Terminator Salvation: Trial by Fire (25 page)

“Valentine?”

Barnes saw Williams wince. “Probably.”

“Damn,” Preston breathed. “We’ve got to get to her—”

“Mayor?” Oxley’s distant voice came. “Mayor Preston? Come now, you’re being foolish. You can’t fight us, and there really isn’t anywhere to run. Come on out and take it like a man. I promise I’ll make it painless.”

“Don’t answer,” Williams whispered urgently.

Preston shot a look at her, his jaw muscles tight. But he kept silent.

“If you’d rather do it the hard way, that’s okay with me,” Oxley’s voice came again, possibly a bit closer this time. “We’ll just kill however we have to, painful or otherwise. Here’s an idea—we’ll start with your daughter.”

Watching his face Barnes saw the disbelief and horror were starting to fade away, and Preston was starting to think again.

“If you want to blame someone, blame your friends there,” Oxley continued. The voice was definitely closer now. “They’re the ones who forced our hand. We’d have been perfectly happy to keep things going the way they were.”

“He’s lying,” Williams muttered. “None of them had the slightest idea of what Skynet had turned them into.”

“Why the hell is he talking so much?” Preston muttered.

“He’s buying time,” Williams said. “You saw how Lajard took off back there. If he’s the one real human among them, he’s probably the only one who
did
know what they were.”

“He was the experiment’s observer?”

“And its controller,” Williams said. “That Latin he spouted just before Oxley’s attack was probably the code to activate them.”

“And to put them under his and Skynet’s control,” Barnes added.

“Right,” Williams said. “I think Oxley’s stalling to give Lajard time to get to cover.”

“Wait a second,” Preston said, frowning. “If the Latin was code, then Oxley should be the only one who got activated.”

Williams shook her head. “Sorry. They’re all linked via short-range radio through the control chips in the backs of their heads. When he activated Oxley, he activated Valentine and Jik, too.”

Preston hissed a sigh. “And Valentine’s got Hope.”

“Yes,” Williams said grimly.

“Mayor?” Oxley called.

“You know how to kill these things?” Preston asked.

“We know how to make them hurt,” Barnes said, thinking back to his target practice with the chained-up Marcus. “They’ve got human skin, and all the nerve endings that go with it.”

“It’s a start.” Preston took a deep breath. “Okay. We don’t have a whistle signal for a situation like this, so the quickest way to warn everyone in town will be to fire off a few shots. We might was well put those shots to some use. Get ready.”

He stood upright and looked over the hedge.

“Oxley?” he called. “You want me? Come and get me.”

Barnes felt his lips pull back in a tight grin. He’d seen first-hand how tough Thetas were, as tough as any other Terminator model Skynet had come up with. With these wholly inadequate weapons, and with a lot of the town’s best hunters out of reach across the river, he and Williams were going to have a serious fight on their hands.

But at least they finally knew who their enemies were. That was worth something.

He hefted the rifle, throwing a quick glance behind them and then settling down with his eyes and weapon toward the town.

Bring it on
, he thought silently toward Skynet.
Bring it on
.

“They hate me, don’t they?” Susan asked quietly as Hope led the way along the path toward Crescent Rock.

“What?” Hope asked, most of her mind on the forest around her. They hadn’t hunted this area for a while, which meant there was a chance that some of the bigger game might have returned.

“The people in town,” Susan said. “I saw the way they looked at me when they came back from the battle with those T-700s.”

“I think everyone’s mostly just tired,” Hope assured her. “They’ll get over it.”

“I’m not so sure,” Susan said. “You heard what Connor said earlier, back at your house. If Nathan, Remy, and I had died instead of letting Skynet pick our brains, maybe there wouldn’t even
be
T-700s for them to have to deal with.”

“I didn’t think you ever worked on the T-700s.”

“You know what I mean.” Behind her, Hope heard Susan sigh. “I wish to God I was you, Hope,” she said. “With my whole life still ahead of me. Instead of—” She broke off. “I’m sorry, Hope. I’m so very sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Hope said. She looked back over her shoulder.

And froze. Susan was staring straight ahead, her face suddenly cold and rigid and agonized. Hope threw a quick look in the direction the older woman was staring, wondering if she’d spotted a bear or another Terminator. But there was nothing there.

“Susan?” Hope asked carefully, looking back at her.

Slowly, the cold eyes turned to focus on Hope.

“I’m sorry, Hope,” Susan said again as she started forward. “I have to kill you now.”

For a moment Hope just stared at her, the words buzzing around her ears like angry hornets.

“What are you talking about?” she asked as she started to back away.

But it was too late. Susan didn’t seem to be hurrying, but her stride was longer than Hope’s, she was walking forward instead of backward, and she was rapidly closing the distance between them.

“Susan, please,” Hope said, trying desperately to think. “What are you doing?”

“Don’t you understand?” Susan asked, a quiet horror filling her voice. “I’m one of them. God help me. I’m one of them.”

“One of what?” Hope asked, trying to keep her talking. To her left, her hand brushed against the branches and leaves of a sapling. “I don’t understand,” she continued, pressing her palm against the slender trunk and bending the young tree over as she continued backing up.

“I’m a Theta,” Susan said, her voice shaking now. “I didn’t know. God, I had no idea. But I am. I’m a Terminator. I’m a
Terminator
.”

“You don’t have to be,” Hope told her, slowing her backward pace as she felt her hand nearing the top of the sapling, holding it down with every bit of her strength and weight. “You can fight it. You don’t have to do what Skynet tells you.”

“But I do,” Susan said sadly. “You don’t understand. I’m so very sorry.” She reached out a hand toward Hope’s throat.

And jerked backward as Hope released her hold on the bent tree, sending it snapping up to slap against Susan’s chest and face.

An instant later, Hope was dashing through the trees, running as fast as she could. The horror of Susan’s revelation hovered at the edges of her mind, but she pressed it back into the shadows. There was no time to think about that now. No time to think about anything except survival.

There was a crash behind her, and she spared a quick look over her shoulder. Susan was coming after her, her expression ice cold, her face crisscrossed with small red lines where the sapling’s branches had cut into her skin.

Human skin. Not metal.
Human
skin.

It was a small chance, Hope knew. But at the moment she didn’t have anything better.

Watching her footing with one eye, looking for the right spot with the other, she drew an arrow and nocked it to her bowstring. This was going to take careful timing.

Ahead and to the right she spotted a large, thick-boled oak. Shifting direction, she headed toward it.

Susan was maybe ten paces behind her when Hope reached the oak. She ducked around it, ran another five paces, then jerked to a halt. Spinning around, she raised the bow and pulled the arrow back to her cheek.

And as Susan came around the tree she sent the arrow whistling into the woman’s right arm. The arrowhead punched through the leather of Susan’s jacket and the human flesh beneath it, skittered its way around the unyielding metal beneath the skin, and reemerged through flesh and leather to bury itself solidly in the oak.

Susan gasped, a sharp, eerily inhuman sound as the arrow pinning her to the tree brought her to a sudden halt. She tried to tug her arm free, her face contorting with pain and anger as the movement dragged more of the arrow through her skin. Half turning, she got a grip on the arrow shaft with her left hand.

And gasped again as Hope’s second arrow flashed through her left thigh and pinned her leg to the tree.

A second later Hope was again sprinting through the trees, heading back toward town as fast as she could. The arrows wouldn’t hold Susan for long, and she’d heard enough stories about Terminators—many of them from Susan herself—to know she wasn’t going to take one down with nothing but a quiver of arrows.

But her father was in town, and Barnes, and Blair. They would know what to do.
Please, God
, she thought desperately.
Let them know what to do
.

She was nearly to the edge of town when she heard the first sounds of gunfire.

In a single flick of his eyelids, Jik abruptly saw the awful truth.

The men and women trudging through the forest around him weren’t his friends or his allies. They were his enemies. People who had sworn to destroy him and the Resistance.

People who had lured him out here into the wilderness to kill him.

But that wasn’t going to happen. Not if John Connor had anything to say about it.

Halverson was the closest, striding along beside Jik a few feet away. Casually, Jik angled his own stride in that direction, watching the other out of the corner of his eye. He was within reach when the big man finally seemed to notice Jik’s presence.

“Trouble?” Halverson asked quietly.

Reaching over, Jik wrenched Halverson’s rifle from his hands and slammed the weapon’s shoulder stock into the other’s rib cage.

With a choked gasp, the man folded around himself and collapsed to the ground. Rotating the rifle into firing position at his hip, Jik spun around to face the rest of the traitors marching along behind him and opened fire.

The first four went down without so much as a yelp. Jik was taking down the fifth when the rest finally burst into action, dropping the pieces of broken Terminator they were carrying and either returning fire or scattering madly for cover like ants from a poked anthill.

Jik strode back through the cowering ranks, coolly squeezing off shot after shot until Halverson’s rifle was empty. Dropping it, he picked up two more weapons from men who no longer needed them and kept going. When those were empty, he dropped them and found two more.

The bullets were beginning to fly now as the would-be assassins finally got their own weapons up and set their murderous plan into action. Most of the shots buzzed harmless past Jik’s head and body before one actually found its target, slamming into his chest and sending a jolt of agony through him.

A blow like that would have killed a lesser man. But John Connor was made of stronger stuff. Regaining his balance, he put a round into the offending shooter and continued on his way.

Those who remained had now gone to ground behind trees, rocks, and bushes. Steadily, methodically, he went to each hiding place in turn.

The traitor called Pepper pleaded with him, calling his name over and over as if it was a magic spell that would drain him of his will and purpose. The one called Singer died with a curse on his lips, uselessly calling down the wrath of God. The one called Half-pint simply stared silently at Jik with fear and agony in his eyes.

But Jik knew better than to listen to any of it. He was John Connor, and these were his enemies and the enemies of humanity. They deserved to die.

So he killed them.

By the time he lowered his last rifle a total of seven rounds had found him, each slug adding a new splash of throbbing pain. But none of the blows was powerful enough or accurate enough to kill him.

Dropping his last empty weapon, ignoring the agony burning through his body, he did a quick but careful survey of the bodies scattered across the blood-stained greenery around him. It had been close, but once again he’d managed to cheat death. Skynet’s agents, all of them, were dead.

All except one. He’d only disabled Halverson at the beginning of his preemptive counterattack, knowing that the wounded man could wait until Jik had finished dealing with the others. Time now for that final loose end to be tied off.

He’d paid close attention to the firefight, and had already concluded that all the rifles and pistols scattered across the ground around him were empty. But he still had Williams’s Mossberg M500 slung over his shoulder, and the shotgun had one round left. Giving the dead assassins one final look, he turned and headed back to the front of the line.

To find that Halverson was gone.

So were the bow and quiver that one of the dead men nearby had been carrying.

Jik gave a contemptuous snort as he looked around. Did Halverson seriously think he could take down John Connor with nothing but a bow and a few arrows?

Apparently not. There was no sign anywhere of the injured hunter. Instead of staying to fight, he’d taken advantage of Jik’s preoccupation with the others to run like a rabbit.

Jik snorted again. Let him run, because there really wasn’t anywhere for him to run to. Now that Jik had finished his own defense, he could hear the sounds of fresh gunfire coming from the town itself.

That would be Oxley, also refusing to simply roll over before the Resistance-hating assassins. Jik had no doubt that he would carry the day there, just as Jik had done here in the forest.

In the meantime, some of the townspeople had probably escaped into the trees. They would have to be tracked down and eliminated.

He shook his head. It would be a long and wearisome task, but it had to be done. All of Baker’s Hollow had heard the false accusations Barnes and Williams had brought against him, and those treasonous thoughts could not be permitted to survive. The reputation of John Connor had to stay clear and clean if he was to lead the people of the Resistance to victory over Skynet.

And toward that end Jik would need to leave soon. The Eugene group had been one of those who had defied Command’s order to activate their transmitters during the climax of Skynet’s grand scheme to destroy its enemies. As a result, they’d been one of the few Resistance groups to have survived. They deserved recognition for that.