In fact, Orozco hoped that some of them had made it out of the building alive, and would find a way to slip through Skynet’s cordon and escape. Sending a few survivors back to the world would at least give his death some meaning.
A death that wouldn’t be much longer in coming. His left arm was wet with blood, and he knew he’d taken a round somewhere up there. He couldn’t feel any pain, thanks to the adrenaline pumping through his system. But all the adrenaline in the world couldn’t plug leaking skin. Even if he managed to avoid taking any more damage, he would eventually collapse from loss of blood.
But not yet. Not yet. Not as long as there was hope for any of his people.
A pair of glowing red eyes loomed up through the smoke in front of him. Orozco squeezed his M16’s trigger, the impact of the round sending the head bouncing backward.
Clenching his teeth, firing again and again, Orozco continued his slow, steady, lonely retreat.
The exit from the sagging building led through a maze of back alleys and ruins. Kyle and Star moved through them, staying in shadow as much as they could, both of them alert to the probability that there were other Terminators somewhere in the area.
But though the night was filled with the thunder of gunfire, and the broken clouds above reflected an eerie glow from the multiple fires going on across the city, Kyle didn’t spot a single one of the red-eyed killing machines.
His plan had been to head due west, then turn north when they got to the street that passed by the building’s main entrance. They were nearly to the service alley that ran along the rear of the Ashes building when a much louder hammering of nearby gunfire suddenly rolled across him.
Reflexively, he pulled Star down beside him into the partial shelter of a ragged waist-high wall, wincing at the sheer thundering power of the blasts. He’d heard similar barrages on and off throughout the long night, but they’d always been coming from somewhere in the distance, and up in the sky. To hear it up close like this was brain-rattlingly terrifying.
But it was over quickly. Wishing he knew whether that was a good thing or a bad thing, he started to stand up—
And dropped back down as a jet aircraft shot straight out of the alley in front of him, followed by a blast of hot air that knocked both him and Star flat on their backs. He caught a glimpse of an angry red-yellow glow blazing from the inside of the plane as it climbed sharply back into the sky.
The roar faded as the plane headed somewhere else.
“You okay?” Kyle asked as he took Star’s arm and got the two of them back on their feet.
She gave him a quick nod, her eyes tense, her hand gripping his tightly.
“Yeah, I know,” Kyle agreed, peering ahead down the street. It looked clear. “Okay, here’s the plan. We cross the alley and go one more block, then turn north and head back to the Ashes. Right?
Let’s go.”
Somewhat to Kyle’s surprise, they made it to the next street without incident. Stepping up to the corner of a small makeshift shanty that someone had long ago built out of scrap wood and brick, and then abandoned, he looked carefully around it.
His worst fears had envisioned a dozen Terminators marching on the building. But again to his surprise, he found that the street stretching out in front of him was completely deserted.
Mostly deserted, anyway. Four or five blocks to the north he could make out a couple of figures in the middle of the street, figures too distant for him to tell whether they were human or machine.
But otherwise the path looked clear.
“Okay, here we go,” he whispered to Star. Taking her hand, he started to ease around the corner.
As the shanty wall above his head exploded in a shattering hail of gunfire.
He took the rest of the corner in a dive, pulling Star with him as the stream of lead raked down the wall of the shanty from somewhere behind them, raining bits of wood and brick across his back and legs.
Kyle winced, squinting against the dust as the rounds began tracking back and forth, methodically perforating the walls of the makeshift structure. He risked a quick look, and through the disintegrating walls spotted two T-600s marching stolidly toward them, miniguns blazing.
Their only chance now was an all-or-nothing run for the archway. Getting a fresh grip on Star’s hand, Kyle prepared himself.
And then, to his stunned surprise, a head and torso rose into view through one of the upper windows of the overturned bus half a block away.
It was another Terminator. Only this one was between them and the Ashes.
Kyle froze, the roar of the miniguns in his ears drowning out the painful thudding of his heart.
So that was it. He and Star were caught in the open between two groups of killing machines.
They were dead.
Unbidden, tears welled up in his eyes. Not tears of fear or anger, but of frustration and shame.
He’d failed. He’d failed himself, and he’d failed Orozco.
Worst of all, he’d failed Star.
He frowned, blinking away the tears as something strange caught his attention. The Terminator in the bus wasn’t looking at him and Star. In fact, it was looking in almost exactly the opposite direction.
He studied the machine, his flash of shame fading as he tried to figure out what was happening.
Orozco had told him all the Terminators were linked together through Skynet, so that what one Terminator saw or heard could be passed on to any of the others.
The Terminators shooting up the shanty beside him knew that he and Star were here. So how could the machine in the bus not know it?
And then the Terminator in the bus opened fire, its minigun raking the side of the old corner store half a block further north.
And abruptly, Kyle understood. The Terminator knew he and Star were there, all right. It just didn’t care. All it cared about right now was trying to kill the people he could see cowering inside the store.
And when it had accomplished that, then it might have the time to deal with these two annoying kids who had refused to simply lie down and die.
Kyle hissed out a breath, a surge of anger driving out the last remnants of his momentary panic.
He didn’t know who the people in the store were, whether they were a fire team Orozco had sent or just a group of civilian refugees running from Skynet’s slaughter.
But who they were didn’t matter.
What mattered was that Kyle still had two bombs left, and a good throwing arm.
“You think we were annoying before?” he muttered as he reached into his shoulder bag. “Let me show you what annoying really is.”
CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN
Connor had moved to the north-facing window and was assisting Bishop and Tony in their efforts to keep the group of T-600s there at bay when he heard the explosion from behind him.
“You get it?” he shouted over his shoulder to Joey.
“It’s got,” Joey called back, sounding bewildered. “But not by me.”
“What?” Connor demanded, turning around and looking through the other window.
The bus was a shambles, all right. Its edges had been splayed outward by a seriously healthy blast, its empty windows and other openings flickering with light from the small fires the explosion had ignited inside it.
And Joey was, indeed, still clutching the squad’s last grenade.
Connor had no idea what had happened, but this wasn’t the time to try to figure it out. From the look of the bus, the explosion had been strong enough to rattle the Terminators’ electronics and temporarily stun them. But unless it had been powerful enough to dismember them, they would soon be up and running again.