Terminator Salvation: From the Ashes

CHAPTER

ELEVEN

“Kyle?”

The teen started awake, chagrined by the sudden realization that he had, in fact, been asleep.

That hadn’t been his plan, certainly not with Orozco handling guard duty all alone. He must have been more tired than he’d realized.

Way more tired, in fact, he realized as he peered through half-open eyes out into the street.

Nguyen and the other traders were standing outside the archway, and even in the limited sunlight making its way through the overcast sky he could see enough shadow to tell that it was at least a couple of hours past noon. He’d not only slept the morning away, but a good part of the afternoon, too.

He looked over at Star. To his surprise, he saw the same grogginess in her face that he himself was feeling. She must have slept as long and as deeply as he had.

“Come on, Kyle, get it together,” Orozco said.

Kyle looked up at the man kneeling over him. There was a grimness on his face that made Kyle wince even harder. Had he and Star slept straight through the mission Orozco had talked about earlier?

“Sorry,” Kyle apologized as he scrambled to his feet.

“Didn’t mean to sleep so long.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Orozco said, his voice as gruff as his face. “In fact, I’m glad you did.

You’ve got a long day still ahead of you.”

“We’re ready,” Kyle said, checking to make sure the Colt was still riding snugly in his holster.

“What’s the mission?”

“Come over here,” Orozco said. He offered a hand to Star, who ignored it and climbed to her feet without assistance. “You’re going to start by taking Mr. Nguyen and his people to our gasoline supply.”

Kyle felt his eyes widen. The first rule hammered into the skulls of everyone who knew where the gasoline was located was to never, ever take strangers there.

“But—”

“And after that,” Orozco said, “you and Star will be going back to their farm with them. And you won’t come back.”

For a handful of seconds Kyle just stared at him, the words spinning through his brain like moths around a candle.

“What do you mean?” he managed at last. “Are you?—We can’t do that.”

“You have to,” Orozco said, his voice low and earnest and with a pain that Kyle had never heard there before.

“There’s no future for you here. Out there, at least you have a chance.”

And then, abruptly, the circling words fell into place in Kyle’s mind. Into a horrible, terrifying place in a horrible, terrifying reality.

“They’re coming, aren’t they?” he breathed.

“I think so, yes,” Orozco said quietly. “That’s why you and Star need to get out of here.”

“What about the others?” Kyle asked, throwing a look across the empty lobby. “We have to warn them.”

“We will,” Orozco promised. “And we’ll do our best to get them all out. But you and Star are going first.”

Kyle looked at Star. Her eyes were wide, her lower lip trembling. Moldering Lost Ashes was their home, the best and safest they’d ever had. To just throw all that away…

He looked back at Orozco.

“Are you coming with us?” he asked.

“No, but if I can I’ll catch up with you later,” Orozco said. “But whether I do or not, you have to promise me you won’t ever come back here again. Not to look for me, or for anyone else, or to try to collect anything you might leave behind. Once you pass under that archway, you’re gone forever.

Understand?”

Kyle looked again at Star. She was gazing up at Orozco, her face solemn and troubled. Then, lowering her eyes, she silently took Kyle’s hand.

“Yes,” Kyle said for them both.

“Good,” Orozco said. “Then go get anything you have that you want to take. And not a word to anyone else, okay?” He reached down and took Kyle’s Colt from its holster. “Here, I’ll load this for you.”

It took Kyle and Star only about five minutes to collect their few belongings. They returned to the lobby to find Orozco standing beside Nguyen, talking to him in a low voice. Lying on the ground at his feet was a bulky canvas shoulder bag.

“Ready?” Orozco asked briskly as Kyle and Star came up. “Good. Here’s your gun, Kyle, plus an extra clip.”

“You sure you can spare them?” Kyle asked as he hesitantly took the weapon and clip. If the Terminators were coming, Orozco and the others would need all the guns and ammunition they could get their hands on.

“Don’t argue with your sergeant,” Orozco chided, though his tight smile showed he didn’t really mean it. “Yes, we can spare them. We can spare this, too.” He nudged the bag with his foot.

Kyle stooped over and picked it up. It was heavier than it looked.

“What is it?”

“Six pipe bombs,” Orozco said. “I made them up this morning. And don’t worry—I kept plenty for us, too.”

Kyle swallowed hard. So that was what Orozco had been doing that had given him and Star time to sleep so much.

“Thanks,” he said.

“It’s just a precaution,” Orozco added. “Even if we’re in Skynet’s crosshairs, its attacks nearly always come after nightfall. You should be well out of the area by then. There’s a lighter in there with the bombs, too. But it’s stoked with a gasoline mixture and burns really hot, so be careful with it.”

“I will,” Kyle said, looping the bag’s strap over his shoulder. “I…”

He was still searching for a way to say good-bye when Orozco stepped close and wrapped him and Star in a single, massive bear hug. Kyle gripped the man tightly, his eyes squeezed shut, drinking in the warmth and the deepness of human contact.

For a long moment they held each other that way. Then, gently, Orozco disengaged.

“You’d better get going,” he said, and Kyle could see the tears in his eyes. “Take care of yourselves and each other. May you both live long enough to see a world finally at peace.”

Kyle tried to say something. But his throat and voice weren’t working right, and he had to settle for giving his friend a quick nod instead.

A minute later, he and Star were walking down the street beside Nguyen, wrapped in a silence broken only by the crunching of their footsteps and the snuffling of the burros. Kyle had lost many friends and acquaintances over the years, either through death or simple desertion, to the point where he no longer cried over those losses.

But it was a near thing. It was a really near thing.

Nguyen and his men were very impressed by the gasoline stash, commenting several times on both its layered concealment and the booby-traps set up to protect it. Kyle had expected them to take as much of the gasoline as their burros could carry, and was therefore surprised when they quit after siphoning off only thirty gallons.

Still, pulling even that much of the precious liquid took nearly an hour, and by the time the group emerged again into the open air the faint glow in the clouds that marked the sun’s position was already halfway to the horizon.

“What now?” Kyle asked as they headed east.

“We get out of this neighborhood,” Nguyen said grimly, “and then cover as much distance as we can before we have to turn in for the night.”

Star touched Kyle’s arm. Where will we stay? she signed.

“You have some place in mind for that?” Kyle asked Nguyen.

“There are a couple of possibilities,” the other said. “We have to see first how far we get.”

“What are they like?” Kyle asked. They were passing the spot where he and Orozco had had the confrontation with the new gang yesterday, and he wondered whether they’d actually left like they’d said they would.

Apparently not.

Even as Kyle eyed their ramshackle headquarters the door opened a crack and a single eye peered out. The eye flicked back and forth, taking in the size and armament of the group, and then the door quietly closed again.

“One’s just an empty building,” Nguyen said. He’d noticed the door and the eye too, Kyle saw, and his gaze lingered there another moment before turning away. “The other’s the home of some of our other customers. Much safer, but they’ll charge a hefty fee for putting us up.”

Kyle nodded, looking up over the broken buildings and piles of wreckage to Moldering Lost Ashes. Up there on the eighth floor, he knew, the sentries were watching, and he wondered if they’d spotted him and Star among the crowd of men and animals.

If they had, what were they thinking? Did they think he and Star had deserted them, the way Ellis had?

The group had made it three blocks east of Moldering Lost Ashes when Kyle spotted two figures standing motionlessly in the shadow of a broken wall, just two blocks farther ahead.

“Nguyen?” he murmured.

“I see them,” Nguyen said grimly. “Vuong?”

“Terminators,” Vuong said, squinting toward the figures. “T-600s, probably—haven’t seen a T-400 in ages.”

“Agreed,” Nguyen said. “I wonder what they’re doing. Terminators usually don’t just stand around like that.”

Vuong shrugged. “Maybe they’re on break.”

Someone in the rear of the group snorted.

“Well, whatever they’re up to, we don’t want to know about it,” Nguyen said. “We’ll turn north at the next street and try to get around them.”

Kyle peered at the distant figures. He didn’t know much about Terminators, only the little that Orozco had been able to tell him. He’d never even seen one close up, which Orozco had assured him was the way he wanted to keep it.

“Maybe we should split up,” he said. “Some of us head north, the rest head south.”

“Too risky,” Nguyen said. “If they decide to come after us, we’ll need all our firepower to stop them.”

Kyle stole a look at the gun in Nguyen’s holster. Did they in fact have enough firepower to stop a pair of Terminators? Orozco had always been a little vague on what it took to bring the machines down.

“Then let’s all just go south,” he suggested. “There’s an alley about half a block south off the next street, that would get us across that block without being seen. If they stay where they are by that wall, we should come out on their blind side.”

“Unless they take maybe two steps forward,” Nguyen countered. “No, I think the northern route would be safer.”

“But there’s no way of crossing the street without them seeing us up there,” Kyle persisted. “Not unless we go four or five blocks, and there are a couple of gangs up there we really don’t want to get close to.”

“There’s a big gang to the south, too,” Nguyen said. “There are gangs everywhere.”

“Right, but if we go south and the Terminators don’t take those two steps forward, we can get past without them ever seeing us,” Kyle said. “Star and I are willing to try it.”

“Forget it,” Nguyen said flatly. “I promised Orozco I’d keep you safe.”

Vuong murmured something in another language. Nguyen answered back, and for a few steps the two men talked quietly back and forth.

“I suppose it’s worth a try,” Nguyen said at last reluctantly. “But Vuong will go with you.”

Kyle nodded. “Where do we meet up again?”

“Vuong knows the rendezvous spot,” Nguyen said. “Just watch yourselves, okay?”

The two Terminators still hadn’t moved by the time the group reached the next street and split up. But Kyle could feel their eyes on him as he, Star, and Vuong headed south, and felt a sense of relief when they passed the nearest building and were out of the machines’ sight.

At least the Terminators hadn’t come charging straight for them. Maybe they really were on some kind of break.

Kyle hadn’t been in this part of the neighborhood for several months, but the place hadn’t changed very much.

“There’s the alley,” he told Vuong, pointing out the opening just past the midpoint of the block.

“The footing’s kind of tricky, but we should be able to get through.”

“I don’t know,” Vuong said doubtfully. “We’ll be coming out awfully close. If those Terminators spot us, we’ll be sitting ducks. You sure we can’t go a little farther south?”

Kyle shook his head. “Not unless we go all the way around the Death’s-Head Gang’s territory.

They’re the ones with all the cars up on their sides blocking the street.”

“Yes, we saw those on our way in,” Vuong said grimly. “We can’t go around them—if we do, we won’t be in position to back up Nguyen’s group if they need us. I guess it’s your alley, or nothing.”

“It’ll work,” Kyle assured him. “Besides, if we have to backtrack, the alley’s a good place to do it from. There’s a gap in a brick wall at the far end you need to get through, and I don’t think one of those Terminators could.”

“You don’t, huh?” Vuong said. “Ever seen a Terminator in action?”

“Not really,” Kyle admitted.

Vuong grunted. “Let’s hope we can keep it that way.”

The alley was as treacherous as Kyle remembered it, filled with angled slabs of pavement, a pair of rusting pickup trucks, and a small forest of exposed rebar. The three of them picked their way through, squeezed through the gap in the final brick wall, and reached the far end. Crouching down beside a bush growing tenaciously through a wide crack in the sidewalk, feeling terribly exposed now that they were back on an open street, Kyle looked carefully around it.

Half a block north, he could see the partial wall where the two Terminators had been loitering.

The Terminators themselves were nowhere to be seen.

“Anything?” Vuong murmured from behind him.

“I can’t see them,” Kyle murmured back. “They could be there, but they could have moved.”

Carefully, Vuong lifted his head above the bush for a look of his own.

“Yeah,” he said. “I guess for the moment we stay put.”

“Stay put here?” Kyle asked, looking around. Except for the bush, they had no cover at all.

“We have to be able to see when the others get to their jump-off point,” Vuong explained patiently. “Once they’re there, we’ll figure out our next move.”

The minutes ticked slowly by. The cloud cover was starting to thicken, bringing a new chill to the air, and Kyle could feel Star shivering at his side. Slipping off his jacket from beneath his bag’s shoulder strap, he wrapped the garment around her. She flashed him a quick smile of thanks, then went back to watching the street.

More minutes went by. Kyle was starting to wonder just how far north Nguyen had decided to go when Vuong touched his shoulder.

“There they are,” he murmured.

Kyle leaned a little farther around the bush. Three blocks north, he could see Nguyen and the others creeping as furtively across the street as the uneven footing and the presence of a dozen burros allowed.

“I don’t see anything,” Vuong said. “Maybe the machines left while we were climbing over all that rebar.”

“And went where?” Kyle asked, looking around.

“As long as they’re not here, who cares?” Vuong said. “Looks like our alley continues on past the street, through that gap in the vines. That’s where we’re going.”

“Okay.” Taking a deep breath, Kyle gathered his feet beneath him for a quick sprint.

And found himself suddenly off-balance as Star grabbed his arm and yanked backward.

“Hey—-easy,” he protested, glancing at her.

What he saw made him take a second, longer look. The girl’s face had gone rigid, her eyes wide and terrified. Something had spooked her, but good.

“What is it?” Kyle asked. A movement past the bush caught the corner of his eye, and he looked up.

To see the two Terminators emerge from a broken doorway half a block south of Nguyen’s group and head straight toward them.

“Vuong!” he bit out.

“Stay here,” Vuong ordered. Drawing his pistol, he dashed around the bush and headed toward the figures that were closing in on his friends.

Again, Kyle gathered his feet beneath him. If he could get Star across the street and into the relative safety of the alley while the Terminators were focusing on the traders….

But again, Star’s grip brought him up short.

“Star, we have to go,” Kyle insisted, trying to pry her fingers off his arm.

She shook her head violently, wrapping her other hand around his arm for emphasis, and nodded sharply in Vuong’s direction. Wishing the girl could just talk to him, Kyle looked up again.

Vuong was still running, his arms pumping at his sides. The two Terminators were still marching stolidly toward Nguyen’s group, apparently oblivious to this new threat coming up behind them. Vuong slowed a little, lifting his gun into a two-handed marksman’s grip and leveling the weapon at the Terminators’ backs.

And then, to Kyle’s stunned horror, as Vuong passed the half-broken wall, the two Terminators they’d seen earlier stepped into view.

Vuong spotted them the same time Kyle did. Twisting half around, he opened fire.

The Terminators jerked with the multiple impacts as the rounds slammed into their metal bodies.

But they didn’t fall or even falter, but just kept moving.

Vuong must have known in that moment that he was a dead man. But that didn’t mean he was just going to lay down and give up. He veered away from the approaching death machines, emptying his pistol into them.

Kyle held his breath. But aside from more jerking the Terminators seemed completely unaffected by the attack. Shaking the clip from his gun, Vuong slammed in a fresh one and emptied it as well. Again, the Terminators shrugged off the hail of lead.

Vuong was reloading with a third clip when a second, more distant crackle of gunfire erupted.

Nguyen and his men had formed a line behind their burros and were making their own stand against the Terminators bearing down on them. But their attack was no more effective than Vuong’s.

And then, suddenly, Kyle’s brain unfroze and he remembered his bombs.

He reached into the bag, snatching out the lighter and one of the cold metal cylinders.

“Stay down,” he muttered to Star as he popped the lighter’s top and thumbed the flame to life.

He ignited the bomb’s fuse, gauged the distance, then rose to his feet and hurled the bomb as hard as he could toward the Terminators closing on Vuong.

But not hard enough. The pipe bounced off the pavement and skittered to a halt a good twenty feet back from the two Terminators. Even over the noise of the gunfire filling the air, the machines apparently heard the sound as the bomb hit the ground, and one of them turned to look.

And then the bomb exploded, and Kyle ducked back down as the shockwave blew through the bush’s branches and leaves. The sound of the blast faded away into silence.

Complete silence.

Kyle looked at Star, his throat tightening. Then, steeling himself, he lifted his head again for another look.

To find that it was already over.

Kyle stared, unable to believe his eyes. Vuong was down, lying unmoving on the pavement, his shirt bright with blood. The two Terminators stood over him, gazing down at his body like hunters assessing their prey.

Away to the north, the other pair of Terminators were wading through Nguyen’s group, metal arms slamming and punching and throwing the men around like rags. Kyle wondered why the traders hadn’t at least tried to run, only then spotting the two additional Terminators striding toward the doomed men from further north, blocking any chance of escape in that direction.

Nguyen had tried to take his men away from a clear and present threat. Instead, he’d led them into the center of a trap.

And as far as Kyle could tell, none of the Terminators had even bothered to use the massive guns strapped to their right arms.

Then, as Kyle stared at the carnage, sickened yet somehow unable to turn away, one of the two machines standing over Vuong’s body stirred and turned its head. Its glowing eyes seemed to lock onto Kyle.

And with a sudden surge of energy, it turned and headed toward him.

“Come on,” Kyle muttered, grabbing Star’s hand and pulling her back into the alley. He pushed her through the gap in the brick wall, then squeezed through himself, and again got a grip on her hand as he took the lead. If they could get back to the next street over and find some building they could disappear into before the Terminator caught up with them, they might still have a chance.

But the alley’s footing was as treacherous going in this direction as it had been going in the other, and Kyle was forced to slow down as he balanced their need for haste with their equally urgent need for safety. A broken leg or twisted ankle now would mean quick and certain death.

Kyle could feel the sweat gathering around his neck as he picked his way along the alley, not daring to turn around, wondering whether he would even hear the sound of the Terminator’s gun as the killing rounds tore into his back.

But that line of thought led only to panic. Pushing it away, he concentrated on finding the best possible route for him and Star. They would make it, he told himself firmly. Luck favored the prepared, Orozco had always told him, and they were prepared. They would make it.

They were halfway through when their luck ran out.

The crash of breaking brick exploded from behind them. The Terminator had reached the wall and was battering its way through, sending bricks flying with each blow from its free left hand. Kyle spun round to see that the top of the wall was already gone, and even as he tried to get his own feet moving again the rest of the wall collapsed. Kicking its way through the rubble, the Terminator strode toward them.

And with that, it was all over.

Kyle froze, gripping Star’s hand, staring helplessly as the killing machine bore down on them.

Its glowing red eyes burned into them from its expressionless face, its rubbery skin and coverall-type clothing torn and scorched where Vuong’s bullets had shredded them. Beneath the dangling tatters, Kyle could see the Terminator’s gleaming metal skeleton. Gripped in its right hand, the multi-barreled gun looked as big as a cannon.

And then, abruptly, a completely unexpected question popped into Kyle’s mind. Why didn’t the Terminator open fire?

They hadn’t used their weapons against Nguyen and Vuong, either. Instead, they’d simply bludgeoned the traders to death with their bare metal hands.

And in a burst of desperation-induced inspiration, Kyle suddenly got it.

Orozco had said Skynet was planning an attack against the neighborhood. But he’d also said that the big computer probably wouldn’t launch that attack until nightfall.

It didn’t want anyone escaping before then, which was why it had set out all these Terminators as sentries. But it also didn’t want to panic the inhabitants into a premature stampede, which might create enough confusion to allow some of the intended victims to escape.

Random gunfire, even at the levels Nguyen and his men had been putting out, was a common enough occurrence, and would probably be dismissed by anyone who heard it as simple gang activity. But a Terminator’s multi-barreled gun would have a very distinctive and recognizable sound, and opening fire with one might well start the panic Skynet wanted to avoid.

Which meant that the Terminator striding toward them would probably hold off using its gun until and unless it calculated that its latest victims were on the verge of getting away. The trick would be to keep it thinking it was in control, right up to the moment when it suddenly wasn’t.

All Kyle had to do now was find a way to do that.

He glanced around the alley, then turned back to the Terminator. Bracing himself, he reached into his bag and pulled out the lighter and another bomb. If the machine decided these bombs were a threat and that it needed to open fire…

But it didn’t, not even when Kyle touched the lighter’s flame to the fuse. Having already watched one of the bombs go off, the Terminator had apparently concluded that the weapon didn’t have enough yield to stop it.

It was probably still thinking that as Kyle ran the fuse down to two seconds and then lobbed it beneath the rusting pickup truck the machine was passing. The bomb exploded, flipping the pickup up onto one side and straight on top of the Terminator, slamming it to the ground with a horrendous crash.

Slamming it squarely on top of the forest of rebar protruding through the concrete.

Kyle didn’t know how much damage being shoved into all those metal spikes would do to the Terminator. But for the moment, all he cared about was that the killing machine was temporarily immobilized. Shoving Star out of the way behind one of the angled slabs of pavement, he pulled out two more bombs and lit their fuses. He ran over to the pickup, already starting to shake as the trapped Terminator tried to free itself, and shoved the two bombs between the twisted stalks of rebar directly beneath the Terminator’s torso and hips.

The Terminator’s arm snapped out, the metal hand trying to grab Kyle’s wrist. Kyle managed to jerk back out of the way in time, then turned and sprinted for the pavement slab where he’d left Star.

He ducked around behind it, wrapping his arms around the little girl, and squeezed his eyes shut.

The bombs went off together, the blasts much louder this time. Kyle waited until the sound had faded, then peeked cautiously around the slab.

The pickup had been blown up against the alley’s side and was half leaning, half sagging against the wall. Still pressed into the rebar where the truck had been was the Terminator.

The machine was a mess. Nearly all of the rubber skin directly over the bombs had been disintegrated, exposing the scorched and blackened metal body beneath it. On the Terminator’s face and legs, which had been farther from the blasts, some of the skin remained, smoldering with an acrid smoke.

But its lack of skin was the least of the machine’s problems. The bomb that Kyle had wedged beneath its hips had shattered the joints there, severing the legs from the rest of the body. The arms were in nearly as bad a shape, with the left completely disconnected from the torso and the right just barely hanging on by a couple of cables. The Terminator’s neck had managed to survive the blast, but the back of the head showed a deep dent, probably sustained during the pickup’s initial impact.

There was a hesitant touch on Kyle’s arm, and he turned to see Star staring wide-eyed at the wreckage.

Is it dead? she signed.

Kyle took a deep breath and looked back at the Terminator.

“I think—”

Without warning, the machine’s metal skull turned toward Kyle, its red eyes glowing balefully up at him.

Kyle jerked backward. The Terminator’s right arm twitched, and Kyle tore his gaze from the blazing eyes to look at it.

Slowly, moving in starts and stops, the arm was creeping back toward the shoulder.

Kyle felt his eyes widen. How in the world—?

There was a sudden gasp from beside him, and he jerked again as Star pounced forward to grab the Terminator’s detached left arm. She lifted it up, staggering and grunting with the load.

“Careful,” Kyle warned as he reached over and took it from her. The metal arm wasn’t just heavy—it was somehow pulling itself toward the Terminator’s shoulder.

The Terminator was trying to put itself back together.

Clutching the metal arm to his chest, Kyle leaned against the pull and managed to take a step backward. To his relief, the pressure eased, and the next step was even easier. Two steps more, and there was no pull at all.

He looked down at the arm that was pressed to his chest. So it wasn’t some sort of evil Skynet magic. It was just a simple electromagnet, or set of electromagnets, embedded inside the gleaming metal to help the Terminator reassemble itself if someone managed to blow it apart.

But apparently only if its severed pieces were close enough together.

“Yeah, I think we can do something about that,” Kyle muttered. Tucking the spare arm under his right arm, he reached into his bomb bag.

And twisted to the side as something shot past his face.

He ducked down, spinning around. Another Terminator had appeared in the far end of the alley, and was striding toward them with a piece of broken brick gripped in its left hand.

“Run!” Kyle snapped at Star, ducking again as the Terminator hurled the brick at him.

This time, the machine’s aim was better. The sharp-edged missile slammed into Kyle’s right shoulder, sending a stab of pain down his whole side. He threw the mechanical arm he was holding at the machine, then snatched out his Colt and fired a quick shot before turning and running for all he was worth. He caught up with Star at the alley mouth, grabbed her hand, and yanked her to the left. Another brick whistled past just as they made it around the corner.

The footing was better here on the street, allowing them to pick up their speed a little. Kyle glanced over his shoulder as they ran, wondering if the two Terminators who had attacked Nguyen’s men had also joined in this new hunt. But to his relief, the street north of them was clear.

So far.

He turned back around, gripping Star’s hand and trying to come up with a plan. The minute that second Terminator made it through the alley he and Star would be back in its line of fire. And this time, it might decide it would be easier all around to simply shoot the two of them down.

Which meant Kyle had to find them a hiding place.

Or else he had to find someone more worthy of getting shot at.

Despite his fatigue and fear, he felt a tight grin touch his lips. Maybe, if he was lucky, he could do both at the same time.