In the wake of the shot came pounding feet, sounding far heavier than the young girl Epifanio had described, beating a machine-gun-rapid tattoo on the floorboards, faster than anything natural could run.
Sarah Connor had come a long way from the time when she'd been a waitress and part-time student. She ran herself, but deliberately in place, feet pounding the floor to supply the sound of flight. A slight form came out of the door, pivoting in place, with one hand flung out for balance—a hand that held something long and bright. Sarah was turned away, head cocked back over her shoulder to aim, in a perfect position for the mule kick.
Any of the unarmed-combat instructors she'd had over the years would have been proud. Her right foot was already slamming back and up as her body went forward, toes curled back toward her shin to present the heel of her riding boot and all the power of leg and gut and body behind the kick. The steel inset met
the thing's jaw with a gunshot crack and an underlying crumbling feeling.
The Terminator cyborg might be stronger than six large men, and heavier than it appeared by a good 50 percent, but it still had the dimensions of a slender teenager, which put an upper limit on mass. Sarah felt as if she had kicked a cement-block wall, but the creature catapulted backward four feet down the corridor, landing on neck and shoulder in the angle of floor and wall with a smack and wrench that would have put a human in traction and neck brace for months if they were lucky.
Even the thing that was hunting her was stunned for an instant. The long knife flew out of her hand as she reeled, sinking into the corridor paneling and humming like a malignant bee.
Sarah snatched at the hilt, and it came free effortlessly—not steel, some sort of fancy composite, and the twelve-inch blade was sharp as a malicious thought.
She threw it overarm as the thing shook its blond head and started to rise. The throw felt right, moving with a graceful inevitability to her adrenaline-sharpened senses. Teeth and blood showed through torn flesh on the perfect countenance of the killer cyborg as its head came up; then it froze again as the needle-pointed blade sank into its body right below the ribs, sank hilt-deep.
That made the calm in its blue-eyed gaze even more chilling as it checked for a moment, looked down, then began to rise again.
Sarah ran then: the gift of seconds was precious luck she didn't intend to squander. She heard it coming after her, slowly at first, then with a rising patter more like the foot skittering of some monstrous insect than a human being, and
far too fast.
At the last instant, as they came into the living room, she swayed her hips aside like a matador with a motion of hips and torso.
The young girl— Terminator! Sarah's mind screamed—came flashing through the space she'd occupied, left hand extended with the palm like the blade of a spear. The same stroke that had nearly gutted Sarah last year, that had put her in a hospital for six months…
Reflex flung her on her back, and she kicked out with the steel-shod toe of her riding boot. It connected with the Infiltrator's kneecap with a dull thock, and yet the ruined face still had the graceful calm of a Boticelli angel and the body of a model with the hilt of the knife protruding from its taut young stomach. Only a trickle of blood came from the wound, despite the way the knife's movement must be razoring through tissue inside.
Then Sarah was up and running down the hall to the sitting room with an athlete's raking stride. Feet came after her—light, still quick, but limping a little.
Time slowed, and everything—the sudden racing of her heart, the salt taste of fear, the acrid smell of her own sweat—was irrelevant.
Pain doesn't affect it, she thought as she cleared the sofa like a hurdler. Only actual mechanical damage. It won't bleed out soon enough to do me any good.
Don't let it get close. Too strong, too quick.
She landed on a low table on one foot and flung herself headfirst at a big upholstered chair. It went over with a clatter and thump, and she landed painfully on her side. Her hand darted under the cushion, to the holster Velcro'd to the
fabric. She scrabbled it out, jacked the slide as she scrabbled backward, and began squeezing the trigger even before she felt the thump of her shoulder blades against the floor.
The gun was ready to go as soon as there was a round in the chamber. Dieter von Rossbach wasn't the sort who'd allow fumbling with a safety to be his last action.
Crack.
The first round went wild. The girl—the thing—was climbing over the chair rather than vaulting it; then she effortlessly knocked the heavy wood-and-leather furniture out of her way. Her face had the emotionless purity of an artist's sketch, made more horrible by the slight hint of glee in the wide blue eyes; one hand was held up, ready for a classic sword-hand strike with the outside of the palm. It could crack her head like an ax, but even then Sarah flinched at the red-painted nails…
Terminators were bad enough. These hybrid monstrosities were like picking up a baby and having its smile show the fangs of a wolf.
Crackcrackcrackcrack—
Four of the 9mm rounds punched into the thing's torso and stomach. Blood welled out, and the slight form stumbled backward for an instant. The hand lashed out, but shock spoiled the perfection of the blow; it merely slapped the gun out of Sarah's grasp, sent it skittering over the dark beauty of the hardwood floor. The Infiltrator collapsed, but her hand closed around Sarah's ankle even as she scooted backward.
Sarah screamed in involuntary agony as bone and tendon gave way beneath the grip. Her flailing hand closed on a poker where it rested in a wooden rack beside the clean-swept fireplace. She lashed out with it, a double-handed death grip on the black wrought iron, striking again and again with the hysterical loathing she might have used on a giant spider…
Sarah crawled to the couch and hauled herself onto it. Without warning, her body was racked by shivers, her teeth chattering in her head as if the temperature had dropped below freezing. She felt something liquid tickle her face as it ran down toward her chin and started to lift her hand to brush it off. To her surprise she still held the poker.
She studied the bent and bloodied implement as though she didn't quite know what it was or how it had come to be in her hand. Indeed, it took Sarah a moment or two to remember how to let go of it. She dropped it at last, and watched it fall, then stared at the imprint of the handle embedded on her palm.
She flexed her hand, then touched it with her other hand and saw the blood on her fingers. Suddenly she began to cry, great openmouthed sobs like a young child that stole her breath and dignity. Sarah dropped onto her side and wept, pulling her legs up to her stomach; covering her battered face with her hands, she gave herself over completely for once to the shock and the sorrow and the horror that her life had been for too many years.
It was darker when she came to herself and her mouth was very dry. Her eyes burned, but they were clear; all her tears were spent. She was lying on her side, arms stretched out before her on the carpet. Everything hurt. Sarah sniffled, then sat up, holding her aching forehead with one hand. She could see the
Terminator's feet in their Nikes poking out from behind the couch. The sight sent her scrabbling at the big leather-covered sofa, pulling out the folding-stock shotgun and jacking the slide with a one-handed motion on the forestock… just as she had when she'd confronted the liquid-metal thing in the steel factory…
The shoes moved. Sarah bit her lip until it bled, and forced herself to crouch behind the sofa and then snap herself up over the edge. The thing was drawing up its feet, pulling the knife out of its middle with one hand and holding the gaping wound closed with the other; blood pulsed around it, slow and very red.
The shotgun had a laser sight designator that came on when you took up the trigger slack. Sarah put the red dot over the thing's forehead and pulled the trigger. The gun was also loaded with rifled slugs, massive things like miniature grooved beer cans made out of lead alloy. Police used them for breaking down doors—they were know
n as the "universal passkey"—and the cyborg's merely human skull splashed away from the first round.
Sarah kept firing until the magazine was empty, and very little of her target was left above the neck. She could see silvery wires glinting amid the ruin of all-too-human flesh and bone and brains, and spattered bits of hair and scalp and…
Oh God, she thought, unutterably weary and full of a deep sickness. How am I ever going to explain the stains? The back of her mind immediately got busy concocting a plausible story. With a gasp she checked the time. Three o'clock.
Epifanio and Marietta would be home anytime now.
What was she going to do with the thing's body, and the car? How did you hide something like that on a flat plain? She climbed to her feet like an old woman and swayed for just a moment, testing the pain in her ankle. It was swollen and
sore, but not broken. I'm going to live, she thought. Again. In which case she'd better get moving a little faster.
Sarah walked around the couch, bracing herself lightly with her hand on its back, and looked down at the Terminator. Very distantly she wondered if she should try to salvage some of the computer components that no doubt lurked inside all that damaged brain tissue. Her stomach rose at the thought, and closing her eyes, she decided that no, that strong she wasn't. Even as she thought, her hands were reloading the shotgun; some reflexes became deeper than thought.
There was surprisingly little blood on the floor, given the damage she'd done.
Sarah licked her lips. Something to do with the computer, she thought. It would probably be programmed to preserves the life of its organic tissues. Sarah shuddered. If it hadn't done this she'd have had a lake of blood to deal with.
A hand almost caught Sarah's ankle as she lurched backward. The shattered remnant of head lolled as the body began to pull itself to its feet, and the pupil of one dangling eye cycled open and shut, like the lens of a camera…
The shotgun came up automatically. The first round of buckshot sent the girl-thing jackknifing back and down. Sarah emptied the magazine with a motion as mechanical and precise as the motions of a Terminator…
"You're terminated, you little bitch!" she rasped. Nothing remotely organic could have survived that. Then the adrenaline flowed out of her. Even so, it took an effort of will to check the cooling corpse.
Sarah took a deep breath. A tarp, she thought. She'd need that to get the body out of here. It might be a good idea to arrange a little bit of blood spatter leading out
to the car. God, she thought in self-disgust, I'm getting to be an artist about shit like this. All at once she knew what she was going to do.
Sarah fixed the emergency brake and got out of the rental car. With one knee braced on the seat, she dragged the Terminator over the gearshift and into the driver's seat. Leaning down below the steering wheel, she pressed the gas pedal down with a stick, making the engine rev. Then, carefully, she backed out, put the car in drive, and dove to the side. The car zoomed forward, slamming the door, and fairly leapt into the swamp.
With an effort, Sarah rose to her feet and watched the car start to sink. The windows were down, so when it finally did reach them the water and mud would pour in, sinking it faster. But for now it floated and she began to worry that this wasn't the bottomless bog that she'd been told it was.
She took a deep breath, then let it out. Turning her back, Sarah started jogging at a limping trot, across the scrubby pasture and back to the house. It sank or it didn't. She'd bury the gloves she wore in one of the flower beds. She would tell the Ayalas that the pretty young girl had a boyfriend hidden in the car and that they had broken in. When she'd arrived he started hitting her, demanding money.
When the girl had finally interfered he'd begun beating her. Sarah tried to stop him and he knocked her out. When she came to they were gone.
It was plausible. Certainly more plausible than the real story. The only thing she couldn't control, that she feared, was what time the Ayalas and the rest of the hands got home from the fiesta. As she approached the house her fear grew that they might already be there.
If they came in and found all the blood and signs of a fight and her missing…
Well, I suppose I could always stay missing. In a way that might solve a lot of problems. But in a way that would also be like giving up. And she wasn't one to just quit. She hadn't yet, even when faced with every reason in the world to do so, and she wasn't going to quit now.
I'm going to go in there, lie on the floor, and wake up screaming and crying like a baby when I hear them come in, she thought, her jaw set. And I'm going to make them believe me. And then she was going to by God wait for her son and the man she loved to come home.
Sarah slowed her pace for a moment as she realized what she'd been thinking.
The word home and the phrase man I love didn't often pass through her mind.
She swallowed a lump in her throat. But I think I approve. Then she started jogging again. She had to get home.
***
As they drove up to the house Epifanio slowed the truck. "Linda," he murmured, pointing at the little mare. "The senora didn't put her away." Which was most unlike her. One of the things he respected about Senora Krieger was the way she treated her animal.
"That girl!" his wife said. "I knew she'd be trouble!"
Epifanio stopped the truck and Marietta rushed ahead of them, bursting through the front door exclaiming, "Senora Krieger! Senora…" Her voice trailed off in consternation as she looked at the wreckage in the front hall. "Senora?"
Dieter and John, following on her heels, froze in the doorway.
"No," John said quietly.
He started to move forward, but Dieter's arm barred his way. The older man shook his head slightly, his expression brooking no argument. They held that way for a long moment, then John nodded shortly. Dieter gestured to Marietta, who had watched them in confusion, and she moved slowly to her husband's side.
Von Rossbach swallowed hard and moved down the hallway, looking left and right, into the office, then into the living room. To him it looked like the fighting had been fiercest there and he walked in.
Sarah was sitting on the couch, her face buried in her hands, her elbows on her knees. He stood still for what seemed like a long time; something in him that had clenched tight stretched and he let out a breath he hadn't known he was holding in a great rush of air.
He rushed into the room and she looked up startled; for a second he saw the old fear flash in her eyes, and then she recognized him. Sarah flashed to her feet and moved toward him, and without thought, as naturally as breathing, they came together, despite the limp, and the growing bruise on one bare ankle. Dieter held her as tenderly as if she was made of spun glass, but Sarah clutched him to her with all her strength and their kiss was a conversation that might have gone on for years had they the time.
"You're safe," he said, pulling back just slightly.
"Yes." She smiled up at him, then gasped. "John?" she said desperately as
though to make up for not asking about him first.
"He's safe," Dieter said, his voice grim.
Sarah looked at him warily. "But… ?" she prompted.
Von Rossbach bit his lip. "Wendy didn't make it."
"Oh, my God," Sarah whispered. "Oh, my God." She shook her head. "It's my fault," she said. "I never should have let a civilian go with you. If she hadn't been so rattled by me she'd have been willing to stay here and wait for John to get back." She looked up at Dieter. "He must hate me."
Dieter put his hand to her cheek; his thumb rubbed at a spot of blood. "What happened isn't your fault," he said. "We needed her skills. Skills that you do not have. You weren't in any condition for the Antarctic—it was brutal." He shook his head. "And more people on the mission might have jeopardized its success.
Fewer people equals more covert. You know that."
"Dieter?" John called from the hall. "Is it all right to come in?"
Von Rossbach took a deep breath
, looked uncertainly at Sarah, and then called out "yes." He leaned toward Sarah and whispered, "John took a wound. He's fine, but it looks bad. Brace yourself." She looked alarmed and tried to step back from him, but von Rossbach refused to let her go.
John walked in trailed by the Ayalas and their niece, all of whom began exclaiming at the sight of the room's destruction and Sarah's bloodied and battered state.
But John and Sarah only had eyes for each other. Now that John had seen them like this, Dieter let her go and Sarah looked up at him once, gently touched his arm, and walked toward her son.
Sarah looked into John's eyes and knew that all trace of youth, of childhood, were gone, as though the boy had never been. She was looking at a man.
In that moment when their eyes met they shared a new bond. John understood now what she had lost when his father was killed. But unlike her, he had no part of Wendy that he could treasure as Sarah treasured him. No child to love and protect; perhaps there never would be.
She stepped forward, one hand reaching toward his wounded face; she hesitated and settled for stroking his hair. Then she embraced him. John stiffened in her arms and he did not return the gesture.
"I know," she whispered, tears in her eyes and in her voice. "I am so sorry."
Then he clutched at her and she felt him tremble, begin to shake. He was silent, but she knew he was weeping and was glad that he could let go, that he trusted her enough to show his feelings before her.
Sarah looked up and met Dieter's sympathetic eyes. He reached out to her and she took his hand. A sudden, primitive possessiveness flamed in her heart and she clasped them both more fiercely. They were hers and she would protect them both with all of the strength in her body and soul. As they would protect her.
They were a family, each lending strength and support to the other. After so long on her own she knew the value of such a bond, and she treasured it.
Together they would face the future and whatever it held, and in the end—
however terrible the journey—they would win.
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