Terminator Salvation: Trial by Fire

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Kyle had taken over point from Callahan, and had led them slogging through the underground ruins for another hour, when he rounded a particularly large slab of concrete and saw a light in the distance.

It wasn’t much of a light, no more than a sliver of hazy yellowish glow, more oozing than actually shining, coming from the ceiling fifty meters ahead.

But in that first minute Kyle didn’t care what kind of light it was. It was light, and after hours of straining his eyes in utter blackness it was like a breath of clean air or a long swallow of cold water.

They’d found the Terminators’ tunnel again.

Which meant that they’d found the Terminators.

There was a rattle of gravel as Callahan and Zac came up alongside him.

“That the tunnel?” Zac whispered.

“Probably,” Callahan said. “Okay. Extra quiet from here on.”

Keeping extra quiet turned out to be easier than Kyle had expected. The light, dim though it was, gave enough illumination to show them a little of the uneven ground they were crawling across. They covered the fifty meters more quickly, and more quietly, than most of the previous several hours’ worth of travel.

From the positioning of the light when Kyle first spotted it, he had guessed the opening was only a meter or two above the level of their floor. What he hadn’t known was that the passageway made a sharp dip halfway along their path before leveling off at a new, lower level. When they reached the light, it turned out to be over three meters above the floor, nearly a meter out of reach.

The good news was that the opening was similar to the one they’d used to escape the tunnel all those hours ago: a gap between the tunnel floor and the wall of debris beside it. Like the other opening, this one also had an angled field of broken masonry below it, tricky but not impossible to climb.

The bad news was that the opening was far too narrow for even Zac to get through.

For a minute they stood together looking up at it, listening to the rhythmic footsteps as the Terminators continued their endless march back and forth to the tunnel face. The marching seemed to go on for longer than it had before, and Kyle wondered uneasily if Skynet had thrown more T-700s into the project. Implying that the breakout was indeed imminent.

Finally, the muffled thudding faded away. Callahan waited another few seconds, then drew the other two in for a close-huddle conference.

“Thoughts?”

“I think we’re near the front of the tunnel,” Zac whispered.

“How do you know?” Kyle asked.

“Because those Terminators were going both directions,” Zac said. “One group coming up empty-handed, the other passing them with their loads.”

“Ah.” Kyle hadn’t detected the difference in direction himself. But Zac had shown several times already that he had the best hearing of the group.

“Sounds like they’re gone,” Zac went on. “Let me climb up and see if I can see anything.”

He started to step away. Callahan, still holding onto his sleeve, pulled him back.

“I’ll go,” he said firmly. “I’m a better climber, and that slope looks tricky.”

The slope was every bit as difficult as Callahan had anticipated, and even with Kyle and Zac standing on either side to brace his arms and legs there were times where he nearly slid back. But finally he was there. Carefully taking hold of the edge of the tunnel floor, he pulled himself up and peered through the opening.

He held the pose for about half a minute. Then, easing himself back onto the debris, he climbed back down.

“We’re at the front, all right,” he told them when they were huddled together again. “There’s a stack of eight bags along the wall that look like satchel charges.”

“They’re not right at the tunnel face?” Kyle asked.

“No, about three meters back,” Callahan said. “There’s still a bunch of debris right at the face, so I’m guessing they’ll still be lugging and hand digging for a while longer.”

“Where’s the light coming from?” Zac asked.

“There are a bunch of small holes in the ceiling,” Callahan said “The light’s pretty diffuse, so I’m guessing it’s sifting in through another layer of broken concrete.”

Kyle grimaced. He’d been hoping the light meant another big crack in the tunnel ceiling. They might have used an opening like that to get out, or at least to signal the rest of the Resistance people up there.

“So that’s a dead end,” he said.

“Don’t worry, we’ll figure out something,” Callahan said. “At least we’ll have some light if we can get up there.”

“How are we going to do that?” Zac asked.

“Not sure,” Callahan conceded. “The wall beside the gap is a single slab of reinforced concrete—you can see the rebar sticking out. There’s no way we’re going to move it.”

“What about the tunnel floor?” Kyle asked.

“Well, it’s not too thick, and I didn’t see any rebar,” Callahan said. “Probably used to be a roof or a wall that didn’t need to hold up a lot of weight.”

“A non-load-bearing wall,” Kyle supplied, remembering Orozco talking about things like that while they poked around some of the ruined buildings back in Los Angeles.

“Right,” Callahan said. “On the other hand, it’s getting stomped on by T-700s all day, so it can’t be that flimsy. It’s also a little crumbly at the edge, so we might be able to make the hole bigger.”

“Sounds good,” Zac said. “I’ll take first shift.”

“That’s okay,” Callahan said, digging into his pocket. “We can start with my knife. When we wear it down we’ll shift to Reese’s, then we’ll just have to use whatever else we can find.”

“Wait a second,” Kyle said suddenly. “This won’t work.”

“Sure it will,” Callahan assured him. “It’ll take awhile, but—”

“No, I mean we can’t do it,” Kyle said. “The Terminators will see the hole get bigger each time they go by.”

There was a brief silence.

“You’re right,” Callahan muttered. “Damn.”

“So what do we do?” Zac asked anxiously. “It’ll take forever to go back to the other hole.”

“No point in doing that anyway,” Callahan said heavily. “The Terminators are bound to still be watching the conduit. I suppose we could try backtracking and see if there’s an opening we missed.”

“There wasn’t anything,” Kyle asked, peering up. The underside of the tunnel floor was hard to see in the reflected light coming from the opening. But even so—

“Probably not,” Callahan agreed heavily. “But it’s all we’ve got.”

“Maybe not,” Kyle said, pointing at the ceiling. “Is that a crack up there?”

The others looked up.

“You mean that line angling across there?” Zac asked, his pointing finger tracing out the path.

“Looks like a crack to me,” Callahan agreed. “But if you think the Terminators will notice the gap getting bigger, they’ll really notice if a quarter of the path they’re walking on disappears.”

“Right, but only if we’re the ones who bring it down,” Kyle said. “What if we just deepen the crack enough so that the next batch of T-700s breaks through? Maybe Skynet will assume it had too much stress and gave way by itself.”

“Of course, if it doesn’t assume that, we’ll have a whole mess of Terminators down here hunting us,” Callahan pointed out. “But it’s worth a try.”

He looked upward again.

“You’re not going to be able to reach the crack from the slope. I guess that means you’ll be standing on our shoulders.”

“Hang on a second,” Kyle said, looking behind them. “I think I saw a door frame back there.”

“Yeah,” Zac said. “It was... there it is, over there.”

The frame was partially buried in concrete chips, but it took only a little effort for the three of them to dig it out. A minute after that, they had it in place beneath the ceiling crack, lying on its long side.

“Perfect,” Callahan said, testing its balance. “Wide enough to stand on, and all you two have to do is brace it to keep it from falling over. Okay, hold it steady.”

“Shouldn’t we wait until the Terminators have made their next round?” Zac suggested. “We don’t want you making scraping noises while they’re on their way in.”

“Right,” Callahan said reluctantly, sitting down beside the frame. “I just hope we can get this done before they blast through into the camp.”

“We will,” Kyle said firmly. “We have to.”

It took an hour for the people of Baker’s Hollow to gather the equipment Jik had asked for, and to then make the necessary modifications for what he had in mind. During that time Halverson’s runners brought in three reports from the men tailing the T-700 on the east bank of the river, which seemed to be tracing out a sentry line half a mile north of town that ran from the river to a couple of miles east.

The obvious inference was that the Terminator was guarding something. But neither Preston nor Halverson could think of anything up there that Skynet might be hiding, unless it thought Jik was still out there and was searching for him.

Finally, with the equipment prepped and their ambush positions chosen, they were ready.

Jik had already decided to lean the main, riskier attack. With Halverson and several of the others, he headed north to intercept the Terminator on their side of the river. Preston and the rest went to reinforce the guard at the ford, and to prepare for the moment when the other T-700 returned and tried to cross the river.

And as Jik and Halverson headed toward the spot they had chosen for their ambush, Jik found himself thinking about Barnes and Williams. Thinking, and wondering.

Mercenaries or paramilitary gang members he could understand. They might have spotted Baker’s Hollow and come in to scope out its resources for theft or barter. Con artists he could similarly understand, though how a pair of scammers could have gotten hold of a working helicopter he couldn’t guess. Still, in either scenario it would make sense for them to come in masquerading as Resistance fighters.

But in neither scenario was there any reason why they would be so stupid as to claim Jik was a fraud.

It made no sense. Even if Jik had been a fraud, why would they open themselves up to suspicion and the risk of serious consequences, consequences that had now in fact rained down on them? Why not keep quiet, pretend to be from a distant Resistance unit which had never had any direct contact with Jik, and try to get through the rest of their agenda before anyone figured out who they really were?

There was more depth to this thing than Jik had yet been able to sort out. But he would sort it out.

In the meantime, there were Terminators to be dealt with.

They reached the ambush point to find a man and woman waiting for them, the woman crouched beside a tree, the man pacing nervously back and forth.

“About time,” the latter said as Jik and the others came up. “This is the path Singer says it’s been walking.” He gestured, indicating a roughly east-west direction.

“But it doesn’t trace out exactly the same path each time,” Jik said, eyeing the tall grass that covered most of the ground area between the trees. “Otherwise it would have worn a more well-defined furrow.”

“That’s right,” the woman confirmed. “Will that be a problem?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Jik said. “How soon before it comes back this way?”

“Probably ten minutes,” the man said. “At least ten. Maybe fifteen.”

“Ten should be plenty,” Jik said, gesturing to the men lugging the equipment. “Let’s get to work.”

Eight minutes later, they were ready. Three minutes after that, Jik felt the first subtle vibrations through the ground as the T-700 approached.

“Get ready,” he murmured to the others.

And then, there it was, pushing aside low-hanging branches and wading through knee-high grass as it walked its solitary sentry path. Its G11 submachinegun was held ready, its metallic skull and glowing eyes swept methodically back and forth.

Jik crouched a little lower behind his tree, one hand gripping each of the two long ropes he and the others had strung around two other trees, watching the Terminator closely as he tried to track its precise path.

“Needs to go a little north,” Halverson murmured from beside him.

Jik nodded and pulled gently but firmly on the rope in his left hand. Twenty meters in front of the approaching Terminator the grasses shifted slightly, the subtle movement camouflaged by their general wind-induced sway. Jik eyed the T-700’s path and gave the rope another few centimeters’ worth of last-minute tweaking. The machine continued forward...

With a startlingly loud crack, the Terminator’s right foot hit and triggered the bear trap Jik had maneuvered into its path. The machine came to a sudden, awkward halt, its momentum forcing it to take one final step forward with its left leg. There was a second crack as the second bear trap snapped shut around its other leg—

“Now!” Jik shouted. Letting go of the rope in his left hand, he shifted both hands to the one in his right and pulled. All around him, the other men and women leaped into position from the bushes, grass and trees, some hauling on Jik’s rope, others joining with Halverson in pulling on the other one.

Terminators were incredibly strong machines. But their servomotor musculature hadn’t been designed with this sort of movement in mind. The T-700’s legs were yanked apart, pulled in opposite directions into a gymnast’s splits by the two bear traps now clinging to its lower legs.

And with its balance base suddenly gone, it toppled forward to land on its gun and its outstretched arms.

“Belay!” Jik shouted. Not waiting for the others to secure the thick ropes, he snatched up his borrowed G11 and braced the barrel against the side of the tree. He would have just one shot at this.

The Terminator shifted position, leaving its left hand on the ground and bringing up the G11 in its right. It aimed the weapon down and to its right, targeting the bear trap and attached rope.

And with his own gun on full automatic, Jik fired everything he had into the magazine on the Terminator’s weapon.

Sometimes, he knew, a sustained blast into that much caseless ammunition would cause a spontaneous cascading that would cook off the close-packed rounds. That would create a multiple explosion that would wreck the weapon and usually the hand or entire arm of the Terminator holding it.

In this case, Jik wasn’t that lucky. But he was lucky enough. The G11 broke apart in the T-700’s hand, its firing mechanism shattered and useless.

And with its gun gone and its legs still being held, the machine was helpless.

Halverson was already on his way, running across the grass with Barnes’s SIG 542 gripped in his hands. Dropping the empty G11, Jik grabbed the Mossberg shotgun they’d also taken from the visitors and sprinted after him.

He caught up with Halverson twenty meters from the Terminator, which was now trying unsuccessfully to reach the traps pinning its legs.

“Arms first?” Halverson called.

“Arms first,” Jik confirmed. “And then we’ll see.”

“See what?”

Jik grimaced. What he knew, and the townspeople didn’t, was that this was the moment of truth. If their ensnared T-700 and the one he, Barnes, and Williams had tangled with across the river were the only two machines Skynet had out here, that second Terminator should even now be charging to the rescue, trying to get here before Jik and Halverson reduced its compatriot to rubble. Two Terminators working together were always more effective than one alone, even if one or both of them were damaged.

But if Skynet still had other resources available or close at hand, it would be foolish to waste the other T-700 in an attempt to save this one. In that case, the other Terminator would remain hidden and out of range as it waited for the reinforcements.

And Terminator reinforcements would be bad. Very bad.

“See what?” Halverson repeated. “Then we’ll see,” Jik said, “which part of it we want to destroy next.”

Connor had warned Preston that the last remaining Terminator would probably show up before there were any warning sounds of gunfire from Connor’s own position north of town. Sure enough, Preston’s team had barely gotten themselves prepared when the bushes across the river parted and the dark figure of a T-700 strode into view and headed for the ford.

It was not, Preston noted, nearly as fearsome a sight as he remembered it from earlier that day. The fingers of its right hand were bent and twisted where Williams’s shotgun slug and the Terminator’s own exploding gun had damaged it. Its left shoulder also looked a little odd, and Preston wondered if it had been damaged by the fall into the ravine during the later fight with Connor and Williams. The limb might even have broken off and had to be magnetically reattached. There were some serious dents on its torso, as well, where Williams’s shotgun blasts had nailed it at close range.

But the Terminator’s legs, at least, were working just fine. The machine reached the edge of the swirling water and strode in, leaning against the current to keep from being knocked over.

Preston shot a quick look to his left. Three meters away, Hope was standing straight and ready beside her own covering tree, her arrow nocked, a look of nervousness tinged with determination on her face. To Preston’s right, Half-pint Swan also stood ready.

Preston turned back to the river, gripping the heavy rope noose in his hands, making sure the rest of the rope trailing from it was free of any entanglements in the undergrowth around him. The Terminator was nearly to the trap now...

It reached the position, then continued past it. Preston hissed viciously between his teeth, wondering what they were going to do now.

And then, the Terminator jerked to a halt, nearly pitching forward onto its face. Apparently, Preston had been slightly off in his estimation of where the bear trap was actually positioned.

But Connor and Halverson were using bear traps against their Terminator, too. With the two T-700s linked via short-range radio telemetry, that meant this one already knew how to deal with bear traps. It didn’t waste any time trying to pull out the chain, but simply leaned over at the waist and reached its metal arms into the whitewater to get a grip on the trap’s jaws and pry them apart.

And as its eyes shifted downward, Preston leaped out of cover and raced toward it, holding the noose straight out in front of him.

Even with its eyes turned away and the roar of the water in its auditory sensors the Terminator must have sensed Preston’s approach. It looked up as he neared the river, its glowing red eyes staring, its useless teeth clenched, its skeletal face an image out of human nightmares.

But there was no turning back now. With the Terminator’s leg trapped, its body hunched over as its fingers tried to pry the bear trap open, and its head turned upward, the machine was at this moment the most unmoving it was ever likely to be. Baring his own teeth in defiance, Preston picked up his pace.

The Terminator was still glaring cold death at him when Preston heard a sharp double twang from behind and to either side of him.

And the twin red glows of death abruptly vanished as a pair of arrows jammed themselves into the machine’s eyes.

Terminators didn’t scream, in pain or rage or anything else. Nor did they get angry. The machine merely jerked back with the double impact, then straightened up, abandoning the task of freeing its leg, and grabbed at the aluminum shafts sticking out of its skull.

It had succeeded in pulling out one of the arrows and snapping off the other when Preston reached it. Jumping into the frigid water, he threw the noose over the machine’s head, gave a quick tug on the rope to tighten the loop around its neck, then leaped backward again out of the Terminator’s reach.

“Go!” he shouted.

For a single, awful second nothing happened. The Terminator’s hands reached toward the noose, fumbling for a grip—

And then the trailing rope snapped upward toward the sturdy branch it was looped over as the men behind Preston hauled on the loose end. The noose twitched out of the Terminator’s groping fingers and closed solidly around its neck.

Preston looked behind him as the two big men hidden in the tree leaned backward, one of them above the other, and fell toward the ground.

And as they did so, the rope wrapped around their waists snapped taut, their combined weight pulling upward on the Terminator’s neck, stretching the deadly machine between the bear trap around its leg and the noose around its neck.

Instantly, the machine abandoned the noose now snugged too tightly around its neck to be gripped and shifted its attention to the rope itself. But its damaged right hand was unable to get enough grip for it to simply tear the rope apart.

It was still trying when Chris, Dowder, and Pappas came running up and opened fire with their shotguns and Barnes’s long sniper rifle. Twenty seconds later, its arms severed from its shoulders, the Terminator was helpless.

Five minutes after that, it was dead.