CHAPTER FIFTEEN
DRIFTLESS AREA, NORTHEASTERN IOWA
Now this, Tom Preston thought, is no goddamned fun at all.
He bent, leaning on the hoe in his right hand, and pulled up the weed whose roots he'd loosened with the tool. Despite the unusually cold weather, the corn was coming up just fine; the problem was that weeds were doing just fine as well. This particular patch wasn't very large; a scraggly strip along a little brook that ran down the mostly wooded valley between two steep hills—this part of the state looked more like Appalachia than the prairies.
It was only about a quarter of an acre, and carefully irregular so that it wouldn't show much from orbit, even on days without the current heavy gray cloud and occasional spatters of rain. The brook was running high not far off to his left, purling over abed of brown stones.'t
He tossed the uprooted thistle onto the mulch—leaves, twigs, grass, reeds—that covered the ground between the knee-high plants and moved on to the next weed, hacking at the base of it with a force that hurt his gloved hands. The turned earth had a cool, yeasty smell, oddly like bread. Despite the cool temperature, he was sweating, and his back hurt. Could it have been only last year that farming meant sitting in lordly comfort in an air-conditioned tractor cab, spraying herbicides?
He who does not work does not eat, he told himself.
There were a dozen other people working in the same field, and many more fields like it scattered through the nearby hills—
growing corn, potatoes, beets, all sorts of vegetables. They had come along more slowly than usual, but only by a couple of weeks. And they were a bit runty, but very welcome anyway.
The hunting had been very good, with abundant deer and hare. They'd had to shoot a bear a few weeks ago. It had risen cranky from hibernation and had made clear its antipathy toward its new neighbors; besides, they needed its cave for storage.
Tom Preston had liked the flavor of the meat, but he'd been in the minority. Most of their small community had found it too gamy and way too tough. There were still a lot of scavenged canned goods available for the picky, though, and his big gallon jars of multivitamins would keep deficiency diseases at bay for years, if need be.
The community had grown over the past year to a village of more than a hundred people. Most of whom refused to understand why they should avoid being visible from orbit.
Things had been so peaceful lately that Tom himself had begun to have doubts.
So when some of the newcomers suggested a party to celebrate their survival, he was willing to go along, to a point.
"Fireworks?" Tom said. "You've got to be kidding!"
"Why? What's wrong with fireworks? It's been wet enough that they shouldn't pose a fire hazard," one of the newcomers, Sam Varela, said.
"Because it's a gigantic, 'We Are Here' sign," Tom said. "I, for one, don't want to end up in those relocation camps you people fled."
The newcomers glared at him resentfully. "We have no reason to think they're still doing that," Sam said through his teeth.
"We have less reason to think they're not," Tom snapped back.
"They didn't set up those camps to leave them empty."
"Going was voluntary," a woman pointed out.
"So why are you here?" Preston challenged. "Why here? Why not stay in your homes?"
"We're getting into some pretty deep issues here," his wife, Peggy, said with a frown at her husband. They'd discussed the newcomers in the privacy of their bedroom and his suspicion toward them worried her. "When what we came here to discuss was a picnic."
"Maybe we should get into it," the woman said. "I'm tired of being treated like an interloper when all I want to do is get back to normal."
"Things aren't going to go back to normal," Tom said. Didn't you notice a few little changes? Like the thermonuclear war?
"Things are going to get a lot worse for a long time before we get anywhere close to normal. But one thing that will at least keep us safe is to avoid attracting attention."
"Exactly whose attention are you afraid of?" Sam gave a light laugh and spread his hands. "The army? I'm telling you, they're too busy to go chasing down anyone who doesn't want their help.
Who else is there?" He shrugged.
Tom closed his eyes. Sometimes he wondered himself. John Connor had warned that there would be more problems with machines, but with no fuel or electricity, he honestly couldn't see how that could be. Humans, on the other hand…
"I'm worried about gangs," Tom said. "I'm afraid that some group of lawless men will come along and take everything we've put together and kill our families." He stood up and started to pace. "These aren't civilized times," he continued. "We're not protected by multiple law enforcement organizations anymore.
For the foreseeable future, our fate is in our own hands."
"Oh," the woman said. "When you put it that way it makes perfect sense."
"No fireworks," said Sam.
Tom sat down and forced a smile, but this didn't feel like victory. Rather it felt like number four hundred of a million more arguments.
I almost wish we'd be attacked so these people would realize what they're facing. Almost.
* * *
"Honey," Peggy said to him later in bed, "we're seventy-eight adults here and we're well armed. It's unlikely that we'll be faced by any gang more powerful than we are ourselves. Maybe we could loosen up a bit. Don't you think?"
Tom reached out and drew her into his arms. "I was so afraid the day the bombs came down that I'd never see you and the kids again," he said into her sweet-smelling hair. Even now, with no shampoo available, he liked the way her hair smelled. God, but he loved her.
Peggy hugged him tight. "I love you, too," she whispered. "I always did."
"Tell you what," he said. "Let's be extra careful this year, until we've got our feet under us. Then we can talk about loosening up." He pulled back and looked down into her face, barely visible in the moonlight coming through the cabin window. Tom shook his head. "But I'm pretty certain that we're gonna have to build a stockade."
She laughed and buried her head in. his shoulder, tickling him so that he laughed, too.
"It's not funny," he said. "I'm serious."
"You are never gonna sell them on that idea," she said. "I can just see their faces." And she laughed again.
He smiled at her and held her close. But all the while he was thinking that a stockade was something they'd realize was necessary only after they needed it the most. He kissed his wife and prayed that she wouldn't have to suffer for its absence.
SKYNET
It watched the small settlement from the dark beneath the trees; linking with the Terminators' interfaces, Skynet saw the village from multiple angles. This settlement had been surprisingly well hidden for a long time. But the sheer size of the place in an area bereft of any other human activity had eventually brought it to the computer's never-resting attention.
One hundred thirty-two humans, seventy-eight of them adults, no meat animals, lived together here. It was an almost pathologically tidy place; quite unnatural for humans. Their houses were small, built beneath, and with, the surrounding trees; often the lower limbs had been woven more tightly to provide a framework for thatched roofs, while the walls were saplings woven together and smeared with clay mixed with grass. Insubstantial for a permanent dwelling; winter weather would break them down in a short time.
But in summer, if the weather was dry, they should be adequate shelter. Even if the weather was wet, however, they should burn well.