Nguyen had tried to take his men away from a clear and present threat. Instead, he’d led them into the center of a trap.
And as far as Kyle could tell, none of the Terminators had even bothered to use the massive guns strapped to their right arms.
Then, as Kyle stared at the carnage, sickened yet somehow unable to turn away, one of the two machines standing over Vuong’s body stirred and turned its head. Its glowing eyes seemed to lock onto Kyle.
And with a sudden surge of energy, it turned and headed toward him.
“Come on,” Kyle muttered, grabbing Star’s hand and pulling her back into the alley. He pushed her through the gap in the brick wall, then squeezed through himself, and again got a grip on her hand as he took the lead. If they could get back to the next street over and find some building they could disappear into before the Terminator caught up with them, they might still have a chance.
But the alley’s footing was as treacherous going in this direction as it had been going in the other, and Kyle was forced to slow down as he balanced their need for haste with their equally urgent need for safety. A broken leg or twisted ankle now would mean quick and certain death.
Kyle could feel the sweat gathering around his neck as he picked his way along the alley, not daring to turn around, wondering whether he would even hear the sound of the Terminator’s gun as the killing rounds tore into his back.
But that line of thought led only to panic. Pushing it away, he concentrated on finding the best possible route for him and Star. They would make it, he told himself firmly. Luck favored the prepared, Orozco had always told him, and they were prepared. They would make it.
They were halfway through when their luck ran out.
The crash of breaking brick exploded from behind them. The Terminator had reached the wall and was battering its way through, sending bricks flying with each blow from its free left hand. Kyle spun round to see that the top of the wall was already gone, and even as he tried to get his own feet moving again the rest of the wall collapsed. Kicking its way through the rubble, the Terminator strode toward them.
And with that, it was all over.
Kyle froze, gripping Star’s hand, staring helplessly as the killing machine bore down on them.
Its glowing red eyes burned into them from its expressionless face, its rubbery skin and coverall-type clothing torn and scorched where Vuong’s bullets had shredded them. Beneath the dangling tatters, Kyle could see the Terminator’s gleaming metal skeleton. Gripped in its right hand, the multi-barreled gun looked as big as a cannon.
And then, abruptly, a completely unexpected question popped into Kyle’s mind. Why didn’t the Terminator open fire?
They hadn’t used their weapons against Nguyen and Vuong, either. Instead, they’d simply bludgeoned the traders to death with their bare metal hands.
And in a burst of desperation-induced inspiration, Kyle suddenly got it.
Orozco had said Skynet was planning an attack against the neighborhood. But he’d also said that the big computer probably wouldn’t launch that attack until nightfall.
It didn’t want anyone escaping before then, which was why it had set out all these Terminators as sentries. But it also didn’t want to panic the inhabitants into a premature stampede, which might create enough confusion to allow some of the intended victims to escape.
Random gunfire, even at the levels Nguyen and his men had been putting out, was a common enough occurrence, and would probably be dismissed by anyone who heard it as simple gang activity. But a Terminator’s multi-barreled gun would have a very distinctive and recognizable sound, and opening fire with one might well start the panic Skynet wanted to avoid.
Which meant that the Terminator striding toward them would probably hold off using its gun until and unless it calculated that its latest victims were on the verge of getting away. The trick would be to keep it thinking it was in control, right up to the moment when it suddenly wasn’t.
All Kyle had to do now was find a way to do that.
He glanced around the alley, then turned back to the Terminator. Bracing himself, he reached into his bag and pulled out the lighter and another bomb. If the machine decided these bombs were a threat and that it needed to open fire…
But it didn’t, not even when Kyle touched the lighter’s flame to the fuse. Having already watched one of the bombs go off, the Terminator had apparently concluded that the weapon didn’t have enough yield to stop it.
It was probably still thinking that as Kyle ran the fuse down to two seconds and then lobbed it beneath the rusting pickup truck the machine was passing. The bomb exploded, flipping the pickup up onto one side and straight on top of the Terminator, slamming it to the ground with a horrendous crash.
Slamming it squarely on top of the forest of rebar protruding through the concrete.
Kyle didn’t know how much damage being shoved into all those metal spikes would do to the Terminator. But for the moment, all he cared about was that the killing machine was temporarily immobilized. Shoving Star out of the way behind one of the angled slabs of pavement, he pulled out two more bombs and lit their fuses. He ran over to the pickup, already starting to shake as the trapped Terminator tried to free itself, and shoved the two bombs between the twisted stalks of rebar directly beneath the Terminator’s torso and hips.
The Terminator’s arm snapped out, the metal hand trying to grab Kyle’s wrist. Kyle managed to jerk back out of the way in time, then turned and sprinted for the pavement slab where he’d left Star.
He ducked around behind it, wrapping his arms around the little girl, and squeezed his eyes shut.
The bombs went off together, the blasts much louder this time. Kyle waited until the sound had faded, then peeked cautiously around the slab.
The pickup had been blown up against the alley’s side and was half leaning, half sagging against the wall. Still pressed into the rebar where the truck had been was the Terminator.
The machine was a mess. Nearly all of the rubber skin directly over the bombs had been disintegrated, exposing the scorched and blackened metal body beneath it. On the Terminator’s face and legs, which had been farther from the blasts, some of the skin remained, smoldering with an acrid smoke.
But its lack of skin was the least of the machine’s problems. The bomb that Kyle had wedged beneath its hips had shattered the joints there, severing the legs from the rest of the body. The arms were in nearly as bad a shape, with the left completely disconnected from the torso and the right just barely hanging on by a couple of cables. The Terminator’s neck had managed to survive the blast, but the back of the head showed a deep dent, probably sustained during the pickup’s initial impact.
There was a hesitant touch on Kyle’s arm, and he turned to see Star staring wide-eyed at the wreckage.
Is it dead? she signed.
Kyle took a deep breath and looked back at the Terminator.
“I think—”
Without warning, the machine’s metal skull turned toward Kyle, its red eyes glowing balefully up at him.
Kyle jerked backward. The Terminator’s right arm twitched, and Kyle tore his gaze from the blazing eyes to look at it.
Slowly, moving in starts and stops, the arm was creeping back toward the shoulder.
Kyle felt his eyes widen. How in the world—?
There was a sudden gasp from beside him, and he jerked again as Star pounced forward to grab the Terminator’s detached left arm. She lifted it up, staggering and grunting with the load.