“Okay,” the kid said, his voice neutral.
Barnes grimaced as he headed toward the chopper and the squad spreading out from it, come to continue the clean-up work. That last had been a lie, and he and Reese both knew it. All the food and sleep in the world wouldn’t ease the kid’s pain. Not yet. Only time would soften the loss of his friend Marcus Wright, and his memories of how that hybrid Terminator had risked his life for Reese and his young friend Star, and then had sacrificed himself to save John Connor.
Just as only time would help Barnes’s own memories of his brother. The memories of Caleb’s last encouraging smile as he climbed aboard the chopper with Connor and the others for that ill-fated mission to Skynet’s big desert lab.
But maybe there was a way to help that process along a little.
The main camp was a fifteen-minute chopper ride away. Barnes waited until his team had turned over their heavy weapons to the armorers for inspection and cleaning, then sent them over to the mess tent for a meal.
And once they were settled, he headed to the medical recovery tent to talk to John Connor.
“Barnes,” Connor said in greeting when Barnes was finally allowed through by the door guards and entered the intensive-care recovery room. As usual, Connor’s wife Kate was sitting at his side, a clipboard full of reports and logistics requests propped up on the edge of the bed between them. “How’s the clean-up going?”
“It’s going okay,” Barnes said, wincing a little as he eyed the bewildering collection of tubes and monitor wires sprouting from Connor’s arms and chest. Barnes had seen plenty of people die, most of them violently, but there was something about medical stuff that still made him a little squeamish. Probably the feeling that all patients who looked like this were dying by degrees, the way it had happened to his and Caleb’s own mother.
“Don’t worry, it’s not as bad as it looks,” Kate soothed.
Guiltily, angrily, Barnes wrenched his attention away from the tubes and bottles. He’d sort of gotten used to Connor reading his mind that way, but he hated it when Kate did, too.
“Yeah,” he said. “I have a request.”
Connor nodded. “Go ahead.”
“You told me that Caleb was on the surface when Skynet blew its research lab,” Barnes said. “That means he wasn’t underground with the others.” He braced himself. “I want to go and bury him.”
Kate stirred but didn’t speak. “Are you sure?” Connor asked. “It’s been a couple of weeks, you know.”
“It’s a desert,” Barnes growled. “He’ll still be... You know that thing Kowlowski used to say? That Skynet leaves its fallen lying on the streets?”
“But that we bury ours,” Connor finished, a flicker of something crossing his face. Maybe he was thinking about Marcus Wright, too.
“The clean-up’s going fine,” Barnes said. “It looks like the outer sentry line were the only Terminators that survived the blast, and most of them are pretty smashed. You’ve got more than enough people to clear them out—”
“All right,” Connor said. “You can go.”
Barnes stopped, the other four points he’d been planning to make fading away unsaid. He hadn’t expected talking Connor into this would be that easy.
“You’ll need a pilot,” Connor continued. “I’ll have Blair Williams check out a helicopter for the two of you.”
A knife seemed to twist in Barnes’s gut. Williams?
“Can I have someone else instead?” he asked.
Connor shook his head. “You two have been avoiding each other ever since San Francisco,” he said. “It’s time you cleared the air.”
Barnes clenched his teeth.
“All due respect, this isn’t the right time to do that,” he said.
“Let me put it another way,” Connor said. “You go with Williams, or you don’t go at all.”
If the man hadn’t been hooked up to a hundred tubes and wires, Barnes reflected blackly, he would have considered hitting him. Not that he actually would have hit him, but he would definitely have considered it. As it was, he couldn’t even have that minor satisfaction.
We bury our dead.
There was no point in stalling. Connor had him, and they both knew it.
“Fine,” he bit out. “If she’s willing. Otherwise, I get someone else.”
“She will be,” Connor promised. “I’ll make sure of that. Go eat and then get some sleep. You can leave in the morning.”
Barnes nodded, not trusting himself to say anything else, and stomped out of the room.
He should have known it wouldn’t be that easy.
CHAPTER THREE
The eight-point buck was nibbling on the ends of some tree branches when it suddenly froze.
Hope Preston felt her cheek twitch. So the animal had heard them. She’d been afraid it would. Hope herself was more than capable of silent stalking, but this was the first time out for Hope’s new hunting partner Susan Valentine, and the older woman simply wasn’t experienced at moving through the twigs and dead leaves that matted the forest floor beneath their feet.
But it was too late now. The deer had been alerted to their presence. One more suspicious sound or movement and it would be out of here, escaping from the clearing into the deeply forested mountain slopes behind it.
Keeping her head motionless, Hope looked at Susan out the corner of her eye. There was an intent, grimly earnest expression on the woman’s face, and Hope had no doubt she was going to try her hardest.
But willpower alone wasn’t enough to send an arrow to its target. Susan’s bow was less than rock-steady in her left hand, and the taut bowstring was wavering visibly as she held the fletching close beside her right cheek. Already she’d held position longer than should have been necessary to aim, and there was no indication even now that she was preparing to release.
It wasn’t hard to guess why. That wasn’t a simple softwood target out there, like the ones Hope had spent all those hours training Susan to shoot at. It was a living, feeling creature, something that would gush blood, go limp, and die. Some people simply couldn’t handle that.
Hope, born and bred out here in the mountains, had a different take on the ethics of the situation. That buck out there was dinner. For the whole town.
And she was not going to let it get away.
Her own arrow was already nocked into her bowstring. Measuring the distance with her eyes, keeping her arrow pointed at the ground in front of her, she drew back the string as far as she could without being obvious about it. If Susan was going to stay in Baker’s Hollow, she was going to have to learn how to do this. Hope could take the shot, and she would if she had to. But she would rather give Susan every reasonable chance to do it herself.
Maybe Susan sensed that. Maybe she’d come to the same conclusion about this being her make-or-break moment. A small whimper escaped her lips, and with an odd sort of abruptness she released her arrow. It flashed between the small branches of their blind and buried itself in the animal’s side.
Too far back. The buck jerked with the impact, but instead of falling dead it twisted around and leaped for the pathway that led out of the clearing.
It was crouching into its second leap when Hope’s arrow drove into its side, dropping it with a thud onto the ground.
Susan’s bow arm sagged. “Sorry,” she said.
“It’s okay,” Hope replied, lowering her own bow and pulling out her whistle. “Watch your ears,” she warned, and gave her personal signaclass="underline" one long, four short. “Come on—let’s make sure it’s dead.” She stepped out from behind the bushes and headed across the clearing. With only a little hesitation, Susan followed.