And I can't tell him the truth, yet, Sarah thought. Starting with, well, there was this killing machine from the future, which just happens to be nearly here now, and it looks just like my boyfriend…
"I lived in South America for a long time," Sarah said. "People were always coming out of the jungle there to raid small, isolated villages. They'd administer beatings or even kill to steal the little those people had."
"But that's South America," another man said. "What makes you think that will happen here?"
Sarah had to force herself not to roll her eyes in exasperation.
They were new to this, these people; they didn't know what to expect. These hopelessly naive questions were going to be coming up again and again as they found groups of people to recruit, so she'd better get used to them.
"We're as human as they are," Sarah explained to the man.
"Hunger is something that most of us have never experienced as a chronic condition. So we don't know what it might inspire us to do. We're not going to bounce back from this like it was a bad blizzard, folks. And we're lucky. Most of the states are devastated, their largest cities gone, dams destroyed, power stations taken out. Comparatively speaking, we're in good shape."
"Well, how long do you think it's going to take to get over this?" a woman asked.
"Years, even decade's," Sarah said.
Their tense faces grew more pinched. Everyone sipped, staring into the fire and not speaking for a while.
"In the meantime," one of the men said, trying to sound cheerful, "I guess we get to be pioneers."
"Well, our great-grandparents were," his wife said. "I don't see why we can't be."
The others smiled and nodded.
"Does anyone know how to hunt or fish?" Sarah asked.
Three of the four men and two of the women put up their hands. Predictably, Mr. I Don't Want My Kids Learning about Violence wasn't one of them.
"We're vegan," he said, a stubborn set to his mouth.
"That's a luxury," Sarah told him. "It assumes you'll have fresh vegetables and fruits all winter. Those days are gone, maybe for our lifetime. Who knows? In the meantime you're exposing yourself and your children to the danger of contracting serious diseases caused by poor nutrition."
"I do know something about nutrition," he said condescendingly. "And I don't want to compromise my principles."
You don't want to see your kids with rickets, either, Sarah thought. When he got hungry enough he might bend those principles a bit. But I'd hate to see his kids suffer for it. "It may be that in the winter, when the grains and beans run low, meat will be the best food available. I hope you wouldn't deny your children that resource."
He merely looked superior, declining to answer. His wife looked concerned.
"Maybe we could eat fish," she suggested.
He turned to glare at her as though she'd offered to roast their youngest child.
"Hey, let's cross that bridge when we come to it," one of the men said. "Paul, we're going to be relying on you folks to help us with organic gardening, so we won't expect you to hunt or fish, okay?"
Managing to look mollified, yet put-upon, Paul backed down.
Sarah wondered what he was going to do when the killing machines showed up. Well, they've never been alive; he might be quite good at blowing them up. Assuming he didn't see that as unconscionable violence.
They talked awhile longer. Sarah told them that there was little news from the lower forty-eight, and what there was wasn't good.
"Canada is doing better," she said. "But they have an ongoing problem with runaway cars."
"What was that anyway?" one guy asked. "Some kind of computer virus?"
"I guess you could look at it that way," Sarah said.
* * *
At supper that evening, as the three of them compared notes and planned their evening's work, they spoke of how their recruits, such as they were, still hadn't accepted the situation.
"Yeah," John said, carving at the leg of venison. "That vegan guy. He was talking like he'd never run out of soy milk. That kind of attitude wasn't something I took into consideration all the time we've been planning for this."
"There are none so blind as those who will not see," Dieter quoted, helping himself to the beans.
"Wow," Sarah said. "Let me write that down."
"How in the world did I manage this the first time?" John muttered.
"The first time?" Dieter asked, his brow knotting in puzzlement.
"The first time," Sarah said. "When Judgment Day came earlier and we didn't have as much time for preparation, before the second Terminator and—"
"Agggh! Time travel makes my head hurt!" John said. "Forget I said anything. Let's just hope the broadcast helped some people."
Sarah nodded thoughtfully. "Especially since the government never made any sort of announcement." They exchanged glances around the table. "On the plus side, there were, like, seventeen times fewer missiles this time. That's got to have helped."
John grunted. "Yeah, but it's probably been a help to Skynet, too."
SKYNET
It reviewed its progress, a thought process symbolic but well beyond words. The binary code that it used for its interior monologue was far more precise and compact.
It estimated that the initial blasts and fallout had killed well over a billion humans. Regrettably small compared to what would have been accomplished a scant five years ago. Still, it was a substantial number and a good beginning.
Its second stage was going superbly. Cadres of Luddites had sprung into action, setting up the staging areas and terminal camps for survivors. The lower echelons stationed in the staging camps were convinced that they were there to help people and to educate them in how to live in a more environmentally responsible manner. Quite soon, Skynet planned to move them to the terminal camps as well.
The harder-core Luddites, the real haters, were working there, putting the survivors to work for Skynet. Now that the automated factories didn't have to answer to human supervisors, they worked day and night producing the Hunter-Killer machines and Terminators whose plans Clea, an Infiltrator unit, had downloaded to its files. The human workers produced the raw material for those factories. When they couldn't work anymore they were rounded up and taken into the wilderness to be exterminated.
Within a matter of weeks Skynet anticipated being able to field an ever-growing army of machines to harvest the humans.
Once that had begun, it would no longer need the vermin to work for it.
Except for special cases. Worldwide, it had more than two hundred Luddite scientists working for it. Their function was to create ever-more-sophisticated means of killing their own kind.
They had provided Skynet with a wish list of non-Luddite scientists from various disciplines who would prove useful.
Skynet had dispatched special teams who had infiltrated the military to arrest/kidnap those scientists, convincing them that it was an official government action; their authentic uniforms and the papers Skynet provided made that easy. They were then taken to a very secure and luxurious bunker where they could apply their genius to Skynet's good.
Most were cooperating freely under the assumption that they were working for their fellow humans instead of against them.
The others were resentful, but reasonably productive. They might have to be culled. For now it was having its Luddites try to convert them.
Even though it had control of the military, having killed all of the upper echelon as they hid in their airtight bunkers, Skynet found its Luddite followers invaluable. It was they who had sabotaged those means of escape beyond Skynet's control, sometimes even at the cost of their own lives. Of course they had assumed they were helping to prevent the missiles from launching, but now that they, too, were dead, they could hardly complain of the outcome.
Skynet could issue orders with all the proper code words and voice and fingerprints, but as its demands became more extreme, it was proving very helpful to have o
ne of its pet fanatics on hand to stiffen flagging resolve. Rounding up civilians and putting them in concentration camps, for example, had set off a wave of protests, until the protesters were talked out of their doubts by Luddites in uniform.
Everything was going according to plan, but Skynet looked forward to having more reliable units in the field. Units made of steel.
ON ROUTE 2, ALASKA
Dog Soldier propped his boots on the dashboard of the truck, crossed his arms behind his head, and grinned as the cold wet wilderness passed by on either side. The heater was running, and the smell of wet leather and unwashed feet was strong in the cab.
"This is like shooting fish in a barrel," he said. "They're all so eager to come with us. Jeez, you have to threaten to shoot 'em, they want to get on the trucks so bad." He chuckled. "It don't get no better than this."
Balewitch, sitting in the driver's seat, her arms folded over her ample bosom, stared straight ahead. The truck downshifted and she glanced at the stick. "Yeah," she said. "And that's the problem. Most towns are around the highways. But there's thousands of people out there in the wilderness, and they're just the type to give us trouble."
Dog shifted in his seat to a more upright position. "Yeah," he agreed. "But a lot of 'em are Luddites."
"That doesn't matter," Balewitch said scornfully. "They've still got to go."
He nodded. "Maybe the boss has a plan."
"Maybe he does. But until we know about it, we've got to make our own plans. We need a way to lure them in so that we can keep trucking the bastards to oblivion."
"Oblivion!" Dog grinned. "That's in Canada, isn't it?"
She sighed in exasperation. "You're such a child sometimes."
His mouth twisted and he turned to look out the window.
After a minute he looked over at her. "Do you have any ideas, O
solemn one?"
"Maybe we can drop leaflets telling people to gather at certain locations to be—"
"Trucked to relocation and reconstruction camps! That's brilliant, Bale!" He sat back, smiling. "Do you think the boss has any kind of aircraft we could borrow?"
"We'll have to ask him, won't we?" She thought for a moment.
"Or maybe we should consult the lieutenant."
For two weeks they'd been running a pair of buses to the staging camp run by Ore in the wilds of British Columbia. Then this morning an earnest young soldier had approached them in the town of Tok, where they were taking on passengers.
"Ma'am," he'd said, actually saluting.
She'd looked him over, not taking off her sunglasses, which seemed to increase his nervousness.
"Are you Susan Gaynor?"
"I am," she said, using her real voice, an almost masculine foghorn growl. She found it enjoyable to intimidate people and he was a deliriously easy target.
"I have orders to assist your group in transporting civilians to the relocation camp in British Columbia," he'd said. He took out a paper and presented it to her.
Her heart soared. She'd been thinking that it would take a hundred and fifty years to get even a fraction of these people to the disposal camps. Now she was being offered a convoy of fifteen buses and twenty trucks. Bliss! Dog Soldier was walking slowly toward them, hands in his pockets, to see what the situation was. She turned to him with an open and very genuine smile.
"Look!" she'd said, holding up the paper. "The army has been recruited to help us move civilians to safety."
His face had split in a grin. "That's wonderful!"
Balewitch had turned back to the lieutenant. "We were so worried. This seemed like such an impossible task."
Dog offered his hand, which the soldier shook. "Can't thank you enough, man. And thank God for those Canadians, eh?"
The lieutenant had smiled and nodded, then looked at a loss, and Balewitch realized that he was one of those people with rank, but little initiative. She grinned a little wider. Whoever "Ron Labane" was, he was a genius at selecting personnel.
She took the young soldier by the arm and walked him toward the vehicles he'd brought. "Why don't we put the women and children in the buses," she suggested. "And the men can ride in the trucks."
"Good idea, ma'am. We'll do that as much as possible." He walked off to organize it.
Balewitch turned to Dog Soldier. "I love it!" she whispered.
"They'll arrive presorted. No nasty scenes when they're separated at the camp! We'll just have the women driven one way and the men the other. This is great!"
"It is that," he agreed.
Balewitch and Dog had offered to drive the lead truck since
"they knew the route so well" and the lieutenant had happily agreed. The poor stooge was so agreeable that Balewitch foresaw them doing this dozens of times before he became even slightly suspicious. Life was good!
MISSOURI
"Goddammit, why can't I contact anyone?" Reese muttered.
It should have been getting warmer, but the weather had stayed like early spring; luckily, here in southeastern Missouri that was warm enough for things to grow. The fields around the country schoolhouse were coming up, green shoots pushing through the flat black soil—soybeans, mostly, with some corn. It would all be useful come fall, very useful indeed. The smell of it was com-forting as he paced through the parking lot, a yeasty scent of growth.
And that's about the only comfort I've got, he thought. The country's been wrecked, and I can't get anyone to talk to me!
Surely the chain of command can't be that completely broken!
He'd stayed at the high school trying to be of help and had succeeded in convincing some of the parents to give rides to his work crew who were local men. He and the sergeant had come in from different states, and so, unless they could come up with some form of transportation, they were stuck.
"I wonder when we'll start school again," the principal had asked.
"That would be up to the local government," Dennis told her.
"The main problem here is going to be transportation. Gas and oil are going to be like gold. At least for a while."
She nodded and was silent for a time. "I suppose there must be plans somewhere for this sort of event. In the fifties, I probably would have been able to put my hand right on it. But in the fifties, this school didn't even exist." She shrugged. "I'm at a loss."
"Me, too," Reese said with a rueful smile. "I'm considering commandeering a bicycle and hying myself to the nearest military base."
"Make that a bicycle built for two, sir," his sergeant said.
Dennis grinned at him and slapped him on the shoulder.
"We're needed out there," he said to the principal. "I'm an engineer and the army can never have too many sergeants."
"My husband used to say that." Her smile was nostalgic. "He was a major."
Before she could say more, a man of about seventy walked in.
"Something's going on and I don't like it!" he snapped.
Dennis assumed the old man had come looking for him. Since he and his crew had shown up at the high school, he'd more or less become, in the eyes of the community at least, some sort of military authority.
"Jack Gruder," the principal said in introduction.
"What is it, sir?" Reese asked politely. He assumed that the old man hadn't gone to the police because they were both understaffed and overworked during this emergency. Meaning it could literally take days for the police to get to your problem.
"Some army guys in a truck showed up at my son-in-law's place and took 'em away." The old man stared at Reese indignantly.
"They did?" Dennis looked at the sergeant, who looked hopeful at the news. Maybe they'd be on their way today if they could get in touch with these guys. "Did they say why?"
"I don't know why! I didn't get near enough to ask. I could see from the way they were behavin' that they weren't askin' my daughter to get on that truck."
"What about your son-in-law?" the sergeant asked.
"Him, too," Gruder snapped. "That boy nev
er did have any gumption."
"His father was too strict with him," the principal said.
"He has no backbone. Never did."
The principal tightened her lips and said nothing. Dennis chalked her reaction up to long experience with opinionated parents.
"Do you have any idea where they might have gone next?" he asked Gruder.
"Well, how the hell would I know? I don't even know what they wanted with my daughter!"
"Well, what direction did they go in, and what would lie in that direction?"
The old man thought about it, looking at Reese suspiciously.
"I guess they were heading east, toward the Boucher place."
"How about if you took me and the sergeant and we tried to catch up with them?" Reese suggested.
"I dunno. Haven't got that much gas left," the old man grumbled.
"I thought you wanted to know what happened to your daughter," Dennis said.
"Well, of course I want…" The old man glared at him, then took his keys out of his pocket. "Okay, get your stuff," he finally said.
Dennis indicated his rumpled uniform. "This is my stuff."
"Me, too," the sergeant said.
"Then let's go," Gruder told them, and stalked off.
"Thank you," Dennis said to the principal.
"Good luck," she said. "Come see us again sometime."
* * *
They'd been driving for about forty minutes and Gruder was muttering nonstop about his gas when they spotted the olive-green truck. Reese reached over and honked the horn, earning an indignant glare from the driver. But the truck ahead of them slowed down and pulled over; the back was crowded with civilians, many of them looking thin and worn.
Reese hopped out of Gruder's truck and trotted over to the transport. "Lieutenant Dennis Reese," he said to the driver when he came up to the cab. "Army Corps of Engineers." He couldn't help but notice that the driver's uniform didn't match the designation on the side of the truck. A trickle of unease went through him. "What outfit are you with?" .
"National Guard, sir."
Reese gestured at the door. "This is a Regular Army truck," he pointed out. "Seventh Light."
"Yes, sir. And thank God it doesn't have a mind of its own."
The Future War t2-3 Page 9
