by Timothy Zahn
“And anything they miss becomes coyote and rat food, I suppose,” Grimaldi said with a maddeningly patient nod. “It’s an interesting story. I, on the other hand, have ten years of experience that says if you leave the Terminators alone, they’ll leave you alone.”
“Your experience is worthless,” Orozco snapped. “Skynet’s left us alone here because it was busy elsewhere. But now it’s our turn. The Terminators are coming. We have got to get everyone out.”
Grimaldi shook his head.
“No.”
Orozco took a step toward the desk.
“We’re getting everyone out,” he said, resting his hand on his holstered Beretta. “Give the order, or I’ll give it for you.”
To his credit, Grimaldi didn’t even flinch.
“Mutiny, Sergeant?”
“Replacing a superior who’s shown himself unfit for command,” Orozco countered. “Now give the order.”
“Suppose I do,” Grimaldi said. “How do we get all the food and plants and equipment out? More importantly, where do we all go?”
“South,” Orozco told him. “Fewer people that direction, which means we should be able to find shelter without having to fight for it.”
“And the food?”
“We take everything we can carry,” Orozco said. “After the Terminators leave, we may be able to come back and retrieve anything we had to leave behind.”
“Just abandon everything?” Grimaldi shook his head. “No.”
Orozco squeezed the grip on his Beretta. “Give the order,” he bit out.
Grimaldi gazed unblinkingly into his eyes. “And if I don’t?” he countered. “Are you going to shoot me?”
For a few seconds Orozco glared at him. But the chief was right. Orozco couldn’t just shoot him down. Not in cold blood. Not for this.
“In that case,” Grimaldi said calmly into the tense silence, “you’re invited to leave.”
Orozco hesitated another few heartbeats. Then, without a word, he turned and strode out of the room.
Wadleigh and Killough were still loitering outside the office. Wadleigh started to say something, got a look at Orozco’s face, and instead stepped back out of his way.
Only not far enough. As Orozco passed, he grabbed Wadleigh’s arm and half pulled, half dragged the man across the lobby, ignoring his protests until they were nearly to the fountain. Then, bringing them to a sudden halt, he swung Wadleigh around to face him.
“That drainage tunnel Kate Connor mentioned,” Orozco ground out. “Did you find it?”
Wadleigh’s eyes flicked to the office door, where Killough was standing slack-jawed as he watched their little drama.
“Yeah, we found it,” he said, lowering his voice. “And no, we didn’t seal it. Just covered it with a few bricks, like you said.”
“Good.” Orozco let go of his arm, giving him a little push as he did so. “Show me.”
Wadleigh gulped and shot one more look toward the office. Grimaldi, Orozco knew, wouldn’t be happy with either of them if word of this got back to him.
Orozco didn’t give a damn.
“Sure,” Wadleigh said. “Follow me.”
Kyle and Star had made it to within a block of the line of rusting cars that marked the northern edge of Death’s- Head territory when one of Kyle’s backward glances finally spotted the Terminator striding down the street toward them.
“It’s coming,” he panted to Star, gripping her hand tighter and trying to push a little more speed out of his legs. The Terminator still hadn’t opened fire, but it wouldn’t be long now. Not with the lead they had on it.
Unless it was counting on the Death’s-Head Gang not to let them through.
Kyle eyed the barrier looming ahead of them: ten cars turned up on their sides with their undersides facing him. They mostly formed a single solid line, but they’d been offset enough to create a single zigzag gap near the center, just big enough for one person at a time to get through.
There were no sentries on guard, or at least none that Kyle could see as he steered Star toward the gap. If the Terminator behind them was going to open fire, he knew tensely, this would be the time for it. They reached the car, and with a quick sideways two-step Kyle ducked around the hood of the front vehicle and then around the trunk of the rear one, pulling Star along behind him.
They skidded to a sudden stop. Facing them ten feet away was a line of men with rifles and shotguns, all of them pointed squarely at Kyle and Star.
“Freeze it!” one of the men snapped.
“Terminators!” Kyle gasped, fighting to catch his breath. “Terminators—coming.”
“He’s right, Rats,” someone called from his right. Kyle turned and saw another man with a shoulder-slung rifle peering up over the cars with a slender periscope. “Got one heading straight toward us.”
“Ah, hell,” Rats bit out, glaring at Kyle. “What the friggin’ hell did you do? Huh?” He stepped up to Kyle and pressed the barrel of his rifle into the center of his chest. “Huh? What the hell did you do?”
“We didn’t do anything,” Kyle protested. “It’s just after us, that’s all. Look, just let us go through and we’ll be gone.”
“Friggin’ hell with that,” Rats snarled. He shoved on the rifle, and Kyle winced as the muzzle dug into his skin. “Back out the way you came. Now.”
Kyle stared at him.
“But—you can’t. Please.”
“Back out on your own feet, or we shoot you and toss your carcasses out to the machine,” Rats said tightly. “Your choice.”
Kyle looked down at Star. She was watching him closely, her face calm with the assurance that he had some plan.
Only he didn’t.
“Can’t we at least talk about it?” he pleaded, looking back at Rats.
“Yeah, that’s a smart idea,” Rats said sarcastically. “You go out there and talk.” He jabbed with his rifle again. “Last chance to do it breathing.”
Kyle took a deep breath. It was clearly no use.
“Come on, Star—”
He broke off as a screech of metal on pavement came from behind Rats, from the upended cars that formed the compound’s southern barrier a hundred feet away. Rats and his men spun around at the noise, their weapons tracking in that direction. One of the cars near the middle of the barrier teetered and then toppled over, slamming to the pavement with a teeth-rattling crash.
And through the gap in the barrier strode three T-600s.
Rats’ men were nothing if not fast on the uptake. The Terminators had barely come into sight before a thunder of gunfire erupted from all across the compound, including the buildings on both sides of the blocked-off street. The Terminators twitched violently as round after round slammed into them.
But they kept coming.
Something arced across and down from one of the upper windows on the eastern building, and the machines were abruptly engulfed in a blazing wash of fire.
And then Star was tugging on Kyle’s arm, pulling him urgently backward toward the upended car they were standing in front of. Kyle glanced at the car, noting for the first time that all of the vehicle’s glass was gone. She tugged again, pointing toward the open gap where the windshield had once been.
They had just slipped inside the car when across the way there was a violent triple explosion.
Star turned wide-eyed to Kyle as they pressed themselves back into the wide cavity where the car’s seats had once been. Their guns?she signed.
Kyle nodded. The fire must have blown their ammo, he signed back.
But if the Terminators’ miniguns were gone, it was clear from the intensity of the gunfire still hammering across the compound that the Terminators themselves were far from defeated. Putting his arm around Star’s shoulders, Kyle eased them both down into sitting positions, trying to make them as small and invisible as possible.
Star took off the jacket Kyle had given her, handing it to him. Kyle nodded his thanks and draped it across their torsos, then changed
his mind and pulled it up over their faces as well, covering them from head to chest. The more they could look like a pile of discarded rags, the better the chance that the Terminators and Rats’ own people would miss them in all the confusion out there.
He’d barely gotten the jacket arranged, and his eye pressed against a small rip in the material, when the Terminator who’d been behind them strode through the gap between the cars. It passed them and headed in to join the battle.
Kyle grimaced. So that was why the machine hadn’t shot them in the back. It had known the other three T-600s were coming up on the compound from the south, and had merely been herding its prey toward this new group of hunters. If Rats had let them go like Kyle had wanted, he and Star would probably both be dead now.
And even as the narrowness of their escape shivered through him, it occurred to him that Skynet’s little neighborhood containment setup had suddenly been blown to hell. Between the Terminator he’d shattered in the alley and the four now embroiled in this battle with the Death’s-Heads, there had to be a huge open gap in their sentry line.
He could only hope that Orozco would figure that out, and would take advantage of this chance to get the residents of the Ashes to safety.
The gunfire was intensifying, and acrid smoke was starting to drift in through the car’s missing windows. Pulling Star closer to him, trying not to choke or sneeze, he settled down to wait it out.
Orozco stared at the pile of broken concrete and dirt stretching three-quarters of the way up to the drainage tunnel’s ceiling.
“So that’s it,” he said, his words echoing oddly in the confined space.
“I guess so,” Wadleigh said. “Sorry.”
Sorry. Orozco felt a surge of unreasoning anger. Sorry. Like the two of them had lost a race, or a bet, instead of losing the one chance the people of the Ashes had of surviving the night.
He took a deep breath. Stop it, he told himself firmly. He had more urgent things to do than be annoyed at someone else’s poor choice of words.
He turned around, lifting his torch higher, studying the tunnel roof. If there were any other manhole shafts up there that might offer a way out, this could still work.
But there weren’t. The only shaft that was visible in the flickering torchlight was the one they’d come down, fifty meters back from the blockage.
“We could try heading northwest,” Wadleigh suggested hesitantly. “That has to be the direction Connor and her people came in from.”
“Which is exactly why we can’t use it,” Orozco said. “I don’t believe for a minute that they came here just to recruit new talent. They were hunting Terminators; and if they came in from the northwest, that’s probably where they were hunting them.”
Wadleigh grunted. “In that case, we’d damn well better seal the place down, but good. Just in case the Terminators start hunting back.”
“You’re probably right,” Orozco conceded, eyeing the pile of debris. If he and Wadleigh tackled it together...
But no. Several of the pieces of broken concrete were bigger than even the two of them could handle, especially in such a cramped space. There was no escape for anyone here.
Or anywhere else. All that was left now was to dig in as best they could and prepare for war.
“Time to get back,” he said, nudging Wadleigh back along the tunnel.
“So after we seal the cover, what then?” Wadleigh asked as they picked their way carefully over the curved concrete.
“We start by getting the fire teams together,” Orozco told him. “That’ll be your job. Break out all the weapons, including the ones in the reserve cache, and get them into the hands of people who know how to use them. Pull out all the ammo, too. If Grimaldi gives you static over any of this, you send him to me.”
“Don’t worry, he won’t,” Wadleigh said grimly. “What about you?”
“I’m going to set up a few booby traps,” Orozco said. “If I have any time left after that’s done, I’ll see about making some more bombs.”
They reached the shaft and climbed carefully up the rusted rungs to the rabbit warren of broken steel and concrete that lay just outside the northern edge of Moldering Lost Ashes. Zigzagging their way over and through the debris, they climbed through the empty window that led back into the building.
After his confrontation with Grimaldi, Orozco had rather expected there to be a reception committee waiting for him in the lobby. He was right. Grimaldi and Killough were standing near the corridor entrance, flanked by Barney and Copeland. The latter two were holding rifles at the ready.
“Sergeant Justo Orozco,” Grimaldi said in his most pompous corporate CEO voice, “as the leader of Moldavia—”
“Stuff it,” Orozco said shortly, striding past the group.
Grimaldi was apparently expecting him to do that. He took a quick step forward as Orozco passed and grabbed the sergeant’s arm. “You are ordered confined to your room until—”
The speech cut off with a yelp as Orozco reached over with his other hand and grabbed Grimaldi’s arm, prying it off and twisting it over at the wrist.
“Let him go,” Copeland snapped. He started to lift his rifle.
And froze. “No,” Wadleigh said quietly.
Orozco turned to look. Wadleigh’s face was pale and his throat was tight, but the Smith & Wesson 9mm he was pointing at Copeland was rock-steady.
“He’s right,” Wadleigh continued. “The Terminators aren’t going to give us a pass. They’re machines. They’re programmed. They’re going to kill us all.”
“That’s enough, Wadleigh,” Grimaldi bit out. “Sergeant Orozco—”
Orozco twisted his arm a little harder, and again the chief broke off with grunt. “Here’s what we’re going to do,” Orozco said, keeping his voice low. “We’re going to prepare for an attack. The fire teams are going to be assembled, and they’re going to answer to me. You can either help, or you can stay out of our way. Is that clear?”
“And if I don’t?” Grimaldi gritted out. “What are you going to do, shoot me?”
“That’s twice you’ve offered me that choice,” Orozco reminded him. “Keep it up, and one of these times I may take you up on it.”
For a half dozen heartbeats the lobby was silent. “All right, Sergeant,” Grimaldi said at last. “You go ahead and make your preparations. Take anyone you need; take any resources you need. But.”
He let the word hang in the air a moment. “If we’re still here in the morning,” the chief continued, “you won’t be. Is that understood?”
“Yes,” Orozco said.
Letting go of Grimaldi’s arm, he stepped back. Grimaldi straightened back up, and once again briefly locked eyes with Orozco. Then, without another word, he gestured to his men, and the four of them headed back across the lobby toward Grimaldi’s office.
Orozco turned to Wadleigh. “Thanks,” he said.
“No problem,” Wadleigh said as he holstered his gun. “Just remember this when they kick me out, too.”
“I will.” Orozco turned back again.
And for the first time noticed Reverend Sibanda seated on the rim of the fountain where Grimaldi and the others had blocked Orozco’s view of him. “Can I help you, Reverend?” he asked.
“I understood there was trouble brewing,” Sibanda said, standing up and walking over to them. “I see it was more serious than I thought.”
“Actually, no matter how serious you thought it was, it’s worse,” Orozco told him.
“So I gather,” Sibanda said soberly. “What can I do to help?”
“At this point, I really don’t know,” Orozco said.
“Chief Grimaldi said you were to use all resources,” Sibanda said quietly, his dark eyes burning into Orozco’s. “I’m one of those resources. Please tell me what I can do.”
Orozco eyed the man, trying to think. There was a huge amount of work to do, but with the preacher’s hands half crippled with arthritis he was out of the running for most of it.
“I can do that,” Sibanda promised. “And when the time comes, I’ll help you lead them to the Promised Land.”
Orozco looked away, his mind flicking back to the dark thought of a couple of days ago. The thought that the truly chosen ones of Judgment Day had been those who’d been granted a quick death.
“We’ll be going to the Promised Land soon enough,” he agreed quietly. “I’d be honored to have you along for the journey.”
“I’ll be there,” Sibanda said, his voice calm and assured. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll go begin my preparations.”
He turned and walked off across the lobby.
“So will we,” Orozco murmured after him.
Because he, for one, had no intention of going to this particular Promised Land without a fight.
He slapped the backs of his fingertips against Wadleigh’s chest.
“Break time’s over. Let’s get to work.”
The gunfire in the Death’s-Head compound seemed to go on and on, punctuated by the occasional thunder of explosions and the whoosh and reflected glare of more of the gang’s napalm firebombs. One of them hit the ground close enough to Kyle and Star’s sideways car that the fire blazed through both the windshield and rear window openings, heating the roof three feet in front of them hot enough to glow a dull red.
There were probably screams and curses amid all the commotion, too. Fortunately, perhaps, the hammering of the gunfire drowned out all such sounds of human agony.
But in the end, neither the gang’s weapons nor their stubbornness did them any good. One by one, the guns fell silent, and the running footsteps came to a halt, and silence again descended on the world.
Slowly, Kyle eased his eye back to the rip in the jacket that still covered their faces. Very little of the compound was visible through the open windshield of their sanctuary car, but even that was enough to turn his stomach. There were dead bodies everywhere, some of them mostly whole, some looking like they’d been ripped apart where they stood.
