A Girl Named River

A Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles fanfic

by Pjazz

2009

Note: This story contains adult themes and strong language.

1

"Ever eaten triple-8 meat before? No? Don't worry, there's a first time for everything."

I leer knowingly, placing the emphasis on everything. No response. The girl just stares back at me across the dying embers of the camp fire, her pale face partially obscured by a veil of lank, geasy hair.

"Don't let anyone tell you it tastes of chicken - if you remember what chicken is. It doesn't. It's not as bad as rat but not as tasty in my opinion as a nice fresh coyote, slow roasted on a spit. Go ahead, try it."

Still nothing. Those big saucer eyes gaze back at me, lips open in a half pout. Very kissable lips too.

"Nothing to be scared of. The flesh isn't poisoned. That's a myth. The boffins say its high in protein and amino acids. And it's not like cannabilism if that worries you; those things aren't human no matter what they look like. Not tempted? All the more for me then."

I take a bite and chew vigorously. The girl stares at me. The me being Vin Savage. Vin short for Vinny short for Vincent. I'm 25 years old. A scavenger and mercenary, meaning I work for the cause of one Vinny Savage Esquire and no one else. If what I do helps the human resistance against Skynet then it's a bonus; I leave saving the world to dogooders like John Connor. I don't claim to be a philosopher, to understand the meaning of existence, but I do know I only get one life. And it's fragile. Me, I'm not risking it fighting for a cause, even one as noble as human extinction. Any cause worth dying for is worth living for, is my motto. And I go me a heap of living to do.

I take the rest of the cooked triple-8 flesh off her plate and offer her my flask.

"Tea? It's still warm. Not coffee, I'm afraid. Got in the habit a coupla years ago. Tea's a cheaper trade than coffee. More bang for your buck, with the emphasis on bang." I leer again, showing her my pearly whites and allow my gaze to drop to the floaty dress she's wearing under a khaki flak jacket. She fills it nicely. Teenage girls usually do in my experience.

To my surprise she reaches out a thin arm and accepts the flask. She places it against those pouty kissable lips and drinks, upending the flask until it's empty, then hands it back without saying a word.

"You're welcome, I'm sure."

I douse the campfire and reach for the stormlamp. It's one of those kinetic types that were all the rage before jay day; you turn a handle for a few minutes and this cranks an internal battery that runs the LEDs for an hour or so. Eco-bullshit or not it's neat technology. Cost me a crate of salvaged Smirnoff so it better be.

"Here. Make yourself useful and juice this. Coupla minutes should do it."

I hand her the stormlamp. She looks at it like it's a Rubiks cube or something. A mystery waiting to be unravelled.

"Go ahead. Just turn the handle."

I make turning motions with my hands. She kinda gawps at me with those big dopey eyes then something obviously clicks in that brain of hers and she starts turning.

"There you go."

The lamp glows white illuminating the basement of the MacDee's we're camping in. I came across bambi eyes in the streets outside, wandering round Los Angeles alone. Risky business that. A triple-8 - the one I just cooked in fact - was stalking her. Something had damaged the T-8s legs and it was just crawling after her pulling itself along after her while she just calmly walked ahead of it like it was no big deal, a stroll in the park you might say. I fragged the chip in its head and she just kinda latched on to me, her amazing saviour. If she wasn't so damn pretty I'd have cut her loose hours ago. But hey that's me, a slave to my libido.

I take out my sleeping bag and roll it out on the floor. A gentleman would offer it to her for the night. Too bad I ain't no gentleman.

"Sorry I don't have a spare. But you're welcome to share this one."

Instead of leering this time I raise an eyebrow, subtle suggestion. Cary Grant would be proud. Nothing. She just stares back at me. Maybe something in her young life traumatised her. Maybe I could pretend to give a shit. If you can fake sincerity you got it made in this world.

"Something troubling you, sweetcakes? Spit it out. You can tell your Uncle Vinny."

Still nothing. I shrug and ease the boots off my feet. Maybe if I ignore her she'll soften up. Works on some women. Hell knows why.

I strip off my shirt to use as a pillow. The stormlamp shows off my muscle definition to good advantage. I'm a big guy. Six-two and one-eighty. Muscle sticks to me just like it did my old man. He was a boxer back in the day. A pro. Fought at super-middleweight. Had a title shot when I was just three years old. Lost on points to a Brit called Joe Calzaghe in London, England. He was training for another shot when jay day intervened. I was with him in the Catskill mountains training camp. First time I'd been away from home. I was eight. Mom stayed behind in Orlando where she worked for the Disney corporation. Orlando got slagged and her right along with it. I remember staring up at the missiles arcing across the sky, the contrails a delicate white fretwork against blue. Then the adults ushered me inside. The TVs were tuned to white noise and the radios were dead. Everyone has an end of the world story and that's mine.

The lamp's starting to dim when the girl surprises me by speaking for the first time.

"Someone comes. Pretty girl with a dark heart. She'll sell her soul cheaply."

She stares at the hole in the wall I made to get inside the basement. I'm about to ask WTF, when I hear movement outside. I kill the lamp and pick up my Glock nine mill. Weapon of choice since I was ten. Shadow approaching. A grunt. A familiar cussword.

"Who's there?" I ask, already pretty sure who it is.

"Santa-fucking-Claus. Who'd ya think, dipshit?"

"What's the password?" I ask with a grin.

"Asswipe."

I crank the lamp up again. A short slim figure, ummistakably female despite the khaki uniform, crawls in and straightens up. Robyn Fletcher. My partner in crime. Someone to watch my back - and warm my front from time to time.

"You realise I could see the light from outside? Not too smart, Vinny. Suppose I was metal?"

"Then we wouldn't be having this conversation."

I move to block the hole with some planks of wood. My reply's flippant, but she's right. I was sloppy. Too fixated on the girl and what's in my pants - and hers.

"Is that triple-8 meat?"

"Sure is. Help yourself."

"Any tabasco sauce?"

"Try my backpack."

Robyn's five years younger and a foot shorter than me. She wears her dark hair cropped close to the scalp. With most women this would make her appear masculine, but with Robyn it's quite the opposite; it just accentuates her high cheekbones and full lips. Course it helps she's got a great rack and killer ass. She's from Jersey orginally, but got tired of belonging to a militia and struck out west looking for some action of her own. We hooked up in Texas. She had something I wanted and vice versa. We sealed the deal and screwed til dawn. My kinda dame. My kinda deal.

She finishes slathering the triple-8 meat with tabasco and notices the girl for the first time. No big reaction, she's far too cool for that.

"Who's the baggage?"

"No idea. Won't tell me her name."

"What d'you want with her? Besides the obvious."

I tell her how we met. I leave out the part about the dark heart and selling her soul cheap. I'm still trying to figure that out myself.

"What's your name, kid?" Robyn asks. "Where you from?"

I'm not expecting an answer given the girl's previous silence so I'm surprised when she replies:

"River."

"River? That your name or the place you're from?"

Nothing.

"I guess it's your name. What kinda name's River?"

"Don't knock it. I once knew a girl named Birdsong."

"You would. You screw her?"

"If she had a pulse."

"How old d'you think she is?"

"Eighteen?"

"You wish. I think closer to sixteen."

River stares at the meat Robyn holds. Slowly she reaches out her hand. She doesn't need to speak to make herself understood. Gimme.

"You want this? Sure. Here you go."

She takes the meat from Robyn and begins to devour it with quick bites of her tiny white teeth. Pretty soon her lips are coated in rich tabasco sauce which her tongue licks away. I find I'm getting a boner. Truly, you can't take me anywhere.

"Hell, Savage, didn't you feed the girl? You've got most of a triple-8 carcass here."

"Hey, I offered. She wasn't interested."

"Must be your sparkling personality. Say, that wasn't its dick, was it?"

I stifle the urge to tell her yes. "No. I threw it out with the head."

Robyn looks around at our surroundings. "What are we doing here? I thought you said this was a gunshop."

"This is a MacDee's; gunshop's next door."

"So why are we here instead of in there?"

"Because the building's collapsed."

"Then we're wasting our time."

"Maybe not. I figure there's a basement just like this one. If it's intact then we're in business. Tomorrow I'll break through the adjoining wall and find out."

River finishes the meal and belches softly. "Firesticks nearby. Much danger. You won't listen. Too much greed make you reckless."

"What'd she say?"

"You heard."

"Sure I heard. I just don't know what the hell she means."

"Join the club."

--------------------------------------------------------------

I rise at dawn half expecting River to have slunk off in the night as mysteriously as she arrived. But no, she's still here sitting cross-legged and gazing back at me with those big eyes. Her dress is hiked up some revealing a pair of black knee-height boots. Definitely not Army issue. A nice salvage job wherever she got them.

I go outside to shave and take a piss. It's a bright fine day in Los Angeles. Too bad the city's bombed to shit and crawling with metal.

Breakfast is dried beef jerky and cold tea. None of us can face anymore triple-8 meat so I ditch the rest of it in a corner of the basement. Robyn uses a handmirror to primp her hair. "I'm thinking of growing my hair out," she says.

"Where? head."

"God, everything's about sex with you, isn't it?"

"You've never complained before."

"What are we gonna do about her?"

"She can help."

"How exactly - by holding your dick when you pee?"

I grin. "It's a start."

I take two walkie-talkies from my backpack and hand one to Robyn. The plan is for her to climb to the highest vantage point overlooking the street and keep watch for metal. The pickaxe I intend to use to smash through the wall is gonna make some noise. I'll need a heads up if Skynet crashes the party.

"Can I at least finish breakfast first?"

Women. They want the world.

---------------------------------------------------------------

"Okay, I'm in position."

"Good and high?"

"Any higher and I'm in the clouds."

"Anything moving?"

"No, you're clear. Nice up here. Maybe I'll take my top off and work on my tan."

I hear the tease in her voice through the walkie-talkie. For once I'm all business. "Just concentrate on watching my ass, not sunning yours."

"Lot of smoke to the west. Serrano Point area. Wonder what's going on."

"Probably Connor's mob stirring things up."

"Must be nice to have scruples."

"Maybe we should try it sometime."

"That'll be the day."

------------------------------------------

I do some nuding up myself, removing my shirt and apply lube to the palms of my hands. River watches me from a corner of the basement, sat with her back against the wall hugging her knees to her chest and peering at me through her dark curtain of hair. Her lips are slightly open and her gaze inscrutable. Not a clue what she's thinking or even if she thinks at all.

I raise the pickaxe above my head and start swinging.

The dividing wall is not brick but some kind of concrete block. Thick. Very durable. An hour passes and all I've managed is a shallow depression a couple of inches deep. This is gonna be a tougher job than I thought. Hot and sweaty and my muscles threatening to cramp, I take a break, chug some water and check in with Robyn.

"Anything?"

"Still clear. Must all be over at Connor's shindig."

"How's the tan?"

"Shoulda brought more lotion."

"Poor you."

"How's it coming?"

"It's coming."

"Put your back into it, you pussy."

"Appreciate the advice."

I do another hour stint, stop for more water and check again with Robyn. The coast is still clear. The basement floor is now strewn with dust and rubble. Still no breach in the wall.

"Third time's the charm," I convince myself.

As I swing the axe my mind wanders to what I'll do if I find guns and ammunition on the other side. Trade with the local militias is one option. Connor's ordanance is mostly military spec; I doubt he'll be interested in what I expect to find. Do I trade piecemeal or the whole caboodle? We'll see. And what do I want out of all this? Supplies. Transport. Maybe a Humvee. Fueled to go. One of those new plasma rifles, the latest lightweight model not the old heavy ones that are too bulky to lug around for any length of time.

So engrossed am I by thoughts of avarice I barely notice I've hit air. A hole about the size of my fist appears in the wall. I drop my pickaxe and reach for my maglite.

"Be lucky, baby."

I feel like Howard Carter about to gaze on the tomb of Tutankamoun for the first time.

"Holy shit!"

For King Tut's treasure substitute wooden crates marked Smith & Wesson. My torch beam picks out several. The gunshop basement appears to be intact. Paydirt. The motherlode.

I go at it with renewed vigour. The hole grows in size until it's large enough for me to crawl through.

"Don't. We should leave now before it's too late," River suddenly tells me.

"Too late for what?"

Nothing. We're back to the silent routine. I shrug my shoulders.

"Do what you want, but I'm going in. Pass me the stormlamp."

I squeeze through the hole, heedless of the rough concrete scraping my bare skin. The girl hands me the stormlamp then surprises me by stretching her arms through.

"You want in? Changed your tune mighty fast."

I help her in then crank up the lamp battery, illuminating the whole basement.

"Wow..."

The gunshop owner was evidently a fan of violence in all its forms. There are samouri swords framed on the walls, including a particularly impressive scimitar, its curving blade like something from the Arabian Nights. There are knives of all shapes and sizes, still pristine and deadly after all these years entombed. Higher on the walls are old fight posters, yellowed with age. The Ali v Frazier trilogy, Tyson v Holyfield, Hearns v Hagler and....

"No fucking way!"

In a corner above a cardboard box of handgun ammo is a poster I recognise from my youth.

Joe Calzaghe v Kenny 'Raging' Savage

My father's face gazes down at me from across the years, defying time and reason. Handsome and younger looking than I remember he scowls at the camera, peering over his gloves in a typically agressive pose.

River comes and stands next to me. She stares curiously at the poster then at me. She touches dad's lips with her index finger then touches mine.

"You?"

"No. My pop. He was a contender. Lost this fight on points. Everyone said he gave it his best shot and there was no disgrace in defeat."

"Dead now?"

I nod not trusting myself to speak. Dad was killed outside Lubbock, Texas. An ambush. The bullet with your name on is the one you never see coming. I was seventeen. We'd left the Catskills because of the food shortages and the severe winters that froze you to the bone. We headed south to warmer climes, scavenging and living off the land. Good times despite it all. I miss him to this day.

River suddenly stiffens beside me, her eyes widen with anxiety.

"Machines come. Metal men wearing clothes of flesh."

I'm sufficiently spooked to check the walkie-talkie. "Robyn, you there?"

"....................................."

Static. The thicker walls must be blocking the signal.

"Shit."

I clamber back through the hole trying to quell my sense of foreboding. Almost immediately Robyn's voice shouts in my ear.

"Vinny? Christ, where you at? I've been calling and calling."

"What is it - bad news?"

"The worst. Metal. Three of them. They're practically on top of you. I'm sorry, Vin. Nice knowing you."

"Robyn?"

"..................................................."

Static. She's busy saving her own skin. I can't say I blame her, though I can't say the betrayal doesn't hurt either. Business partners. Fuckbuddies. It meant nothing when the heat was on.

Screw her.

Shadows at the hole leading to the outside world. I grab my backpack and squeeze back into the gunshop basement. I rely on stealth to dodge metal, avoiding confrontations whenever possible. Consequently I travel light: a Glock nine mill and an Uzi sub with a maximum of two clips is all I have to defend myself.

I'm the one screwed.

I put my finger to my lips warning River to keep very quiet and douse the light. We crouch behind a crate of what appear to be hunting rifles. Nice irony. At least it's big enough to hinder their infra red.

River taps my shoulder and points at the floor. As my eyes adjust to the darkness I see the trail of footprints in the dust. Our footprints. Leading to where we're hiding.

We are so screwed.

As the first terminator tries to squeeze through the opening I stand and let rip with the Uzi. The gunfire is deafening in the enclosed space. The metal, another triple-8, is forced back. The wall begins to shake as they bludgeon a bigger entrance. We retreat to the rear of the basement. The stairway leading to the shop above is clogged with fallen masonry. No escape route there.

The wall disintegrates as three T-8s join the party. None are armed which is a bonus. Too bad their hands are deadly weapons.

"Stay down," I order River, and open fire with the second clip.

The Uzi bucks wildly in my hands as the magazine empties. The bullets mash their pseudo-flesh but do little else to slow them down. I feel River rising to her feet.

"No! Stay down!"

She ignores me and takes a step over to where the curving blade of the scimitar hangs on the wall.

"River!"

I discard the useless Uzi and draw my Glock. I put three bullets in the skull of the nearest T-8. His eye assembly disintegrates but unless I get lucky and hit the chip ordinary ammo is not gonna get the job done.

What I'm gonna describe now will sound like some stoner fantasy or acidtrip headfuck, but it actually happened. I'm the living proof.

River steps between me and the metal, twirling the scimitar above her head. She begins a series of moves that are a cross between ballet and martial arts. The scimitar blade loops round and suddenly the terminator's head is rolling on the floor, joined in short order by its decapitated body. The T-8 with the missing eye advances and is dispatched in the same extraordinary manner. The third fills the breach left by its fallen comrades and sure enough its head joins the others rolling about the floor like so many ninepins.

Christ!

Now I've seen grown men twice this girl's size and weight struggle using an axe to chop a terminator's head off. Their skeletons are tough, designed for extreme combat. Yet River lopped their heads off as if they were decadent french aristos lying beneath a guillotine.

"How did you do that?"

"No dying today," she informs me calmly. "Today's a Sunday. Bad karma."

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

River helps me disguise the entrance hole in the street. We obscure it with old wood boards and the largest chunks of rubble we can carry. Finally I throw handfuls of dust over the ground, covering our tracks. We do a good job. Even close up you can't tell there's a hole in the wall. Only three people know it's there. Me. River.

And Robyn.

I don't think that bitch will be back any time soon. Sentiment won't keep her away and nor will squeamishness at what she might find. No, metal has a habit of staking out places where they find us in the hope we'll return in even greater numbers. But curiosity will bring her back eventually. Robyn doesn't know what we found but she knows there's something here worth finding. I figure we have a week, ten days tops, before she returns.

Bitch.

But that's plenty of time. And I don't need her anymore, do I? I've got a new girl. River. A very special girl. Maybe we don't have the intimacy Robyn and I shared but hey, just give me time.

I take River's hand in mine. I smile at her and we start walking down the street.

Yeah. Just a matter of time.

-000-

Bought Serenity on Blu Ray - worth the upgrade for the extras alone - and felt compelled to write a River fanfic. But I don't know the Firefly universe nearly well enough to write about it, so I incorporated her into T:SCC.

What's River doing in 21st century LA? Patience. I explain all in a later chapter.

The narrator, Vinny Savage - no relation to Robbie,lol. - is meant to be a sleaze so the language and tone are appropriately adult.

About 5-6 chapters planned. Hope you like it so far.