CHAPTER NINE
With the coming of night, most of those trapped inside the Transport were overtaken by exhaustion compounded by fear. One by one, they lapsed into weary sleep. Those who were not exhausted collapsed from despair. Of the few who remained conscious, their wakefulness was largely motivated by hunger or thirst.
Subject to none of these and driven by determination, Kyle Reese was working his way from one end of the extensive compartment to the other; questioning those who answered readily, badgering those who were reluctant to respond. He was hunting for hope, but would gladly have settled for a grenade.
Pausing before a man huddled off by himself, he leaned forward and asked the same question he had been putting to everyone else who was still awake.
“You have any weapons?”
His eyes glazed, the man looked up at him and muttered derisively.
“You think if I had any weapons I’d be sitting here doing nothing?”
Reese took no umbrage at the man’s response. He was bitter and despondent, and had every right to be. The teen persisted.
“Anything in your pockets that we might be able to use when we land? A pen, a paperclip, anything?”
A little of the man’s sullenness fell away.
“Sorry. I know you’re only trying to help, but I have nothing. My family....” His voice trailed away and his gaze dropped to the floor.
Reese left him, moving back toward the other end of the Transport compartment where Virginia was talking quietly to Star.
“How about a song?” the older woman murmured to the little girl. “Can I sing you a song? Has anyone ever sung to you?”
As was her wont, Star replied only with her eyes. They provided the sad answer that Virginia had suspected. She smiled tenderly as she queried Reese.
“Why doesn’t she talk?”
“’Cause the machines took her voice away. Scared her out of talking. The things she’s seen....” His voice trailed away.
The older woman’s voice was tired but willing, just as the words she sang were deep-rooted and hopeful. Some things never go out of fashion, never lose their appeal. Among these are certain lullabies.
When the last verse had trailed away, the older woman reached out with both arms.
“Come here, darling.”
Walking slowly forward, Star allowed Virginia to lift her up and set her down on her lap. The older woman smiled down at her.
“Do you know there are more than a billion stars in the sky? And every one of them is special. Just like you. And do you know what makes them so special?”
Thoroughly engrossed now, Star shook her head “no.”
“Because each one of them comes with a wish. What do you wish for, Star?”
The girl thought a moment. Then she used both hands to mimic an explosion and followed it with a “peace” gesture. Virginia nodded and pulled her close, rocking her back and forth.
“Me too, babe. Me too.”
Having worked his way down one side of the compartment, Reese started back along the other. His queries there brought him no more information or useful material than they had on the other side, but he persisted. He had nothing else to do anyway. Once, he halted before some tiny openings and tried to see outside. All he managed to catch were a few brief glimpses of earth and sky, neither of which was very enlightening.
Continuing up the line back toward the front of the prison, he came upon a young woman wedged against the cold metal. The compartment was not heated and she was shivering, her hands trembling as she tried to keep the baby in her arms warm.
Peeling off his gloves, he handed them over to her. Her expression as she took them said more than words. In gratitude and wanting to reciprocate, she picked up a small bag with one hand and dumped its contents out on the floor where he could see them. He shook his head, declining the offer. There wasn’t much to see anyway. Some cotton puffs, Q-tips, a comb with half its teeth missing, an incongruously intact lipstick, a lone shoelace....
His eyes widened slightly and he pointed at the shoelace. Grateful and pleased that she was able to give back, she pressed the length of fabric into his hand.
It was all he was able to glean from his questioning, but it was better than nothing. On the face of it, it would not be of much use against even the smallest of the fighting machines. But over the years he had learned not to despise even the smallest potential weapon. As he rejoined Virginia and the now sleeping Star, he carefully tucked his prize into his shirt. Then he settled down to listen to the older woman sing.
Her lilting voice brought back memories he had thought forever forgotten.
It seemed an incongruous place to seek shelter for the night—beneath a machine. But the rusting hulk of the huge constructor had never possessed an independent mind, had never been tormented by consciousness. Its driverless cab flaunted levers and wheels, buttons and dials. It had been manufactured before the age of malevolent self-awareness circuits and devious communications parsers. Without a human driver it could do nothing, and consequently was perfectly harmless.
At the base of this mountain of silent metal, flames blossomed, a flickering red-orange rose of heat holding back the night chill. Wright fed it another log and it leaped gratefully into the cold air.
Friend of man, foe of man, Wright mused as he watched the blaze spit sparks skyward. It had always been so, would always be so even after man was gone.
Which, if the murderous machines had their way, would not be long in coming.
Lying on the ground, he shifted his attention from the fire to his companion. The pile of scavenged logs and kindling wasn’t the only presence close to the machine that was giving off heat. It didn’t take long for her to notice that his gaze had become fixed.
“You’re staring, Marcus. Thinking about your past?”
Unaware that his concentration might have strayed into the realm of the impolite, he blinked and turned away.
“Sorry. Didn’t mean anything by it. It’s been a while since I spent any time around someone who wasn’t,” he hesitated briefly before finishing the confession, “scared of me.”
Using a long stick she stirred the embers, wishing they had something worth cooking. Marshmallows, she thought. And polish sausage. Might as well wish for crème brulee and chateaubriand while she was at it.
“After seeing how you handled those three drifters I can understand why some folks might cross to the other side of the street when they see you coming, but I don’t scare easy. Besides, we’re not alone out here. We have a chaperone.” She patted the heavy butt of the Desert Eagle, now restored to its proper place in the holster hitched to her service belt.
“Maybe you’d be scared if you knew more about me.” Lying flat on his back now, he regarded the stars that were starting to peep through the shifting cloud cover.
“Like what?” The heat from the fire was making her sleepy.
“I was in prison. Before.”
She set her stir stick aside and turned her attention from prodding the fire to her suddenly pensive companion.
“Didn’t know they had any left.” When he looked sharply at her, she added, “What did you do? Usually when someone talks about having spent time in prison, they’re not referring to their long career as a guard.”
He took some time before replying.
“I shot a cop.”
She took more time before responding.
“You have a good reason?”
It clearly wasn’t the comeback he had been expecting.
“Not the first question people usually ask.”
“Normally it wouldn’t be the first one I’d ask, either, Marcus. But you came back to help me, back at the racetrack. Something about you doesn’t add up, doesn’t make sense. I can’t figure it, and so I can’t figure you. One thing I do know: you saw those three nomads and they didn’t see you. There was nothing to stop you from slipping away into the night and leaving me to have to deal with them. You could simply have left.”
“Thought about it,” he told her with brutal honesty.
“But you didn’t,” she hastened to point out. “You came back to help me, a stranger, at considerable risk to yourself.”
“Not so much risk.” The way he said it made it sound like the most normal assessment in the world, devoid of even a hint of bluster.
“You came back,” she reiterated, “when most people in your position would not have done so. People are different now, Marcus. In case you hadn’t noticed, the world is a little different now, too. Just to give you one example, I sure as hell never thought I’d be a fighter pilot.” She contemplated what had become of her life.
“Before, if you killed somebody, that usually made you a criminal. But in this world, all it means is that you’re probably a good shot.”
***
This world, he thought. What had happened to the world while he had lain unconscious? He still had no idea how much time had passed or what had turned machine against maker. It hurt his head to think about it.
“You know, Marcus,” she murmured, “we can focus on what is lost. On what is past. Or we can fight for what is left.”
He turned to face her. “You think people get a second chance?”
“I do.” She clutched at herself. “I’m a little cold.” Without waiting for an invitation, she crawled over next to him. Drawing back, he eyed her uncertainly.
“Relax.” She smiled gently. “I just need some body heat. I’ve got low blood pressure, for one thing.”
That was certainly a possibility, he told himself. He mustered a half-hearted grin as she lay down against him, resting her head on his ribs.
“I can hear your heart beating all the way through your chest. Man, you’ve got a steady heartbeat!” Remembrance muted her words. “My dad had a Harley. An old softail he restored all by himself. Whenever things got tough at work or whenever he had a fight with my mom, he’d go to the garage, work on that bike, and everything would be good again. He’d let me ride on the back sometimes, even when I was little. We would pull up to a stoplight and I could hear his heart thumping along, keeping rhythm with the engine. Funny, isn’t it? We’re in a war to the death with machines, and here I am thinking affectionately of a machine. I miss that.” Raising her head from his chest, she looked up at him. “What do you miss, Marcus?”
He thought back, hunting through his past for a good memory. It took some time.
“Me and my brother, we’d steal a car. Didn’t matter what kind: old, new, domestic, foreign. Van or sports car. We’d just go, fast as we could, ’til the gas ran out or the cops caught up to us. Nearly killed ourselves I don’t know how many times. Didn’t matter. We’d laugh ourselves silly. I can still see him going crazy when I’d try to make this impossible curve or we’d turn the wrong way down a one-way street. We’d still be laughing when the cops would slap the cuffs on us, ’cause we knew we’d shared something special.” Realizing he was rambling and that he was starting to lose himself in a past forever gone, he forced himself back to the present.
“What happened to your father? He crash out on the bike?”
She shook her head sadly.
“No. That would have made him happy, to go out that way. He was an airline mechanic. Jet engine specialist.” She smiled and a tear started from the corner of one eye. She wiped it away angrily, as if it was some kind of intruder into her private life. “He loved the noise engines made, but I guess you already figured that. All the big airports and related maintenance facilities were taken out in Skynet’s first strike.” Finding another tear forming, she hastened to change the subject.
“What about your brother? Was he killed on Judgment Day?”
“No.” Any hint of happiness vanished from Wright’s face as his mood darkened visibly. “He died—before.”
Intending to press him for details, she changed her mind fast when she saw his expression. The talk and the lateness of the hour were combining to shrink her span of attention. In spite of herself, she yawned.
“That other world, it’s all gone. All—gone.” She lifted her gaze to meet his. “Thanks for saving me back there. Don’t meet too many good guys these days.”
His tone did not change. “I’m not a good guy.”
“Sure you are. You just don’t know it yet. You know the only good thing about the end of the world? Whatever you were, whatever you did—doesn’t matter now. That world is gone.” Snuggling closer to his bulk, she dropped her head back onto his chest.
“You get to choose who you want to be.”
He looked down at her, not moving. Not wanting to disturb her. It was a strange feeling. He was used to disturbing people—often violently. Not this time. As she fell asleep against him he let his head ease back onto the ground.
It had stopped raining. Overhead, the sky was clearing, and the stars were coming out.
The Hunter-Killer had picked up movement and changed its course to pursue. Though the illumination from the stars above was feeble, the machine did not need daylight to track its quarry. Sighting via infrared, it had recognized the heat signatures of multiple human forms moving through the trees of the overgrown park below.
Dropping low, it activated its main batteries, preparatory to inaugurating extermination. The human shapes were moving fast as they crossed over a ridge. Reaching the far side, they slowed.
So did the HK. Programming flashed over reports, scanned histories. It halted, hovering just above the treetops.
***
Crouched down on the other side of the ridge, Barnes gripped his assault rifle tightly as he watched the shadow of the Hunter-Killer.
“It’s not following us.”
Raising a hand, Connor used a finger to trace the crest of the hill as it wandered across the edge of the old park.
“This ridgeline is the beginning of solidly defended Resistance territory. We still hold sway here. The HK won’t risk getting hit by a missile battery. Not for a low priority target like a couple of isolated humans out for an evening’s scavenging.”
Barnes managed to look offended.
“How do we become high priority targets?”
Connor extended a hand. “Give me your weapon.”
Barnes passed it across. Taking careful aim, Connor pointed it at the HK and fired off several rounds. Unless he managed a freakishly lucky hit the shells would do no damage to the big, heavily armored killing machine. But they would be enough to indicate that the humans it had been tracking were armed with more than angry words, and were therefore worthy of its continued attention.
A couple of his shots pinged off the Hunter-Killer’s smooth sides. It responded immediately, according to programming. Connor and his companion were already on the move as slugs and explosions tore up the hillside where a moment earlier they had been catching their breath.
Darting into a cluster of standing structures, the two men wove their way skillfully in and out between the buildings. Continuing its search for a clear line of fire, the HK kept after them. When they ducked into one of the long-abandoned structures, the machine began to pulverize the walls behind them. They were trapped inside, and now it was only a matter of time.
Sprinting up the interior stairs brought Connor and Barnes to the rooftop—where they were greeted by the rest of the assembled commando team. In its center stood a single tech, backpacking the portable transmitter that had been put together by the base’s best mechanics and technicians.
Having blocked the entrance to the building with debris, the HK rose on its repellers until it appeared above the roof-line. Muscles tightening, Barnes took up his position behind the transmitter-carrying tech and looked anxiously at their squad leader.
“Now?”
Connor evinced no such anxiety. While there were occasions, an increasingly apprehensive Barnes reflected, when the man’s calm could be reassuring, at other times it could be downright unnerving.
“Wait.” Connor regarded the ascending machine with a detachment that bordered on
the academic.
Adjusting its attitude as well as its altitude the HK pivoted slightly, the better to bring its weapons to bear on the group of humans it had cornered atop the ruined building. Guns whirred to life as they prepared to fire. On the roof, battle-hardened fighters flinched and looked fretfully at their leader.
“Now.” Voicing the command with conviction, Connor never took his eyes off the Hunter-Killer.
Reaching up onto the tech’s backpack, Barnes flipped the switches that activated the transmitter. Had anyone asked, he would not have been ashamed to admit that he was scared shitless. The transmitter’s components had been checked and rechecked before the device had been certified for use. Its batteries had been fully charged.
Despite repeated testing, however, no one knew if this was actually going to work out in the field. If it didn’t, the HK’s gatling guns would turn every one of them to hamburger in less than a minute. That they had all volunteered for this mission did not make him feel any better about the prospect of dying for it.
Colored telltales came to life within the body of the transmitter. It made hardly a sound and emitted nothing visible. The roar of a missile or the thunder of a cannon would have been much more visually and aurally satisfying. Used to such familiar battlefield cacophony, the commando squad was uncertain how to react when what was supposed to be the primary weapon in their midst failed to generate little more than an electronic whisper.
For a horrible moment there was no indication that the transmitter was doing anything at all. Having volunteered for the night-time mission, prepared to die if it failed, the squad members tightened their grips on their weapons and primed themselves to go down fighting.
“It’s not working,” Barnes hissed tightly. “It picked up the signal. We gotta get outta here.” He started to move.
Connor grabbed him, held him back.
“Stop. Don’t turn it off. Turn it up.”
Something very strange happened. Strange and unprecedented in their collective experience.
The indicator lights on the outside of the Hunter-Killer dimmed. The steady throb of its thrusters stopped as its engines cut out. Unceremoniously and suddenly as harmless as an oversized child’s toy, it fell backward to smash into the buildings across the street. Dust rose from the crash site, briefly obscuring the impact.
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