Terminator Salvation: Trial by Fire

CHAPTER FIVE

He froze, his ears straining, his eyes trying to pierce the canopy of branches and leaves above him to the glimpses of starry night sky beyond. The sound was growing louder, and for a minute he wondered if it might be a Resistance jet or helo heading across the mountains on some mission.

But no. As the noise grew louder, it resolved itself into the distinctive hum of Hunter-Killer turbofans.

He bared his teeth in a scowl, his hands pressed against the rough tree bark. During the long walk from Los Angeles he’d spent his nights off the ground whenever he could, both as a defense against predators and also because he hated the sensation of ants and other ground insects crawling over him.

But he was only safe from ground-based dangers like wolves and coyotes. Against flying threats like H-Ks, setting himself above the bushes and other ground cover was not only useless but decidedly counterproductive.

He peered beneath him, trying to recall the details of the terrain. There was a large section of dead log about ten meters away, he remembered, surrounded by a group of thorn bushes. If the log was hollow, he might be able to squeeze himself inside. Surely the infrared signature of a man inside a log would be significantly different from that of a human out in the open?

But did he dare risk the movement required to climb down the tree? And once he was down, what about the coyotes and wolves he’d heard prowling around earlier?

The H-K was getting closer. Abruptly, Jik made up his mind. The leaf canopy was no defense if the H-K was hunting humans tonight, and wolves he would at least have a fighting chance against. Better to go with the log.

He was adjusting his grip on the branches around him, preparing to swing out of his perch, when a new sound came to him across the breeze. Like the H-K’s engines, this one was instantly recognizable: the heavy, steady cadence of large metallic feet.

The H-K wasn’t alone. It had brought some Terminators with it.

Jik froze, the bitter irony of it drying his throat. All the way from Los Angeles... and now, with Baker’s Hollow practically in sight, the Terminators had finally caught up with him.

And pinned between earth and sky, with nowhere to go and no time to get there anyway, Jik literally had no other option but to trust in luck to get him through the next few minutes. Tucking his arms against his chest, he pressed up against the tree bole and tried to look as much like a bear as he could.

The footsteps swishing through the leaves and thudding against the ground grew louder, and a minute later he caught a glimpse of glowing red eyes through the vegetation to the south, heading northeastward more or less parallel to Jik’s own route. A glint of starlight on dark metal showed that it was a T-700, not one of the rubber-skinned T-600s. A few meters behind it was a second T-700, which was followed by a third and then a fourth. All of them walking in the same path, Jik noted, probably to disguise their numbers should anyone happen across their trail.

He tensed, waiting for the moment when they spotted him and turned to the kill. But they didn’t. They continued on their stolid, mechanical way, their footsteps fading away into the night. As the normal forest sounds began to reassert themselves, Jik heard the distant hum of the H-K’s turbofans also fade away.

The Terminators had been hunting him, all right. But his luck had held.

Or had it?

He looked around again, this time with new eyes. His estimate when he’d first settled down for the night had been that he was about ten miles from Slate River, with just another half a mile until he reached Baker’s Hollow itself. Slate River was only about fifteen feet wide, but it was relatively deep and as fast and rock-filled as any other mountain stream. Back when he’d spent summers here, he’d been warned repeatedly not to go anywhere near it.

But warnings like that never stopped ten-year-old boys. He and one of the local kids, Danny Preston, had routinely crossed the river at the spot everyone else used, a somewhat wider section where the slightly slower current had built up a mass of stones that made the water shallow enough to safely wade through. That ford was the spot Jik was currently heading for, and up until now he’d assumed he was more or less on course.

Now, though, he wasn’t so sure. If Skynet was still trying to nail him—and the presence of T-700s in the middle of the forest was pretty good evidence that it was—its best strategy at this point would be to try to pin him against the river. If one of the machines could reach and hold the ford ahead of him, the others could then sweep in from the west, north, and south, beating the bushes until they ran him down. Simple, straightforward, and an almost guaranteed success.

He smiled tightly into the darkness. Or maybe not so guaranteed... because what Skynet didn’t know was that forty years ago Jik and Danny had built themselves a private bridge about a mile north of the ford. If it was still there, he might be able to get across the river and to the relative safety of Baker’s Hollow before Skynet even knew the fish had slipped the net.

His smile turned into a grimace. If the bridge was still there, and that was a mighty big if. He and Danny had built the thing pretty solidly, but forty years was a long time to expect something made of rope and wooden planks to survive mountain winters. Even if Danny still lived in Baker’s Hollow, he must surely have found better things to do with his time than maintain an old childhood plaything.

But with the next nearest practical crossing over twenty miles downstream, Jik had no choice but to try it.

Luck hadn’t failed him yet. He could only hope it would stay with him a little while longer.

Slipping off his branch, he slid down the tree as quietly as he could. There was a cabin of sorts, he remembered, just a little ways this side of the bridge. No more than a shack, really, but if it was still there it might provide him with a place where he would at least be out of direct sight.

And being out of direct sight suddenly seemed like a good thing to strive for.

For a moment he stood at the foot of the tree, straining his ears. But the first line of Terminators had long since passed, and if there was another line coming up behind them they weren’t close enough to be audible.

It was now or never.

Taking a deep breath, he headed off into the night.

The figure standing among the trees on the far side of the river was so silent and still that most people would never notice it in the dim starlight. Even if someone did, he would most likely dismiss it as a trick of the light on some misshapen tree bole.

But Daniel Preston wasn’t most people. He’d lived in Baker’s Hollow all his life, and he knew every tree and bush for ten miles around. The thing standing across the river was no trick of tired or nervous eyes.

He was pretty sure he knew what it was. But it never hurt to get a second opinion.

“Nate?” he murmured, just loudly enough to be heard over the sound of the rushing water.

Beside him, Dr. Nathan Oxley lowered his binoculars.

“It’s a Terminator, all right,” he murmured back grimly. “T-700, probably. It’s not bulky enough to be a T-500, and it seems to be reflecting more starlight than a T-600 would.”

“Alive, I assume?”

“You mean active?” Oxley shrugged. “Probably. It’s facing the other way, so I can’t see its eyes. But it would be rather too much to hope for that a T-700 would get all the way out here in the forest and then just happen to break down half a mile from town.”

Preston grunted. “Probably also too much to hope that the river’s going to stop it.”

“Well, it’s not going to rust, if that’s what you’re thinking.” Oxley shook his head. “Beats me why you never put a bridge there.”

“Before Judgment Day everything over there was private property,” Preston said, eyeing the Terminator. “The owner didn’t want us walking on his land and absolutely wouldn’t allow anything like a bridge. Afterward, we kind of liked the idea of having a barrier between us and any predators that might want to wander this direction. So the water won’t hurt it at all?”

“Not at all,” Oxley confirmed. “There’s a ferrous component to their construction—that’s why they can pull their limbs back together if they get blown apart. But—”

“Wait a second,” Preston interrupted. “They can put themselves back together?”

“Of course.” Oxley waved a hand. “Sorry. I forget sometimes that you never worked with the damn things staring over your shoulder. Yeah, they can pull themselves back together. They can also stand up to anything but big-caliber, high-power bullets, and keep going pretty near forever.”

Preston squeezed his left hand into a fist. Terrific.

“So what’s it waiting for? I assume it’s not afraid of the dark.”

“No, of course not,” Oxley said thoughtfully. “And you’re right, that’s the part that doesn’t make any sense. I mean, aside from the question of what the hell it’s doing out here in the first place.”

“Any thoughts? On either point?”

Oxley shrugged. “You’ll recall I said I couldn’t tell if it was active because it’s not facing this direction. Not facing this direction may imply that it’s not interested in Baker’s Hollow, but is waiting for something to happen over on that side of the river.”

“Like what?” Preston asked.

“How should I know?” Oxley growled. “You want to go ask it, be my guest. But it’s definitely not standing there because it’s afraid of the river. Even if it was worried about the depth or the current, the ford’s right there in front of it.”

Belatedly it struck him. Of course. “It’s not waiting for something,” Preston said. “It’s waiting for someone. Someone who’s trying to get to Baker’s Hollow.”

“Someone trying to get here?”

“Why else guard the ford?” Preston replied.

“But who in the world would want to come here?” Oxley protested. “Who out there even knows Baker’s Hollow still exists?”

“I don’t know.” Preston nodded toward the Terminator. “And from the looks of things, odds are we never will.”

Oxley sighed. “You’re probably right. Poor devil.”

Preston nodded. Poor devil indeed.

But right now, he had more urgent things on his mind than some random migrant who might be wandering this way.

“Let’s assume for a minute it gets whoever it’s here for,” he said. “Will it just leave? Or would it decide to take out the town as long as it’s here anyway?”

“For starters, T-700s don’t decide anything,” Oxley said. “They’re wholly controlled by Skynet, and I have no idea what that means now that the lab is gone.”

Despite the seriousness of the situation, Preston had to smile at that. Gone. Like the massive explosion that had rattled buildings in Baker’s Hollow and lit up the entire sky to the southeast qualified as just being gone. Sometimes Oxley showed an awesome flair for understatement.

“Where would the next nearest Skynet center be?”

“San Francisco was the nearest command hub,” Oxley said. “But if Connor was right about that one being gone, I don’t know what’s left. There might be another hub in Missouri, or there might not be anything until the east coast.”

“Could something that distance away even get a signal this far?”

“Oh, sure,” Oxley said. “Shortwave would do just fine. Never fear—Skynet’s in complete control of any Terminators it’s got left out here.” He grimaced. “And will continue that control straight through a massacre of Baker’s Hollow, should it decide to go that route.”

“So what do we do?” Preston asked.

Oxley shrugged. “We wait.”

Preston peered out into the darkness.

“And meanwhile let whoever’s out there walk into a trap?”

“I know,” Oxley said heavily. “But the only other option is to try to take out the T-700 ourselves. That’s not easy to do.”

“So I’m told,” Preston said, eyeing the unmoving machine. So it had finally come. The confrontation he’d been afraid of ever since the fires of Judgment Day died away and the first rumors of killing machines began to drift up to their little refuge in the mountains.

Their town’s isolation had protected it for a long time. But the reprieve was over. Skynet had found them, and every man, woman, and child in his care was now in deadly danger.

Including his own daughter.

“You haven’t asked the obvious question,” Oxley said carefully.

“You mean whether or not you and your friends might be the reason for this visit?” Preston suggested.

“That’s the one.” Oxley hesitated. “Do you want us to leave?”

“Depends,” Preston said with a shrug. “You think your presence in town would hurt us, or help us?”

Oxley snorted. “Even asking such a question presupposes we were more than just cogs in Skynet’s giant machine. Unfortunately, we weren’t. As a matter of fact, if Skynet thinks of us at all it’s probably as deserters. Or whatever term it uses for humans who drop off its grid.”

“Most likely the same term it uses for all the rest of us,” Preston said grimly. “Dead men walking.”

Oxley sighed. “Sounds about right.”

Preston nodded, watching the other out of the corner of his eye. Oxley had always been vague as to what exactly he and the other two scientists had been doing down in that big underground lab. Lajard and Valentine had been even more tight-lipped than Oxley, saying only that they had been part of Skynet’s vast contingent of human labor.

But that had never rung exactly true to Preston. All three of them had the kind of high-class scientific credentials that should have lifted them well above the general mass of humanity they had described as being down there. Had Skynet put them to work doing something else? Some job they were too afraid or too ashamed to admit to?

Or maybe Skynet simply didn’t care about high-class scientific credentials. Maybe to it, all human slave labor was created equal.

“Well, whatever we end up doing, we’re not doing it tonight,” Preston decided. “Let’s go sleep on it. Maybe by morning we’ll have thought up some better options.”

“Maybe,” Oxley said. “You might want to post a guard here, though. Just in case.”

“I already have,” Preston said. Though what a lone guard could do against a T-700 he couldn’t guess. Probably little more than be the first of them to die. “Let’s get back to town.”

It was after midnight, and Blair was trudging her sixth weary and leg-aching walk around the perimeter of their camp when she heard a sound that chilled her even more than the cold desert air.

The sound of a distant Hunter-Killer.

She froze in her tracks, her right hand dropping to the grip of her holstered Desert Eagle, her head turning slowly back and forth as she tried to locate the noise. Somewhere to the northeast, she decided.

She was staring in that direction, trying to figure out whether it was coming closer, when something grabbed her ankle.

Reflexively, she tried to jerk away. But the grip was too solid. Snatching out her gun, she looked down.

To find that one of the broken pieces of a T-700—a crushed skull, partial torso, and one arm—had inexplicably come back to life. The skull was half turned upward toward her, its red eyes glowing angrily, the bent fingers tightening around her ankle.

“Damn,” she snarled. Lining up the muzzle on the damaged skull, she squeezed the trigger.

The big gun bucked in her hand, the thunder of the shot slamming across her face and ears. The Terminator ignored the attack, its cold hand continuing to tighten its grip. Clenching her teeth, Blair fired two more rounds into the skull. This time, the machine’s grip slackened, and the glowing eyes faded once again to emptiness. Quickly, she worked her ankle free, then looked up again.

And caught her breath.

All around her, the desert was in motion. The scattered fragments of Terminators were on the move, crawling and clawing and hunching themselves across the sand like grotesque metal caterpillars. Their eyes, which had been blank and dead all afternoon, were once again spots of glowing red. As the echoes of her shots faded away, she could hear the faint clink of metal on metal as other scattered pieces began to magnetically reassemble themselves into some semblance of the once proud killing machines.

And all of those broken, deadly, grotesque things were heading straight for her.