He sat up on the cot, wiggling his toes a couple of times inside his boots to get his circulation going, listening closely to the distant cracks. So far all the gunfire seemed to be of the single-shot variety instead of coming in machinegun bursts. That implied that the townspeople were doing most of the shooting, which in turn implied that the machines were low on ammo and had to be careful how they spent it.
It could also mean that the town’s opposition was so weak that the Terminators weren’t even bothering to shoot back. That they were simply killing the people with their bare hands.
Swearing under his breath, Jik squeezed himself through the door. There was no way he could get to the ford in time to help. But maybe there was something he could do from right here.
The Terminators were trying to find him. It was time they succeeded.
The distant gunfire was still going on as he slipped around the final tree and came into sight of the bridge. He’d wondered if the T-700 he’d seen there earlier might have been called to the ford, but Skynet apparently hadn’t seen any need for reinforcements down there. The Terminator was still standing its silent guard, right where Jik had left it.
And then, as Jik hesitated, wondering if this was really the best plan he could come up with, the distant sounds from the ford changed as a new weapon joined in the battle.
Only this one wasn’t any single-shot hunting rifle. It was the terrifying, lethal stutter of a T-600 minigun.
And Jik no longer had a choice. If the Terminators were bringing that kind of firepower to bear, the people standing against them had literally only minutes left to live. Their only chance was for Jik to give the machines a better, more important target.
The secret of man’s being, the old quote ran through his mind, is not only to live but to have something to live for.
Gripping his Smith & Wesson in both hands, he stepped into the T-700’s view.
“Hey!” he shouted. “Over here!”
The machine turned its glowing red eyes toward him.
“Yes, here,” Jik called. “Here I am. Take a good look.”
He raised his gun.
“And get terminated.”
Aiming between the machine’s eyes, he squeezed the trigger.
* * *
They had just passed through the town, which as far as Barnes could tell consisted entirely of a bunch of ramshackle houses and a couple of larger buildings, when the sound of gunfire erupted from somewhere dead ahead.
Their leader, Hope’s father, was off in an instant, breaking into a sprint with his rifle held high in front of him. Grunting, swearing under his breath, Barnes followed. His legs were already feeling leaden from all the weight he was carrying, and the soft, draggy ground beneath him wasn’t making things any easier. But he’d told Preston he could keep up and he was damned if he would fall behind now.
Three minutes later, they burst through one final barrier of low-hanging branches onto the scene of battle.
Barnes had seen Terminators picking their way through city rubble, striding across empty fields, even climbing up the outsides of shattered walls. But up to now he’d never seen one standing shin-deep in the middle of a narrow river, plumes of whitewater churning around its legs, trying to push forward against the current and the relentless impact of heavy rifle rounds.
Heavy, but not heavy enough. The T-700’s approach was being slowed by the gunfire, but it wasn’t taking much damage. There were some dents in its torso and skull, and its gun arm had been dislocated at the shoulder, but that was about it.
Well, Barnes could do something about that. Braking to a halt, he slid his right foot behind him for stability and dropped the muzzle of his minigun into firing position. Lining up the weapon on the Terminator’s torso, he squeezed the trigger.
The gun thundered to life, pouring out its stream of destruction. Barnes leaned into the recoil, fighting to keep the hail of lead centered on its target.
He probably wasn’t as accurate with the minigun as an actual T-600 would have been. But at this range he was accurate enough. The T-700 staggered back, its arms and legs snapping free of its torso and flying into the churning water, the torso itself denting and then shredding and finally disintegrating under the assault.
And as the machine collapsed into a heap in the roiling water Barnes let up on the trigger.
“Anyone else?” he challenged.
He hadn’t expected a response. He got one anyway. On the far side of the river, thirty meters to the north, a pair of bushes were shoved violently apart to reveal a second T-700. It strode to the riverbank and then turned to its right and started downstream toward the ford.
“Look out—there’s another one!” someone shouted.
Barnes glanced down at the minigun’s ammo belt. There were only about thirty rounds remaining, about half a second at full auto. Best to save those until the machine was closer. He dropped into a crouch and lowered the big gun to the ground.
And as he did so, a burst of gunfire from his left burned through the air above him.
He twisted his head to look in that direction, swinging his shoulder-slung SIG 542 into firing position. A third T-700 had appeared from the trees, this one fifty meters south, also moving along the riverbank toward the ford.
But unlike the one coming down from the north, this Terminator was ready for battle. Its G11 submachinegun was pointed and ready, its metal skull swinging back and forth as its glowing eyes tracked the human defenders scrambling madly for cover.
Sinking a little deeper into his crouch, Barnes swiveled as far around as he could at hips and waist and fired off a three-round burst from the 542. At this range the shots did little but stagger the Terminator back, but it was enough to give the rest of the men time to get to cover.
“Never mind the one to the north,” someone shouted over the renewed gunfire. “The south one. Focus your fire on the south one.”
As if to underline the urgency of the order, the southernmost of the two T-700s fired again, this burst digging gouges into the side of a wide tree two of the riflemen were huddled behind. Barnes sent another burst bouncing off the Terminator’s torso, then checked the T-700 coming from the north. Its gun hand was still hanging at its side as it strode toward the ford, with no indication that it was preparing to open fire.
That would change soon enough, Barnes knew. But for the moment, whoever had called out that order had the situation properly nailed. The second Terminator was the one doing all the shooting, so that was the one they needed to deal with.
From Barnes’s left came a familiar thunderclap as Williams opened fire with her Desert Eagle.
“I need to get closer,” she shouted to Barnes as her shot staggered the Terminator back. “Cover me?”
Barnes gave a curt nod.
“Go.”
He flicked his rifle’s selector to single-shot as Williams ducked around behind Preston and his men and sprinted in a broken-field charge for the river. Deliberately, methodically, he pumped slug after slug into the T-700, spacing his shots so as to conserve ammo while still keeping the Terminator off balance and unable to get a clear shoot at the woman running toward it. A few of the other men, Preston among them, caught onto the plan and added their fire to Barnes’s, their shots alternating with his.
Ten seconds later, Williams reached the river, her Desert Eagle now holstered and the Mossberg shotgun unslung and clutched in front of her. She was just closing the weapon’s action, which told Barnes that she’d exchanged the shotgun round that had already been in place for one of the solid slugs from her ammo pack. The machine turned its G11 toward her, its burst going over her head as she threw herself into a feet-first baserunner slide that carried her to the very edge of the riverbank. The Terminator fired again, this burst also going wide as Barnes and Preston simultaneously hammered it.