“He’s right,” Preston seconded. “Let me show you to our rooms while Hope and I get something together for you to eat.”
“My place is more comfortable,” Halverson said. “And Ginny’s already got food ready.”
“They’ll be fine here,” Preston said, locking eyes with Halverson. “It won’t take long.”
“They’re coming to my place,” Halverson said in the voice he always used when he’d made up his mind about something. He gestured to Barnes. “Come on—it’s a few houses down.”
“Mayor?” Blair asked.
Hope looked at her father, noting the familiar tension in his jaw. But he merely nodded.
“It’s all right,” he said. “Go ahead.”
“Fine,” Barnes said, eyeing Preston closely as he gestured to Blair. “We’ll grab our stuff and be right with you.”
They headed out, Halverson striding along in the lead. With the meeting clearly over, the rest of the crowd began to file out behind them. A minute later, Hope and her father were alone.
“That might not have been a good idea,” Hope said hesitantly.
“You mean letting Halverson push me around in front of everyone?” Preston responded, his voice tight as he crossed to the window and peered out. “That happens all the time.”
“I was thinking Barnes and Blair might rather have stayed here with us,” Hope said.
“They’ll get over it,” Preston said, still gazing out the window. “As for Halverson, for once he did exactly what I was hoping he’d do.”
Hope frowned. “You wanted them to go with him?”
“What I wanted was to be left alone for a couple of hours.” Preston left the window and headed to the corner where he’d propped his rifle. “You remember that bridge I told you about a long time ago, the one that one of the summer kids and I built over the river?”
Hope had to search her memory.
“The one you made out of rope and a bunch of boards you swiped from the Pennering building site?”
“That’s the one,” Preston said, nodding. “I think whoever’s out there has crossed that bridge.”
“How would he know it was there?”
“Only two ways I can think of,” Preston said. “Either he happened on it by accident, or else he’s the one who helped me build it.”
“Whoa,” Hope said, feeling her eyes widen. “You mean some kid who visited here thirty years ago is back? That’s really... unlikely.”
“Unlikely as in the scratch end of zero,” Preston agreed. “I know. And for the record, it was closer to forty years ago. But I can’t think of any other reason why those two T-700s would suddenly decide to head up opposite sides of the riverbank. Whoever they’re hunting must have gotten across the river, and that’s the only other place for miles where that’s possible.”
“That assumes the bridge is still there, of course,” Hope warned. “Rope bridges and mountain winters don’t exactly go together.”
“Which is why I want to go up there and take a look,” Preston said. He checked his rifle’s magazine, then headed for the door.
“What if the Terminators are waiting?” Hope asked, scooping up her bow and quiver and hurrying to catch up.
“They won’t be,” Preston assured her. “The bridge comes off a narrow path at the bottom of a steep defile. Even if the machines know where it is, they’re not going to be able to get down there without dumping themselves into the river. Best they can do is look down on it from above, and even that’s iffy.” He stopped, eyeing her as she came up beside him. “Where exactly do you think you’re going?”
“With you,” she said. “First thing you taught me was that the forest can be dangerous, and that you don’t go out there alone.”
“I meant that you don’t go out there alone,” he countered.
“We should make up a survival pack before we go,” Hope said, ignoring him. “Whoever’s out there may need food or medical care.” She cocked her head. “And if it turns out he needs carrying, we’ll need two of us there anyway.”
“No,” Preston said firmly. “There are Terminators out there.”
“And they can’t get down your path, remember?” Hope said. “Besides, if Lajard is right, they’re not after us, which means we don’t have anything to worry about.”
“And if Barnes is right?”
“Then we’re all doomed anyway,” Hope said calmly, “and it doesn’t matter whether I’m out there with you or back here in town.”
Her father made a face.
“Did I ever tell you that you inherited your mother’s sense of logic?”
“No, but I’ll take that as a compliment,” Hope said.
“You would.” Preston sighed. “Fine. Go pack a food bag. Nothing too heavy—we’ll be going up and down some tricky slopes. Let me go double-check that I have all the ammo we’ve got for this thing.”
He nodded toward her quiver.
“And you’d better bring all the rest of your arrows, too. Just in case.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Ginny Halverson was a small, thin woman with a quiet manner that was in stark contrast to the bluster of her loud and borderline-bullying husband. She accepted Halverson’s sudden imposition of guests without complaint, showed Blair and Barnes to a bedroom, and assured them that a meal would be ready soon.
“We must really look tired,” Blair commented as she looked over the room. Like the couple of rooms she’d seen in Preston’s home, this one was only sparsely furnished, with a large bed piled high with bear skins, a dilapidated chest with two of the drawers missing, and a chunk of log serving as a side table with a large partially burned candle stuck to its top. On the walls beside the room’s single window were more bear skins, probably there as insulation. Clearly, Halverson liked to hunt.
“What was that?” Barnes asked as he lowered his minigun to the floor with a muffled thud.
“I said we must look tired,” Blair repeated. “Everyone here seems to think we need to go rest somewhere.”
“Or else they just don’t want us going anywhere,” Barnes growled as he slid his rifles off his shoulders and propped them against the wall beside the minigun. “Not until they’ve figured out what to do with us.”
Blair felt her stomach tighten. She’d been thinking pretty much the same thing.
“So you think they’re up to something, too?”
“Someone’s sure as hell up to something,” Barnes said darkly. “I don’t care what that idiot Lajard says. Mission or no mission, if Terminators have ammo to spend, they spend it. On people”
“Mmm,” Blair said noncommittally. In general, he was probably right.
On the other hand, she’d seen plenty of H-Ks veer off for strategic or tactical reasons even when they still had something to shoot with. “Maybe Lajard’s right about Skynet being concerned about its ammo supply,” she suggested. “There can’t be a lot of places out here where they can reload.”
“Yeah, and that’s another thing,” Barnes said. He paused by the bed long enough to test its softness with his hands, then continued on to the window. “Where the hell did those machines come from, anyway?”
“Good question,” Blair agreed. “You think it’s possible they’re a search party?”
“Three whole months after they got lost?”
“Point,” Blair admitted. “Maybe they’re remnants from the lab explosion, then. Some perimeter guards or scouts that survived Connor’s attack.”
“Then where were they going?” Barnes countered. “You saw them—they weren’t just wandering around waiting for instructions. They were heading somewhere.”