At least the Terminators hadn’t come charging straight for them. Maybe they really were on some kind of break.
Kyle hadn’t been in this part of the neighborhood for several months, but the place hadn’t changed very much.
“There’s the alley,” he told Vuong, pointing out the opening just past the midpoint of the block.
“The footing’s kind of tricky, but we should be able to get through.”
“I don’t know,” Vuong said doubtfully. “We’ll be coming out awfully close. If those Terminators spot us, we’ll be sitting ducks. You sure we can’t go a little farther south?”
Kyle shook his head. “Not unless we go all the way around the Death’s-Head Gang’s territory.
They’re the ones with all the cars up on their sides blocking the street.”
“Yes, we saw those on our way in,” Vuong said grimly. “We can’t go around them—if we do, we won’t be in position to back up Nguyen’s group if they need us. I guess it’s your alley, or nothing.”
“It’ll work,” Kyle assured him. “Besides, if we have to backtrack, the alley’s a good place to do it from. There’s a gap in a brick wall at the far end you need to get through, and I don’t think one of those Terminators could.”
“You don’t, huh?” Vuong said. “Ever seen a Terminator in action?”
“Not really,” Kyle admitted.
Vuong grunted. “Let’s hope we can keep it that way.”
The alley was as treacherous as Kyle remembered it, filled with angled slabs of pavement, a pair of rusting pickup trucks, and a small forest of exposed rebar. The three of them picked their way through, squeezed through the gap in the final brick wall, and reached the far end. Crouching down beside a bush growing tenaciously through a wide crack in the sidewalk, feeling terribly exposed now that they were back on an open street, Kyle looked carefully around it.
Half a block north, he could see the partial wall where the two Terminators had been loitering.
The Terminators themselves were nowhere to be seen.
“Anything?” Vuong murmured from behind him.
“I can’t see them,” Kyle murmured back. “They could be there, but they could have moved.”
Carefully, Vuong lifted his head above the bush for a look of his own.
“Yeah,” he said. “I guess for the moment we stay put.”
“Stay put here?” Kyle asked, looking around. Except for the bush, they had no cover at all.
“We have to be able to see when the others get to their jump-off point,” Vuong explained patiently. “Once they’re there, we’ll figure out our next move.”
The minutes ticked slowly by. The cloud cover was starting to thicken, bringing a new chill to the air, and Kyle could feel Star shivering at his side. Slipping off his jacket from beneath his bag’s shoulder strap, he wrapped the garment around her. She flashed him a quick smile of thanks, then went back to watching the street.
More minutes went by. Kyle was starting to wonder just how far north Nguyen had decided to go when Vuong touched his shoulder.
“There they are,” he murmured.
Kyle leaned a little farther around the bush. Three blocks north, he could see Nguyen and the others creeping as furtively across the street as the uneven footing and the presence of a dozen burros allowed.
“I don’t see anything,” Vuong said. “Maybe the machines left while we were climbing over all that rebar.”
“And went where?” Kyle asked, looking around.
“As long as they’re not here, who cares?” Vuong said. “Looks like our alley continues on past the street, through that gap in the vines. That’s where we’re going.”
“Okay.” Taking a deep breath, Kyle gathered his feet beneath him for a quick sprint.
And found himself suddenly off-balance as Star grabbed his arm and yanked backward.
“Hey—-easy,” he protested, glancing at her.
What he saw made him take a second, longer look. The girl’s face had gone rigid, her eyes wide and terrified. Something had spooked her, but good.
“What is it?” Kyle asked. A movement past the bush caught the corner of his eye, and he looked up.
To see the two Terminators emerge from a broken doorway half a block south of Nguyen’s group and head straight toward them.
“Vuong!” he bit out.
“Stay here,” Vuong ordered. Drawing his pistol, he dashed around the bush and headed toward the figures that were closing in on his friends.
Again, Kyle gathered his feet beneath him. If he could get Star across the street and into the relative safety of the alley while the Terminators were focusing on the traders….
But again, Star’s grip brought him up short.
“Star, we have to go,” Kyle insisted, trying to pry her fingers off his arm.
She shook her head violently, wrapping her other hand around his arm for emphasis, and nodded sharply in Vuong’s direction. Wishing the girl could just talk to him, Kyle looked up again.
Vuong was still running, his arms pumping at his sides. The two Terminators were still marching stolidly toward Nguyen’s group, apparently oblivious to this new threat coming up behind them. Vuong slowed a little, lifting his gun into a two-handed marksman’s grip and leveling the weapon at the Terminators’ backs.
And then, to Kyle’s stunned horror, as Vuong passed the half-broken wall, the two Terminators they’d seen earlier stepped into view.
Vuong spotted them the same time Kyle did. Twisting half around, he opened fire.
The Terminators jerked with the multiple impacts as the rounds slammed into their metal bodies.
But they didn’t fall or even falter, but just kept moving.
Vuong must have known in that moment that he was a dead man. But that didn’t mean he was just going to lay down and give up. He veered away from the approaching death machines, emptying his pistol into them.
Kyle held his breath. But aside from more jerking the Terminators seemed completely unaffected by the attack. Shaking the clip from his gun, Vuong slammed in a fresh one and emptied it as well. Again, the Terminators shrugged off the hail of lead.
Vuong was reloading with a third clip when a second, more distant crackle of gunfire erupted.
Nguyen and his men had formed a line behind their burros and were making their own stand against the Terminators bearing down on them. But their attack was no more effective than Vuong’s.
And then, suddenly, Kyle’s brain unfroze and he remembered his bombs.
He reached into the bag, snatching out the lighter and one of the cold metal cylinders.
“Stay down,” he muttered to Star as he popped the lighter’s top and thumbed the flame to life.
He ignited the bomb’s fuse, gauged the distance, then rose to his feet and hurled the bomb as hard as he could toward the Terminators closing on Vuong.
But not hard enough. The pipe bounced off the pavement and skittered to a halt a good twenty feet back from the two Terminators. Even over the noise of the gunfire filling the air, the machines apparently heard the sound as the bomb hit the ground, and one of them turned to look.
And then the bomb exploded, and Kyle ducked back down as the shockwave blew through the bush’s branches and leaves. The sound of the blast faded away into silence.
Complete silence.
Kyle looked at Star, his throat tightening. Then, steeling himself, he lifted his head again for another look.
To find that it was already over.
Kyle stared, unable to believe his eyes. Vuong was down, lying unmoving on the pavement, his shirt bright with blood. The two Terminators stood over him, gazing down at his body like hunters assessing their prey.
Away to the north, the other pair of Terminators were wading through Nguyen’s group, metal arms slamming and punching and throwing the men around like rags. Kyle wondered why the traders hadn’t at least tried to run, only then spotting the two additional Terminators striding toward the doomed men from further north, blocking any chance of escape in that direction.