, she had fought an intelligent machine from the future, with
the help of a lone warrior, also from the future. She had been told her
destiny, and had her world turned upside down in the space of moments.
After being debriefed, interrogated and examined Sarah had spend some
time recovering from her wounds and gathering her strength, then, when
she was ready, she had acted. She had collected her resources, favors
owed and her impromptu inheritance and used them to buy this jeep, a
handgun and a thousand bullets and the dog that sat behind her. It was a
highly trained dog, schooled to defend her and sniff out dangers, a
weapon in its own right and loyal only to her. Now, with what remained
of her not very large nest egg, Sarah was on her way to learn how to
become the person she knew she had to become. Armed with maps, intuition
and rumors, she was starting her journey, in South and Central America,
she could find the training, and the contacts and resources she needed
and she would let nothing stop her. Lynn Reese had died to save her, and
she was determined that Lynn's sacrifice would not be in vain.
A low fuel gauge interrupted Sarah's musings and she started to hunt
around for a gas station, determined to keep her emergency Jerry can of
fuel for actual emergencies. Deciding it was time to concentrate, she
put down the small recordable cassette player she had been talking into
and looked around in earnest. Her search was rewarded after a remarkably
short time, and she soon found herself pulling into a run down looking
petrol station where an old Mexican man came out to fill her car. As
Sarah waited, she turned her sight inward, remembering Lynn and
remembering everything, swearing that she would never forget anything. A
bright flash and a low grown from her dog brought her out other musings,
and she found herself looking at a small and scruffy boy holding a
Polaroid camera. The child spoke to her in too rapid Spanish, forcing
Sarah to turn to the old man for an explanation. The man coughed
delicately to clear his throat before saying. "The boy says that he took
the picture for the pretty lady, and that if you do not give him 5
dollars for it, his father will beat him when he gets home." Sarah
looked at the child in question, seeing infinitely dark eyes and the
obvious hardship that the boy had grown up under. "Nice hustle kid, I'll
give you 3." Sarah said the words with a smile in her voice and the
child quickly accepted her offer, snatching the 3 worn dollars from her
hand and handing her the now dry picture. Sarah glanced at the photo,
noting the sad look she carried but otherwise having no emotions towards
it. She didn't realise at the time, but this was to be the picture that
she would give PFC Reese far into the future, though the warrior woman
would not know that it was her who had put the sad look on Sarah's face.
As Sarah prepared to drive off after paying the old man for her fuel,
the child who was still hanging around the gas station pointed to the
sky and said something in an exited voice. Turning to the old man one
last time for an explanation, the man translated once again. "He says, a
storm is coming." Sarah looked at the sky and thought of Lynn once more
and all that the woman had told her. "I know..." Sarah said, almost
under her breath as she drove off, once more picking up the recordable
cassette player. Pausing to gather her thoughts as she continued her
drive south she turned the machine on and spoke into it, intending to
make a record of her memories of the events that had brought her to this
moment, while they were still fresh in her mind. Maybe she was making
them for her future self, who knows, maybe she was hoping that the
future could be avoided somehow, but wanted to remember what had
happened regardless. As she drove, she continue her narrative while her
dog watched over her, ever faithful in the rising storm...
The End