by Timothy Zahn
“Freeze!” he ordered.
The gang leader’s head snapped toward Kyle, his eyes burning with surprise and rage, his gun swiveling toward this sudden new threat. As he did so, Orozco took half a step forward.
And in a haze of motion that Kyle never did completely figure out, the gang leader was spun 180 degrees around, his gun hand yanked up behind his back with the revolver pointed harmlessly down the street, and Orozco’s left arm snaking its way around the kid’s neck to press tightly against his throat.
“Like my friend says,” Orozco said. “Freeze.”
“Let him go!” the gunman down the street snarled, jabbing his empty revolver threateningly toward Orozco as he and his friend unglued themselves from their positions and charged toward the would-be victims.
There was a sudden muffled crack from the direction of the gang leader’s twisted arm. The kid cried out in pain, and his revolver thudded onto the broken pavement. An instant later, Orozco had released the kid’s wrist, drawn his Beretta, and had his arm crooked around the front of the leader’s face with the gun pointed toward the two incoming teens.
“We only say freeze twice,” he warned quietly.
The boys came to a sudden halt.
“Join the group,” Orozco invited them, twitching the Beretta’s muzzle toward the five who were still spread out in front of him. “Put the gun on the ground first.”
Silently, the two teens complied. Orozco’s Beretta followed them the whole way over to the rest of the pack, and now there were seven sets of hate-filled glares washing at Kyle over the muzzle of his Colt.
“Here’s how it’s going to work,” Orozco said into the brittle silence. “You’re going to put down your weapons—all of them—and you’re going to walk away. And you’re not going to come back. Ever.”
The leader began cursing. Orozco tightened his grip slightly around the other’s neck, and the swearing abruptly stopped.
“That’s the easy way,” Orozco continued. “The hard way is that we make sure you don’t bother us again by killing all of you.” He cocked back the hammer on the Beretta. “Right now.”
Kyle felt sweat gathering on the back of his neck. He’d seen Orozco use this same threat on other gangs, and so far all of them had backed down.
What if this one didn’t? Would Kyle be able to coldbloodedly open fire on other human beings if they decided to make a fight of it? Even to save his own life?
Beside him, he felt Star brush his arm... and with that, all the questions and indecision faded into a cold determination. Because he wouldn’t just be protecting himself. He would be protecting Star.
And whatever it took, he would do that. Whatever it took.
Maybe the other teens saw the subtle change in his face. Maybe they didn’t, but had just finished running the odds. Whichever it was, one of them took a deep breath and dropped his knife onto the pavement. A moment later a second followed suit, and then a third, until all of them were standing unarmed, looking forlorn and a little ridiculous, as they continued to glare with impotent rage.
“Good,” Orozco said. Removing his arm from the leader’s throat, he gave the kid a shove toward the rest of the group. The kid stopped a couple of feet in front of the pack and turned around, adding his glare to the others’ as he clutched his wrist.
“I suggest you head south,” Orozco went on. “The population density goes down as you get closer to NukeZero, so there should still be places where you can carve out a home for yourselves. And the radiation should be well below danger levels by now.”
“Like we care about that when we’re starving to death,” one of them muttered.
“There’s still plenty of food to be had for the scrounging,” Orozco assured him. “Or you can starve, if you’d rather. Makes no difference to me.”
Abruptly, Kyle heard the sound of running feet coming from his left. He turned, to see Wadleigh and three more Moldering Lost Ashes men appear around the corner, rifles and shotguns at the ready.
The teens saw them, too, and with that the last thoughts of resistance or treachery crumbled away. They might be vicious and depraved, but the fact they’d survived this long proved they weren’t stupid.
“But wherever you go,” Orozco went on, “please believe me when I say that you have no future in this neighborhood.”
The leader’s eyes came reluctantly back to Orozco.
“Yeah, we got it,” he bit out.
“Good,” Orozco said. “Now go collect whatever you’ve got in your flophouse and hit the road. I’ll give you half an hour. After that, if we see any of you around here again, you’ll be shot on sight.”
“Go to hell,” the leader muttered. But the words had no fire behind them, only dull resignation.
“I’m already there,” Orozco said grimly. “So is everyone else. Save your strength for fighting Skynet and the Terminators, not your fellow humans.”
The kid snorted. “Right.”
“I’m serious,” Orozco insisted. “You like leading? Fine. We need leaders. But lead a Resistance cell, not a gang.”
The kid just grunted and turned his back. Pushing his way through the rest of the group, he stomped back into their flimsy ganghouse. One by one the others followed, some of them glancing at Orozco as they went, others ignoring him completely.
They had all disappeared inside by the time Wadleigh and the others arrived.
“You okay?” Wadleigh asked, panting as he trotted to a halt. “The sentry signaled that you were in trouble.”
“We were, but we’re not anymore,” Orozco assured him. “Thanks for the timely arrival. Made it much easier to convince them to vacate the premises.”
“Let’s hope so,” Wadleigh growled. “What about that stuff?” He gestured at the knives and revolvers scattered around the street.
“We’ll take it with us,” Orozco said. “Kyle, you and Star go gather everything up. You can put it in that extra bag on the burro’s harness.”
“Sure,” Kyle said. Gesturing to Star, he holstered his Colt and grabbed the bag. Walking around the burro, he went to the abandoned weapons and started collecting them. One of the knives in particular caught his eye, and he took a moment to heft it in his hand, feeling the weight nestle comfortably in his grip.
A couple of the teens, he had noticed, had held their knives like they really knew what they were doing. Carefully setting the weapon in the bag with the others, Kyle made a mental note to ask Orozco about that later.
Orozco had already taught him how to shoot and make explosives. Maybe later Kyle could learn how to fight with a knife, too.
The sun was setting behind a line of drab, pink-edged clouds when Blair finally arrived at the new hangar where she and Yoshi had stashed their A-10s.
Considering the shape her plane had been in when she delivered it to Wince last night, she’d expected to find the place buzzing with activity. But the big open space was quiet and dark, with no hum of grinding wheels or flicker of welder fire.
“Hello?” she called softly into the darkness, stepping back to put her shoulder blades against the wall beside the door, her hand dropping to the grip of her Desert Eagle. “Anyone home?”
There was another moment of silence. Then, a shadow behind her A-10 shifted subtly and Wince’s familiar shock of white hair appeared around the tail.
“Oh,” he said. “It’s you.”
“You were expecting someone else?” Blair growled, looking around the otherwise deserted hangar. This was not the level of security they were supposed to have around here.
“Yoshi, actually,” Wince said. “He’s been here all day, and I finally sent him back to the bunker to get some sleep. But you know how well he obeys that kind of order.”
“About as well as I do?”
“About that, yes,” Wince agreed. “But since you’re here and he isn’t, could you give me a hand?”
“What do you need?” Blair asked, keeping her grip on the Desert Eagle as she headed toward him. If there
was someone back there holding a gun on the old man.
But she rounded the tail to find that Wince was indeed alone.
“I’m trying to get this attached without attracting attention,” he told her, pointing to a replacement armor plate lying beneath an open section of her A-10’s tail, a section completely surrounded by bullet holes. Those HKs last night had really done a job on her plane. “HKs have been buzzing the neighborhood all afternoon,” Wince continued, “and I’ve been afraid to fire up the welders.”
“So what are you going to use, duct tape?” Blair asked, eyeing the hole. It looked way too small for the plate Wince was planning to jam into it.
“Close,” Wince said with a grin as he pried the top off an unlabeled one-quart can. “I’m going to glue it in.”
Blair cocked her head.
“You’re kidding.”
“Well, temporarily, anyway,” he said. “Tomorrow when I don’t have to worry so much about stray light leaking out I’ll do a proper welding. But the glue should hold it together until then.”
“Okay,” Blair said, looking at all the other bullet holes on the tail as the scent of the adhesive curled her nose hairs. Wince’s inventory included some of the worst-smelling concoctions in all of creation. “Don’t you think you should take off all those other plates before you glue this one down?”
“By that I assume you mean I should take them off so that I can replace them?” Wince suggested as he selected a paintbrush and started to layer the glue onto the exposed section of fuselage. “I’d love to do just that. Problem is, we haven’t got anything to replace them with.”
Blair looked at the other damaged plates.
“Oh.”
“It’s worse than just ‘oh,’” Wince said grimly. “Another round like last night and you and Connor can say goodbye to any hope of continuing air support. My inventory of spare parts and armor is going fast, and as for jet fuel, we’re down to a single fill-up each.” He glanced over at her. “Just between us, I’m starting to get a bit concerned.”
“Join the club,” Blair said. “I just hope we’ll find some useful stuff in that depot.”
“The Skynet staging area,” Wince said, nodding. “Yes, Yoshi told me about that. Sounds perfectly insane, if you ask me.”
“No argument there,” Blair agreed. “But it’s better than going out with a whimper. Besides, in theory all the Terminators will be out making trouble when Connor hits it.”
Wince snorted. “In theory. Right. Famous last words if I’ve ever heard ‘em.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” Blair said. “You ever hear that bumblebees can’t fly?”
“Unscientific urban legend,” Wince scoffed, studying his new layer of glue and reaching the brush in to touch up a few spots. “There’s not enough wing surface if the bumblebee functioned like a fixed-wing aircraft, but its wings actually work more like reverse-pitch semi-rotary helicopter blades. You get a lot more lift that way, obviously more than enough for a bumblebee to tootle along just fine.”
“That’s my point,” Blair said. “Skynet’s got its rules and logic, and if we play by them it’ll eventually grind us down. So we have to find new ways and new logic.”
“Such as hitting a staging area?”
“Exactly.”
Wince shook his head.
“I’m just a simple country mechanic. Okay, I think we’re ready. You get that end of the plate, and I’ll take this end.”
Lying on the floor, the plate had looked much bigger than its intended hole. Once held up to the gap, though, it turned out to be precisely the correct size.
“Now what?” Blair asked as she and Wince pressed it into place.
“We need to hold it here for a minimum of fifteen minutes,” Wince said. “I hope you didn’t have anything else you wanted to do just now.”
“I think I can spare a bit from my busy schedule,” Blair said. “Especially given that it’s my plane you’re putting back together.”
The minutes dragged slowly by. Blair pressed against her end of the plate, feeling the warmth of Wince’s shoulder nearby. The silence of the hangar and the city beyond it settled in around her, the smell of oil and metal and adhesive tingling at her nostrils. Her stomach grumbled once, reminding her that she hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and the plate began to feel increasingly heavy as her arm and shoulder muscles started to fatigue.
On the theory that the glue must surely be ready to take some of the strain, she shifted to pressing against the plate with only one hand at a time. It seemed to help.
“Why ‘Hickabick?’” Wince asked suddenly.
Blair frowned sideways at him.
“What?”
“Your call sign,” Wince said. “I’ve wondered about it for months, only I never think about it when you’re actually around to ask.”
“It’s an acronym,” Blair told him. “HKBK—Hunter-Killer Butt Kicker. Throw in some vowels so you can actually pronounce it and it comes out Hickabick.”
“Cute,” Wince said. “A little mild, though, isn’t it? I mean, why not go with ‘Hunter-Killer Ass Kicker?’ Let’s see—HKAK—Hikak. Works even better.”
Blair turned her eyes back to the plate, a hard lump forming in her throat.
“It’s already taken,” she said, trying to keep the old pain out of her voice. “A friend of mine had it. Pete Teague. He was killed by the HKs a month before I joined Connor’s group.”
“Oh,” Wince said quietly. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Blair said. “But like I said, that was his call sign. It’s—I can’t use it.”
“Because it’s his memorial?”
“Something like that,” Blair said. “Probably sounds silly.”
“No, not at all,” Wince assured her. “Thank you for sharing that.”
The room fell silent again. Blair found herself staring at Wince’s hands as they pressed against the plate beside hers, images of Pete flashing with bittersweet clarity across her mind. She’d watched his plane go down in flames even as what was left of their group fled yet another Terminator attack.
Blair hadn’t had a chance to say goodbye to him, or to give him a final kiss. She hadn’t even been able to give him a proper burial.
But she could make sure his call sign remained his. That much she could do.
That, and do her absolute damnedest to make sure his death ultimately counted for something.
“Okay, that should be enough,” Wince said, breaking into her thoughts. “Let’s let ‘er go and see if she stays put. Keep your toes out of the way, though, just in case.”
Carefully, they eased their hands off the plate. Blair watched it closely, but it showed no sign that it was even thinking about coming off.
“Perfect,” Wince said after a minute. “It should survive the night just fine. Thanks.”
“No problem,” Blair said, peering at her plane’s underside. The missile pylons, she noted, were still empty. “You’ll be rearming me once you get all the holes fixed?”
“You mean the holes, the hydraulics, and the left aileron?” Wince asked.
Blair grimaced. “I thought the aileron was acting a little funny.”
“It’s not just funny, it’s hilarious,” Wince said dryly. “But I think I’ll be able to sober it up a little.”
“I know you will,” Blair said. “You can do anything.”
“But...?” Wince asked.
Blair frowned. “But what?”
“Come on, Blair,” Wince said with a knowing look. “Flattery is always followed by an insane request. Go ahead, but do bear in mind that I’ve only got three Sidewinders left, and even I can’t make new ones out of cheese and ten-year-old Army MREs.”
“I wasn’t going to ask for more Sidewinders,” Blair protested, mentally scratching them off her list. “I was just going to ask if you could give me a few extra rounds for my GAU-8 this time.”
“And how would you suggest I do that?” Wince asked. “Those ammo drums only come
in one size.”
“I know,” Blair said. “But we just agreed that you can do anything.”
“You agreed I could do anything,” Wince said. “I’m not sure my vote was even asked for, let alone counted. Wouldn’t it be simpler to just lighten up on the trigger a little?”
“It’s not that I’m spending them too fast,” Blair said. “It’s that Skynet always seems to know when I’m dry. I swear the damn computer’s counting every round as it comes out.”
“Actually, it probably is,” Wince conceded. “No, really, it’s a fine idea. I just don’t know if I can—”
“Shh!” Blair cut him off, snapping up her hand for silence. A familiar hum had appeared at the edge of her consciousness, the low-pitched vibration of an HK’s turbofans working its way through the hangar’s walls.
Wince had heard it, too. He nodded understanding, his face drawn and tense. The hum was getting louder.
And suddenly, the hangar’s boarded-up west wall exploded into a hundred fiery spots and slashes of light as the HK’s searchlights found their way through the cracks and gaps.
Wince twitched, but remained silent. Blair found her hand again gripping her holstered gun. Pure reflex—it would be a lucky shot indeed that would let even the Eagle’s .44 caliber rounds do anything against one of Skynet’s flying horrors.
The angle of the lights shifted as the HK passed overhead, and for a few seconds it was the ceiling, not the wall, that was leaking intense beams of light.
Abruptly, the lights went out. Blair held her breath, peering into the darkness, trying to figure out if the HK’s rumble was moving away or circling back for a second look.
And then, the light reappeared, coming through the series of cracks and gaps in the east wall. But this time it wasn’t the eye-burning, full-power glare of the HK’s searchlights. It was the softer glow of that same blaze as it was reflected from the ground and rubble and distant buildings.
Blair and Wince looked at each other, and Wince puffed out his cheeks in a pantomimed puffy sigh. Blair nodded, then lifted a finger to her lips to remind him not to make any actual noise until the HK had left the area. Wince nodded in turn, and together they waited as the growl turned again to a distant hum, then faded out completely.