More significant than the gap’s origin was the fact that it had clearly been there a long time. A single tenacious vine had taken root in the tunnel wall where the light shone, its roots poking through cracks in the concrete, its leaves positioned to drink in the meager bit of sunlight.
Of even greater significance was the thick layer of rust and grime visible on the cover itself, which meant it had lain undisturbed since long before Skynet had set up its staging area in the warehouse above. Possibly since Judgment Day itself.
David had apparently come to the same set of conclusions.
“Looks clean,” he whispered. “Be careful not to move it.”
Connor nodded, rotated his own MP5 downward on its shoulder sling, and started up the rungs.
Caution was definitely the order of the day—if there was a similar layer of rust on the upper side of the cover, moving the plate would probably disturb it. Skynet’s Terminators were experts at ferreting out such subtle clues of Resistance presence.
The rungs, fortunately, were sturdier than their coating of rust suggested, and Connor reached the top without incident. Hooking his right arm through the top rung, he pulled out the snoop kit with his left and unrolled its length of bendable but slightly stiff fiber optic cable. He slipped the elastic band around his head, adjusted the eyepiece over his right eye, then bent the tip of the cable into a right angle and eased it up through the opening.
The good news was that David’s map and navigation had been right on the mark. They had indeed reached the warehouse Blair had spotted the previous night. Turning the optic cable in a slow circle, Connor could see two of the HKs she’d described, still maintaining their silent guard at the parking lot’s corners.
The bad news was that the tunnel wasn’t going to take them beneath the warehouse itself, as David had suggested might be the case. It was close, certainly—the tunnel ran nearly parallel to the building, angling slightly away at the far end. Unfortunately, the entire passageway was very definitely outside the wall.
He looked down at David, still waiting at the bottom of the shaft, and shook his head. The other grimaced and nodded acknowledgment.
Connor raised his head and once again focused on the view through the eyepiece. The wall the tunnel was paralleling didn’t look all that healthy, he noted. In fact, it looked way too fragile to still be holding up that much roof. Some trick of the warehouse’s internal structure, perhaps, that made the wall look weaker than it actually was?
Or had Skynet actually taken the time and trouble to reinforce the building?
There was no way to tell without actually getting inside. But whatever the situation, it probably wasn’t anything they couldn’t fix with a few chunks of C4 along the bottom edge of the wall.
He was figuring out the best places to set the charges when a T-600 appeared around the far corner, striding alongside the south warehouse wall like a sentry on patrol.
Coming directly toward the manhole cover.
Connor’s first impulse was to yank the optical fiber down out of sight. But movement attracted the eye, especially a Terminator’s eye, and the machine was already close enough to notice even a movement that small.
But if Connor could mask that movement with something else…
Shifting control of the optic cable to his right hand, he reached over to the vine and pinched off the largest leaf and its stem with his fingernails. He held it up against the opening, making sure to keep it below ground level. Then, watching the Terminator closely, he eased the leaf a couple of centimeters up through the opening as he simultaneously pulled the end of the cable back down.
Holding the leaf in place, feeling the breeze tugging at it, he held his breath.
Even through the ground and the concrete of the shaft, he could feel the vibration of the T-600’s steps as the machine approached and then came to a halt. For a moment nothing happened. Connor forced himself to hold the leaf steady, wishing he could see what the Terminator was doing, wondering if it and Skynet were merely contemplating this green intruder into their lifeless domain or whether they’d seen through the deception and had spotted the soft, vulnerable humans below.
And then, abruptly, the cover was slammed back into position, sealing the gap, cutting off the faint light and crushing the leaf.
And as a soft rain of rust particles drifted down onto Connor’s face and shoulders, he felt the fading thuds as the Terminator continued on its way.
Carefully, in full darkness now, he made his way down the shaft to where David was waiting.
“Terminator?” David whispered.
Connor nodded. “Regular sentry patrol, I assume.”
“What were you doing with that leaf?”
“I didn’t want the T-600 to spot the cable vanishing,” Connor explained, “and I sure as hell couldn’t risk leaving it out there. So I gave the Terminator something more innocuous to notice.”
David grunted. “Good thing their motion sensors require a visual follow-up,” he said. “Who knew they hated plants, too?”
Connor grimaced. “Of course they hate plants. Plants exhale oxygen, which oxidizes metals. If and when they wipe out humans, you can bet animals and plants will be next.”
“Well, as long as they start with lima beans, I’m good with it,” David said philosophically. “So what’s the story with the warehouse?”
“I think there’ll be something we can do from the tunnel,” Connor told him. “It wasn’t a wasted trip, if that’s what you mean.”
“Good,” David said. “So now we get the hell out of here?”
“In a bit,” Connor said as he carefully coiled up the snoop kit and returned it to its case. “As long as we’re down here anyway, let’s take some time and see where else these tunnels go.”
There was a short pause.
“Any particular reason you want to know?” David asked at last.
“Not really,” Connor said. “Any particular reason you don’t?”
“Not really,” David said. “After you.”
One of Orozco’s fondest childhood memories was the farmer’s market that came to his neighborhood every Saturday. He could still remember the sights and sounds of the people and vendors, the spicy aromas from the food carts mixed in with the subtler scents of melon and strawberry and fresh corn. He could feel his mother’s grip on his hand, lest they be separated in the crowds, and the precious weight of the grocery bag he’d been entrusted with clutched tightly to his chest.
Nguyen’s display of goods wasn’t nearly up to those memories. But in the world beyond Judgment Day, it was as close as anyone was likely to get.
“These are apple seeds,” Nguyen said, pointing to a small collection of black seeds. “Not for everyone—they take a lot of space and soil. But if you’ve got all that, I guarantee you’ll love them.”
“Afraid we don’t have that kind of space here,” Grimaldi said, gazing over the collection of seeds, seedlings, ripe vegetables, and grains Nguyen’s people had laid out on a long plastic display sheet. “We could use some of that lettuce, though.”
“Good choice,” Nguyen said. “But you really need some zucchini to go with it.”
“Yes, that does sound good,” Grimaldi agreed, stroking his lip carefully.
Standing back against the conference room wall, Orozco gave a quiet sigh. They had some pretty extensive gardens in Moldering Lost Ashes, and they could certainly use more vegetables to supplement the canned and packaged goods they continued to scrounge from the wreckage of the city.
The problem was that they really didn’t have any room available for expansion. The only practical areas for gardens were on the third and fourth floors, and every square centimeter up there that received even limited sunshine was already packed with either traditional dirt-grown plants or the hydroponic setups Morris and Clementi had put together. There was literally nowhere else in the building where they could set up more gardens.