And as the machine once again staggered back, Williams’s slug blasted at point-blank range into its gun.
Terminators were made of incredibly strong, incredibly hard alloy. The G11s, on the other hand, were not only not as strong, but also had a couple of critical weak points. The gun’s receiver was one such weakness, a spot where a heavy rifle or shotgun slug could jam the action and possibly ignite the chambered round. The magazine with the exposed explosive of its caseless rounds was another.
And if you were really, really lucky, those two weaknesses intersected. Williams’s round slammed into the gun—
And suddenly the entire magazine went up in a sputtering, multiple flash as the close-packed ammo blew up, each round triggering the one next to it. The T-700 staggered back as the exploding rounds lit up its torso.
“Look out—here it comes!” someone shouted.
Barnes looked away from the sputtering fireworks display. The northern T-700, the one that the earlier voice had ordered everyone to ignore, had reached the ford and started across the river. Cursing, Barnes swung his rifle around toward it.
“Don’t shoot!” the same voice called again. “It’s not after us. Don’t shoot!”
Barnes frowned. Ridiculous. The thing wading through the whitewater toward them was a Terminator. Terminators were always after humans. That was what they did. That was what they were.
But the machine’s gun hand was still at its side, its head and eyes angled to the north instead of toward the small group of humans standing against it. From all appearances, it really did look like it was ignoring them.
“Don’t shoot!” the voice called again.
Barnes swore again, shifting his grip on his rifle. Appearances or not, he didn’t trust the damn machine farther than he could spit at it. He would hold onto his ammo for now, but the instant the T-700 stopped pretending and launched its attack he would make damn sure he was ready to blow its head off.
He was still crouching in the grass and dead leaves, waiting for that moment, when the Terminator finished crossing the river, turned north, and headed off again along the riverbank.
Barnes watched its back as it strode stolidly along, an eerie sense of unreality creeping across his skin, until it disappeared among the trees.
A movement caught the corner of his eye, and he looked across the river to see the other T-700 stride past the ford and continue north on the opposite bank. Its gun, he noted, was lying in a tangle of twisted metal on the ground behind it. Its right hand, which had taken the brunt of the multiple explosions, was in impressively bad shape, too.
The Terminator disappeared into the trees and bushes. Slowly, Barnes got to his feet, his 542 still pointed at the spot where the machine had vanished.
“What the hell?” he muttered under his breath.
“Agreed,” Preston said as he came up beside Barnes, sounding as disbelieving as Barnes felt. “I thought Terminators killed everyone they met.”
“That’s because you don’t understand Terminators.”
Barnes turned around. Shouting and speaking voices were sometimes very different, but he knew instantly that the man emerging cautiously from behind a tree was the one who’d been directing their fire. Or rather, their lack of fire.
“Who are you?” he demanded.
“Remy Lajard,” the man replied, eyeing Barnes warily. “The question is, who are you?”
“His name’s Barnes,” Preston said. “The woman over there is Blair. They say they’re with the Resistance. What exactly is it I don’t understand about Terminators?”
“The fact that most of them are programmed for specific jobs,” Lajard said. His face and clothes were as rough and rustic as everyone else’s, but something about his tone reminded Barnes of a couple of his more annoying teachers back in pre-Judgment Day school. “It was clear that these two—these three, actually, counting the one Barnes destroyed—have a more important assignment than shooting back at people who are attacking them.”
“Maybe it’s clear now,” another man put in. This one seemed even scruffier than the rest of the group, as if looking like a mountain hermit was a badge of pride for him. “It sure as hell wasn’t clear when we first started shooting.”
“And as I tried to tell you at the time, Halverson, it wasn’t coming for us,” Lajard said. “It was clearly just trying to get across the river.”
“Clear to whom?” Williams asked as she came up to the rest of the group.
“Clear to anyone who was paying attention,” Lajard said, starting to sound annoyed. “You saw it yourself in that second T-700. Its gun hand was down, and it was looking at the riverbank, not us, as it crossed. It was obviously evaluating footing and route.”
“So what happened with the other one?” Barnes asked, jerking his head toward the spot where Williams had blown away the T-700’s gun. “Didn’t it get the message? It sure as hell was shooting at us.”
“It was just giving the other one cover fire,” Lajard retorted. “After you destroyed the first one, it needed to draw your attention long enough for its companion to get across.” He snorted. “You really think it would have missed everyone if it had actually been trying to kill us? You may not have seen what a G11’s caseless ammo can do—”
“Yeah, we’ve seen it plenty,” Barnes cut him off. “Fine, so it missed everyone. Why?”
“I just told you—”
“I think he means that if it was going to shoot to distract us anyway, why not shoot to kill?” Williams put in.
“And while you’re at it, why were you so hot on us not destroying them before they got away?” Barnes added.
Lajard took a deep breath.
“For the first,” he ground out, “I already said they’re obviously on some important mission, and Skynet is smart enough not to simply waste ammunition. As for the second, see part two of my answer to question one.”
“Oh, I see,” Williams said, an edge to her voice. “You just didn’t want us wasting ammo. Even though they were right there, in the open, where we could get them.”
“You shoot every bear you run across, whether it’s attacking you or not?” Lajard countered. “You’ll probably never even see those particular Terminators again.”
“Or we might,” Barnes said.
Lajard rolled his eyes. “If that happens, and if they shoot at you, you have my permission to blow them to scrap,” he said condescendingly. “Happy now?”
Barnes looked at Williams, caught the sour twist of her lip. Unfortunately, the man had a point. Several points, actually.
“So what kind of special mission could they be on?”
Lajard shook his head. “Haven’t a clue,” he conceded. “I don’t even know what a group of Terminators would want out here in the middle of nowhere.”
“Actually, Oxley and I were talking about that last night,” Preston said. “We were wondering if they might be after someone.”
“You mean someone like them?” Lajard asked, pointing at Barnes.
Barnes tightened his grip on his rifle. But Preston shook his head.
“Seems unlikely,” he said. “At least one of the T-700s was already in position by the ford last night, long before Barnes and Blair showed up.” He frowned suddenly at Barnes. “Unless there’s some reason Skynet might have known you were coming?”
“Not really,” Barnes said, throwing a quick warning glance at Williams. His original plan, once the Terminators had been dealt with, had been to ask Preston if he knew about any underground cables passing through or near the town.