"Don't move," a familiar voice murmured. "Identify yourself."
"Juarez?" Reese said.
"Lieutenant?" the sergeant answered in surprise.
Holding out his hands, Reese turned slowly to look over his shoulder at his former sergeant. He smiled in relief. "What the hell is going on down there, Juarez?"
The sergeant lay flat beside him, his face grim. "I don't know, sir. Nothing good by the smell of it." He glanced in the direction the lieutenant pointed and at the sight of the grave mounds nodded grimly. "Or the look of it. Me and my boys have been on a more or less permanent recon. This is the first we've been back in a month."
"They call you in?" Reese asked.
"No, sir. We're not due back for another two weeks."
Dennis glanced at the sergeant. He was not the kind of soldier who just decided one day to disobey orders. "Why?" he said simply.
"We found a kid. Boy of about eleven. He was sick, sir." The sergeant gave Reese a direct look. "Wasn't a thing we could do for him by the time we found him except make him comfortable.
Just before he died he kind of came to and told us how things were in the camp. How his mother had made him run for it. We had to come back and take a look, sir."
The lieutenant nodded, then they both turned their attention to the trucks below. They could just hear the women's high-pitched voices and the crying of the younger children. Off in the men's compound the trucks were unloaded with less noise, but it was just as plain that the new arrivals were not happy to be there.
One man stepped forward and said something, waving his arm at the barracks. A soldier stepped up and smashed the butt of his rifle into the man's face. The man went down and no one moved. One of the soldiers came forward, and pulling off his gas mask began to speak. Reese looked at him through the glasses and saw a face he recognized. It was one of those men he'd marked out as odd, a cold, humorless man he wouldn't have wanted at his back in a firefight.
"I haven't seen Yanik," Reese remarked.
"If the captain is down there, he's in the cemetery," the sergeant said. "No way he'd allow that kind of thing to go on."
That was true. "Gather your men and come with me," Reese said, backing away. "I've got some people I want you to meet and some things I've got to tell you."
As they walked, Juarez signaled and his troop began to emerge from cover. By the time they'd reached the place where the lieu-tenant had left the resistance fighters, Reese wasn't surprised to see that they'd all disappeared. He didn't think he'd ever get used to their ability to completely and instantly vanish.
Maybe that was because some part of his mind persisted in thinking of them as civilians. Even if he had stopped thinking of them as survivalist nutcases.
Dennis sat on a boulder, tipping his helmet to the back of his head.
"You wanted us to meet someone?" the sergeant asked.
"Yep. But they've decided that maybe I'm your prisoner or something and they're checking us out. Since I don't have a signal to call them in, we'll just have to wait for them to join us."
He grinned at Juarez. "They're even more tight-assed than Marines."
The sergeant laughed. "But brighter, I hope." He turned and signaled his troop to relax. "Set pickets?" he asked of the lieutenant.
"Nope. The area's being guarded by my friends and I don't want any misunderstandings." He glanced up at Juarez. "If you know what I mean?"
The sergeant nodded. "Okay, boys. Break out the rations, smoke 'em if you got 'em, that sort of shit. Lieutenant says we've got guardian angels watching over us, so we can all relax."
From the uncertain looks the soldiers passed among themselves, relaxation was going to be hard to come by.
Juarez sat down beside the lieutenant. "You here to deal with that?" he asked, jerking his head toward the camp.
Reese nodded, watching the men around them. A bird trilled a few liquid notes and Dennis waved his arm in a "c'mon in"
gesture.
"That was them?" Juarez asked. "I'm impressed. I thought it really was a cardinal."
"Oh, they're very good," Dennis said.
From all around them figures decked in grass and brush and paint began to stand, or to emerge from the undergrowth, guns at the ready.
"At ease," Reese told them. Guns were lowered to a less threatening position, but their faces remained guarded. "Susie, this is Sergeant Juarez. Sarge, this is my second-in-command."
Juarez looked her over, visibly hesitated for a moment at her extreme youth, then nodded; she did the same.
"Everyone I've been able to identify down there is a creep,"
Juarez said, looking at Reese. "I know that most of them have at the very least been put on report for unnecessary roughness to the civilians. They talked about the kids like they were some kind of vermin. And none of them had very convincing stories about what outfits they were with before they came here—somehow, they were all people who'd been on leave from units that took a nuke in the first day. Funny they're the ones who survived."
The lieutenant shook his head and forced himself to meet the sergeant's eyes. "Funny like a funeral. I doubt it's an accident,"
he said. "Just before I was shipped out, some guys were overheard apparently gloating over the epidemic. There was some speculation that someone was spraying germs onto raw food. Fruits and vegetables."
Juarez just looked at him, for so long that Reese assumed he was waiting for him to go on.
"Apparently they never got around to investigating it," the lieutenant said.
"Apparently," the sergeant agreed, hard-eyed.
"Sir, I hate to break into a reunion, but how are we going to handle this?" Susie's dark eyes were intense and Reese could almost feel her nervous energy flowing like an electrical field around her. This was her first mission under fire and Juarez was a complication she hadn't expected.
"From what I've seen"—he nodded at the sergeant—"and heard, we're unlikely to get any converts out of the military left in camp. My instinct here is to be careful only in regard to civilians and any prisoners they may have."
"Today would seem to be a bad time to strike." Susie glanced at the sergeant. "They're expecting trouble."
"But not from our direction," Juarez pointed out. "And not from armed opponents."
"Has to be today," Reese interjected before his fiery second could respond. "By tonight those people will have been infected, and for all the good we can do 'em we might as well shoot them."
Susie bit her lips. "When do we go, sir?"
"After the trucks are gone," the lieutenant said. No sense in giving the enemy heavy armor. "Say twilight. It will make it harder for us to be seen. Meanwhile, get some rest. Come back…"
He quickly calculated the marching time and then doubled his original estimate of fifteen minutes to explain what he wanted done; these were civilians, or very recent ex-civilians, for the most part.
She nodded and moved off to talk to her people.
"They any good?" Juarez asked quietly.
"We'll know in a few hours," Reese said, getting out his map.
"In any case, they're what we've got. Let's figure out how we're going to do this."
THE CAMP
The women were all terrified, and trying not to show it for the children's sake. Bad enough that for the last few weeks they'd been living a life they were ill prepared for after experiencing the terror that had haunted their entire lives. Now, suddenly, their own armed forces were herding them into prison camps.
Children clung and cried, or moved silently, big-eyed by their mothers' sides into the barracks. The stench was overwhelming and most of the youngsters hung back. But the eyes of the soldiers, just visible behind their gas masks, offered no leniency.
They'd been told to go into the barracks and clean them up. So the women did, dragging their reluctant children with them.
One of the women started to retch upon entering.
"You sick?" a guard barked.
"It's t
he smell," a woman snapped. She took the sick woman by the arm and pulled her across to a window, which she threw open. Just in time as the woman threw herself over the sill and was sick.
"You'll clean that up," the same soldier said.
A little girl screamed and her mother exclaimed, "Oh, my God! There's a body here!"
The other women clustered around the bed and stared in horror at the emaciated figure in it. The woman moved and they all sprang back, some screaming.
"She won't bother you for long," a guard said. "But we can't bury her just yet." The other guards snickered and the newcomers looked at her in deep dismay.
The women looked at one another and then a new look at the place they were to stay. It was filthy beyond description, with a stench that could only come from terrible sickness and much death.
"You said clean," a woman said, rolling up her sleeves. "Do we have cleaning supplies?"
The guards looked at one another, marking this as one to watch. Then their leader indicated a closet at the end of the long room.
"Okay," the woman said. "Let's get to work, ladies."
* * *
"Now remember, the guards are all bad guys," Reese said.
"But the inmates aren't, and those shacks wouldn't stop a spitball or a stiff breeze, much less a bullet. Now let's go."
He felt himself smiling grimly as they moved in through the thickening twilight.
Somebody designed this camp to keep people from getting out, not in, he thought. And those creeps may be wearing the uniform, but they're prison guards and muscle, not soldiers.
That's why they don't have anyone out here.
He still wished he had more night-vision equipment, or that the enemy had less. That could be arranged…
Sergeant Juarez and two men were walking down the road toward the camp's entrance, which was flanked by two watchtowers. Reese made himself not check his weapon again—that would be fidgeting—and kept still behind the bush that sheltered him. Juarez and his troopers were playing it calmly, walking up with weapons slung; soldiers from the camp—
pseudosoldiers, he reminded himself—came out to meet them.
Far too many of them. I was right: that bunch never went through basic.
The last thing you wanted to do in a suspicious situation was crowd a lot of men right out in the open. An experienced and suspicious NCO would have sent one or two men out to greet the newcomers, keeping the rest back under cover and ready to react if anything went wrong.
Which it was about to do. Through the binoculars Reese could see the leader of the camp guards smiling and nodding as Juarez spoke, the broad gestures of the sergeant's hands… and then one going to the small of his back.
" Go!" Reese barked as the noncom pulled the pistol out and shot the guard in the stomach.
Then Juarez hugged the body to himself and used it as a shield, emptying the magazine into the crowded enemy as the two soldiers following him swung their assault rifles down and opened fire as well.
Reese ran forward, hoping that the dozen others behind him would follow—the rest of Juarez's squad were over on the eastern side of the camp, and it was all survivalists and odds-and-sods here.
From their yelling, they were following him. "Shut up!" he shouted—not the most inspiring battle cry in the world, but it would have to do.
Ahead of him was one of the observation towers; a wooden box on top of four splayed wooden legs, with a little roof above it.
There was a searchlight and two machine guns in the box; the guards there were both looking at the firing around the gate, though… and the tower was outside the barbed-wire perimeter of the camp.
" Go!" he barked, panting slightly as they reached the tower.
Reese went down on one knee, his carbine to his shoulder. The figures up top were dim, until they lit up the searchlight…
"Perfect," he whispered as he gently squeezed the trigger.
Braaaapp. One short burst, and a body toppled over the edge of the railing, falling inert not far away.
That left the other one, who was turning a machine gun Reese's way.
"Open fire!" he bellowed. " Shoot, for Chrissake!"
The survivalists did, belatedly. For an instant, the man above looked as if he was dancing—bullets went through the floor of the wooden observation box as if it wasn't there. One of them struck the searchlight, and it went out with a shower of sparks that left orange afterimages drifting across Reese's eyes.
"You, you, get up there!" he snapped. "Man those guns. The rest of you, follow me!"
Hot damn, he thought. For the first time since Judgment Day he was doing something, something that might help. Striking back, at least, at the machine and its collaborators.
* * *
Dennis Reese looked at the… Well, collaborator, I suppose, he thought.
The man had been passing for a corporal when Reese and Mary left the camp. Now he was in Yanik's quarters and wearing his rank insignia… and not being very cooperative.
"I won't tell you zip," he said.
"I think you will," Reese said, conscious of the slight tremor in his voice.
He'd had time to tour the camp. A lot of the people he'd known hadn't been buried yet; the matron at the clinic where Mary had worked was lying where she'd fallen near her chair, swollen and purple, with flies walking across her eyes.
" Nada," the man said; he had a thin stubbled face and hard eyes.
Juarez touched Reese on the shoulder. "Sir, I think you should so for a walk," he said.
"What?" Reese asked.
"Sir, you should go for a walk. Check on the people. We'll call you when this is taken care of."
Reese opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again. There were times an officer should take a walk—not something that was covered in the formal curriculum at the Point, but it did get passed on by word of mouth from generation to generation.
And Sergeant Juarez had seen everything that Reese had.
Reese smiled at the man in the captain's uniform and walked out. There was a lot of work to do… and one of Juarez's men was bringing up a bucket of water.
By the time the noncom joined him—Reese had carefully not listened to the sounds—the camp inmates were gathered. Reese looked down on them from the steps; they'd gotten the lights working again, and a corner of his mind was wondering whether they could salvage the camp generator and take it with them. It would be so useful… The faces looking up at him held fright, anger, despair.
"What do you mean, these weren't really the army?" a man asked.
"The American army doesn't do this"—Reese pointed around; everyone had been shown the mass graves—"to American citizens. This was a bunch of terrorists pretending to be soldiers."
"And you're the real army?" somebody called.
"There isn't one left," Reese said grimly. "It died on Judgment Day. We're the… resistance. And we're not just fighting for America; we're fighting for the survival of the human race."
Juarez bent to whisper in his ear. "Sir, you're damned right about that. We got a lot out of him…"
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
DOT LAKE, ALASKA
We're getting organized, John Connor thought. Which means… paperwork!
Luckily, he and Sarah and Dieter had all been in favor of a decentralized structure, which kept bureaucracy to a minimum.
Which did not mean "small."
He sighed and leaned back in the chair until it creaked dangerously, even with his boots on the table to stabilize it, and took another sip of lukewarm herbal tea. For a moment his mouth crooked up at one corner; the central HQ of humanity at the moment was a man barely old enough to drink, in a nowhere town in the wilderness.
Lists were scrolling across the screen of his laptop, mostly of new recruits brought in by various resistance cells across North America, Europe, and East Asia. Skynet hadn't had a chance to pulverize Latin America quite as thoroughly, yet—it had probably been much worse in the "original" Judgm
ent Day scenario, which had happened back when the major powers had tens of thousands of ready-to-go nuclear warheads, instead of a couple of thousand all up. Of course, once Skynet got its production facilities fully operational, it would probably make more nukes—
"Christ!" he said suddenly, putting the cup down fast enough to slosh.
Jack Brock had sent in his list from Missouri, from the Ozark Redoubt. One of their more promising cells…
Dennis Reese.
He called up a picture. No absolute proof, but there was a resemblance—thin features, light brown hair, something about the eyes…
How would you define the relationship? Technically he's my granddad…
Even though the lieutenant was only twenty-five to John's recently turned twenty-one. John shook his head slowly. I think the reason time travel makes my head hurt is that it makes my eyes spin. Right now his gut was hurting, too. He felt an overwhelming urge to send a priority-one message to Brock: keep Reese safe at all costs!
But I can't do that, he knew, with a sinking sensation. That might be the exact thing that would keep Reese from fathering the son who's going to father moi!
The chaos-butterfly-wing thing evidently wasn't entirely correct; for all the time-loops and frantic attempts to change the past, each cycle tended back toward the original course of events.
But the past was changeable; sometimes the future created its own past. He had to be so careful…
* * *
John turned his attention to the single truck and bus waiting for passengers in the town square. Poor suckers, John thought.
They should be all right, though. He'd moved some of the resistance into that old logging camp and they'd be watching the road for these newcomers. If Skynet tried anything, it would lose.
They planned an attack on the "relocation camp" any day now. As soon as thirty of the new plasma rifles arrived from California. He had no intention of sending his people into battle less well armed than the enemy. At least not if he could help it.
Reports on conditions in the camp weren't good, but they weren't as bad as the Black River camp in Missouri. For some reason, Skynet seemed to want the humans in B.C. to survive.
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