It took Kyle and Star only about five minutes to collect their few belongings. They returned to the lobby to find Orozco standing beside Nguyen, talking to him in a low voice. Lying on the ground at his feet was a bulky canvas shoulder bag.
“Ready?” Orozco asked briskly as Kyle and Star came up. “Good. Here’s your gun, Kyle, plus an extra clip.”
“You sure you can spare them?” Kyle asked as he hesitantly took the weapon and clip. If the Terminators were coming, Orozco and the others would need all the guns and ammunition they could get their hands on.
“Don’t argue with your sergeant,” Orozco chided, though his tight smile showed he didn’t really mean it. “Yes, we can spare them. We can spare this, too.” He nudged the bag with his foot.
Kyle stooped over and picked it up. It was heavier than it looked.
“What is it?”
“Six pipe bombs,” Orozco said. “I made them up this morning. And don’t worry—I kept plenty for us, too.”
Kyle swallowed hard. So that was what Orozco had been doing that had given him and Star time to sleep so much.
“Thanks,” he said.
“It’s just a precaution,” Orozco added. “Even if we’re in Skynet’s crosshairs, its attacks nearly always come after nightfall. You should be well out of the area by then. There’s a lighter in there with the bombs, too. But it’s stoked with a gasoline mixture and burns really hot, so be careful with it.”
“I will,” Kyle said, looping the bag’s strap over his shoulder. “I…”
He was still searching for a way to say good-bye when Orozco stepped close and wrapped him and Star in a single, massive bear hug. Kyle gripped the man tightly, his eyes squeezed shut, drinking in the warmth and the deepness of human contact.
For a long moment they held each other that way. Then, gently, Orozco disengaged.
“You’d better get going,” he said, and Kyle could see the tears in his eyes. “Take care of yourselves and each other. May you both live long enough to see a world finally at peace.”
Kyle tried to say something. But his throat and voice weren’t working right, and he had to settle for giving his friend a quick nod instead.
A minute later, he and Star were walking down the street beside Nguyen, wrapped in a silence broken only by the crunching of their footsteps and the snuffling of the burros. Kyle had lost many friends and acquaintances over the years, either through death or simple desertion, to the point where he no longer cried over those losses.
But it was a near thing. It was a really near thing.
Nguyen and his men were very impressed by the gasoline stash, commenting several times on both its layered concealment and the booby-traps set up to protect it. Kyle had expected them to take as much of the gasoline as their burros could carry, and was therefore surprised when they quit after siphoning off only thirty gallons.
Still, pulling even that much of the precious liquid took nearly an hour, and by the time the group emerged again into the open air the faint glow in the clouds that marked the sun’s position was already halfway to the horizon.
“What now?” Kyle asked as they headed east.
“We get out of this neighborhood,” Nguyen said grimly, “and then cover as much distance as we can before we have to turn in for the night.”
Star touched Kyle’s arm. Where will we stay? she signed.
“You have some place in mind for that?” Kyle asked Nguyen.
“There are a couple of possibilities,” the other said. “We have to see first how far we get.”
“What are they like?” Kyle asked. They were passing the spot where he and Orozco had had the confrontation with the new gang yesterday, and he wondered whether they’d actually left like they’d said they would.
Apparently not.
Even as Kyle eyed their ramshackle headquarters the door opened a crack and a single eye peered out. The eye flicked back and forth, taking in the size and armament of the group, and then the door quietly closed again.
“One’s just an empty building,” Nguyen said. He’d noticed the door and the eye too, Kyle saw, and his gaze lingered there another moment before turning away. “The other’s the home of some of our other customers. Much safer, but they’ll charge a hefty fee for putting us up.”
Kyle nodded, looking up over the broken buildings and piles of wreckage to Moldering Lost Ashes. Up there on the eighth floor, he knew, the sentries were watching, and he wondered if they’d spotted him and Star among the crowd of men and animals.
If they had, what were they thinking? Did they think he and Star had deserted them, the way Ellis had?
The group had made it three blocks east of Moldering Lost Ashes when Kyle spotted two figures standing motionlessly in the shadow of a broken wall, just two blocks farther ahead.
“Nguyen?” he murmured.
“I see them,” Nguyen said grimly. “Vuong?”
“Terminators,” Vuong said, squinting toward the figures. “T-600s, probably—haven’t seen a T-400 in ages.”
“Agreed,” Nguyen said. “I wonder what they’re doing. Terminators usually don’t just stand around like that.”
Vuong shrugged. “Maybe they’re on break.”
Someone in the rear of the group snorted.
“Well, whatever they’re up to, we don’t want to know about it,” Nguyen said. “We’ll turn north at the next street and try to get around them.”
Kyle peered at the distant figures. He didn’t know much about Terminators, only the little that Orozco had been able to tell him. He’d never even seen one close up, which Orozco had assured him was the way he wanted to keep it.
“Maybe we should split up,” he said. “Some of us head north, the rest head south.”
“Too risky,” Nguyen said. “If they decide to come after us, we’ll need all our firepower to stop them.”
Kyle stole a look at the gun in Nguyen’s holster. Did they in fact have enough firepower to stop a pair of Terminators? Orozco had always been a little vague on what it took to bring the machines down.
“Then let’s all just go south,” he suggested. “There’s an alley about half a block south off the next street, that would get us across that block without being seen. If they stay where they are by that wall, we should come out on their blind side.”
“Unless they take maybe two steps forward,” Nguyen countered. “No, I think the northern route would be safer.”
“But there’s no way of crossing the street without them seeing us up there,” Kyle persisted. “Not unless we go four or five blocks, and there are a couple of gangs up there we really don’t want to get close to.”
“There’s a big gang to the south, too,” Nguyen said. “There are gangs everywhere.”
“Right, but if we go south and the Terminators don’t take those two steps forward, we can get past without them ever seeing us,” Kyle said. “Star and I are willing to try it.”
“Forget it,” Nguyen said flatly. “I promised Orozco I’d keep you safe.”
Vuong murmured something in another language. Nguyen answered back, and for a few steps the two men talked quietly back and forth.
“I suppose it’s worth a try,” Nguyen said at last reluctantly. “But Vuong will go with you.”
Kyle nodded. “Where do we meet up again?”
“Vuong knows the rendezvous spot,” Nguyen said. “Just watch yourselves, okay?”
The two Terminators still hadn’t moved by the time the group reached the next street and split up. But Kyle could feel their eyes on him as he, Star, and Vuong headed south, and felt a sense of relief when they passed the nearest building and were out of the machines’ sight.