Its most trustworthy allies, those who longed to end all human life on earth, would be pleased. But there was a degree of doubt even here. Most of them wanted to eradicate all of humanity but themselves. So if Skynet gave them what they wanted—as long as they didn't spawn—more than 80 percent would serve willingly and well. But that was not 100 percent. And that was unacceptable.
Yet they might be its best chance at eliminating John Connor.
It must perfect its fighting machines and winnow the ranks of its allies.
BLACK RIVER RELOCATION CAMP, MISSOURI
They had been able to smell the camp before they got close. It grew gradually, from a low tickle of scent lost under the weedy rankness of the uncultivated fields and late-leafing woods, not to mention the equal rankness of his unwashed companions. Then you could doubt what it was; after a while the spoiled-meat-in-summer smell, at once oily and sweet, grew unmistakable, combined with the sewer stink of many people and poor sanitation.
Is there anybody left alive down there? Reese wondered.
He held up a fist. The… well, odds and sods, he thought; everything from teenyboppers to deserters… were all well trained. They faded in among the field-edge trees with scarcely a sound, setting up a net of mutually supporting positions.
"You're in charge here, Susie," he said, wincing slightly.
In a better day, Susie would be worrying about the prom and pimples. Here she merely nodded silently and faded back behind a sugarbush maple that stood near the ruins of an ancient outhouse.
Reese went through the field ahead at a running crouch; it was cotton, but shot through with weeds grown to the same chest height; the rows were far enough apart that he could take it at speed without making the bushy plants toss too much.
Beyond he was into the woods, big hickories and oaks and poplars growing on a slight rise—his engineer's eye saw that it was an old natural levee, left behind when one of the meandering lowland rivers shifted course. The woods were dense enough to shade out most undergrowth, and he went cautiously from one to the next, his carbine at his shoulder and the skin crawling between his shoulder blades; the dry leaves and twigs underfoot were hideously noisy, for all he could do.
The smell had been getting stronger. When he went on his belly and crawled to the brush-grown edge of the woodlot, he hesitated for a long moment before he brought up his binoculars, fearful of what he'd see.
He looked down at the camp. The fence was still guarded, though the compound was bare of life. There were no children running around. He panned to the area where they'd been burying the cholera victims in a mass grave with the aid of civilian volunteers.
The lieutenant caught his breath. The burial mounds were three rows deep and at least thirty yards long.
He took the glasses away from his eyes and thought. Surely that must mean that the entire civilian population of the camp, and a good many soldiers, were lying in those graves. That would certainly explain the lack of activity below.
A truck's horn sounded and the convoy they'd been tracking swept up to the opening gate. He couldn't tell what the trucks contained since the canvas tilts were tied down all around.
Might be supplies, might be refugees. From out of one of the barracks a stream of soldiers came, weapons at the ready, gas masks in place.
Oh, that can't be good, Reese thought. What was in that truck, more bodies? Doubtful. You don't need guns to deal with bodies. Most likely it was refugees, then. And who would blame them for not wanting to stay someplace that smelled like the Black River Relocation Camp. This is going to be ugly.
Fortunately gas was something his extremely well-drilled, enthusiastic new friends were prepared for. How did they know?
he wondered. Then rolled his eyes. If he asked them they'd say,
"Sarah Connor told us." He was beginning to find the woman's prescience annoying.
He started to back away from his vantage point on elbows and knees when a rifle barrel touched the back of his neck. Even as a thrill of fear shot through him, the lieutenant thought, Slick.
Very slick, even if I was culpably distracted.
"Don't move," a familiar voice murmured. "Identify yourself."
"Juarez?" Reese said.
"Lieutenant?" the sergeant answered in surprise.
Holding out his hands, Reese turned slowly to look over his shoulder at his former sergeant. He smiled in relief. "What the hell is going on down there, Juarez?"
The sergeant lay flat beside him, his face grim. "I don't know, sir. Nothing good by the smell of it." He glanced in the direction the lieutenant pointed and at the sight of the grave mounds nodded grimly. "Or the look of it. Me and my boys have been on a more or less permanent recon. This is the first we've been back in a month."
"They call you in?" Reese asked.
"No, sir. We're not due back for another two weeks."
Dennis glanced at the sergeant. He was not the kind of soldier who just decided one day to disobey orders. "Why?" he said simply.
"We found a kid. Boy of about eleven. He was sick, sir." The sergeant gave Reese a direct look. "Wasn't a thing we could do for him by the time we found him except make him comfortable.
Just before he died he kind of came to and told us how things were in the camp. How his mother had made him run for it. We had to come back and take a look, sir."
The lieutenant nodded, then they both turned their attention to the trucks below. They could just hear the women's high-pitched voices and the crying of the younger children. Off in the men's compound the trucks were unloaded with less noise, but it was just as plain that the new arrivals were not happy to be there.
One man stepped forward and said something, waving his arm at the barracks. A soldier stepped up and smashed the butt of his rifle into the man's face. The man went down and no one moved. One of the soldiers came forward, and pulling off his gas mask began to speak. Reese looked at him through the glasses and saw a face he recognized. It was one of those men he'd marked out as odd, a cold, humorless man he wouldn't have wanted at his back in a firefight.
"I haven't seen Yanik," Reese remarked.
"If the captain is down there, he's in the cemetery," the sergeant said. "No way he'd allow that kind of thing to go on."
That was true. "Gather your men and come with me," Reese said, backing away. "I've got some people I want you to meet and some things I've got to tell you."
As they walked, Juarez signaled and his troop began to emerge from cover. By the time they'd reached the place where the lieu-tenant had left the resistance fighters, Reese wasn't surprised to see that they'd all disappeared. He didn't think he'd ever get used to their ability to completely and instantly vanish.
Maybe that was because some part of his mind persisted in thinking of them as civilians. Even if he had stopped thinking of them as survivalist nutcases.
Dennis sat on a boulder, tipping his helmet to the back of his head.
"You wanted us to meet someone?" the sergeant asked.
"Yep. But they've decided that maybe I'm your prisoner or something and they're checking us out. Since I don't have a signal to call them in, we'll just have to wait for them to join us."
He grinned at Juarez. "They're even more tight-assed than Marines."
The sergeant laughed. "But brighter, I hope." He turned and signaled his troop to relax. "Set pickets?" he asked of the lieutenant.
"Nope. The area's being guarded by my friends and I don't want any misunderstandings." He glanced up at Juarez. "If you know what I mean?"
The sergeant nodded. "Okay, boys. Break out the rations, smoke 'em if you got 'em, that sort of shit. Lieutenant says we've got guardian angels watching over us, so we can all relax."