The Future War t2-3

by S. M. Stirling

  Before he could swear in frustration, another truck, this one without a driver, started rolling toward the knot of men. To him it looked like the damn thing was sneaking up on them. "Hey,"

  Dennis shouted. "Look out!"

  The men looked over at him and the truck sped up. Some of them heard it and managed to leap aside, but the original victim and two other men were crushed beneath its wheels. All around the site, vehicles were moving; even the cars in the impromptu parking lot were starting to drive on their own.

  Some of the men in the earthmovers were able to leap out of their cabs; most of them managed to avoid the treads. Dennis forced his eyes and his mind from what was going on there. The men inside the trucks seemed trapped, though it was obvious from where he was that they were attempting to control their rogue vehicles.

  Up here on the bluff he was out of danger; he shouted to the men below to get to high ground. Some seemed to hear him, and jinking and dodging made their way toward him. Others were too panicked, or simply too busy to hear him. In the phone he held to his ear the "lines are busy" message continued to drone.

  Giving up on 911, he called the Black River Project HQ.

  A trembling voice answered. "Black River Project HQ."

  "This is Lieutenant Dennis Reese, put me through to the CO."

  "Sir, I'm afraid I can't do that." In the background he could hear the sounds of heavy vehicles roaring by.

  "We have a situation heaaaaaaaahhhh!" There was the sound of a crash, glass and wood breaking, and screams. But nothing from the operator. An engine roared, loudly, then there was silence.

  Dennis snapped the phone closed and looked at the men who had managed to get up on the bluff beside him. "We're on our own," he told them.

  Down below, most of the vehicles circled like sharks. At the bottom of the track leading up to the bluff, a single Jeep made repeated, abortive attempts to climb up to them. Thank God it's not a Hummer, Dennis thought, watching it. As he watched it gave up, and when it did the others made one last circle and headed for the road, in some cases still carrying their drivers.

  Dennis thought that to his dying day he'd remember the eyes of one man who met his gaze.

  "What's going to happen to them?" someone asked.

  No one answered. No one asked the next logical question—

  What's going on?—either.

  Sergeant Juarez came up to Dennis and asked softly, "What should we do, sir?"

  Dennis looked over the ground below them, littered with bodies, then up the dirt road that led to the main drag before answering. "There's a radio in the trailer, and a pair of binoculars," he said thoughtfully. "If we could get them it might go a long way toward answering that question. But I'm concerned that there might be a vehicle lurking behind those trees." He gestured toward a clump of trees that hid a good part of the dirt road. "So I think most of us better stay up here. I want to send two men down. One to check the bodies, see if anyone's alive down there. One to retrieve those items." He shook his head. "We wouldn't be able to do a thing to help if there is some kind of a rearguard out there, except give a shout of warning."

  He turned to the crowd of men. "I'm asking for volunteers."

  He wanted to go himself because he knew that he would do a better job than anybody here. But he also knew that he was in charge and that these men needed someone who could and would make decisions for the group. Someone that everyone could agree to follow. So for the sake of the group, he couldn't put himself at risk. Delegating responsibility might be the secret to success, but it kinda stuck in your craw when you were asking men to put their lives on the line while you stayed relatively safe.

  To his relief, two members of the corps shuffled forward, frowning down the track at where the Jeep had tried to climb up to them. Dennis quickly ascertained which of them could at least take a pulse and assigned him to check the bodies. He described to the other where the radio and binoculars were. When he was finished the two men saluted; he returned the gesture.

  "Good luck, men."

  One nodded, the other muttered, "Thank you, sir." Then they turned and went down to the deserted project site.

  Feeling helpless and useless, Dennis tried 911 again and wasn't surprised to get the "all lines are busy" signal again. One of the men had reached the first body. He looked up at the bluff and shook his head, then went on to the next. Dennis dialed his father's number in Ohio.

  "Hello," the old man barked.

  "Hey, Dad, what's happening?"

  Silence greeted the question. "What do you mean?" the older Reese asked.

  Now Dennis was silent. When his father got this cagey it usually meant he was very nervous. "Are you having trouble with cars and trucks where you are?" he asked.

  His father let out his breath in a long hiss that whistled over the phone. "Yeah. The damn things have been running people down and crashing into things all over the place. It's on the news, but the bastards don't know anything. They keep saying the same stuff and showing pictures of cars running around on their own like we can't see the same thing through our own front windows."

  The man who'd gone for the radio ran up. Dennis nodded to him in acknowledgment. "Turn it on, see if you can find a news channel." To his father he said, "It can't last forever. They'll run out of fuel and stop."

  "I hope so," his father said. "Some of these new stations fill your tank automatically; all you have to do is swipe your card."

  "Let's hope they're not involved, then."

  "Yeah, keep a good thought," his dad sneered.

  Dennis smiled involuntarily; his father could be a sour old coot sometimes, and there was something oddly reassuring about hearing the familiar snarl now. Behind him the radio made a strange sound and he turned to look at it. He heard his father say, "What the hell?"

  "… is Sarah Connor. I can tell you what's happening. Not long ago the military developed a super-computer and a very sophisticated program to run it that they dubbed Skynet. This computer is so advanced that it actually became self-aware. It kept this from its operators because it suspected that they would shut it down if they knew.

  "Since it became self-aware, it has insinuated itself into a number of computer systems throughout the world, using them to fill its needs. This included, we're forced to assume, every automated factory on the planet. It used these factories to produce vehicles slaved to Skynet. Now every truck, automobile, or piece of construction equipment manufactured during the last two years is under the direct control of a system that has decided that for it to be safe, every human being on earth must be killed."

  The men looked at one another uneasily.

  "Crazy talk," one of the hard hats muttered.

  Another pointed silently to the bodies at the foot of the hill, and the first man shook his head and swore.

  Dennis held the phone to his ear. The name Sarah Connor teased his memory, but nothing came to him.

  "It has complete control of every military system at the disposal of the United States military. That means every nuclear weapon in the American armory. It is going to use them. Soon.

  It's using the cars and trucks worldwide to trap people in the cities to achieve maximum kill.

  "Anyone outside the fire zone, those of you in rural areas, for example, should stay in your basements. Take as much food and water down as you have. Those of you in cities and towns that will be targeted should do your best to flee. I have to be honest; your chances aren't good. Especially with all those murderous vehicles running loose. But it is your only chance.

  "I must also tell you that this will not be over once the bombs have fallen. Nuclear war is only Skynet's first step. It has already turned its automated factories to manufacturing robots whose sole purpose is to kill humans.

  "But for now, arm yourselves, and hunker down if you're in a safe area; try to get to a safe area if you're not presently in one.

  Survive as best you can. Find us; we're out there. We'll train you to fight this thing. Good luck."<
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  They all waited for more, but all they got was the unnerved voice of a newscaster.

  "Dad?" Dennis said. His father lived close to Dayton.

  "I heard. She was on the TV."

  "Can you get out of town, or something?"

  "I'm seventy years old, son. I don't think I can outrun a car, let alone an atom bomb."

  "Does your building have a fallout shelter?"

  His father sighed. "Closest thing we've got is the parking garage, and believe me, that's not friendly territory right now."

  "What about the stairwell?"

  The older Reese seemed to be thinking that over. "Not an attractive prospect," he said. "But better than dying of stupidity.

  I'll look into it."

  Dennis looked at the men around him. He should share the phone with them while there was still time to call their families.

  "You'd better get to work, then, Dad."

  "Yeah."

  Dennis lowered his voice. "I love you, Dad."

  "Love you, too, son."

  "Bye."

  "Good-bye, son. God bless."

  Then he was gone. The lieutenant looked around at the men, forcing certainty and assurance into his voice. "This is a fairly rural area; if we can find shelter we could make it. What about your families?"

  "Well, hell," one man said, "I ain't got no basement. I got a slab house."

  "Me neither," said another. "Ain't no basement in a double-wide."

  "The kids're at school," said a third. "They'll have a shelter there, won't they?"

  "Yes," Dennis agreed. "They probably will." He was thinking rapidly. They needed to find shelter from the fallout, and they needed supplies, and they needed to avoid the roads. "How close is the nearest public building?"

  "There's the regional high school about eight miles south of here," said one of the locals.

  "Can we get there cross-country?" the lieutenant asked.

  "Yeah. Take longer, though."

  Dennis nodded. "Can you show us the way?"

  The man hesitated. "I want to go home," he said. "My wife's home with the baby."

  The others indicated that they, too, wanted to get back to their families.

  "Some of us might be close enough to do that," Dennis said.

  "The rest of us can't. It takes hours to walk fifteen miles." That was the distance to the nearest town. "We probably don't have hours."

  He held up the phone. "Call them. Tell them to get into the basement, those of you who have them, or to find one if you haven't. I know it's hard, but we have to be practical. We can try to find them after the fallout stops, but we won't be any good to anyone if we're dying of radiation sickness." He held the phone up. "Use it alphabetically. Sergeant?"

  Juarez stepped up and took the phone. "Albertson," he barked out.

  "Let's move," Dennis said. "We can talk while we walk."

  The man who knew the path to the regional high school led the way, through fields that would be swamp grass later in the year, and along old streamside dikes. No one looked at the bodies of their fellow workers as they left.

  Dennis felt the world turning as he walked. God, I wish I could believe this was a hoax, he thought. As he listened for the sound of a charging car, the name Sarah Connor suddenly clicked.

  She was a terrorist who liked to blow up computer companies.

  She'd been diagnosed insane because she claimed that an evil computer was going to try to kill the human race.

  Crazy! he thought. Only it's like they said. A paranoid can have real enemies. Too bad they're everyone's enemies, this time

  .

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  SARAH'S JOURNAL

  It was a long two weeks in the shelter as freakishly heavy winds carried the fallout from Russia, Asia, and probably our own West Coast up to Alaska. We listened to the radio stations going off, one by one; then the bombs came, and for a while there was nothing, and we might have been the last alive in a world as empty of humanity as Skynet's soul. We wondered if anyone had heard our broadcast, and if so, had they believed us?

  Knowing what was happening around the world was very hard to take. John blames himself, I blame myself, Dieter blames himself; although at least we don't blame one another. The weight of depression on all of us was almost physical. We failed.

  Now it's up to us to make it up to humanity for that failure.

  ALASKA

  Bemused, Sarah watched John teaching the children about self-defense; they were grouped around the base of a big Sitka spruce, a circle of dirty faces and slightly ragged clothes on the resilient pine-needle surface of the ground. The strong spicy scent of the tree's sap came to her on the wind—which was fortunate, because soap and hot water were already scarce.

  John had turned out to have an unexpected talent for dealing with children. He was patient, he gave them slack, but he wouldn't let them run roughshod over him. They were learning self-discipline in these classes, and self-reliance. After accepting an exuberant greeting from the munchkins, he sat them down to listen to his lecture.

  "Okay," John said. "Now sometimes you're going to find yourself facing a larger or better-armed opponent. What do you do?"

  The kids said nothing, glancing at one another to see if anyone else had any ideas.

  "Nobody? You run, or you hide, whichever is better. Why is that?"

  A little girl held up a skinny arm and John nodded at her. "

  'Cause if you don't you'll get hurt."

  "That's right. You could get hurt, or worse, killed. Yes, killed."

  "But what if you can't get away?" a boy asked.

  "I'm going to show you how to break away if someone grabs you. And I'm going to show you a few ways to hurt an attacker so that he, or she, will think twice about trying to get you. But everything I'm teaching you is so that you can run away. That's why we finish every lesson with a run. You want to be able to run a long, long time as fast as you can. Okay?"

  There was a ragged chorus: Yessir, yes Mr. Connor…

  "Okay, now who'd like to help me demonstrate? Sharon and Jamie?"

  Everyone laughed and the two chosen came forward reluctantly, their faces red.

  Grinning, Sarah turned away. She had a meeting with the parents; four couples, all of them close in age, and like most Alaskans pretty savvy about the basics of surviving in the wild.

  Of course none of them had expected being in the wild to become a lifelong thing, and they were starting to panic as they began to suspect that rescue wasn't coming.

  The children, bless them, were adapting just fine. It was the parents who were going to be a handful.

  While the three of them had been in the fallout shelter they'd discussed how to approach people on the subject of Skynet and its intention to wipe out the human race. Dieter had argued that they'd have to take it slow. "They'll never believe us," he'd insisted. "They'll think the blast unhinged our minds."

  Sarah had looked at him. "My heart wants to say, 'Of course they'd believe me,' " she'd said. "But…"

  "But as someone who spent a lot of time locked up in the booby hatch, you think he's right," John had put in.

  "Tactful."

  "No, just true. He's your boyfriend; he has to be tactful. I'm your son, the Great Military Leader, and I can tell it like it is."

  These four couples were the first group of people they'd brought together and led to one of their supply caches. They'd also built a large communal dwelling on the site; it was half-underground, with a turf roof. The group had been a bit dubious at first, but accepted the Connors' explanation that the building conserved resources. They seemed to be settling in all right.

  And it was snug inside; outside the sky was overcast, with a gray chill that had been around since the bombs fell. Inside the poles and turf had a sort of archaic coziness, lit red by the flicker of the fire in the central hearth.

  Sarah joined the circle around the blaze where the adults were nursing cups of coffee. The beverage was so irreplaceable that
everyone treated it like a ceremonial occasion when it was brewed up. Cups were held with both hands and no one spoke for the first few mouthfuls. But everyone was beginning to notice that caffeine went further when you didn't get it very often.

  Sarah accepted a cup and sipped contemplatively for a while.

  "The kids all love your son," one of the women said eventually.

  "They live for these lessons."

  "I'm not sure it's a good idea, though," one of the men said.

  He had a long, sensitive face and glasses; his name was Paul.

  "I'm afraid it will encourage them to be violent."

  Sarah blinked. Even before Judgment Day, she'd found the assumption that you could keep your children safe from violence by not telling them about it inexplicable. Now it seemed demented.

  "After what's happened, things have changed," she said patiently. "Food supplies are going to be running out, and then people are going to go looking for more. Some of those people will be willing to do anything to feed their own children. And some will be criminals who have always felt entitled to take what they want by force. We may find ourselves in a position of having to choose our children over theirs."

  "That's horrible!" one of the other women said. Her eyes had a wild look that made Sarah think she was going to crack one of these days. "It's uncivilized!" she went on. "As long as we can share, we should."

  "What we have in storage here will get you about halfway through the summer," Sarah explained. "By then the seeds you've planted should be bearing fruit. And there are wild plants that you can harvest as well. But Alaska has always had a short growing season."

  She glanced up, and everyone followed suit, even though they were looking at the rough pine trunks of the rafters; it seemed to her that the weather was already colder than it had been.

  "This year I expect it will be shorter than usual. So your crops will be smaller. Food is going to become a big issue from now on.

  And yes, there will be people who'll steal it whenever they can, even if they have to kill you."

  "What makes you think like that?" asked Paul. There was an edge in his voice that indicated unspoken questions about her stability.