Terminator Salvation: Cold War

CHAPTER ELEVEN

2003

“Get in!” the woman repeated. “Move your butts!”

That was all the invitation Losenko and his men needed. They sprinted toward the armored truck even as the surviving robot lurched into firing range once more. Harsh scraping sounds came from its damaged left tread, slowing it down, but it seemed no less determined to exterminate the rest of the patrol.

Losenko’s heart pounded. The prospect of being shot now, only seconds away from rescue, filled him with dread. That would be the cruelest blow of all.

But no more than I deserve, perhaps.

A cigarette lighter flicked inside the truck. The flame ignited a strip of cloth wadded into the mouth of a tinted glass liquor bottle. Losenko recognized an old-fashioned Molotov cocktail

“Head’s up!” the woman in the truck shouted. She hurled the flaming bottle at the robot. “This drink’s on me!”

The bottle crashed against the robot’s armored chassis, exploding on impact. A swirling orange fireball swallowed up the oncoming machine. Its sensors overwhelmed, it fired wildly from inside the inferno.

“All aboard!” the bomb-throwing stranger hollered. “Trust me, that’s just going to make it mad!”

Losenko hustled two of his men into the dimly lit hold before boarding the truck himself. A calloused hand grabbed onto his wrist and yanked him up into the waiting vault. He tumbled forward onto a padded foamboard floor.

“There you go!” the nameless woman said. She risked a glance out the door. “Is that all of you?”

Losenko took a second to glance around. Heartsick, he realized that only the two other sailors were still alive, out of a party of twenty-five. Blasko and Stralbov were both young midshipmen, in their early twenties. They looked like shell-shocked teenagers to his weary eyes.

“I think so.” There was no point in looking back. The pitiless machines would have already killed any stragglers or wounded. He spit the vile words out. “Yes, we’re all that’s left.”

“Lucky you.” The woman yanked shut the reinforced steel doors and locked them in place, then shouted at a man at the other end of the vault. “You heard the man, Josef. Let’s get out of here before another one of those metal assholes shows up!”

Her companion, a heavy-set man with a surly expression, pounded on the bulkhead separating the cargo hold from the driver’s compartment. The blows echoed in the enclosed, windowless vault. A narrow metal lattice let his voice through to the cab. “Hit the gas!”

“Da! I hear you!” a voice answered from up front. “Hold onto your balls!”

A sudden burst of acceleration slammed Losenko against a foam-insulated wall. Tires squealed as the truck peeled out, back the way it had come and away from the flattened robot. He was grateful for the lack of windows, that meant he didn’t have to watch as they left their fallen comrades behind.

Exhausted, he sagged against the wall. Stralbov sobbed uncontrollably. Blasko vomited onto the floor of the truck.

“Crap!” the woman exclaimed. She wrinkled her nose at the mess. “Oh, never mind, sonny. What’s a little puke after all you’ve been through?” She gazed at the young seaman in sympathy, her tone softening a bit. Plopping down onto a bench, she drew her muddy boots back from the pooling vomit. “It’s only human, which is more than you can say for a lot of things these days!”

As Losenko’s eyes adjusted to the gloom, he got a better look at their rescuer. A round face, of good peasant stock, had been baked brown by the sun. Time and toil had etched deep lines into her careworn countenance. A faded red kerchief covered her scalp. She, too, was stocky, and Losenko put her age at fifty-plus. Wily blue eyes looked over the traumatized sailors. Nicotine stained her fingertips.

“Thank you,” Losenko croaked. His throat was still raw from the smoke. “If you hadn’t come to our rescue....”

She shrugged off his gratitude.

“Name’s Grushka.” She cocked a thumb at her companion, an intimidating bear of a man wearing a tattered raincoat over what looked like hospital scrubs. He was twice Grushka’s size and maybe half her age. “That cantankerous whoreson over there is Josef.”

The man grunted in response. He had a smooth dome and a florid complexion. A cataract clouded his right eye. The other one eyed the newcomers suspiciously. A shotgun lay across his lap. A meaty hand rested protectively on a carton of liquor bottles topped with improvised fuses. There were at least eight Molotov cocktails left.

“Losenko,” the captain introduced himself. “Captain Dmitri Losenko.” He gestured at the traumatized sailors. Neither man seemed to be wounded, at least not physically. “These are my men.”

Or what was left of them.

Grushka leaned forward. Her fingers plucked at the stripes on Losenko’s uniform. “You really with the Army?”

“The Navy,” he corrected her. “Our submarine, K-115, is docked at a fishing village about a hundred miles east.” He believed the truck was heading that way, although the lack of windows made it hard to verify. “Our base at Murmansk was destroyed in the war.”

In the past, he would have been averse to sharing such crucial intelligence with unknown civilians, but everything had changed now. These people had saved his life. They were the closest thing to allies he’d encountered since the bombs fell.

Grushka nodded. “I know that village. Used to have a cousin there.” A momentary grimace betrayed her grief. “Didn’t think there was anybody still alive out that way.”

“There wasn’t,” Losenko divulged. “The town was empty when we found it.”

Josef snorted. “About time you got here. We’ve been hanging on by our nails for weeks now, with no help from Moscow or the Army or any of you worthless uniforms. First you blow up the world, then leave us to fight those fucking machines on our own.”

Losenko didn’t argue the point. In the end, the Gorshkov and the rest of Russia’s vast nuclear arsenal had failed to protect the people from the ultimate horror. The last thing either Grushka or Josef needed to hear was that the holocaust might have been caused by an overseas computer error. And that still didn’t explain why his men had died.

“What happened here?” he asked. “What are those machines? Who built them?”

Now it was Grushka’s turn to look disgusted.

“Tell you the truth, I was hoping you could explain that to us.”

“I’ve never seen those robots before,” Losenko confessed. “How long have they been hunting you? Does this have something to do with that factory?”

The woman nodded.

“This used to be our home, and I actually worked on the assembly line at the plant once, back when it used to churn out riding mowers. Hard work, but a decent living. Then those red-hot mushrooms starting sprouting in the sky, and everything changed. Hid out in my basement for as long as I could, until I ran out of food and water. And when I came out....”

A shudder passed through her body.

“Well, I’ll spare you the ugly details. Pretty much everybody was dead or gone, though. I thought I was all alone in the world until I ran into that overgrown sourpuss over there.” She nodded at Josef, who scowled back at her. “Knew him casually from one of the bars in town. Never liked him much, to be honest. Still don’t. But beggars can’t be choosers.” She glanced toward the front of the truck. “Found the driver, Mitka, about the same time. He was in the back of this rolling lockbox when the bombs came down. Figure that’s what saved him.

Losenko could only imagine what life had been like in the immediate wake of the war. How many friends and loved ones had these people lost? The fallout alone would have inflicted heavy casualties—never mind starvation, violence, and disease. But that dreadful scenario, no matter how heart-breaking, wasn’t what most concerned him now.

“And the machines?” he prompted her.

Grushka spat onto the floor. Traces of crimson streaked the saliva. For the first time, Losenko noticed that the old woman’s gums were bleeding. Radiation sickness or just malnutrition? He snuck a closer look at Josef. How long had the man been bald?

And where were his eyebrows?

“The big army planes started arriving just days after the world went to hell,” Grushka recalled. Her gaze turned inward. “I could hear them flying over what was left of my cottage. At first I thought maybe it was the disaster relief people, but nobody came looking for me. Later, when the lights and noises started up at the factory, everybody hurried to see what was going on. There were a few more of us left back then, you see. Guess we all wanted to think that somebody was still in charge, that things were starting up again.”

So did I, Losenko thought. And Zamyatin and his party.

“That’s when we saw those machines for the first time.” Another shiver betrayed how much the memory cost her. She drew a half-empty packet of cigarettes from the pocket of her jacket. “There were just a couple of them at first, plus a bunch of armed storm troopers. Americans mostly, although there were some other nationalities mixed in. Even a few Russian quislings and translators. I thought the soldiers were controlling the robots. Took me a while to figure out that the machines were babysitting the soldiers.”

Machines in charge of humans? Losenko had trouble grasping the concept.

“What did they do to you?” he asked.

“Put us all to work, that’s what. Turned us into slave labor, refurbishing the factory to build more of those damn machines. Executed anyone who resisted, just to set an example. Herded up the kids and old people to use as hostages.” Another flicker of grief cracked her stoic pose. “What was really nauseating, though, is that there were those who didn’t even complain, who were grateful just to be taken care of and know where their next meal was coming from.” Her lips twisted in disgust. “Stinking metal lovers.”

Losenko envisioned a throng of hopeful survivors, desperate for assistance, being pressed into slavery by an occupying force. He couldn’t help being perversely impressed by the speed and efficiency with which the lawn mower factory had apparently been converted into an incubator for killer robots. That bespoke meticulous planning and premeditation, in anticipation of Armageddon. Someone had been looking ahead beyond the initial attack.

But who? What kind of “computer malfunction” was capable of that?

“How did you get away?” he asked.

“Smuggled my wrinkled carcass out of the place along with a load of fresh corpses.” Her casual tone defied the horror she must have endured. “People were being worked to death all the time. What was one more wornout piece of meat?”

“I’m sorry—for everything,” Losenko offered. The words rang hollow even to his own ears. A vision of Alaska, equally devastated by his own missiles, flayed off a fresh strip of his soul. “Are there others like you?”

“A few, hiding here and there.” Grushka lit up a cigarette to steady her nerves, using the same lighter she’d employed to ignite the fuse of her Molotov cocktail. Losenko glanced nervously at the gas-filled bottles boxed over by Josef. “The machines mostly leave us alone as long as we stay away from the factory. At least Who knows what they’ll do once they’ve built more of ‘em.”

“Kill us all, that’s what.” Josef glared at them like they were stupid. He fondled the shotgun in his lap. “Any fool can see that.”

“Probably.” Grushka scratched her head thoughtfully. A loose strand of hair slipped free of her kerchief. Embarrassed, she grabbed the strands and tucked them into her pocket, out of sight. Rough hands made sure the kerchief was secure. She gave Losenko a searching look. “You really got a submarine?”

He nodded. “The Gorshkov.” He felt a sudden urge to report back in to the sub; Ivanov and the surviving officers needed to be informed of the debacle. “Excuse me.” He unhooked a compact walkie-talkie from his belt. Pushkin would be waiting in the radio shack, listening for his signal. “Captain to radio. Do you read me?”

“I don’t like this,” Josef grumbled. “What if the machines are listening?”

“Quiet!” Grushka shushed him. “This is military business!”

Pushkin promptly answered Losenko’s hail, but the captain’s relief at getting back in touch with his boat was leavened by the dreadful news he had to impart. “Get me First Officer Ivanov at once.”

“Aye, aye, sir!” Pushkin answered. There was a moment of silence, after which he spoke again, his voice eager. “Good to hear from you, skipper. Is Ostrovosky there?”

The captain winced. The radio operator’s blood was still smeared across his face.

“Just get me Ivanov.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” Pushkin replied, his voice flat now. He didn’t say anything more.

The XO was on the other end of the line within minutes.

“Radio to captain. What is it, sir?”

Losenko decided he could give Ivanov a full report later, once they were safely at sea.

“We’ve taken heavy casualties,” he said tersely. “Rig the boat for an immediate departure.” He consulted his wristwatch, which was still set to Moscow time. It would be dark soon. “If we’re not back by dawn, leave without us. The boat is not safe here. This is occupied territory.”

“Casualties?” Ivanov said, and there was new anger in his voice. “Did you engage the enemy?” The hatred was audible even from dozens of kilometers away. “Was it the Americans?”

Losenko allowed himself a bitter smile.

“Not unless they bleed oil now.”

A computer malfunction....

“What?” Ivanov was understandably perplexed by the cryptic remark. “I don’t take your meaning, sir. Can you elaborate?”

Losenko wished there had been time to take a snapshot of one of the robots. How else was he to fully convey the horror they had faced? No longer pumped full of adrenalin, he suddenly found himself unbearably tired.

All those men, shot to ribbons... for what?

Gunfire jolted him from his lethargy. Bullets slammed into the rear door of the armored truck.

“Crap!” Grushka explained. “Guess they really want you Navy boys!”

“I told you we should have left well enough alone,” Josef snarled. He pumped his shotgun. “Stupid old hag! You had to go looking for trouble!”

“Captain!” Ivanov blurted over the radio. “What is it? What’s happening?”

Losenko barked into the device. “Just get my boat ready to sail, Alexei! Captain out!”

More bullets hit the back door. It sounded like a machinegun. Losenko guessed that their attackers were trying to shoot out the truck’s tires. A plausible strategy, despite the tires’ protective casings. But how had the robots managed to catch up with a speeding truck? Surely their caterpillar treads weren’t capable of such speed?

“Who...?” he began.

Josef must have been wondering the same thing. He pounded the butt of his shotgun against the partition behind him and yelled at the driver. “Speak up, idiot! Who’s shooting at us now?”

“A Jeep,” Mitka shouted back from the cab. Glass shattered as a bullet took out his side-view mirror. Angry voices hollered at the truck in Russian. “Two metal lovers. A driver and a gunman. Machinegun mounted in the back.”

Losenko wanted to make sure he’d heard correctly.

“Humans? People are firing on us?”

“Circuit-sucking collaborators!” she spat. “Traitors!”

Not machines then, but humans. And, from the sound of them, Russian conscripts. Losenko was appalled and sickened to find himself under fire from the very people he had sworn to defend. Had Mother Russia—and all of mankind—truly sunk so low?

Grushka grabbed onto his arm.

“Listen to me, Captain. We can’t stay on this road for long. It’s not safe. But there’s a speedboat hidden along the river not far from here. We can get you to that.”

“Grushka!” Josef lurched to his feet, almost hitting his head on the roof of the compartment. Veins bulged beneath his hairless scalp, and he brandished his shotgun. “What are you saying, you old cow? That’s our boat. We can’t give it away to strangers!”

“Shut up, you selfish lummox!” Bloody spittle sprayed from her lips. “These people have a submarine. A Russian submarine. That’s our Navy we’re talking about, maybe all that’s left of it.”

Josef was unconvinced.

“We don’t owe them anything!”

“What about the machines?” she challenged him. “You want those bloodthirsty monsters to get their cold metal hands on that sub?” She pointed at Losenko and his men. “Who do you think is going to stop those things except men like these?”

Josef sneered.

“Don’t you get it? Nobody can stop them. It’s all over now.”

“So you’re just going to roll over and die then?” Grushka pursed her lips, took a drag of her cigarette, and blew smoke at him. “I always knew you were no good for anything!”

“Bitch!”

For a second, Losenko feared that the hairless bruiser was going to shoot the older woman with his shotgun. He weighed his chances of disarming Josef, and found them far from encouraging. And the last thing he wanted was for the gun to go off next to that carton of explosive cocktails.

“I’m right, and you know it,” Grushka taunted him. “Do your duty, you miserable son of a bitch!”

Josef lowered his gun.

“All right, all right! Anything to shut you up!” He pounded his fist against the bulkhead behind him. “Go for the boat!” he ordered the driver.

Machinegun fire peppered the door. A ruptured tire blew, throwing the truck to one side, but it kept on going. A reinforced steel frame allowed the vehicle to roll on even with a deflated tire.

Furious voices called on them to surrender.

“Damnit!” Grushka yelled at the driver. “What do you think you’re doing, leading them on a scenic tour of the countryside? Shake those leeches!”

The armored truck swerved off the road. It sped across the open tundra, bouncing down a rocky slope. The bumpy ride tossed Losenko and others about the cargo hold, making him grateful for the padding on the walls. Grushka braced herself and sucked on her cigarette. The Molotov cocktails rattled in their carton.

The other seamen braced themselves against the walls as well. The bone-jarring impacts left Losenko battered and bruised.

Then the gunfire abated. Had they lost their pursuers for a moment? Losenko wondered how much longer it would take them to reach the boat. And whether the Jeep would chase them down to the river, over the open country. And in the midst of it all, he was still trying to get used to the fact that his own countrymen were trying to kill him.

On behalf of the robots.

Abruptly the driver slammed on the brakes, almost throwing Losenko from the bench. Grushka leapt to her feet. She unbolted the rear doors, but didn’t yet open them. A wide grin revealed a mouthful of missing teeth.

“This is where you get off,” she announced

Josef slid the crate of bottles across the floor. “Bar’s open, cow. How ‘bout you fix those bastards a drink or two?”

“You read my mind.” She grabbed the nearest bottle and lit the fuse with her cigarette. Losenko watched with alarm as the wadded cloth caught fire. The doors of the compartment were still shut, sealing them inside with the volatile explosives.

Grushka kicked open the doors and hurled the bottle into the moss-covered landscape outside. The bomb went off, igniting a cloud of flammable vapor. The smell of burning gas filled the cool summer air. A wall of fire sprang up to provide cover for the open truck. Clouds of roiling black smoke suggested that sugar, glue, or some other thickening agent had been added to the combustible cocktail. She was busy lighting another bomb before the flames from the first had even died down.

“I’ll hold ‘em off,” she promised. Her kerchief came loose, revealing a bald spot surrounded by tufts of dry, straw-like brown hair. The wind from the fire blew an uprooted lock off her skull, as she let the kerchief fall to the ground. Clearly she thought this was no time for vanity. “Josef, show them the boat!”

Muttering obscenely under his breath, the big man shoved the sailors out of the armored truck.

“Move it, you cock-sucking pains in the ass.” He jumped out of the cargo hold, then hurried down the slope toward the marshy shore of a swiftly coursing river, almost certainly the Ponoy. Swaying rushes sprouted along a narrow strip of beach. A heap of rotting timbers were piled high at the edge of the water. Josef took hold of the wooden planks and started tossing them aside. “I can’t believe I let that witch talk me into this!”

The rushes and timbers concealed a small fiberglass skiff powered by a single outboard motor. The humble craft had room for maybe six passengers. Stagnant water pooled in the floor of the boat, covered in a coat of algae. A topless mermaid was crudely painted on the side of the hull. Cyrillic lettering spelled out the craft’s name: Rusalka. An aquatic siren that lured men to their doom.

Not exactly the Gorshkov, Losenko thought, but it might get us back to port.

Assuming it didn’t spring a leak along the way.

Wasting no time, he and his two men helped Josef get Rusalka into the water. The young sailors, revived by the task at hand, piled into the boat and starting fumbling with the motor. Losenko hesitated before joining them. “Come with us,” he urged Josef. “You and Grushka and the driver.”

What was the driver’s name again? Mitka?

“Come with you where?” Josef challenged, mockery in his voice. His beefy arms were folded across his chest. “Do you know where you’re going in that glorious sub of yours?”

Losenko couldn’t lie to him.

“No.”

“I thought as much.” Josef backed away from the shore. “Go on! I’ve got better things to do than stand around waiting for you to get out of my life.”

“Captain, please!” The men called out for him to hurry. Losenko wondered how long they would wait for him. “We have to get away!”

Bowing to the inevitable, he splashed through the chilly water toward the boat. Mud and silt sucked at his heels. Icy water filled up his boots. An eager seaman helped him aboard, and Rusalka rocked beneath his feet, but, mercifully, did not take on water as he plopped down onto a damp plastic bench. The other sailor fired up the outboard motor.

Josef watched the boat pull away from the river bank. He shook his shorn head in disgust. “You had better be worth this!” he called after them.

Midshipman Blasko manned the rudder as Rusalka motored down river. The rushing current carried them swiftly away from the dismal beach. A white froth chopped up the water at their stern. Josef, Grushka, and the truck disappeared behind a curve in the Ponoy. A rocky ridge, coated with purplish-red lichen, hid the fractious civilians from view.

Climbing balls of fire, however, hinted at the furious conflict the submariners had barely escaped. Gunfire echoed across the water. A distant explosion rippled the surface of the river.

The din of battle receded into the distance, gradually replaced only by the steady chug of the motor. A somber hush fell over the men in the boat. Blasko finally broke the silence.

“You think they made it, sir?”

“I hope so, Mr. Blasko.” It pained Losenko to realize that they would probably never know. He found himself deeply moved by what Grushka and her comrades had risked for them. They were just civilians, ordinary citizens, but they had fought as bravely as any professional soldier or sailor. Looking back toward the shore, he raised his hand in salute.

Your struggle, and your sacrifices, will not be forgotten.

Blasko continued to work the rudder.

“Your orders, sir?”

Losenko turned his face forward.

“Back to the boat. Full speed ahead.”

A determined look came into his eyes. His jaw set firmly. This mission had been a costly one, but not without purpose. He had lost many good men, but he had gained something, too.

A people worth fighting for.