But did he dare risk the movement required to climb down the tree? And once he was down, what about the coyotes and wolves he’d heard prowling around earlier?
The H-K was getting closer. Abruptly, Jik made up his mind. The leaf canopy was no defense if the H-K was hunting humans tonight, and wolves he would at least have a fighting chance against. Better to go with the log.
He was adjusting his grip on the branches around him, preparing to swing out of his perch, when a new sound came to him across the breeze. Like the H-K’s engines, this one was instantly recognizable: the heavy, steady cadence of large metallic feet.
The H-K wasn’t alone. It had brought some Terminators with it.
Jik froze, the bitter irony of it drying his throat. All the way from Los Angeles... and now, with Baker’s Hollow practically in sight, the Terminators had finally caught up with him.
And pinned between earth and sky, with nowhere to go and no time to get there anyway, Jik literally had no other option but to trust in luck to get him through the next few minutes. Tucking his arms against his chest, he pressed up against the tree bole and tried to look as much like a bear as he could.
The footsteps swishing through the leaves and thudding against the ground grew louder, and a minute later he caught a glimpse of glowing red eyes through the vegetation to the south, heading northeastward more or less parallel to Jik’s own route. A glint of starlight on dark metal showed that it was a T-700, not one of the rubber-skinned T-600s. A few meters behind it was a second T-700, which was followed by a third and then a fourth. All of them walking in the same path, Jik noted, probably to disguise their numbers should anyone happen across their trail.
He tensed, waiting for the moment when they spotted him and turned to the kill. But they didn’t. They continued on their stolid, mechanical way, their footsteps fading away into the night. As the normal forest sounds began to reassert themselves, Jik heard the distant hum of the H-K’s turbofans also fade away.
The Terminators had been hunting him, all right. But his luck had held.
Or had it?
He looked around again, this time with new eyes. His estimate when he’d first settled down for the night had been that he was about ten miles from Slate River, with just another half a mile until he reached Baker’s Hollow itself. Slate River was only about fifteen feet wide, but it was relatively deep and as fast and rock-filled as any other mountain stream. Back when he’d spent summers here, he’d been warned repeatedly not to go anywhere near it.
But warnings like that never stopped ten-year-old boys. He and one of the local kids, Danny Preston, had routinely crossed the river at the spot everyone else used, a somewhat wider section where the slightly slower current had built up a mass of stones that made the water shallow enough to safely wade through. That ford was the spot Jik was currently heading for, and up until now he’d assumed he was more or less on course.
Now, though, he wasn’t so sure. If Skynet was still trying to nail him—and the presence of T-700s in the middle of the forest was pretty good evidence that it was—its best strategy at this point would be to try to pin him against the river. If one of the machines could reach and hold the ford ahead of him, the others could then sweep in from the west, north, and south, beating the bushes until they ran him down. Simple, straightforward, and an almost guaranteed success.
He smiled tightly into the darkness. Or maybe not so guaranteed... because what Skynet didn’t know was that forty years ago Jik and Danny had built themselves a private bridge about a mile north of the ford. If it was still there, he might be able to get across the river and to the relative safety of Baker’s Hollow before Skynet even knew the fish had slipped the net.
His smile turned into a grimace. If the bridge was still there, and that was a mighty big if. He and Danny had built the thing pretty solidly, but forty years was a long time to expect something made of rope and wooden planks to survive mountain winters. Even if Danny still lived in Baker’s Hollow, he must surely have found better things to do with his time than maintain an old childhood plaything.
But with the next nearest practical crossing over twenty miles downstream, Jik had no choice but to try it.
Luck hadn’t failed him yet. He could only hope it would stay with him a little while longer.
Slipping off his branch, he slid down the tree as quietly as he could. There was a cabin of sorts, he remembered, just a little ways this side of the bridge. No more than a shack, really, but if it was still there it might provide him with a place where he would at least be out of direct sight.
And being out of direct sight suddenly seemed like a good thing to strive for.
For a moment he stood at the foot of the tree, straining his ears. But the first line of Terminators had long since passed, and if there was another line coming up behind them they weren’t close enough to be audible.
It was now or never.
Taking a deep breath, he headed off into the night.
The figure standing among the trees on the far side of the river was so silent and still that most people would never notice it in the dim starlight. Even if someone did, he would most likely dismiss it as a trick of the light on some misshapen tree bole.
But Daniel Preston wasn’t most people. He’d lived in Baker’s Hollow all his life, and he knew every tree and bush for ten miles around. The thing standing across the river was no trick of tired or nervous eyes.
He was pretty sure he knew what it was. But it never hurt to get a second opinion.
“Nate?” he murmured, just loudly enough to be heard over the sound of the rushing water.
Beside him, Dr. Nathan Oxley lowered his binoculars.
“It’s a Terminator, all right,” he murmured back grimly. “T-700, probably. It’s not bulky enough to be a T-500, and it seems to be reflecting more starlight than a T-600 would.”
“Alive, I assume?”
“You mean active?” Oxley shrugged. “Probably. It’s facing the other way, so I can’t see its eyes. But it would be rather too much to hope for that a T-700 would get all the way out here in the forest and then just happen to break down half a mile from town.”
Preston grunted. “Probably also too much to hope that the river’s going to stop it.”
“Well, it’s not going to rust, if that’s what you’re thinking.” Oxley shook his head. “Beats me why you never put a bridge there.”
“Before Judgment Day everything over there was private property,” Preston said, eyeing the Terminator. “The owner didn’t want us walking on his land and absolutely wouldn’t allow anything like a bridge. Afterward, we kind of liked the idea of having a barrier between us and any predators that might want to wander this direction. So the water won’t hurt it at all?”
“Not at all,” Oxley confirmed. “There’s a ferrous component to their construction—that’s why they can pull their limbs back together if they get blown apart. But—”
“Wait a second,” Preston interrupted. “They can put themselves back together?”
“Of course.” Oxley waved a hand. “Sorry. I forget sometimes that you never worked with the damn things staring over your shoulder. Yeah, they can pull themselves back together. They can also stand up to anything but big-caliber, high-power bullets, and keep going pretty near forever.”
Preston squeezed his left hand into a fist. Terrific.