Dr. Silberman

Dr. Peter Silberman had immediately scurried to the sub-basement at Pescadero Hospital when he heard the air raid sirens.  Most of the other staff hurried down the stairwell beside him, a few in security or Department of Corrections uniforms, but most in the standard white slacks and shirts.  Silberman’s brown pants and tweed jacket made him stand out like a large brown rat in a river of white mice.  This was probably just a bomb threat or something and he laughed to himself thinking about the young man so many years ago who thought the world would end like this.  Well, it had not ended up until now, although Silberman worried about his house and wondered what would happen to his car in the parking lot.  He never once considered the patients locked in their cells several levels above.

Marla Jones

She wasn’t quite sure why, but it seemed important to walk south.  Marla had always prided herself on keeping fit, but the going was slow through the ruins of the city and she struggled just to cover the first mile.  Eventually, there was the freeway and though she had to thread her way between cars, progress was smoother.  The baked metal of the vehicles and the carbonized remains of people in various poses supplied a grim background.  Occasionally, she had to step over a corpse or climb over a car with a grinning head propped behind the wheel.  The ones with half the flesh gone were the worst.  The skin had shrunk, peeling away from the teeth and often the eyes remained as pools of clouded liquid held tenuously in soft little sacs that popped randomly as the decay advanced. 

A pack of dogs crossed her path as she left the road.  They froze in unison, hackles rising as they caught her scent.  Their lips drew back in a rictus of fear as they whined and shifted nervously. Marla moved slightly and they barked in confusion at the alien animal, unsure whether to attack or flee.  It did not smell like human flesh.  It was not a plant or food.  It did not fit into any instinctive canine category and was therefore cause for alarm.  Marla backed away and chose an alternate route.  The dogs watched as she made her way into a business park.

Kyle

It took a few days, but the Sarah-Elena now sat empty in the harbor.  The six of them had stashed her supplies throughout the city although none of them truly expected the caches would remain undisturbed. 

Time to split up. The plan was to at least begin the process of organizing a resistance even though it would take years. Uneasily, Kyle watched Sarah walk away with Mano and Lanie, his love for her constituting an unwelcome distraction from the business at hand. It was completely unprofessional and he shoved the feelings down under a mental rock. With Triss and John he would scout the water supply while the others located the two nearest sources of weapons. Kyle did not care for the make up of the two groups; however John and Triss refused to separate and at least he could keep them out of harm’s way.  It would be months before the H-Ks became a real threat so it was still possible to move around during the day, but he worried about savage gangs of scavs. He did not relish the thought of having to kill or be killed over the most basic necessities of life.  Food, clothes, shelter.  It remained a cold, hard fact that there simply was not enough of anything to go around and at this point, other humans were more of a threat than the machines.

Triss

“Stay close,” Kyle said several days later.  The three of them crept forward against walls and beside piles of burnt wreckage under the mid afternoon haze. They were approaching the remains of a large supermarket where several groups of survivors picked over the burned cans and broken glass.

“Look at that,” said Triss watching a man and child trying to open a can of food, banging it against a corner of metal shelving.  ‘Half the food’s going to go flying if they make a hole.  Don’t they know how to make a can opener?”

“Evidently not,” said John. At that moment, the can split in two spilling most of the applesauce onto the ground.  The man shouted in anger and the little boy started to cry. 

“Stop it!”  The man screamed at him and even from a distance, Triss could see tears on his face too.

Sarah

Sarah and Lanie pried open another crate and surveyed the M-4 Carbines. Neither relished the task of stashing them—though exhuming occupied caskets and replacing the current residents with weapons was harshly pragmatic.  Days, they inventoried and sorted, nights they moved equipment. Sarah was feeling strong, competent, lethal, but seeing so many dead and so many familiar places destroyed had planted an insidious idea. There was something resigned in the way Kyle had stood watching her walk away. Was he planning some suicide mission or had he not told her some critical piece of information about the future? Did he know something was about to happen to John?  The more she thought about it, the more she worried.  She started to imagine him throwing himself in front of John, bullets or lasers or knives assaulting his body.  It was just like Kyle to cut her off, to separate himself in order to protect her.  Her heart squeezed up painfully as her fear grew.

“You’re shaking,” observed Lanie, laying a steady palm between Sarah’s shoulder blades.  “Tell me what’s wrong.”  Sarah looked at her best friend, and then glanced back at Mano, a huge, imposing man.  He was proud, strong and unfailingly loyal to his friends, but his macho streak often drove Sarah crazy.

“I don’t think Kyle’s coming back.” Lanie looked at her in surprise, but didn’t spout false reassurances. 

“Why do you say that?”

“I think John’s in more danger than we know and Kyle’s going to protect him—just like he protected me from that Terminator.”

“Well why would he let us all be separated when we’re stronger together?”

“Maybe I’m the one supposed to die protecting John.  Kyle’s planning to take my place,” Sarah said matter-of-factly, but as she looked at Lanie her eyes were brimming with anger and sadness.  Lanie’s own fear for Triss and for John and the others had now been spoken aloud.

John

John studied his father’s face as they trotted down an empty street.  Kyle seemed tense and understandably sad.  John tried to imagine growing up in this place, surrounded by the dead in the ashes and haze.  Kyle had lived with Sarah in New Mexico for fifteen years with the hot sun to warm his body and ease his soul and had it all taken away to return to this stinking ruin.

Triss and John had been taught the terrain from their earliest memories, but seeing it for real was very different as Kyle led them confidently through the warren of partially destroyed structures.  He spotted the smashed YMCA sign lying in the street and led the way inside.  “What is this place?” asked Triss, her voice echoing down the empty hall.  John and Kyle knew she meant what had it been originally.  There were so many mirrors in every room.  A few remained intact.

“Just a health club,” said Kyle.  John and Triss had been taught the value of physical as well as mental training for post war, but a culture of exercising for aesthetic reasons was baffling.  Triss glanced curiously at a poster of a woman in a leotard and tights with matching leg warmers.

“Weird.”

John watched her as she walked behind his father.  Triss was John’s height, light and quick. She had the disorienting quality of being his athletic equal in many ways and now constantly occupying his thoughts and emotions as she began to bloom with hints of Lanie’s curves.  There were no hints given about where he stood with her, though.  He was unable to sort out his feelings over Triss crushing herself against him while Lanie had bandaged her hand.  The memory of her hair on his face looped constantly through his mind.  Even more confusing was her wordless comfort the times he needed a friend.  How could she be so perceptive, able to calm his thoughts and yet be oblivious to his physical agitation?

They filed down two flights of stairs to reach the indoor pool.  Their flashlights seemed impossibly bright in the otherwise complete darkness as they picked their way past odd little piles of clothes and towels. Then they were in the cavernous natatorium.  The Olympic sized pool was a silent black lake, the water clear except for a bit of algae beginning to form on the wall tiles at the surface line.  Kyle knelt and dipped his hands into the coolness and washed his face.  The post war environment was familiar again.  Small comforts such as this were to be treasured. Triss and John tentatively followed his example as he cupped a hand and drank.   

“Different kind of birthday, isn’t it, Triss?”  Kyle said, sitting back with his arms resting on his knees.  Today Triss was thirteen.  John had actually given her a small teddy bear, partly to tease her and partly because he knew she would like it.  All of them had had to abandon most personal possessions now that they would be constantly on the move. 

“It’s a different kind of any day,” she answered and swung her flashlight around, looking at the walls and ceiling.  “The earthquake?”

“A couple of years from now, probably.” Kyle pointed his light.  “It’ll crack that wall,” he indicated where an industrial clock encased in wire mesh hung fifteen feet from the floor.  “That end of the pool will kind of flatten out, with a hole in it so the river or lake or whatever that starts running through here has a place to go. “  He moved his light across the length of the room.  John and Triss gazed at the water, imagining this space filled with a continuously milling crush of people. Kyle sighed and said, “Well, I guess we can check this off the list.  Let’s move on.”

They used the stairwell on the opposite side of the building to get back to street level.  Triss was thinking about how quiet John had been all day when Kyle paused and then took a step backward. Triss was startled to see bodies stacked neatly in a corner of the landing as Kyle snapped his fingers and they all drew their weapons.

“Why are the corpses piled up that way?”  John asked, before thinking.

“Quiet,” said Kyle sharply, still backing up while his mind screamed, No, no, no, no! Not yet! It’s too soon.  He had to get the kids out of there now…

There was a tiny scrape and they looked up to see four people standing silently, motionless a few steps above the landing. “Run!” Kyle opened fire, the sound huge in the confined space. John and Triss instantly reversed direction, leaping down multiple stairs with each stride.  They fled across the pool deck, zigzagging, sprinting back the way they had come.  They heard Kyle shouting, “Motherfuckers!” then his weapon was silent.