Terminator Salvation: From the Ashes

CHAPTER

EIGHT

For Orozco, the day began as so many of them did: with a fight over food.

“But it’s mine,” Candace Tomlinson insisted, her plaintive five-year-old’s whine especially jarring coming from a seventeen-year-old’s mouth. “I found it. It’s mine.”

“But it was my stuff she found it in,” Sumae Chin, the twenty-two-year-old complainant snapped back.

“And where exactly was this private cache of yours?” Grimaldi asked, his eyes steady on Sumae as he stared at the two girls across his scarred office desk. “In your room?”

“She can’t just steal my stuff,” Sumae insisted, glaring at Candace.

“Where was the cache?” Grimaldi asked again, his voice going a few degrees sterner. “Sumae?”

Sumae sent Orozco a hooded look.

“In the lower storage room,” she said reluctantly. “Under some cracked drywall.”

Orozco sighed to himself. All the residents had their own rooms, as well as lockers Grimaldi’s men had lugged all the way from the remains of a high school, almost a mile away. In theory, everyone had all the room they needed for their personal items.

But too many of them had gone the squirrel route, hiding stuff around the building. Some did it because they didn’t want anyone else even knowing how much they’d managed to accumulate, while others were out-and-out paranoid about the Board swooping down someday and confiscating everybody’s private treasures.

The problem, of course, was that one battered can of processed lunchmeat looked pretty much like any other. Once it was outside anyone’s official storage, it was well-nigh impossible to establish ownership. Especially since—even after all this time—it was still possible to occasionally find food items everyone else had missed buried in the building’s rubble.

Which left Grimaldi with really only one possible ruling.

“I’m sorry, Sumae,” the chief said, his voice regretful but firm. “If you choose to hide items outside your designated areas—if the pickles Candace found were, in fact, yours to begin with—”

“But they were,” Sumae protested. “I told you where I’d—”

Grimaldi stopped her with an upraised hand.

“Even if they were yours to begin with, you forfeited all claims when you left the jar unattended outside your area. You know that. I’m sorry, but Candace owns them now.”

Sumae flashed the younger girl a look of pure hatred.

“Just wait,” she said, her voice low and menacing. “Someday you’ll drop something—”

“Sumae,” Grimaldi warned.

“—and I’ll be right there to pick it up,” Sumae finished.

“And if and when that happens, I suspect I’ll be seeing the two of you again,” Grimaldi said wearily. “You may return to your rooms or your work now. And you, Sumae, had best collect anything else you might have hidden around the building.”

Sumae held her glare on Candace for another heartbeat, then tried to transfer it to Grimaldi. But Grimaldi wasn’t sixteen, and he’d no doubt been glared at by experts. Sumae’s expression faltered as her glower bounced harmlessly off the stone that his face had become.

“Yes, sir,” she muttered, and slunk away out of the room. Candace triumphantly snatched up the dusty jar of pickles and followed.

“And so begins another glorious day in Moldavia Los Angeles,” Grimaldi said with a sigh.

“So it does,” Orozco agreed. He and Grimaldi had their differences, God knew, but Orozco had always respected Grimaldi’s insistence on handling these disputes personally, instead of hiding behind his desk and title and foisting the unpleasant duty off onto someone else. “Let’s hope things go uphill from here.”

“I don’t think they will,” Grimaldi said. “I talked to Evans and Kemper last night. They’re pretty sure they’ve seen your empty-revolver gang before.”

“Over on the far southern edge of the neighborhood,” Orozco said, nodding. “Yes, I got the same thing from Hamm.”

“Which means those kids were not, in fact, the new gang Nguyen and his buddies spotted on their way in yesterday afternoon,” Grimaldi said. “Which means that group is still out there, and we’re eventually going to run into each other.”

“I’ve already doubled the sentry shifts and put two of the fire teams on quick-response,” Orozco told him. “Unless you want to go out hunting, there’s not much more we can do.”

“We definitely don’t want to go looking for them,” Grimaldi said firmly. “The lower the profile we can keep, the better.”

“Agreed,” Orozco said. “Unfortunately, we’re about five years past the low profile stage.

Everyone for ten or twelve blocks around at least knows we’re here somewhere, even if they don’t know exactly which building we’re in. We have to assume our newcomers will try to pick up as much intel as they can on the territory they’re trying to move into.”

“Fortunately, everyone who knows we’re here also knows that everyone who’s tried taking us on has lost,” Grimaldi said. “Maybe they’ll be smart enough to learn from the mistakes of others.”

“We can hope,” Orozco agreed. “But in case they don’t—”

He broke off as the door was suddenly thrown open, and Mick the Binocular-Breaker ran into the room.

“Sentry signal,” he said, panting. “Four and one.”

“Damn,” Orozco snarled as he rose quickly from his chair. Four and one was a positive threat coming from the north. Ten to one it was Nguyen’s gang. “Chief—”

“I got it,” Grimaldi interrupted. He was on his feet, checking the chambers of the shotgun he kept under his desk. “Get to the entrance—I’ll roust the fire teams.”

Ninety seconds later Orozco was back at the archway. Kyle and Star were already there, Kyle with Orozco’s M16 gripped in his hands.

“They’re coming,” he reported tightly.

“I know,” Orozco said, stepping to the arms locker and pulling out their one true sniper rifle, a Remington 700 with a Leupold VX-1 scope “Are they visible?”

Kyle stepped beneath the archway, leaning cautiously out from behind the building’s broken facade.

“Not yet,” he said. “They may be on the other side of that broken truck three blocks up.”

“Take this,” Orozco said, taking the M16 from Kyle and handing him the Remington in exchange. “Go to the sniper nest.”

Kyle’s forehead creased uncertainly as he fingered the Remington.

“Evan’s a better shot than I am,” he said.

“Evan’s not here,” Orozco said. “You are. Get going.”

With a grimace, Kyle nodded and headed across the street, Star right on his heels.

Orozco waited until the two kids had disappeared into the sniper’s nest. Then, checking the M16’s clip and chamber, he settled in to wait for their visitors.

He had received one follow-up report from the sentry, and was waiting for a second, when they arrived.

In impressively sophisticated military fashion, too. The sentry had said there were ten of them, but only four came striding into Orozco’s view along the street, spaced far enough apart that they couldn’t be taken down in a quick four-shot. The other six weren’t visible, but Orozco suspected they could see him, or at least they could see the building’s archway. Backup forces, ready to provide covering fire or a second attack wave, whichever was needed.

Not that the first group wasn’t a wave and a half all by itself. Orozco counted ten heavy weapons among the four men, plus holstered sidearms and whatever hidden grenades or knives they might be carrying.

They were well-armed, well-trained, and at least slightly better-fed than the average L.A. citizen.

If they had been a new gang trying to move into the area, Orozco would have been worried.

But they weren’t a gang. The red sashes tied around their sleeves showed that. They were, in fact, Resistance.

Which made it even worse.

“Morning,” Orozco called courteously, keeping the muzzle of his M16 moving gently back and forth between them. “Just passing through?”

“Mostly,” one of them said. He was a big black man with a fringe of a beard and a totally bald head. Along with his guns he was also carrying a couple of ammo packs, but he didn’t even seem to notice all the weight. His eyes flicked once to the M16, then came back to Orozco’s face. “You must be the Orozco everyone talks about.”

“Sergeant Orozco, actually,” Orozco said. “Formerly of the U.S. Marine Corps.”

The other gave a snort that seemed to double as a laugh.

“That supposed to impress me?”

“Just want to make it clear I know how to use this,” Orozco said, hefting the M16 a bit. “You have a name?”

“Barnes,” the man said. He nodded toward the red armband. “This is my unit.”

“Yeah, I see it,” Orozco said. “Is that supposed to impress me?”

“It should,” Barnes growled. “We’re the ones keeping Skynet off your back.”

“Or you’re the ones drawing Skynet’s fire onto everyone else,” Orozco countered. “That’s the way a lot of people around here see it.”

Barnes gave him a long, measuring look.

“You can’t be that stupid,” he said at last. “Not if you were really a soldier.”

“Marine,” Orozco corrected automatically.

“Whatever.” Barnes nodded past Orozco’s shoulder.

“Mind if we come in? We’ve got some snacks to share out with your people in there.”

Orozco suppressed a grimace. He’d called it, all right, straight from the top, the minute he’d seen those red armbands. These guys were here to recruit.

Grimaldi, if he were here instead of up on the balcony, would absolutely forbid them to pass the archway. He saw the people of Moldering Lost Ashes the same way he’d seen his inventory list back in the day, and he took it badly—and personally—when any of them chose to leave. The best thing Orozco could do right now would be to send Barnes and his team away.

And then, Orozco’s eyes fell on all the weaponry the men were carrying.

A hard knot settled into his stomach. Recruiters didn’t lug that much stuff around. Not if all they were doing was looking for fresh faces and able bodies.

Something was about to go down. Something bad.

And if Barnes’ recruitment pitch meant even a couple of the people here got out before it was too late…

“If you’re here to sign folks up, you’re going to be disappointed,” he warned. Some people, he knew, worked better and harder if you told them something couldn’t be done. Barnes looked like that type. “But if you want to try, it’s your time to waste.”

“Thanks,” Barnes said. He lifted his left hand above his head—

“But you’ll have to leave your weapons here at the archway,” Orozco added. Grimaldi, he knew, would insist on that.

Barnes froze, his arm still lifted.

“You thinking about trading up?” he asked, looking pointedly at Orozco’s M16.

“Not at all,” Orozco assured him. “You’re welcome to leave a guard with the gear. Two or three of your six backstops should be enough.”

Barnes grinned suddenly, bright white teeth against his dark skin.

“I guess maybe you were a Marine,” he said. He flashed a couple of hand signals, then lowered his arm again to his weapon, swiveling the muzzle to point it at the ground. “That’s okay—the rest of the crowd can stay out here,” he added. “Don’t want to make your people nervous.”

“I appreciate your concern,” Orozco said dryly. “What do you want me to do?”

“Just call ’em in and line ’em up,” Barnes said as he and the other three men walked in under the archway. “Tell ’em we’re springing for breakfast.”

Orozco nodded. “I’ll pass the word.”

This whole “Breakfast with the Resistance” thing had been one hundred percent Connor’s brainstorm, and Barnes had disliked it right from the start.

He’d argued vigorously against it, in fact, the minute he’d been able to get Connor alone. The group barely had enough food for its own, and the idea of handing out freebies to a hunch of civilian parasites had struck him as complete and utter insanity.

But he had to admit that the scheme had gotten them into a lot more places over the past two days than they probably could have managed without it.

Not that they’d actually gotten any new recruits out of all that time and effort. Most of the people they’d talked to were small, close-knit family groups that you couldn’t break up if you lobbed in a brick of C4.

But for once, Barnes didn’t mind the lack of results. When you were in the process of infiltrating a Skynet staging area, every hour spent off the street and out of sight was a good hour. Even if all the civilians did was eat your food, listen to your sales pitch, and then throw you out.

This place was the last one on Connor’s list, and it was looking to be more of the same. Barnes couldn’t tell about Orozco—the man had a poker face like a T-600. But the boss man who’d showed up as soon as the team had cached their weapons had been as easy to read as a Terminator’s footprint.

Grimaldi didn’t like Barnes, he didn’t like the Resistance, and he especially didn’t like these intruders breathing his nice, clean non-violent head-in-the-sand civilian air. He’d been picking restlessly at the strap of his shotgun ever since slinging it, and Barnes could tell the man would like nothing better than to swing that gun back up to firing position and order Barnes and the others back onto the street.

But the man also knew better than to buck the crowd, and the swarm of children, teens, and adults that had come out of the woodwork at the mention of free food was definitely a crowd and a half.

“So what exactly are you offering my people?” Grimaldi asked as he stood beside Barnes, watching as the team passed out snack bars to the eager residents.

“Mostly, the chance to fight back,” Barnes told him.

“And to die while they’re doing it?” Grimaldi countered, raising his volume a little. A few nearby heads turned toward them in response. “Very heroic, I suppose, if you buy into all that glorious epic hero nonsense. But what I meant was what can you offer in the way of safety or community compared to what we have here already?”

Barnes snorted a laugh.

“Safety?” he bit out. “You think you’re safe here? From T-600s and HKs? Here?”

“Gentlemen, please,” a soft voice came from behind Barnes. “There’s no need to frighten the children.”

Barnes turned to see a slender, almost gaunt man standing a respectful two paces behind him.

The man’s skin was darker even than Barnes’, his face pockmarked with tiny scars, probably from some childhood disease. First or maybe second generation African, Barnes guessed.

“You have a problem with fear?” he challenged the newcomer.

“Not at all,” the man said calmly. “Fear is an excellent motivator, though not as strong as duty, honor, or love.” He inclined his head toward three young children digging eagerly and blissfully into their snack bars. “But hopelessness isn’t.” He held out his hand. “Reverend Jiri Sibanda.”

“Barnes,” Barnes said, taking the proffered hand carefully. He had already seen the telltale bulges of arthritis in Sibanda’s knuckles. “You the chaplain?”

“The pastor,” Sibanda corrected. “I was just thinking that there are several children and young adults who haven’t been able to avail themselves of your generosity. If you’re willing, I’d like to take you to them.”

Barnes scowled. First Connor wanted him to waste food on civilians, and now Sibanda wanted him to waste it on the sick and dying.

“If they can’t take the time to get here on their own—”

“Oh, no, it’s not like that,” Sibanda said. “I’m talking about the sentries on duty on the upper levels.” He looked past Barnes at Grimaldi. “With your permission, of course.”

Barnes looked at Grimaldi as well. The man didn’t look happy at the idea of a stranger touring his building, but he didn’t seem ready to get in Barnes’ way, either.

“Go ahead,” he growled.

“Thank you.” Sibanda took a step back and gestured toward a wide stone staircase. “This way, please.”

The trip to the top of the building was more of an adventure than Barnes had expected. The stone staircase, which led up to a mezzanine balcony and a whole group of what had probably once been a selection of retail stores, was as sturdy as anything Barnes had run into over the years since Judgment Day. The next three floors were all right, too, though the stairways that led between them were now the more standard types tucked alongside the empty elevator shafts.

But starting with the fifth floor, things got trickier. Some of the stairs were missing, while others were solid only in certain places along their width. Between the sixth and seventh floors half the steps had vanished completely, forcing a quarter-building detour through a set of hallways even more treacherous than the stairs.

Fortunately, Sibanda knew all the danger spots and was agile enough to make the jumps and long steps necessary to avoid them. Still, Barnes could see why Orozco had delegated most of the high sentry duty to the more nimble kids and teens.

Finally, to his quiet relief, they emerged once again into the open air.

“Here we are,” Sibanda said cheerfully. “This is our southeast sentry post.”

Barnes looked at the two kids sitting by a partial wall at the side of the building. One of them, a boy, looked to be thirteen or fourteen, while the other was a six- or seven-year-old girl. Both of them were staring wide-eyed at the big newcomer.

“This is Zac Steiner and this is Olivia Womak,” Sibanda said, gesturing to the kids. “Olivia’s just learning how to be a sentry.”

“You like it?” Barnes asked the girl.

Her lip twitched.

“Kinda cold up here.”

“It’s kind of cold everywhere,” Barnes pointed out.

“And at least here you have this wonderful view,” Sibanda said.

Barnes turned to look. The city stretched out in front of him, broken but still surviving, its streets and empty areas green with the vines and grasses and weeds that had slowly been coming back across the whole nuke-blasted region. To the far east and south, a haze had set in, softening the edges of the vista.

“It’s okay,” he said with a shrug.

“But you didn’t come up here for the view,” Sibanda continued. “Zac, Olivia, Mr. Barnes is with the Resistance, and he’d like a word with you.”

Barnes turned back to the kids.

“That’s right,” he said. “In the Resistance our job is to fight against Skynet and the Terminators.”

“Are you one of the people Kyle saw yesterday?” the boy asked.

“I don’t know,” Barnes said. “Who’s Kyle?”

“One of the other sentries,” Sibanda explained. “No, Zac, that was a different group. From what I understand, Mr. Barnes’ group was coming in too far north to be visible from this particular station.”

“Oh,” the boy said. “What’s Skynet?”

“It’s a big computer that’s taken over most of the world,” Barnes told him. “You know those HKs—Hunter-Killers, those big metal flying things—and the Terminators, those metal robot sorts of things that walk around with big guns?”

“I’ve seen them,” the boy said, shivering. “Not very close.”

“You want to try very hard to keep it that way,” Barnes told him grimly. “People who see Terminators up close usually die. That’s what the machines do. That’s all they do.”

“That’s…kind of scary,” the boy said.

Barnes looked at Sibanda. But this time there were no speeches or warnings about fear or hopelessness coming from the man. Maybe the preacher really did understand the reality of the world these kids were living in.

“It’s very scary,” Barnes agreed, looking back at the young sentries. “That’s why we fight.”

“Mr. Barnes is offering you—and all the rest of us—the chance to join them and be part of that fight,” Sibanda explained. “It’s something you both need to think about, very hard.”

The boy looked at Barnes, then back at Sibanda.

“Do we have to go right now?”

“Not right this second, no,” Sibanda said. “But soon. We’ll be visiting the other sentry posts, and then Mr. Barnes and his people will want to talk to the people downstairs, so you both have a little time to make up your minds.” Looking at Barnes, he raised his eyebrows. “In the meantime, I believe Mr. Barnes has something for each of you.”

“Oh—right,” Barnes said, digging into one of his jacket pockets and pulling out two of the snack bars. “This is to thank you for listening to me.”

“Though I’m sure that even in the Resistance they don’t get these things all the time,” Sibanda cautioned as the kids’ faces lit up and they started eagerly unwrapping the bars.

“No, we don’t,” Barnes admitted, remembering Connor’s number one rule of not sugar-glazing what the prospective recruit was getting into. “Mostly, what we get is that when the Terminators start shooting, we get to shoot back.”

“And with that, we’ll leave you to your duty,” Sibanda said, touching each of the children lightly on the shoulder before heading back into the building.

They were a quarter of the way around the floor, heading for the southwest sentry post, before Sibanda spoke again.

“You’ll take care of him, won’t you?” he asked Barnes quietly.

“Who?” Barnes asked.

“Zac,” Sibanda said. “He’s going with you.”

Barnes frowned. Last he’d heard, the kid was still undecided.

“When did he say that?”

“He didn’t have to,” Sibanda said, a deep sadness in his voice. “I know these people, Mr.

Barnes. Olivia is interested, but she’s not yet ready to leave her family and friends. But Zac is older, and he’s been listening to Sergeant Orozco. He understands the danger lurking out there.”

Barnes grunted. “He’s ahead of Grimaldi on that one, anyway.”

“The chief’s heart’s in the right place,” Sibanda murmured. “You must give him that. He also understands organization and resource management. Under other conditions, he would be the ideal man to run a place like Moldering Lost Ashes.”

“You mean conditions like no Skynet?”

Sibanda sighed. “He’s not blind, you know. We see your planes battling the Hunter-Killers, and we get word from other parts of the city. He knows what Skynet is doing. But he truly believes that you Resistance people are baiting it, that it’s just reacting to your attacks. He believes that if we stay quiet and leave Skynet alone, it will leave us alone, too.”

Barnes barked a laugh.

“Yeah. Right.”

“I know,” Sibanda said with another sigh. “But what else can we do? We can’t fight, not all of us—we have women and children here. We can’t run, either—where could we go where Skynet couldn’t find us?”

“There isn’t any place,” Barnes agreed grimly. “But don’t sell your women short. We’ve got women in our group, too. Most of them are damn near as good at fighting as the men.”

“Perhaps,” Sibanda said. “But there are still the children. I doubt you have any of them in your group.”

Barnes grimaced. “We’ve got a few. Civilians. Mostly because they didn’t have anywhere else to go.”

“Then you see our problem,” Sibanda said. “Even if Chief Grimaldi was willing, there’s little he can do.”

The southwest post had a lone sentry, a teenaged boy who clearly wasn’t interested in anything but Barnes’ snack bar bribe. The lookouts in the northwest and northeast posts were pretty much the same, though the girl in the northwest post was at least willing to listen to Barnes as she ate.

“Is that it?” Barnes asked as they headed back down toward the lobby.

“There’s a sniper’s nest in the building across the street,” Sibanda said, “and I daresay Sergeant Orozco probably has a few other places around the neighborhood where people can watch or shoot from. But I would guess he’s already called all of them in to hear your recruitment talk.”

Barnes nodded. “I can check with him on that before we go.”

By the time they returned to the mezzanine balcony, the snack bars had been distributed and Tunney had formed the residents into the circle he liked to use on these occasions. In this case, there were enough folks to form a circle three people deep, centered around the broken fountain in the middle of the lobby.

Tunney himself was standing on the inner part of the circle facing the balcony. A dozen steps behind him, a few meters inside the distinctive entrance archway, the other two men of their foursome were standing in a loose guard circle around their cached weapons, their arms folded or clasped parade-rest style behind their backs, eyeing the two men who’d taken up guard duty at the entry. From the voices drifting up to the balcony, Barnes gathered that Tunney had finished running through his standard sales pitch and was in the process of answering questions.

There were a lot of questions, too, Barnes noted as he and Sibanda walked down the stone staircase and settled in unobtrusively at the rear of the circle. Maybe the preacher was right, that the people here didn’t have anywhere else to go. But that didn’t mean they’d all bought into Grimaldi’s ostrich plan, either.

And it was pretty clear that Grimaldi didn’t like that. He was standing a quarter of the way around the circle to Tunney’s right, flanked by three other men. All four of them had rifles or shotguns slung over their shoulders, and all four of them were glowering.

But for the moment, at least, they seemed willing to let Tunney talk.

Finally, the people ran out of questions. Tunney let the silence hang in the air for a few seconds, just to make sure, then cleared his throat.

“If there are no more questions,” he said, “it’s time for you to make your decisions. What we offer isn’t much, but it’s better than sitting here waiting for the inevitable. Are there any who would like to come with us?”

For another handful of seconds no one moved. Then, from the front row directly across from him, a young man took a step forward.

“I will.”

A quiet stir rippled through the crowd.

“Your name?” Tunney asked, gesturing him forward.

“Callahan, sir,” the young man said, circling the fountain and going up to Tunney. “I’m not very good at fighting. But I can learn.”

“Indeed you will,” Tunney promised, motioning the man over to stand beside him. “Anyone else?”

A young couple stepped out from the middle row, the woman clutching at the man’s arm like she was afraid to let it go.

“Leon and Carol Iliaki,” the man said. “I’m not much of a fighter, either, but I can also learn.

And Carol has some skills you might find useful.”

Barnes looked at Grimaldi. The boss man hadn’t looked happy when Callahan had deserted him, but that was nothing compared to the stiffness of his expression now as he watched the Iliakis cross the circle.

“She’s a master seamstress,” Sibanda told Barnes quietly. “Amazing woman. She can take nearly random bits of cloth or leather and fashion them into clothing that’s both warm and durable.”

Barnes nodded. No wonder Grimaldi didn’t want to lose her.

“Anyone else?” Tunney called.

“Can I come, too?” a familiar voice called from behind Barnes, and he turned to see the kid Zac Steiner hurrying down the stone staircase.

Apparently, that was the final straw.

“Hold it, Steiner,” Grimaldi called, stepping into the circle. “What are you doing down here?”

The boy faltered to a confused-looking halt.

“Mr. Barnes said I could—”

“You’re on sentry duty, boy,” Grimaldi cut him off. “You think these people want someone who deserts his post?”

Zac sent Barnes a look that was full of sudden guilt and fear.

“But I sent Amy Phao up—”

“You sent Phao up?” Grimaldi echoed. “Since when are you authorized to make changes in the duty roster?”

“It’s all right,” another voice put in, and Barnes turned in mild surprise to see Orozco step into the circle across from Grimaldi. Either the Marine had just arrived, or else he’d managed to blend into the crowd so well that Barnes hadn’t spotted him a minute ago from up on the balcony. “The sentries have permission to leave their posts under extraordinary circumstances.”

“This is not an extraordinary circumstance,” Grimaldi countered. He shot a glare at Tunney.

“This is a circus.”

Barnes’ mind flashed back to the gangs he’d locked horns with so many times when he was growing up. They’d all had the same kind of single-man rule he could see happening here…and with most of them, this kind of ridicule had been the next-to-the-last resort when they didn’t have any other way to counter someone’s argument or demand.

If ridicule didn’t work, it was always followed by violence.

Carefully, Barnes shifted his weight, picking the path he would take through the people in front of him on his way to telling Grimaldi up close and personal exactly what he thought of him—

A hand touched his arm.

“No,” Sibanda murmured. “Let him talk.”

“I’d hardly call matters of life and death a circus,” Tunney said mildly.

“I wasn’t referring to matters of life and death,” Grimaldi said. “I was referring to you. You and your little band of amateurs.”

“Amateurs?” Tunney asked, his voice still calm.

“Listen to me,” Grimaldi said, raising his voice as he looked around the circle. “We’ve been here, some of us, for over ten years now. We’ve kept ourselves and each other alive, and fed, and clothed.” He leveled a finger at Tunney. “And yet now these men come along promising the moon; and you’re actually listening to them? These men who were so eager to talk you out of here that they were foolish enough to give up their guns?”

And without warning, the three men alongside Grimaldi swung their weapons up, leveling the barrels at Tunney.

“This is the tactical brilliance these men have?” Grimaldi went on sarcastically. “And yet they promise to keep you alive while they pick and poke and prod at Skynet and the Terminators?” He snorted. “I don’t think so.”

Sibanda’s hand was still on Barnes’ arm. Gently but firmly, Barnes pushed the hand away.

“Please,” Sibanda pleaded. “They have guns. You don’t.”

“The man needs a lesson,” Barnes told him grimly. “It’s time he got one.”