“Good morning, Los Angeles! It promises to become a warm day with clear skies!” The voice on the radio exclaimed excitedly.
He raised his head off the pillow, glanced at the alarm clock and reached out to press the snooze-button. It was a few minutes past six. Slowly he stretched himself and looked at the window. Sunlight was streaming into the room.
He felt movement next to him and he smiled when she put her arm across his stomach and rested her head on his chest.
“Morning, Connor,” he said in a whisper, playing with a lock of her hair.
“How’s the headache?” She mumbled, nestling even closer to him.
“Gone.”
“You were no fun last night,” he could hear her smile in her voice.
“Sorry, ma’am,” he chuckled.
For the past few days he had been tormented by severe headaches that resembled nanoattrioid-attacks but weren’t. There was an unrest in his head. Living off borrowed time did that to any person, but in his case they were accompanied by blinding headaches.
Judgment Day, April twenty-first, two-thousand-eleven had come and gone. Just another ordinary day, at least to anyone who did not know about the darkness that had loomed over that day. However he had not fooled himself into thinking they had averted the end of the world. In fact he had the strong feeling that they were running out of time. Fast.
Since two days the news was dominated by so-called accident reports on crashing planes and sinking ships. Twenty-three air planes had crashed within U.S. air space, Seventeen ships had sunk in U.S. territorial waters. All under mysterious circumstances, and he was most certain that the U.S. Government had forced the media to turn it into a series of unfortunate accidents. A cover-up to hide what was really happening.
His headaches had started around the time the first planes had fallen from the skies. It had to be the nanoattrioids trying to tell him something. He went over the stories he had been told about the averted Judgment Days. August twenty-ninth, nineteen-ninety-seven. April twenty-first, two-thousand-eleven. Both spoke of two days between Skynet going online and the end of the world. Two days of mysterious accidents. Two days of terror. It would not be different this time. This was it.
“It is time,” he concluded.
“Time?”
“Today is Judgment Day,” he answered slowly.
“You sure?” She asked, sitting up and looking at him.
“I like a good joke, Connor, but this is not something I would joke about,” he grumbled before he sat up and swung his legs out of bed.
Ever since the last Judgment Day had passed they had been prepared for this day. Everything they would need was packed and only needed loading into the car. At least once every two weeks they had driven up to the fallout shelter, just north of Santa Clarita near Castaic Lake, to make sure everything was still in order.

She watched as he got to his feet and got dressed. Her heart was thumping wildly in her chest. God, she hoped that he was so very wrong about this day, but deep down she knew that he was right. How could he be so calm and collected when the world was about the end?
Despite her better judgment, she had hoped that they had finally stopped Skynet, that this day would never come. She began to tremble all over and felt a headache rise.
“It’s gonna be okay, babe. You wake John. I’ll get Wilder,” he said while he tied the laces of his combat boots.
How much time did they have before the bombs would fall? She closed her eyes for a moment and tried to still her frantically beating heart. If he was right, nothing would be the same after this day. She had faced so much and had learned to shut off her emotions but she couldn’t now, suppressing wave after wave of panic.
It was the difference between knowing this day would come and experiencing this day. She could be as calm and collected as he was now, but the knowledge of an ending world interfered with that ability, where in Tyler’s case he was just fearless. She wanted to hit him for being so relaxed, like it was just another day. This just happened to be the day the world as they had known it would come to an abrupt end. Just another day.

Robin looked out the car window.
“You excited you get to ditch boring school to see grandpa?” Her stepfather asked after he glanced in the rearview mirror.
She nodded enthusiastically. It was always fun to go and see grandpa. He was her stepfather’s father but very much a real grandfather to her. He would take her to pet and feed the horses before taking her on a tractor ride through the fields that belonged to his farm.
Her mother had not been too thrilled last night when during dinner her stepfather had announced his plans for today. A pretty face was not enough to make it in the world, her education was equally important, but after a few minutes her mother had relented. Now she was stuck with the promise to do some yard work this weekend but it would all be so very worth it.

John had just poured himself a mug of fresh coffee when his mother came running into the kitchen. She had a wild look on her face and he wondered if she had drawn the same conclusions about this day as him. This was going to be one hell of a day, literally.
“You and Tyler worked out who’s gonna be driving?” He asked calmly, taking a sip.
She stopped in her tracks and studied him closely: “Don’t tell me that you know too? Could either one of you have told me this, oh, yesterday?”
“You’re in a good mood,” he remarked sarcastically while he shrugged his shoulders. “Live each day as if it were the last? Well, this is the last day.”
“Yeah, Ty told me,” she paused. “John,” she added with a sigh. “I wish you had told me sooner.”
“Why? Would it have made a difference? Or would it have caused you to drive yourself insane? You are known to rant about Judgment Day.”
“Yeah, when I was locked up in Pescadero and nobody listened,” she snorted angrily, looking over her shoulder. “What’s taking him so long?”
“Mom, relax. He’s strapping Wilder into her seat as we speak. He knows what he’s doing…Sit down. We got a little time left… I’d offer you coffee but you’re high-strung enough already.”
She looked at him if she saw water burning. He had resigned in his fate and with that a certain tranquility had come. They had done their best to stop Judgment Day, but as Tyler had said: the future was an inevitability. They had done their best, and it just had not been enough. He had to resign in that knowledge as well.
He looked at his mother again. She was pacing back and forth restlessly. It was obvious that she was less at peace with all that would happen today than Tyler or him, as if she had not found the resignation as of yet. He worried about what it all would do to her; she had been trying to prevent this day ever since nineteen-eighty-four with a hiatus of eight years when they had jumped forward in time.
“Our destiny has never been to stop Judgment Day. It had been merely to survive it,” he said in a calm voice.
“Will we now?” She asked.
“We will, mom. Things might look grim for a while, but we’ll survive.”
“Well, ain’t I happy that you and Ty are so convinced,” she snapped at him.
“Mom, we did what we could… It just wasn’t enough. Don’t start driving yourself crazy thinking that you could’ve done more, should’ve done more. Wilder, Tyler, me, we all will need you.”
He had had his reservations about his mother and Tyler being together, but they were good to each other, even when they got into vehement arguments about the best strategies to follow or the smallest things that could annoy anyone in a relationship. They brought out the best in each other, and also the worst.
Tyler had not stopped his war against Skynet. From time to time he would leave for a few days, make the headlines anonymously by blowing up another Skynet-related company, but he had always come home, covered in cuts and bruises. His mother would chastise Tyler for being so reckless; she would raise her voice and even throw a punch if Tyler insisted on being smug about it. Nevertheless he knew that his mother loved Tyler. It made her happy to have someone to share this burden with, who understood her goals and motives, and whatever made her happy made him happy.
Sometimes he considered it to be weird how normal they could act, as if the end of humanity did not loom over them. However he figured that some degree of normalcy was a means to survive in a crazy world.
Around the days of the other Tyler, she had wanted some normalcy for him, as John Baum. Maybe it had been her turn now? To have a normalcy that would never ever last.

Tyler cursed under his breath and honked again. Just an ordinary day for others, one hell of a day for the world. He had stayed on the right lane to have an out, but still they had gotten stuck in a massive traffic jam. It was a Wednesday and not even a holiday.
He took a deep breath and wiped the sweat of his brow. He could tell that Sarah was just about to make a remark on it by the sharp intake of breath, a telltale sign that she was not happy with how things were going.
“We got a little time left… Yeah, I can see that,” she began.
He would have chuckled if the situation had not been so dead serious. It would not help them if he provoked her into hitting him. This was not the day to play ‘bug slug’.
“Yeah, yeah,” he grumbled, annoyed with traffic, while he scratched his chin.
“You’re Tyler Jess Devlin, supposedly the smart one of this team,” she hissed angrily. “Ever heard of morning traffic jams? No? Well, we’re stuck in it now!””
Normally he would have loved to counter her sarcasm and get into an argument with her, only to make it up later, but they were starting to run late. He slammed his hand on the car’s horn again: “A slight oversight,” he growled.
“An oversight that will get us all killed if we don’t get a move on,” she countered in a sweet voice.
“Let it rest, Connor. So I messed up once… Big deal!”
“It wouldn’t be if this wasn’t the day, Devlin.”
His temper flared when she called him by his last name. Where he did not want to provoke her into an argument, she did her damndest best to get on his nerves. He closed his eyes for a few seconds and considered his options.
“I know. Believe me, I know. It’s been drilled into me the past five years. And everything we have done to do to stop this day, has been in vain… The future is inevitable.”
Long rows of cars bumper-to-bumper in front of them, long rows of cars behind them. There could not have been a worse day to get stuck in traffic. There was no alternative but to go off-road.
“Time to take a shortcut,” he growled while he let the car pull out of the lane, onto the hard shoulder and into grass.

“OH GOD!!!” Sarah heard her son exclaim upset from the backseat. “It has already started!”
She turned in her seat and looked at all who were in the backseat. Her son with a look of utter horror on his face. Her daughter who was sleeping soundly in her seat, unaware of the world’s destiny. Spinner, restless and close to howling at the imminent threat.
After she had turned back, she looked out the window on her side. Missiles rose to the surface before they were launched. Hatch after hatch opened, revealing more and more missiles.
“We’re too late,” she mumbled upset, her voice filled with extreme sadness.
“Hold on,” Tyler said while he steered to the left to dodge an opening hatch.
Sarah shook her head wearily. Of all the shortcuts he could have taken, he had to take one that lead them straight through a missile field.

Robin looked up towards the sky. She had decided to take a walk alone after grooming and feeding the horses. Crackling noise like thunder had drawn her attention. She loved thunder storms, but this was no thunder storm, this was something very bad. It could have passed off as fireworks but her gut feeling told her to run.
The sky was literally filled with rockets going in all directions, leaving behind a white crisscross pattern against the clear blue sky. She knew that the past few days the news had been dominated by freak accidents and her stepfather had told her that the rest of the world was nothing too happy with the United States. Had the world declared war on the U.S. after yet another ‘accident’?
The sound of thunder increased and she had to put her hands over her ears to block it out. Her eyes grew wide in shock when she saw a missile fall from the sky. A bright white flash of light split the horizon in two and a big mushroom of fire and smoke cloud rose swiftly towards the sky.
She started to run in the direction of her grandfather’s farm, as fast as her legs could carry her. Another missile fell from the sky, another white flash and she tripped, landing flat on her face on the rough dust road. Quickly she sat up and checked herself for injuries. Her left kneecap was grazed by the gravel and sand. If that was all, she still had a chance.
She scrambled to her feet, only to discover her right ankle stung like a bee. Tears of pain and frustration welled in her eyes. Scared, confused, she started to hobble as fast as she could. She had to get into safety.

“Damnit, Tyler!” Sarah yelled when the car almost went into a tailspin on the dirt road.
“What?” He asked smugly. “I got it under control.”
“Yeah, I can see that,” John chimed in from the backseat. “Are you trying to get us killed? If that’s the case, just pull over and wait for the bombs to drop.”
“No, not really,” he said while he fought to keep a straight face.
He would never admit it but he liked this. The adrenaline rushing through his veins made him feel alive like he had never felt alive before. Sarah would skin him alive if she were to ever find out he liked this better than sex. He grinned mischievously; first she would prove him wrong and then she would skin him alive. Then again there were worse ways to die.
“Hold on,” he said, gripping the steering wheel tightly, sending the car crashing through another gate.
“Do you even know where we are going?” John asked worriedly.
Whatever was growing in the fields rained on the car as it sped through the fields, flattening everything in its path.
“You’re fucking mental, you know that!” John remarked furiously when he remained quiet.
He had a good sense of direction and this shortcut would make up for the time they had lost when they had been stuck in traffic.
“Now tell him something he doesn’t know, John,” now it was Sarah’s turn to chime in.
He rolled his eyes; just what he needed, tag teaming in sarcastic remarks. He steered the car through another wooden gate and turned onto another dirt road.
“Damn!” John yelled when the car swerved dangerously from left to right and back.
“Don’t be such a wimp, John,” he said through gritted teeth, steering to the left when he saw something on the road before flooring the gas pedal again. “If you think this is bad, you obviously got the wrong fate!”
“Tyler! Pull over!” Sarah ordered after they had passed the obstacle on the road.
“Why?” He asked gruffly.
“Didn’t you see?” She asked angrily.
“See what?”
He couldn’t afford to pay attention to every little detail, only the road and anything on the road. The obstacle on the road had been a human being, but they couldn’t take the entire human world with them. Whoever it was, she would be collateral damage.
“That kid!” She answered quickly, glancing over her shoulder to check.
“So?”
“Pull over and get her,” she ordered again.
“You gotta be fucking kidding me,” he growled, slamming on the brakes causing the car to swerve dangerously from left to right again.
The dust cloud in the car’s trial caught up and passed them by. Spinner yelped when he was thrown off of the backseat against the driver’s seat.
“It’s only a kid, Tyler. I can’t let an innocent kid die when I can save her, can you?” She appealed to his humanity.
He rolled his eyes; he hated it when she was right. It would have given him new nightmares for weeks to come. As if this day would not give him nightmares enough. He threw his door open and jumped out of the car. For once his unwillingness to wear a seatbelt paid off.
“Easy, boy. Just stay!” He commanded the dog when it tried to get to the driver’s seat.
Robin had looked up, just in time to see a dark station wagon speed by. It didn’t stop. She had fallen for the umpteenth time because she could not put any weight on her right ankle. This was hopeless and she gave up, hunching up at the side of the road, resting her head on her arms, waiting for whatever came.
She heard tyres slip on gravel. The sound faded away into a steady humming. Tears streamed down her cheeks. Why had she skipped school? Why did she even wanted to go to her granddad’s farm? She was going to die, she just knew it.
Suddenly she heard another strange noise, sand and gravel chirping under footsteps. She looked up and saw a young man running towards her. Without looking at her or saying a word to her, he knelt over her and picked her up. His hold on her was rough, even painful. Stunned, she did not even put up a fight.
He broke into another sprint in the direction he had come from. Her hope of survival returned as suddenly as it had disappeared. She looked up at his face. There was something oddly familiar about him, but she couldn’t place it. Was he someone famous? An athlete? An actor? Who was he?

It was an accident waiting to happen. John had opened the door for him so they wouldn’t lose precious time but John had forgotten the restless, crazed state of mind Spinner was in. The poor dog knew something was terribly wrong. The moment the dog smelled freedom and a chance to get himself into ‘safety’, he jumped out of the car and took off into the fields.
“Spinner! Here, boy!” Tyler yelled at the top of his lungs, hoping his four legged friend would listen to the command.
Frantic barking distanced itself from him. Sarah leaned over and called from her seat: “Tyler, we don’t have time for this!”
He turned a slow circle, scanning the fields to see if he could trace where Spinner was heading. The strange wind that had picked up made it impossible to determine in what direction the dog was running.
“Damn it!” He seethed through gritted teeth furiously.
He slammed his hand flat on the roof of the car, took one last look and got behind the steering wheel again. Why had John been so stupidly? He glared into the rearview mirror before releasing the handbrake and letting the car pull up.
“I’m so sorry, Ty,” Sarah whispered while she reached for his hand to squeeze it.
Frustrated and angry he pulled his hand away, the nerve in his jaw twitching. The moment he had picked up the girl and had carried her to the car, he had realized who she was. His dog for his mother; why couldn’t he have saved both? Why hadn’t John thought of the dog’s crazy scared behavior?
“Oh,” Sarah sighed sadly.
He kept his eyes on the road, anticipating on everything that crossed their path, hoping Spinner would come in his line of sight so he could still save the animal. It was vain hope, he knew that. Sarah had been right when she had told him to pull over and get the girl, but he hadn’t want to lose Spinner either. It hadn’t been John’s intention to let the dog escape. He just hadn’t been thinking. But out there, with the missiles starting to fall from the sky, the dog held no chance at survival.
“Good bye, my friend,” he muttered underneath his breath, glancing in the rearview mirror only to see the German Shepherd reappear from the field and chase after the car.
For a second time he slammed on the brakes, almost sending the car into another tailspin.
“Open the goddamn door!” He barked at Sarah when he saw the dog come up at the passenger’s side.
She looked shocked but did as she was told, groaning when the big dog jumped on her lap. Without a second to spare, he floored the gas pedal again. The car door, still wide open, grazed the crops. Regaining her senses, Sarah leaned out of the car and pulled the door shut.
He leaned over a little and patted the dog on his head: “Stupid mutt,” he said good-naturedly, earning a lick over his hand.

Robin kept looking from the young man in the backseat to the woman in the passenger seat. She did not dare to look at the big young man behind the steering wheel. He was intimidating to say the least and yet there was an aura of trustworthiness about him.
"Are you bad people?" She finally asked.
The woman managed to turn towards her, despite the dog sitting on her lap, and smiled encouragingly: "No, we're all good people. I'm Sarah."
"I'm John," the young man sitting next to her said, extending his hand to her. “And this sleeping beauty is my little sister Wilder,” he added after she shook his head, nodding at the sleeping child no older than two or three.
"This pooch here is Spinner,” the woman groaned when the dog got to his feet on her lap, his tail tucked firmly between his back legs. “And this is Tyler," she added while she placed a hand on the driver's shoulder.
She finally dared to glance at the driver now that the woman named Sarah had introduced him to her. When he had knelt over her to gather her in his arms and carry her to the car, she had felt a strange kind of recognition. A feeling that had not left her, a thought that refused to leave her mind.
"I'm Robin… Baxter," she said sadly.
She caught the weird look on Sarah’s face after she had given her last name. What did it mean?
The young man named John let out a cry of horror and she turned her head just in time to see another missile plummet from the sky. The blast wave rocked the car but the driver kept it under control. He knew what he was doing.
“What’s happening?” She wanted to know, unable to stop watching when huge fireball rose to the sky.
John sighed defeated: “The end of the world,” he said in a whisper.
The fields were on fire, flames devouring everything in their path. Smoke bellowed upwards. White flashes stood out against the dark smoke, making them look like thunder clouds. The fires were coming, bathing the inside of the car in their warm but eerie light. Sweat was running down her back and she noticed that John was soaking in sweat too. She looked at the little girl in the special child safe seat between them. How could a child sleep through this? The ghostly crackling of huge fires, the thundering noise of the missiles crossing the sky should have been enough to wake the child up.
By now the fires had reached the side of the road they were driving on. Huge flames were grasping and licking at the car. There was no way they could outrun this. Then, all of a sudden, there was the end of the field and the driver steered the car away from the engulfing flames, sending through a closed gate onto a main road.
“That was a little too close, Ty,” Sarah remarked in a fashion as if she was confronted with things like this on a daily basis.
That remark only added to her confusion about the things happening and who these people actually were. She watched as the driver only shrugged his shoulder in response. He had to be a stone cold crazy son of a bitch.

John could not remember ever being happier than the moment they reached the fallout shelter. It had not been a moment too soon. First the missile field, then the field on fire. Tyler had a knack of finding trouble wherever he went. That latter wasn’t entirely true.
Tyler had done what he had trained himself to do for this day, and that was to get them to safety. In a way, it had surprised him that Tyler hadn’t jumped from the rolling car the moment they had passed the giant concrete doors to enter the code to close the doors, but that he had taken his time to park the car and had walked to the small box.
He knew that he would have run to it to type in the code, but Tyler had been calm and collected as always. He wished he could be fearless like Tyler, but being without fear came with a big danger, a recklessness that could easily get you killed.
“Sjohn,” his little sister called excitedly, toddling towards him.
He tried to smile, if not for him then for her. The sleeping pills had finally worn off and she had become rather active much to the amusement of Robin. His mother and Tyler had discussed it time and again, asking themselves if it was a smart thing to do, but they had agreed that the girl should not witness the world coming apart now that she had reached the age that she could start remembering things. They didn’t want her first memory to be their maniacal drive on Judgment Day so they had given her something to sleep through the whole ordeal, which she had done. He was genuinely happy for her, but the feeling was outweighed by a bitter sadness over the fate of the world. It felt like his heart was being ripped apart when he glanced at the closing doors.

Slowly the doors of the fallout shelter slid closed. Tyler took a deep breath and looked at the world as he had known it for the past twenty-one years for the last time. When the doors would open again, this world would be gone. Bright white light hurt his eyes when the sky exploded again. Huge flames consumed all in their path.
He had to see this, even it was almost unbearable. He had to see the end of the world, to know what they had lost and soon would have to face. The thrill of earlier had left him and had been replaced by an intense feeling of sadness.
Someone came up behind him and placed a hand on his shoulder. By the sound of the walk he could tell it was Sarah. He smiled grimly and placed a hand over hers. Spinner, sitting at his feet rigidly, whined softly as the doors slid into place.
“You did the right thing, Ty,” she whispered heartbroken.
“Did I? Everything’s gone,” he remarked sullenly.
“We did our best and it just wasn’t enough,” she mumbled while tears etched into her voice.
He closed his eyes and heaved a deep sigh before stating: “It will never be enough, Connor. Whatever we do, it will never be enough. And unless we don’t stop putting our trust in faulty machines that are supposed to make our lives as comfortable as we desire it to be and won’t turn them into demigods created to protect us, we will be forced to relive this day over and over again. And the fate of the world will be such as the world deserves.”

Chapter 24: Facing Your Demons

Epilogue: A Changed Past, A New Future