SOMETHING ELSE

Disclaimer: I don't own these wonderful TSCC characters, just wish I did.

Chapter One: What Have I Done To Deserve This?

Southern California: Tuesday, November 14th 2006.

It was a small town, located on an old Highway. Like many small places, it had gotten a by-pass: a big, wide Interstate. But since that had opened, most folks just by-passed the town, in a hurry to get some place else. That suited him just fine.

He parked his old Triumph Bonneville on its side-stand, outside of the only diner visible on Main Street. Safely stowing the key in a pocket in his jeans, he removed one arm from his backpack's shoulder harness and strode inside without bothering to remove his Wayfarer sunglasses.

There appeared to be only two customers: one, a man not far removed from vagrancy; the other, seated well away, a middle-aged woman who regarded her fellow diner suspiciously. She turned to appraise the newcomer. Her eyes lit up momentarily, but then she sighed in resignation at the loss of her allure, and continued with her meal.

A waitress, perhaps the only one, approached the stranger. "Hi! Seat at the counter, or a booth?" she asked in what appeared to be a genuinely pleasant way.

"Booth," he replied.

"This way," she beckoned.

He caught himself admiring her ass as she showed him to a booth in the far corner, near the rear exit. Hmm, he thought. Usually gotta pick the seat with the best sight-lines myself. Sometimes you're lucky...

"Thanks," he said sitting down. "You still doing breakfast, or is it lunch now?"

"Oh, we ain't fussy! Whatever you want, if it's on there you can have it. Whatever..." She emphasized the last word with a look that suggested that something not on the menu was available too.

He grinned slightly, then cast a quick glance over the plastic-coated list. "Give me the Big Breakfast, with black coffee."

"How do you like your eggs?" the waitress inquired.

"Scrambled. Please," he added, remembering his manners. He was rewarded with a smile.

"Coffee'll be just a minute," she said, then twirled away and sashayed towards the counter, giving him the opportunity to admire her rear anew.

He continued to gaze upon her as she went about her duties with an economy of motion that seemed almost... artistic? He scratched his head in bemusement at his thoughts. "You've been too long in the sun, John," he chuckled.

She poured out a mug for him. "John? That's your name?"

"Er, yeah! Didn't realize I was talking aloud..."

"Then you have been too long in the sun," she asserted amiably.

"Guess so," he replied, shrugging it off.

"John what?"

"Huh? What?"

"Your name: John what-comes-next?" she clarified.

"Oh, right! Er, it's... just John," he said evasively.

"Okay, Just John, I'm–"

"Cameron," he interrupted. She looked puzzled, and something else: worried? "Your name tag," he said, pointing to the hand-written badge upon her chest.

"Oh! Thank you for explaining," she said with a smile. "I'll... um, go check on your order."

Curious phrase, he thought. Cute smile though!

As he got up to settle the check, John made sure to leave a decent tip. By now the only customer, he thought fit to compliment the cook on the pancakes as he handed over his money.

"Glad you liked them. I got him to put in a little extra something," Cameron remarked conspiratorially, whilst giving him his change.

"Oh?" He looked concerned, which she duly noted.

Holding his arm reassuringly, she replied, "Oh, nothing bad, just a hint of vanilla."

"Hmm, okay then." He noted that she still held on to him. She caught his pointed glance and let go with an embarrassed laugh.

"So, is that your motorcycle out there?" she asked.

"Yeah," John admitted.

"You should wear a helmet, riding those. Wouldn't want you to come to any harm, now would we?" Cameron stated.

John regarded her curiously. Who was this chick? She sounds like Mom, he thought. Who was herself a waitress, mostly. Is being a nag part of the job? He shook such thoughts from his head then, putting his shades back on, headed for the exit.

"I get off at two-thirty," Cameron called out.

He looked at his watch. Forty-five minutes. The place was dead, considering it was lunch-time. He turned to face her. "What about now?"

"Five minutes, 'kay?" she implored. He nodded twice, then went outside to wait on the Bonneville. He bided his time securing his backpack to the small rack on the bike's tail.

She reappeared in almost exactly five minutes, which surprised him: most women of his acquaintance said five, but took thirty. She was now wearing brown leather boots under blue boot-cut jeans, a dark blue tee-shirt topped by a black leather jacket, her hair pulled back into a pony-tail. She had a smallish canvas courier bag slung over one shoulder, from which she removed a set of aviator sunglasses. John could see his approving grin reflected there as she donned them.

"Where to?" he asked.

She climbed on the back behind him, then placed her arms around his middle. Her head was close to his.

"Just keep on going, I'll tell you when to stop," she said enigmatically.

He keyed the ignition, switched the fuel tap on, then thumped his leg hard down on the kick-start. Unusually, it started first time. Sometimes you're lucky...

"There," she said, pointing to a small patch of concrete road, left to the side when this particular bit of the highway was realigned. The pot-holed surface also had eruptions of weeds and grass here and there, showing that it was used irregularly. Carefully threading his way through these obstacles, John pulled to a halt and killed the motor.

Cameron the waitress climbed elegantly off the back seat, allowing him to set the bike on its side-stand. He followed her with his eyes as she strolled to the edge, where a section of guardrail sought to prevent vehicles going over the precipice. She turned back to him and smiled, the sun glinting off her sunglasses as she moved her head.

"So, what is it?" he asked warily.

"A view. I know it's just hills, desert and farms, but it's beautiful, don't you think?"

He moved up alongside her, and gazed out over the vast expanse in front. A mile or so behind them lay the Interstate, its constant drone barely reaching his ears.

"Yeah, guess so," he reluctantly admitted.

Usually, he saw farms as potential employment, hills and deserts as somewhere to hide. There didn't seem much room for beauty in his life. If there ever was, it was short-lived – not literally, of course: it was just that he moved on so much, before he could form attachments, before he became a danger to anyone. He followed his mother's advice, but as he regarded his attractive, interesting companion, he wondered: Why? Why keep running? He had no record, was not wanted for anything, unlike his mother Sarah Connor, who had died hand-cuffed to her hospital bed, a fact that haunted him still.

"John? You okay?"

"What?" he said.

"You, um, seemed to zone out there. Like you were somewhere else," Cameron said, looking concerned.

"Yeah, sorry," he said, then decided to change the subject away from himself. "So, what's a waitress in a hick town doing admiring landscapes then?"

"None taken," she replied icily. The warmth vanished from her face too.

John Connor realized he'd put his foot in it. And not for the first time, either. Oh well, looks like this birthday is gonna be like the last – spent alone. "Sorry. Again," he said. Another apology, two in a row. Some savior I am, he thought bitterly. "I'll, um, take you back, 'kay?"

"Fine," she replied. The coldness in her voice emphasized the lack of heat out there in the open on a November day, albeit in Southern California. He zipped up his own leather jacket, but still shivered slightly.

As they headed back into town, he noticed the warmth of the woman at his back, more so than on the way out. Her arms around his chest seemed reassuring, comforting even, as the wind tore through his hair, and pushed against his chest, seemingly trying to pull him from his seat for daring to disturb its progress across the earth.

With subtle gestures she guided him to a small side road, about a quarter-mile away from the diner on Main Street. They were parked outside a vacant shop, which appeared to John to be a disused liquor store.

She caught his puzzled expression. "I live above it, second floor."

He glanced up for the first time. Damn! Should have taken in the full picture right at the start. "Not such a nice view from here," he said.

"No," she agreed. "That's why I like it out of town. You never know when you won't be able to enjoy it again."

Funny, thought John. Didn't take her for one of those doom and gloom types. He'd figured her for a good-time-girl. Appearances could be deceiving, he knew that. But he had other more pressing matters on his mind. "Can I, er... Can I use your bathroom? All that coffee, the cold wind..." He let her imagination fill in the blanks.

After what seemed to John to be an age, she finished studying his efforts to control his bladder, and simply nodded her assent.

Relieved mentally if not physically, John scurried after her. As she turned a key in the lock to open the door to the apartments, she looked back at the Triumph. "Shouldn't you get your backpack? It's not the best of neighborhoods."

"Oh, right. Yeah." He turned back and struggled with the clasps that had seemed so easy to do up just a few hours before. As the last one released itself he caught a slight smirk on her face. "Done it," he said, then hastened to the rapidly-closing door, catching it just before it slammed shut.

He bounded up the stairs, surprised by her speed. As he entered her apartment, she pointed the way for him distractedly. He mumbled his thanks, then went about relieving his bladder. Afterward, seeking to atone for his dumb behavior, he set the seat back down, and washed his hands – dried them too. Looking in the mirror over the basin, he didn't see the cool, confident John Connor who had mooched into the diner earlier that day, sweeping the waitress off her feet. Instead, he saw the lonely, scared boy who had been the target of terminators from the future, not once but twice.

The second one had attacked him at school in New Mexico, back in 1999. Somehow he'd escaped, when by some dumb luck an old truck, probably driven by a panicking student, had just run into the machine. He didn't need a second invitation to run off as his mother taught him. He'd found her at the school gates, that sixth sense of hers alerting her to the threat. Once more they'd hit the highway, but it was his last day in formal school. The machine never caught up with them, for they kept themselves under the radar as long as possible, moving from state to state. They had been told that terminators never gave up, so when the authorities finally caught up with his mother the previous year, as she succumbed to the cancer that had been eating away at her, he fully expected the metal assassin to reappear. That day in December when his mother passed, he was willing to embrace whatever Skynet threw at him. But it never came. He'd spent seven years looking over his shoulder, for the cold hand of his destiny to reach out for him, all the while dreading the coming of Judgment Day. However, it too never came. It didn't stop him running though.

He sighed deeply. Introspection was not his thing. "Snap out of it, Johnny-boy!" he told his reflection. "Turn this around and there's a warm bed for the night, with free breakfast thrown in." His reflection grinned back at him.

There was a knock on the door. "You okay in there?" the waitress called to him, sounding concerned.

He opened the door, to find her standing there, her hands on her hips, head tilted to one side.

"Yeah, I'm okay. Sorry."

"You make a habit of 'pologizing?" she asked. He was about to say sorry again, when he caught himself; thinking back, he detected a note of humor in her question.

"Not usually, no," John admitted.

"Guess I should be honored then," Cameron said. The warmth had definitely returned to her voice, and her demeanor. "You wanna just hang out, take the weight off your feet?" she offered.

Pleasantly surprised by this development, John agreed enthusiastically.

Happily slouching in an old armchair, he surveyed the small apartment's one main room, a kitchenette/living-room. It was sparsely furnished, Probably by the landlord, he thought, as he sought clues to Cameron's personality in the ornaments.

"None of it's mine, not even the TV," she clarified for him, as if reading his mind. "I just moved here at the weekend, started work yesterday. All I've got are some clothes and my truck."

"Truck?" John couldn't recall seeing one parked in this street, but maybe his memory was failing? No, the outside was deserted when they rode in on the bike.

"Yeah, it's in back of the diner."

"Oh, right. You wanna go pick it up? I'll drop you off, get outta your way..."

"No, it's fine as it is. No-one's gonna steal that ol' heap. We can get it later."

"Later? Sounds good," John replied, using his most sincere smile.

Cameron responded with hers. "So, what are you doing in a hick town like this, Just John?"

He smiled at the playfulness in her voice. "Oh, looking for work, short-term, nothing fancy."

"You move around a lot?" she asked.

"Yeah," he admitted. "It's the times though: you gotta go where the work is, right?"

"Yeah," Cameron agreed.

The conversation seemed to be going nowhere, but John figured there was one last card he could deal. "Listen, about before: I was rude. Maybe I can make it up to you, buy you dinner?"

"Dinner?"

"Yeah!" he chuckled. "Dinner – you do eat don't you?"

"Of course, doesn't everybody?" She sounded offended.

"Well, girls these days like to watch their figures; eat like, a lettuce leaf or something," John explained.

"I guess I'm lucky then," Cameron replied. "I can eat what I want, don't put nothing on, not a pound."

"Yeah, lucky," John agreed. "Fact is, it's my birthday, didn't want to spend it alone..."

"Oh, happy birthday! How old?" she asked brightly.

"Twenty-three."

"Sounds about right," she responded, her answer puzzling him for a second before he dismissed it as a distraction from his goal.

"Is it rude to ask how old you are?" he inquired.

"No, it's not rude – that comes when women are like, really old. Let's say I'm a bit younger than you, and leave it at that."

John smirked. "Chicks like to be mysterious about their age, no matter how old, right? Okay, keep your secrets. We all have them..."

"Some more than others," she said archly. He did not fail to notice this, and something began to tingle somewhere inside his brain.

He was stirred from his musings by a noise, seemingly from behind the only closed door in the apartment. On reflection, it sounded like a thud. "What was that?" he said.

"A mouse?" offered Cameron.

"Hell of a big mouse! More like a moose; I've yet to see one this far south though." John got up to investigate, pushing the door open carefully. Lying on the floor, all trussed-up like a Thanksgiving turkey, was a blond woman of about thirty, her mouth gagged, her blue eyes bulging with fear. Without hesitation, John quickly moved to her side, removing the duct-tape gag with a swift tug, causing the woman to cry out in pain. "Sorry," John said soothingly. "Take it easy, not here to hurt you! Who did this to you?"

"That freaking mad bitch!" the woman croaked.

John turned to follow her gaze. The waitress stood in the doorway, looking unnaturally calm.

NEXT: Chapter Two – Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue?

In which more is revealed about the mysterious waitress, Cameron.