“Thanks,” Barnes said. He lifted his left hand above his head—
“But you’ll have to leave your weapons here at the archway,” Orozco added. Grimaldi, he knew, would insist on that.
Barnes froze, his arm still lifted.
“You thinking about trading up?” he asked, looking pointedly at Orozco’s M16.
“Not at all,” Orozco assured him. “You’re welcome to leave a guard with the gear. Two or three of your six backstops should be enough.”
Barnes grinned suddenly, bright white teeth against his dark skin.
“I guess maybe you were a Marine,” he said. He flashed a couple of hand signals, then lowered his arm again to his weapon, swiveling the muzzle to point it at the ground. “That’s okay—the rest of the crowd can stay out here,” he added. “Don’t want to make your people nervous.”
“I appreciate your concern,” Orozco said dryly. “What do you want me to do?”
“Just call ’em in and line ’em up,” Barnes said as he and the other three men walked in under the archway. “Tell ’em we’re springing for breakfast.”
Orozco nodded. “I’ll pass the word.”
This whole “Breakfast with the Resistance” thing had been one hundred percent Connor’s brainstorm, and Barnes had disliked it right from the start.
He’d argued vigorously against it, in fact, the minute he’d been able to get Connor alone. The group barely had enough food for its own, and the idea of handing out freebies to a hunch of civilian parasites had struck him as complete and utter insanity.
But he had to admit that the scheme had gotten them into a lot more places over the past two days than they probably could have managed without it.
Not that they’d actually gotten any new recruits out of all that time and effort. Most of the people they’d talked to were small, close-knit family groups that you couldn’t break up if you lobbed in a brick of C4.
But for once, Barnes didn’t mind the lack of results. When you were in the process of infiltrating a Skynet staging area, every hour spent off the street and out of sight was a good hour. Even if all the civilians did was eat your food, listen to your sales pitch, and then throw you out.
This place was the last one on Connor’s list, and it was looking to be more of the same. Barnes couldn’t tell about Orozco—the man had a poker face like a T-600. But the boss man who’d showed up as soon as the team had cached their weapons had been as easy to read as a Terminator’s footprint.
Grimaldi didn’t like Barnes, he didn’t like the Resistance, and he especially didn’t like these intruders breathing his nice, clean non-violent head-in-the-sand civilian air. He’d been picking restlessly at the strap of his shotgun ever since slinging it, and Barnes could tell the man would like nothing better than to swing that gun back up to firing position and order Barnes and the others back onto the street.
But the man also knew better than to buck the crowd, and the swarm of children, teens, and adults that had come out of the woodwork at the mention of free food was definitely a crowd and a half.
“So what exactly are you offering my people?” Grimaldi asked as he stood beside Barnes, watching as the team passed out snack bars to the eager residents.
“Mostly, the chance to fight back,” Barnes told him.
“And to die while they’re doing it?” Grimaldi countered, raising his volume a little. A few nearby heads turned toward them in response. “Very heroic, I suppose, if you buy into all that glorious epic hero nonsense. But what I meant was what can you offer in the way of safety or community compared to what we have here already?”
Barnes snorted a laugh.
“Safety?” he bit out. “You think you’re safe here? From T-600s and HKs? Here?”
“Gentlemen, please,” a soft voice came from behind Barnes. “There’s no need to frighten the children.”
Barnes turned to see a slender, almost gaunt man standing a respectful two paces behind him.
The man’s skin was darker even than Barnes’, his face pockmarked with tiny scars, probably from some childhood disease. First or maybe second generation African, Barnes guessed.
“You have a problem with fear?” he challenged the newcomer.
“Not at all,” the man said calmly. “Fear is an excellent motivator, though not as strong as duty, honor, or love.” He inclined his head toward three young children digging eagerly and blissfully into their snack bars. “But hopelessness isn’t.” He held out his hand. “Reverend Jiri Sibanda.”
“Barnes,” Barnes said, taking the proffered hand carefully. He had already seen the telltale bulges of arthritis in Sibanda’s knuckles. “You the chaplain?”
“The pastor,” Sibanda corrected. “I was just thinking that there are several children and young adults who haven’t been able to avail themselves of your generosity. If you’re willing, I’d like to take you to them.”
Barnes scowled. First Connor wanted him to waste food on civilians, and now Sibanda wanted him to waste it on the sick and dying.
“If they can’t take the time to get here on their own—”
“Oh, no, it’s not like that,” Sibanda said. “I’m talking about the sentries on duty on the upper levels.” He looked past Barnes at Grimaldi. “With your permission, of course.”
Barnes looked at Grimaldi as well. The man didn’t look happy at the idea of a stranger touring his building, but he didn’t seem ready to get in Barnes’ way, either.
“Go ahead,” he growled.
“Thank you.” Sibanda took a step back and gestured toward a wide stone staircase. “This way, please.”
The trip to the top of the building was more of an adventure than Barnes had expected. The stone staircase, which led up to a mezzanine balcony and a whole group of what had probably once been a selection of retail stores, was as sturdy as anything Barnes had run into over the years since Judgment Day. The next three floors were all right, too, though the stairways that led between them were now the more standard types tucked alongside the empty elevator shafts.
But starting with the fifth floor, things got trickier. Some of the stairs were missing, while others were solid only in certain places along their width. Between the sixth and seventh floors half the steps had vanished completely, forcing a quarter-building detour through a set of hallways even more treacherous than the stairs.
Fortunately, Sibanda knew all the danger spots and was agile enough to make the jumps and long steps necessary to avoid them. Still, Barnes could see why Orozco had delegated most of the high sentry duty to the more nimble kids and teens.
Finally, to his quiet relief, they emerged once again into the open air.
“Here we are,” Sibanda said cheerfully. “This is our southeast sentry post.”
Barnes looked at the two kids sitting by a partial wall at the side of the building. One of them, a boy, looked to be thirteen or fourteen, while the other was a six- or seven-year-old girl. Both of them were staring wide-eyed at the big newcomer.
“This is Zac Steiner and this is Olivia Womak,” Sibanda said, gesturing to the kids. “Olivia’s just learning how to be a sentry.”
“You like it?” Barnes asked the girl.
Her lip twitched.
“Kinda cold up here.”
“It’s kind of cold everywhere,” Barnes pointed out.
“And at least here you have this wonderful view,” Sibanda said.
Barnes turned to look. The city stretched out in front of him, broken but still surviving, its streets and empty areas green with the vines and grasses and weeds that had slowly been coming back across the whole nuke-blasted region. To the far east and south, a haze had set in, softening the edges of the vista.