Grimly Snog wiped his hand clean on the lower part of the man's pants. Then he grabbed the keys and started to try them on the door. The ice cream truck turned into the parking lot of the strip mall; he could hear the sound of its tires in spite of the loud, tinkly tune. His hands were shaking as he tried key after key.
What's with this guy? Fifty keys?
"Shit!" Snog muttered softly. "Shit, shit, shit!"
The others came and crowded close to him, their eyes wide as they looked anxiously to the end of the row where the ice cream truck slowly approached. Gravel crunched.
Carl snatched the keys from Snog's hand and without hesitation fitted one into the lock. They rushed inside and quietly closed the door behind them.
"How did you know which one to use?" Snog whispered.
Carl held up the key. It bore a label that said store.
Snog looked at Brad and the two of them broke up, laughing hysterically as Carl kept saying, "Shhhh! Shhhh!" He slapped Brad and both he and Snog gasped in shock and stared at him.
Then they heard it. The truck's tires made crunching sounds as it approached.
Carl's lips formed the words, "The body."
The truck sped up and from the sound scraped its length along the side of the building. A soft, wet sound interrupted the screeching of metal against stucco. Then the truck backed up, went forward, backed up, all the while playing its mindlessly merry tune. Snog broke for the front of the store and was sick to his stomach behind the counter. Pale-faced, Brad and Carl followed him, silently crouching down beside him.
"Shit!" Snog swore passionately, half in tears. " Shit!"
Brad patted his shoulder. They sat quietly until the ice cream truck went away. Then they sat for a while longer. Slowly Snog became aware of what he was looking at. Dangling from the ceiling and ranged along the walls was a colorful herd of mountain bikes. Farther into the store there was camping equipment, tents, blankets, cooking supplies, down jackets, the whole magilla.
"Paydirt," he said softly.
The others looked at him and he gestured at the stock before them. It took a minute for his meaning to penetrate their shock, then, slowly, they both smiled.
CHAPTER SIX
JOHN CONNOR'S INVITATION-ONLY WEB SITE
This is it, folks, the nightmare we've all been waiting for. For those of you in more rural areas who may be unaware of what's happening, at least I hope you are, I have some scary news. For the last several months Skynet has been experimenting with some vehicles built in automated plants that it controls. It's been causing accidents all over the world, with, taken all together, a pretty grim death toll. Anyone who has a new vehicle is in danger; anything older than two years is probably fine unless you've upgraded it.
What's happening right now, all over the world, is that these vehicles have gone rogue and are trapping people in cities, the better to kill them when the bombs fall. And those bombs are coming, soon. If you are in a city or town, leave now. Wake and warn your friends and relatives by all means, but run for it.
You don't have much time left. Head for the mountains or the wilderness.
Good luck.
John Connor.
NORTHEASTERN IOWA
Tom Preston sat back in his chair, stunned, as he stared at the screen. The rough plastered-stone walls of the old farmhouse suddenly seemed insubstantial, unreal. He was distantly conscious of the hammer of his heart, and the smell of his own sweat; the coffee in the cup he held in one hand shook like a tide-lashed sea, until he set it down with a clatter.
Peggy, he thought. His estranged wife, and Jason and Lisa, his kids. He had to get them to safety.
And Peggy won't listen to me.
She'd put up with his survivalist doctrine for the first four years of their marriage. No, let's be honest: she ignored it for the first four years of our marriage. She just liked testing herself against the wilderness— she thought the rest of it was a crock.
Deep down, did I? I don't now, that's for sure.
You could lash yourself into a fit of terror over a menace, but you couldn't convince your lower intestine unless you really believed.
He remembered when he carried her over the threshold of the ancient farmhouse: she'd been thrilled. Not once in the first year had she complained about hauling her own water, or chopping wood or the kitchen garden that took up a couple of acres, or the canning that went with it. She'd gloried in it. He'd been so proud of his new bride.
When Jason came along she was a bit nervous about going with a midwife, but everything had gone smoothly and later she'd thanked him for insisting. She gave birth to little Lisa under the same circumstances without a qualm, though having two kids in diapers made her less easygoing about all the water she had to haul. Then, when Jason turned six…
"Home schooling," he'd said. "What else?"
"Not my kid."
That had been the beginning of the end.
Actually, he'd really gotten into the survivalist movement very seriously about that time. Many a weekend he'd gone out, leading groups of like-minded men into the wilderness to train them how to survive. Leaving her alone with the kids. He'd forced her to learn to shoot, even though he could see she hated it. He took her hunting, but no matter what he said he couldn't get her to shoot anything.
"What are you going to do if something happens to me?" he'd asked. "Let the kids go hungry?"
She'd just given him this look. He'd gotten her to teach a class in canning to some of his survivalist friends' wives, thinking it would be a clever way to get some help for the annual canning.
Unfortunately it turned out to be an incredible amount of work.
When everyone had gone home and the mess had been cleaned up, Peggy, with rings of exhaustion around her eyes, had sat him down for "the talk." Some of his buddies had warned him about
"the talk."
"You're on your way out when the wife gets to that point," one of them had said. "I'm not sure there's anything that can be done to save the situation by then."
There had been a world of bitterness in the man's eyes when he'd said it. But Tom was secure, or so he thought, until the night after the canning debacle.
"Tom," Peggy had said, tears running down her cheeks, "I still love you. But living like this is killing me. I can see myself getting older, I'm finding gray in my hair. Tom, I'm only twenty-seven.
Look at me! Look at my hands!"
She'd held them out—they looked like his mother's hands, work-roughened and knobby in the knuckles, stained with beet juice, the fingernails broken off short.
"And I want our children to have friends. I want them to go to school like we did." She'd looked away from him, biting her lip.
"I'm not a trained teacher. I'm so afraid that I'm shortchanging them. And for God's sake, it's not 1862! I want running water and a bathroom and a washing machine! I deserve to live in the twenty-first century just like everybody else, instead of in my own personal third-world country!"
He'd remembered his friend's words and a cold chill ran down his spine. "What do you want to do?" he'd asked her.
"I want us to move into town, get jobs, and live like normal people."
He'd shaken his head. He remembered how numb he'd felt.
"Honey, that lifestyle you're talking about isn't going to last. It's only a matter of time."