Juarez stepped up and took the phone. "Albertson," he barked out.
"Let's move," Dennis said. "We can talk while we walk."
The man who knew the path to the regional high school led the way, through fields that would be swamp grass later in the year, and along old streamside dikes. No one looked at the bodies of their fellow workers as they left.
Dennis felt the world turning as he walked. God, I wish I could believe this was a hoax, he thought. As he listened for the sound of a charging car, the name Sarah Connor suddenly clicked.
She was a terrorist who liked to blow up computer companies.
She'd been diagnosed insane because she claimed that an evil computer was going to try to kill the human race.
Crazy! he thought. Only it's like they said. A paranoid can have real enemies. Too bad they're everyone's enemies, this time
.
CHAPTER SEVEN
SARAH'S JOURNAL
It was a long two weeks in the shelter as freakishly heavy winds carried the fallout from Russia, Asia, and probably our own West Coast up to Alaska. We listened to the radio stations going off, one by one; then the bombs came, and for a while there was nothing, and we might have been the last alive in a world as empty of humanity as Skynet's soul. We wondered if anyone had heard our broadcast, and if so, had they believed us?
Knowing what was happening around the world was very hard to take. John blames himself, I blame myself, Dieter blames himself; although at least we don't blame one another. The weight of depression on all of us was almost physical. We failed.
Now it's up to us to make it up to humanity for that failure.
ALASKA
Bemused, Sarah watched John teaching the children about self-defense; they were grouped around the base of a big Sitka spruce, a circle of dirty faces and slightly ragged clothes on the resilient pine-needle surface of the ground. The strong spicy scent of the tree's sap came to her on the wind—which was fortunate, because soap and hot water were already scarce.
John had turned out to have an unexpected talent for dealing with children. He was patient, he gave them slack, but he wouldn't let them run roughshod over him. They were learning self-discipline in these classes, and self-reliance. After accepting an exuberant greeting from the munchkins, he sat them down to listen to his lecture.
"Okay," John said. "Now sometimes you're going to find yourself facing a larger or better-armed opponent. What do you do?"
The kids said nothing, glancing at one another to see if anyone else had any ideas.
"Nobody? You run, or you hide, whichever is better. Why is that?"
A little girl held up a skinny arm and John nodded at her. "
'Cause if you don't you'll get hurt."
"That's right. You could get hurt, or worse, killed. Yes, killed."
"But what if you can't get away?" a boy asked.
"I'm going to show you how to break away if someone grabs you. And I'm going to show you a few ways to hurt an attacker so that he, or she, will think twice about trying to get you. But everything I'm teaching you is so that you can run away. That's why we finish every lesson with a run. You want to be able to run a long, long time as fast as you can. Okay?"
There was a ragged chorus: Yessir, yes Mr. Connor…
"Okay, now who'd like to help me demonstrate? Sharon and Jamie?"
Everyone laughed and the two chosen came forward reluctantly, their faces red.
Grinning, Sarah turned away. She had a meeting with the parents; four couples, all of them close in age, and like most Alaskans pretty savvy about the basics of surviving in the wild.
Of course none of them had expected being in the wild to become a lifelong thing, and they were starting to panic as they began to suspect that rescue wasn't coming.
The children, bless them, were adapting just fine. It was the parents who were going to be a handful.
While the three of them had been in the fallout shelter they'd discussed how to approach people on the subject of Skynet and its intention to wipe out the human race. Dieter had argued that they'd have to take it slow. "They'll never believe us," he'd insisted. "They'll think the blast unhinged our minds."
Sarah had looked at him. "My heart wants to say, 'Of course they'd believe me,' " she'd said. "But…"
"But as someone who spent a lot of time locked up in the booby hatch, you think he's right," John had put in.
"Tactful."
"No, just true. He's your boyfriend; he has to be tactful. I'm your son, the Great Military Leader, and I can tell it like it is."
These four couples were the first group of people they'd brought together and led to one of their supply caches. They'd also built a large communal dwelling on the site; it was half-underground, with a turf roof. The group had been a bit dubious at first, but accepted the Connors' explanation that the building conserved resources. They seemed to be settling in all right.
And it was snug inside; outside the sky was overcast, with a gray chill that had been around since the bombs fell. Inside the poles and turf had a sort of archaic coziness, lit red by the flicker of the fire in the central hearth.
Sarah joined the circle around the blaze where the adults were nursing cups of coffee. The beverage was so irreplaceable that everyone treated it like a ceremonial occasion when it was brewed up. Cups were held with both hands and no one spoke for the first few mouthfuls. But everyone was beginning to notice that caffeine went further when you didn't get it very often.
Sarah accepted a cup and sipped contemplatively for a while.
"The kids all love your son," one of the women said eventually.
"They live for these lessons."
"I'm not sure it's a good idea, though," one of the men said.
He had a long, sensitive face and glasses; his name was Paul.
"I'm afraid it will encourage them to be violent."
Sarah blinked. Even before Judgment Day, she'd found the assumption that you could keep your children safe from violence by not telling them about it inexplicable. Now it seemed demented.
"After what's happened, things have changed," she said patiently. "Food supplies are going to be running out, and then people are going to go looking for more. Some of those people will be willing to do anything to feed their own children. And some will be criminals who have always felt entitled to take what they want by force. We may find ourselves in a position of having to choose our children over theirs."
"That's horrible!" one of the other women said. Her eyes had a wild look that made Sarah think she was going to crack one of these days. "It's uncivilized!" she went on. "As long as we can share, we should."
"What we have in storage here will get you about halfway through the summer," Sarah explained. "By then the seeds you've planted should be bearing fruit. And there are wild plants that you can harvest as well. But Alaska has always had a short growing season."
She glanced up, and everyone followed suit, even though they were looking at the rough pine trunks of the rafters; it seemed to her that the weather was already colder than it had been.
"This year I expect it will be shorter than usual. So your crops will be smaller. Food is going to become a big issue from now on.
And yes, there will be people who'll steal it whenever they can, even if they have to kill you."
"What makes you think like that?" asked Paul. There was an edge in his voice that indicated unspoken questions about her stability.