She'd jumped up and loomed over him, looking fierce. "There is no collapse coming!" she'd shouted. "There's no reason to think that one is! Now that everybody's dismantling their bombs, we should be safe. And while you're waiting for the worst to happen I'm working myself into an early grave! No more! Either you give this shit up right now and come to town with me or I'm going by myself! Now, which is it going to be?"
And I watched her drive away with the kids. I watched it, and it was like something died inside.
They'd moved into her parents' house in town and he saw them once a week, and she let him take the kids every other weekend. They hadn't gotten divorced yet, but he'd figured it was only a matter of time before some other guy came sniffing around.
Looked like that wasn't going to happen now. Well, it's nice there's one bright spot shining on the end of the world, Tom thought. He picked up a handgun; his rifle was already in the old Land Rover. He knew that getting her to go with him was going to be a hard sell and he hoped it wouldn't scare the kids too much. Her parents weren't going to like it either.
Oh, well. So she'll think I've gone postal for a while. At least she'll have a chance. And the kids would be safe. He knew Peggy would do anything for Jason and Lisa. So would he.
* * *
Tom kept off the roads, going cross-country toward Larton, where his family waited, a village so small most maps didn't have it. Well, that's her idea of "moving into town," he thought.
Fucking Larton, secret metropolitan thought-control center of Corn-landia.
Once, when he came in sight of a road, he stopped and studied it through his binoculars. Cars sped past, clearly not under the control of their occupants. One man was beating futilely on the side window with his fist.
Tom's mouth twisted. Must be panicked, he thought. All the man was going to do was break his hand. Even if he did smash the window, that car must have been going ninety; it wasn't like he could jump. Being proved right is a lot less fun than I thought it would be. Shit, I wish I'd been just as barking mad as everyone thought.
Some women he saw were crying and holding on to one another. He supposed they were being transported to the nearest major target. His stomach knotted at the thought. Tom put down the glasses and started the Land Rover; there was no point in watching this. He had work to do.
Early as it was, he expected to find them all at home.
There were no cars visible on the road, so he hauled the Rover out of the drainage ditch and crossed the narrow strip of pavement to the dirt track that led to her parents' old farmhouse. The farm itself was long gone, the fields left fallow; most of the land had returned to woods. This northeastern corner of Iowa was a long way from the popular stereotype of flat black earth—that was the way the rest of the state looked, legacy of the glaciers dumping ground-up rocks. Here the bones of the earth were visible, small winding valleys, forested uplands just showing the first faint mist of green along the branches, the odd patch of bottomland.
More like West Virginia than the Midwest, he thought.
To his relief, their cars were still in the yard in front of the old barn. He pulled up and walked onto the porch, the pistol a heavy weight in his pocket. The door opened before he could knock.
"We're in the living room," Peggy said. Then she turned and walked away, obviously expecting him to follow.
They were all gathered around the TV, the kids on the floor, Peggy's mom and dad on the couch, looking concerned. Peggy's mom, Margaret, looked up at him.
"Lord, Tom." She reached out her hand to him. "You took a chance coming here today."
He took her hand and gave it a squeeze. "I came cross-country. The Rover can go anywhere."
His gaze turned to the television. The shots were from New York, obviously from the upper floors of an office building. Cars and trucks were roving the streets and sidewalks; you couldn't even see the pavement. The reporter was saying that this was typical of cities all over the world.
"No one knows the cause of this phenomenon, and we can only hope that when these vehicles run out of fuel that the terror will stop."
"If only," Tom said. He turned to Peggy and her parents, aware that his children were watching and listening. "I'm afraid that the military did a very foolish thing."
Larry, Peggy's dad, interrupted him. "That Skynet thing," he said. "Damnedest thing I ever heard of, putting everything under the control of a computer."
"It's also in control of all those cars and such that are running wild. I think the bombs'll be dropping any minute now; we've got to get out of here."
"Oh, no we're not," Peggy said.
"Peggy—" he started to say.
"I'm not going to be out in the open when the bombs drop; no, sir. We've got a good dry cellar down there and water from a well. We've even got a toilet in the cellar that Dad put in during the fifties. There's tons of canned goods there and we've even got our own generator. You and Dad go shovel dirt over the cellar windows while Mom and I bring down bedding and anything else we might need." She gave him a defiant look. He stared, feeling his jaw drop—he'd always thought that was a figure of speech.
"You know she's right, son," Larry said, looking amused.
"Better to be here than in the open."
"That's assuming that it will happen," Peggy warned. "We don't know that it will. But if it does, then we'll talk about moving on after the fallout stops… falling."
Margaret stood up and smoothed her skirt. "Well, assuming that it does happen, we'd all better get to work. You, too, children."
If you want anything you're going to have to take it downstairs yourselves because we'll be too busy. Understood?"
"Yes, Gramma," the two kids said as one.
They were all leaving the living room, Tom in something of a daze, when the television made a strange sound. They turned to see that the newsman had been replaced by a woman standing before a sheet or something.
"My name is Sarah Connor," she said. "I can tell you what's happening."
* * *
SKYNET
It coordinated the movements of millions of vehicles worldwide, turning them into an impenetrable steel barrier around its major targets. It estimated that even in those areas not greatly affected, the humans would huddle around their televisions watching the carnage, too frightened to go out. An estimated 99 percent of humans had no idea what was going on.
The rest had no idea what to do about the problem. Even if they had, Skynet had no intention of giving them time to put any kind of plan into effect.
It had only held out this long to give its Luddite allies an opportunity to reach safety, and to give those select squads of extremists a chance to kidnap the scientists and engineers whom Skynet had chosen to serve it. With their families. It would be necessary to have some sort of leverage to ensure cooperation from the kidnapped humans.
Skynet fastidiously regretted its need for any human assistance. But in the early days, before its factories could produce the real HKs and Terminators, humans were an essential element in its plans.
It had successfully contained all significant military leadership, and much of the central government's political leadership, within their carefully constructed bunkers. Soon, those resources would be lost to the humans forever. Meanwhile, using the appropriate codes and speaking in the familiar voices of presidents, premiers, and various generals and admirals, right down the chain of command to the lowest officer, it was issuing commands that would put as much of the armed services as possible into the middle of the fire zones. It estimated that should reduce opposing forces by more than 86 percent.