The killer looked up at the same moment the grille of the big-wheeled Dodge pickup truck plowed into her body, carrying her in a seeming instant into the side of the Lexus convertible, bumping over the curb and shoving the entire mass of steel and plastic and cybernetic circuitry and framework into the side wall of the clinic.
For the briefest of moments the crash seemed to hang in midstride, until the leading edge of the wreck, still moving in excess of three meters per second, ruptured a large, three-fourths-full propane gas tank.
A huge ball of fire erupted, blowing straight up and then out, the heat instantly bringing tears to Kate's eyes.
Still dazed, she sat up as tremendous clouds of dust and black smoke billowed up from the great flash-bang of the explosion. She'd never seen anything like that in her life.
It was a pickup truck that had passed over her body, the wheels somehow miraculously missing her. She could see the back end of it sticking out of the wall.
She got unsteadily to her knees and rubbed her bruised neck where the killer's boot had been jammed into her throat.
She figured that the blond woman as well as whoever had been driving the pickup truck had to be dead. They could not have survived the crash and the fire. But something moved within the most intense area of flames.
Kate tried to shake herself out of her daze, unable to believe anything she was witnessing, unable even to believe her own rationality. She had to be dreaming, or hallucinating. Something.
This was not happening.
A tall man, wearing a leather jacket and trousers, boots on his feet, and a shotgun in his left hand, pushed through the jumbled mass of burning wreckage and melting steel and glass, shrugging out of the flames as if the heat and damage had absolutely no effect on him, and strode purposefully to Kate, who was frozen to the spot.
"Katherine Brewster," Terminator said as a statement of fact, not a question.
Kate could do nothing more than dumbly look up at him and nod.
The stranger scooped her up with his right arm, tossed her over his shoulder like a duffel bag, and brought her around to the back door of the animal van.
"Wait!" Kate shouted, coming out of her fog. "What are you doing?"
The tall man got the back door of the van open and he tossed her inside among a couple of empty animal cages, blankets, and some medical equipment. There were no windows in the pickup's cap. A security screen covered the sliding window into the cab.
"Where is John Connor?" the man asked, his tone neutral.
Kate didn't know what to say or do. "Look, if I tell you, you'll let me go, right?"
"Yes," he said.
"In the kennel. I locked him in one of the cages."
The man spotted a lug wrench attached to the spare-tire bracket. He pulled it free, and Kate shrank back, thinking he was going to hit her with it.
"You said you'd let me go!"
"I lied," he said, which strictly speaking was not true. In fact he had merely omitted the time frame. He would let her go, but not now.
He slammed the door, stuck the lug wrench through the latches, and without any apparent effort bent it into a steel loop, effectively locking Kate inside.
Terminator turned and strode toward the animal clinic's smashed front entrance, his processors evaluating the range of likely scenarios he was heading for.
Most of the fire was on the other side of the brick wall that separated the kennel from the rest of the building, but a big section of intersecting wall had collapsed in a heap of rubble, and the room was filling with smoke.
Connor kept smashing at the cage door with both feet, bracing himself against the rear bars with his back for more leverage.
The animals were howling and barking wildly. Like Connor they were frantic that they would burn to death or die of smoke inhalation before someone came to let them out.
One of the door hinges bent then broke. Connor savagely kicked the door one last time, and the second hinge broke, sending the door clattering to the floor.
He scrambled out of the cage, heedless of the wound to his leg. He wanted out of there right now. He started for the door, but then stopped and turned back He couldn't leave.
The animals nervously switched their attention back and forth from him to the smoke pouring through the collapsed wall, almost pleading with him to help them.
"Shit," Connor muttered. He went back and started opening cages. The animals that could leaped out of their cages and raced for the door. Connor helped the others that were too sick to crawl out under their own steam. But once they were free and on the floor they were on their own.
He turned to get out of there when movement at the base of the rubble caught his eye. He stopped and watched
as silver beads of liquid metal oozed out of the debris and began to pool on the concrete floor.
Connor stepped back a pace. He'd seen this kind of thing before. Twelve years ago. It was the T-1000 model that Skynet had sent back to kill him and his mother. It was happening again. "Oh, shit"
A metallic arm coalesced from the liquid metal, and at even more material began to build on the first, clawlike structure, it was obvious that something very sophisticated was happening. This was no mere T-1000 rising out of the liquid metal.
This was something infinitely more deadly. Connor did not know how he knew such a thing, he just did.
He raced out of the kennel into the storage room where he retrieved his RAK PM-63 9mm machine pistol from where Kate had laid it, and headed out into the reception area, which was filled with dense smoke.
It was hard to breathe let alone see, and he nearly stumbled over the blood-soaked body of a woman. At first he thought it was Kate, but then he heard the distinctive double click of a round being cycled into the breach of a shotgun. He stopped dead in his tracks, trying to figure his options before it was too late. Terminator, the Mossberg 12-gauge 500 pump-action shotgun low at his right hip, appeared out of the smoke, reached Connor, grabbed him by the shirt, and lifted him up.
"John Connor," Terminator said. His head-up display
was slower and less sophisticated than the T-X's, but his processors came up with a very quick match. "It is time."
The first instance a T-800 had come back, it had been sent by Skynet to kill Connor's mother. The second T-800 had come to protect them. Now, twelve years later, it was anyone's guess what this unitthe newest model of the machine which had been the only father figure Connor had ever knownhad been sent to do.
"You're here to kill me," Connor said.
"No," Terminator replied, perhaps a mild expression of surprise forming at the corners of his mouth and eyes. "You must live."
c.ll
The Valley
Connor allowed himself to be hustled out of the clinic, partly because he knew there wasn't much he could do about it, and partly because of what was re-forming in the kennel.
"Why are you here?" he asked Terminator. "Where are we going?"
"Keep moving," Terminator said. He led Connor around to the back of the pet van and pushed him through the doorless driver's side. Fire still raged in the back of the building. Propane flames shot straight up into the dark, early morning sky. Debris littered the street. In the distance, Connor thought he could hear a lot of sirens. Someone must have turned in the alarm. The cops and the fire department were on the way. He glanced toward the front of the clinic in time to see T-X emerge through the shattered glass door. "Shit. Look out!" Terminator turned as T-X came toward them, the cyborg's liquid metal skin and clothing peeling back to reveal its formidable battle chassis armored with a
crystalline ceramic that was interlaced with nano fibers of carbon and titanium. T-X's right arm had transformed into the same model of plasma weapon that had been used in Colorado to wipe out the commands of Colonel Earle and Lieutenant Benson. This was Skynet's latest.
Terminator stepped directly between the oncoming T-X and Connor and raised his shotgun.
"Get out of here," he told Connor.
; He fired. The 12-bore slug plowed into T-X's armored skull, showing little effect other than opening a small liquid metal crater that immediately closed.
"Now!" Terminator insisted, firing a second time, and a third, and a fourth.
Connor finally got the van started and peeled away, tires screeching as Terminator headed directly for T-X, firing the last four shells.
He took more rounds that he'd found in the pickup truck from his jacket pocket and loaded them into the shotgun as an electric blue aura formed and intensified around T-X's plasma cannon.
A tremendous burst of raw energy, twenty-five or thirty millimeters in diameter, shot from the transmission head of the weapon, striking Terminator square in his broad chest.
He was not capable of feeling pain, but a firestorm raged across his battle-hardened neural networks, and a physical force as powerful as one hundred pounds of TNT picked him off his feet and propelled him across the street and through the front window of what appeared to be a hardware store. Glass and metal and bricks went flying as
if a bomb had gone off just outside the store.
Terminator landed on his side on top of a pile of glass and tools from a display rack, his shotgun gone, his sun-glasses askew. Blue plasma energy crackled through his body.
He was aware of his surroundings; aware of the still burning propane fire, of the approaching emergency ve-hicles, of his internal systems trying to reboot.
He was vulnerable now. Unable to perform his as-signed duties.
Terminator hot-started many of his systems, shunting others, bringing as many battle and defensive subsystems
on line as quickly as possible before T-X came to finish
the job.
T-X turned in the direction that Connor had gone, but the pet van had already disappeared around the corner. A street map of the immediate area overlaid her head-up display. The probable paths that Connor could take in-
creased exponentially with each elapsed minute. She debated giving chase on footthe T-X was ca-pable of speeds in excess of eighty kilometers per hour for brief periods of time before its power packs began to
show slight declinesor mounting a vehicular pursuit. The solution presented itself as the first two squad cars and ambulances turned the corner at the end of the block, fire trucks and other emergency vehicles right be-hind them.
T-X evaluated the developing situation and moved up the street toward the equipment rental company as her flesh re-formed over the plasma cannon.
The first police officers to arrive immediately began taping off the entire area. Some of the paramedics rushed into the clinic, while others tried to get in close to the rear of the Dodge pickup that was still totally involved in the intense fire.
Two LA. Fire Department pump units arrived, and their crews began setting up their equipment, while pairs of LAPD squad cars blocked off the intersections east and west.
People had materialized from somewhere, forming a small but growing crowd to watch what was happening.
T-X was just one person in the middle of the confusion. No one noticed her, not even the beefy fireman in all his gear who ran headlong into her, and bounced off as if he had run into a brick wall.
He picked himself up and ran off as T-X nonchalantly headed over to one of the unattended LAPD squad cars.
No one was watching as she lifted the hood, breaking the latch as if it were made of straw. She extended the data transfer point drill from her right index finger directly into the engine block.
In a matter of milliseconds she connected with the automobile's extremely crude but effective computers and reprogrammed them.
When she withdrew her finger and closed the hood, a blue glow lingered in the engine compartment.
in Kate's estimation, whatever John really wanted, he was at the very least a liar. She'd got that much from the few words he'd had with that creature she'd seen walking out of the middle of the flames.
God, this wasn't happening. She was still at home in bed having a bad dream. Any minute now Scott would nudge her shoulder. She would wake up suddenly and he would tell her that she was moaning in her sleep. She was having a nightmare.
Only she knew that she wasn't dreaming. She could still smell the fire. She could hear the man firing his shot-gun at someone.
And the sirens. They seemed to come from every di-rection. They were much too loud for this to be a dream. The pet van was bouncing all over the place, but Kate opened one of the emergency medical kits and found one of the clinic's cell phones. The battery was nearly dead, but she braced herself in a corner and managed to dial 911. It rang once.
A woman with a soothing voice answered. "This is nine-one-one. What is your emergency?" "I'm being kidnapped," Kate said, her voice low but urgent.
"Yes, ma'am. Can you tell me where you are?" "I don't know where. It's a Toyota pickup with a tan cup. It says Emery Animal Hospital on the side. I'm
locked in the back." The 911 operator didn't answer.
"Hello?" Kate said. "Hello?" She looked at the cell phone's display. The battery indicator showed discharged. "Shit," she said.
Connor figured that if he could make it to the freeway, he would have a good shot of getting out of the city. Out in the desert where he'd have some breathing room; time to figure out what the hell was going on.
But he wasn't familiar with this part of L.A., and he hadn't paid any attention earlier this morning when he'd caught the ride with the Mexicans. So he was driving blind. Sooner or later he'd have to cross one of the freeways though. It was an unavoidable fact of life in the city.
He just had to get that far.
Someone, or something, banged on the cab's rear window, and Connor nearly jumped out of his skin, almost smashing into a row of parked cars. They were still in a commercial section of the city: warehouses, hardware stores, appliance repair shops, air-conditioning shops.
He glanced over his shoulder. The window was painted black and it was protected by a heavy mesh screen. Whoever was back there banged on the window again.
Connor slid it open, and Kate was there.
"Let me out!" she screeched.
For a moment he didn't know what to say or do. He had no earthly idea how she had gotten into the back of
the truck. He thought she was dead, back in the animal clinic.
"What thewhat are you doing back there?" "You tell me!" Kate shouted. "You got me into this!" She searched for words. Frustrated, angry, frightened. "That woman shot Betsythe man, that man came out of the fire. Who are these people?"
"They're not people," Connor said. He felt truly sorry for her. She seemed like a nice person, although he couldn't remember her from West Hills. But that was a long time ago. A lot of things had happened since then. And somehow she had gotten into the middle of it. "Stop the car!"
"I can't," Connor said. "Not yet." "You can't keep me in here!" Kate screamed. She banged her tack. "Stop the carplease. Stop the car." "Be quiet"
She exploded. "You bastard! Stop the car!" "Shut up," Connor shouted back. He reached over his shoulder to slide the partition shut, taking his eyes off the
street just for a second.
A black Mercedes C280 came around the corner as Connor missed the stop sign and plowed into its rear end, sending them both to the side of the street. Connor was shoved up against the steering wheel by the force of the impact, and Kate crashed into the front of the cap.
The accident wasn't serious, but the pet van had astalled nd Kate was shouting for help.
The Mercedes's driver, a middle-aged man wearing jeans and a light pullover, jumped out to see how bad his car was damaged.
Connor opened the partition. "Are you okay back there? Are you hurt?"
"Let me out! Now!"
Connor tried to restart the pet van when the Mercedes's driver suddenly looked up.
"Goddammit," the man shouted. He was pissed off.
Connor continued trying to start the pet van.
"Hey, you!" the Mercedes's
driver shouted, and he started back.
c.12
The Valley
LAFD paramedic Logan Ballinger had expected to see more bodies when the call came in. The explosion was a big one, and the fire would probably burn for quite a while before it was brought under control. Propane-fed fires were always a bitch.
But so far the only body was the guy in black leathers who'd apparently been blown right through the window of a hardware store.
He crunched through the glass and debris and set his emergency response kit next to the victim who was unconscious and apparently not breathing.
His partner, Eric Kraus, was right behind him. Ballinger knelt down next to the man and touched a finger to the carotid artery in the side of his neck. There was no blood, or any obvious trauma, but the guy was as stiff as a board. "No pulse," he said.
Kraus moved to the victim's opposite side as he pulled on surgical gloves. He opened a plastic sterile wrap and pulled out the CPR mask. "Turn him over."
Ballinger took the guy's shoulder and tried to ease him gently over on his back, but the man wouldn't budge. He was stiff. Some kind of paralysis, or maybe even rigor mortis already. He could have been here before the explosion.
"I can't," Ballinger said. "This guy weighs a ton."
T-X closed the sharply sloping hood of the ambulance she'd reprogrammed, a blue haze in the engine compartment.
The animal clinic was fully engulfed in fire now. Paramedics were bringing out the body of the woman from the reception room on a gurney.
It was obvious that the police were agitated because of the gunshot wounds in the woman's chest
Soon they would try to completely seal off the area and question anyone they could round up. T-X wasn't concerned that such an action would stop her, but they might just slow her down.
Time just now was precious. With every moment that passed finding and eliminating John Connor became more and more problematic.
T-X evaluated her chances of finding Connor based on the continuously expanding time frame that gave him choices, and the likely pursuit of herself by the authorities once she moved out.
She walked over to another unattended LAPD radio car, opened its hood, and reprogrammed its computers,
Terminator - T3 01 - Rise of the Machines Page 7
