Through a Terminator's sensors Skynet watched the brightly colored silhouettes of the humans through the thin walls of their dwellings. One by one, two by two, they reclined, and the heat images took on the signatures of humans at rest. Its Terminators waited silent and motionless as the moon rose and traversed the night sky.
Many small improvements had made these Terminators more formidable killing machines than the first group, and their weapons were infinitely more powerful than the pellet weapons these humans had at their disposal. Still, Skynet had observed these subjects intensely and knew them to be well schooled in the use of the weapons they did have. This would be a true test, the first of a thousand thousand field terminations, until the final organic pest was hunted down.
Unfortunately, that will require at least another century.
As the last human sank into a dormant state, Skynet gave the signal to attack.
* * *
Peggy woke first. A light sleeper since the children were born, she heard a crackling sound and opened her eyes to the sight of flames.
"Tom!" she shrieked, leaped from the bed, and ran down the loft stairs toward the already engulfed living room. The heat drove her back and she lay down on the floor to look over the edge of the platform. "Jason! Lisa!" she screamed.
Then Tom was beside her. He looked over the edge and saw his children with their backs against the wall of the cabin, coughing, their eyes wild with fear. "Take Daddy's hand," he shouted over the roar of the flames. If he could just get them up here, they could go out the window, down the rope ladder.
Lisa came toward him, but Jason held back, shaking his head frantically. The little girl reached up and Tom squirmed forward, putting slightly more than half his body over the edge. He could feel his hair start to sizzle. Peggy threw herself across his hips to hold him down, and when Lisa's head came over the edge of the platform, she reached forward and caught the girl's hair. Lisa was already screaming by then, so it made little difference in the volume of her distress, but still, her mother felt terrible.
Once Lisa was safe and huddled against her mother, Tom dove over the edge a second time, reaching toward his son and encouraging, ordering, threatening him to come to Daddy.
Suddenly his hair caught fire and Tom reared up in surprise and shock. Peggy caught up the small rag rug at the foot of the bed and threw it over his head.
"I've gotta go down to him, Peg," Tom said. "He's too scared to move. Get Lisa out of here."
She shook her head. "We've got time. You go get him; we'll lower the rope ladder. Then we'll all go." Because they sure weren't going out the front door.
Tom did as she suggested, lowering himself from the platform, trying to ignore the fierce heat on his naked shoulders.
He forced himself to move slowly for fear of panicking his son into doing something foolish. "C'mon, Jason," he said soothingly.
"Take my hand and let's get out of here, okay?"
The rope ladder came down from above and Jason dove toward it, eluding Tom's clutching hand. Tom couldn't help laughing as he pursued the kid up the ladder. As soon as he reached the top, he grabbed it and dragged it over to the window, tossing it out with a clatter. Jason all but pushed him aside in his eagerness to be out of the flaming cabin and Tom let him go, laughing at his eagerness. His sister will never let him live this down.
Jason was halfway down when a blaze of blue light shot through him, emerging in a yellow blossom of sparks. The boy fell backward, a startled expression on his young face. Tom was leaning out the window, frozen with shock, when Peggy yanked his shoulder. If not for the sudden move, the next flash of blue light would have taken off his head.
"What's happening?" Peggy shouted over Lisa's terrified screaming.
"The cellar!" Tom answered.
His wife stared at the rising flames, then at her husband. It didn't look possible. She moved toward the window, but Tom grabbed her and dragged her toward the stairs.
"Tom!" she shouted, objecting, but too frightened to be more coherent.
"Jason's gone," he said tersely, feeling sick to his stomach.
"Someone's firing at us. Cellar," he repeated.
Peggy had gone limp. She still held their daughter, still stood, but for now at least, she might as well have been gone. The loft was full of smoke and the heat was becoming more dangerous.
Tom grabbed a blanket off the bed and soaked it as well as he could with the contents of their washbowl. Then he wrapped it around them all, and with one arm around his wife's waist barreled down the stairs.
The hatch to the cellar was under the stairs and so, for the moment, was partially sheltered from the scorching heat. Tom yanked it up, then forced his wife down the stairs before him, Pulling the hatch closed behind.
Long ago he'd connected the cellar to a narrow rock cave that came out by the creek. Peggy knew about it and she'd hated it, seeing it as an example of his growing paranoia. The sight of the passage now snapped her out of her shock and she took a deep breath, turning to him with fear in her eyes.
"Mom and Dad," she said. Then she faltered for a moment and Tom knew she was thinking of Jason.
"We need to get out of here first," he said, and gave her a gentle push.
He pulled the camouflaged, dirt-coated door closed behind them, hoping it wouldn't burn. Just inside, he pawed at the doorframe and found the flashlight he'd placed there. He shook it to charge the battery, then hastened Peggy down the passageway in the dim light.
The passage wasn't that long, really, about a hundred feet, but it had seemed the length of Route 66 before he'd been finished.
At the end, where he'd placed another hidden door, he'd also stowed some clothes and weapons, carefully wrapped in plastic to protect them. There was food here, too. He sat Peggy on one of the chests.
"Get dressed," Tom ordered, "and stand ready. I'm going to find out what's going on. I might end up sending some of the other women and children down here. Take care of them." He grabbed a shotgun and thumbed in rounds—solid shot, cylindrical rifled slugs.
Then he turned off the flashlight and placed it in his wife's hand. Feeling his way carefully, he opened the door into the natural cave.
When he reached the creek he squatted down and smeared some mud from the bank over his face and hands, then crept forward. Peering over the bank, he saw that the whole village was in flames. He could see forms moving about; by their postures he could tell they were armed. Then one stood before the flames of a burning house and he caught his breath, his eyes widening in horror.
Like something from a horror movie, it was skeletal. It turned its head slowly, like a gun turret searching for a target. Light gleamed from the metal dome of its skull and through the cage of its ribs; red light blazed from its eye sockets. Tom sank slowly, until he'd dropped onto his butt.
Shit! he thought.
Slowly he became aware that he was hearing screams. Tom squeezed his eyes tight shut, wishing he could do the same with his ears. Of course he heard screaming. They were trapped in burning buildings, and the only way out was certain death. If he hadn't provided a way out for himself and his family, he'd be screaming, too.
There was a sound off to his right. Not footsteps but the result of stealthy footsteps, crackling leaves and breaking twigs, unavoidable in the deep woods. Tom pressed himself deeper into the dirt of the bank and prayed, making all sorts of promises to God if He would only let him live. He pulled the rifle against his chest, up under his chin, waiting.
He had no idea how many of those things were up there trolling the village for survivors, but he knew one shot would have them all down here looking for him. That would draw them toward Peggy and Lisa, and he wouldn't let these things have them. They wouldn't take them like they'd taken his son. My boy