Terminator Salvation: From the Ashes (25 page)

“You’re the only one we’ve found alive.”

For a long moment Orozco lay silently. Kate watched him, wondering if he was going to slip off into unconsciousness again. Then, finally, he stirred.

“I’m not feeling much pain,” he said. “Morphine?”

Kate nodded. “I have more if you need it.”

“Maybe later,” he said. “What’s the damage?”

“Not as bad as it could have been,” Kate assured him. “You had a through-and-through in your upper left arm and another slug in your shoulder. I got it out. There were also several grooves in your left forearm, which I sewed up, and you took a grazing shot across your right hip.”

“Right hip, huh?” Orozco said, frowning. “I didn’t even know about that one. How mobile am I?”

“Well, you won’t be going on any long hikes for awhile,” Kate said. “Fortunately, you won’t have to. Now that you’re stable enough to move, I can call for a litter to get you to the chopper. A few weeks in rehab—”

“Whoa,” Orozco interrupted. “Chopper?”

“The Resistance has arrived in force,” Kate told him. “We’re going to be taken to one of their bases.”

“A base with generals and admirals and everyone?” Orozco asked.

“Probably,” Kate said. “And that’s good. It means they should have everything we’ll need to get you on your feet again.”

“Glad to hear it,” Orozco said. “I hope they find someone they can use it on. You’d better get going. Thanks for patching me up.”

Kate stared at him.

“What are you talking about?” she asked carefully.

“We’re taking you with us.”

“I don’t think so,” Orozco said, a sudden bitterness in his voice. “It was people like your precious generals and admirals who brought Judgment Day down on the world in the first place. It’ll be a cold day in hell before I’ll ever work for them again.”

“But you can’t just stay here,” Kate protested. “Where will you go? What will you do?”

“I’ll survive,” Orozco said. “I’m a Marine. That’s what Marines do. If you can spare me a little food and water, I’d appreciate it. If you can’t, that’s fine, too.”

“Sergeant, you’re not thinking clearly,” Kate said, putting some firmness into her voice. “You’re alone, you’ve lost a lot of blood—”

“Your generals are waiting, Ms. Connor.” Orozco cut her off.

“Then look at it from my position,” Kate said, switching tactics. “I’m a doctor. How can I just walk away and leave you here alone? Or never mind me. What’s John going to say when I tell him I left an injured soldier behind?”

“You’ll tell him first that I’m not one of his soldiers,” Orozco said. “And you’ll tell him second that you didn’t have a choice.” His right shoulder twitched.

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And Kate looked down to see the man’s bloodied hand gripping the butt of the Beretta belted at his side. “You wouldn’t,” she said, looking him squarely in the face.

For a moment he held her gaze. Then, almost reluctantly, his eyes drifted away.

“No,” he admitted. “But you never know what a crazy man’s going to do, do you?” He looked over her shoulder, toward the huge mound of stone rubble she and the others had had to climb over to get into the building.

“Did a good job on that archway, didn’t I?”

“Yes, you did,” Kate said, conceding defeat. If he truly didn’t want to come with them, there really wasn’t any way she could justify forcing him to do so.

Her earphone crackled.

“Barnes: get your squad together and bring it in, double-time,” John’s voice came. “Don’t bother stopping by the staging area—we’re leaving whatever’s there behind.”

“Got it,” Barnes said. “On our way.”

“Time to go?” Orozco asked.

“Yes,” Kate said, unfastening her ration pouch from her belt and laying it beside Orozco. “This is all the food and water I’ve got with me, but there’s more in a sort of long house two blocks west of here. It’s on the street where—”

“I know the place,” Orozco said. “Passed it once or twice.”

Kate nodded and stood up.

“Last chance.”

Orozco nodded. “Better get going.”

“Right.” Kate hesitated, then unclipped her medical bag and set it beside the ration pouch.

“Good luck.”

“One other thing,” Orozco called after her.

She paused and turned back.

“Yes?”

“There were 280 people who died in here tonight,” Orozco said, his voice dark. “I’d consider it a personal favor if you and Connor would take out a Terminator for each of them.”

Kate swallowed, her throat feeling tight. “We’ll do our best,” she promised. “And we’ll think of you with every single one of them.”

“Good enough,” Orozco said.
“Vaya con Dios,
Ms. Connor.”

* * *

Kate had been waiting by the pile of stone for about two minutes when Barnes and the rest of the squad returned.

“No one else?” Kate asked. A silly question, she knew—they would certainly have called her if they’d found anyone else still alive.

“No,” Barnes said, making it official, as he gestured everyone to start climbing the rubble. “You got a litter coming for Orozco?”

Kate shook her head as she started up the treacherous footing.

“He’s not coming with us.”

A couple of the other heads turned at that one. But Barnes just grunted.

“You get attached to a place like this, I guess.”

They were over the rock pile and walking down the empty streets before Barnes spoke again.

“I found that preacher—Sibanda—over in the hallway off the lobby,” he said. “Still had his arms around a couple of kids.”

“Thin black guy?” Simmons asked. “North hallway by one of the windows?”

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Barnes nodded. “That’s him.”

“I saw him, too,” Simmons said grimly. “Looked like he was huddled over the kids, trying to protect them, when they shot him in the back.”

Kate felt a fresh wave of sadness and guilt flow through her. All those children…and neither she nor anyone else had been able to save a single one of them.

“Any particular reason you brought that up?” she asked Barnes.

“Not really,” he said with a shrug. “Just making conversation.”

* * *

For nearly half an hour Kyle and Star just sat there in the abandoned ganghouse, quietly eating and drinking, Kyle on the chair, Star on the ground at his feet. It was the first time since they’d left the Ashes, Kyle reflected soberly, that he’d felt at peace.

But it wasn’t real, he knew. Peace was only an illusion these days.

And it was time for them to go.

To Kyle’s relief, there was no lightheadedness this time when he stood up. Maybe he hadn’t really been injured in the blast, but had mostly been just hungry and thirsty. Adjusting his new shirt and jacket across his shoulders, he fastened his holster around his new jeans.

“Ready?” he asked Star.

She nodded, then pointed questioningly at the packages of ration bars and water bottles.

Kyle pursed his lips. If this stuff had belonged to the gang that Orozco had chased out, he would have no particular qualms about taking it all. It wasn’t really stealing to take something from a thief.

But his new clothes didn’t look like the stuff the gang had been wearing. It was too clean, for one thing. And the water bottles seemed way too well taken care of, too. He had the feeling that someone else had moved in after the gang had cleared out.

And he and Star couldn’t steal from ordinary citizens. Even if all the stuff really had been abandoned.

Or at least they couldn’t steal
everything.

“Go get two bottles of water and four of the bars,” he instructed Star. “Somebody might still come back for the rest.”

Star wrinkled her nose, but nodded and went over to the stack. She was sorting through the packages when something behind the clothing seemed to belatedly catch her eye. Reaching down, she lifted a shotgun into view.

This time, Kyle didn’t hesitate.

“Yes,” he said firmly.

A minute later, shotgun in hand, food and water in his new jacket’s pockets, Kyle opened the door and they once more slipped out into the night.
Where are we going?
Star signed.

“Back to the Ashes,” Kyle told her, frowning as they set off along the street. Was that the sound of helicopters just fading away in the distance? Probably his imagination.

“We need to see if there’s anything we can do there to help,”

The streets were eerily quiet, with only the sound of their own footsteps breaking the silence.

Kyle looked around carefully as they walked, wondering if any of the people they’d seen earlier were still lurking around here somewhere.

But they all seemed to have left. Could that have been what the sound of the helicopters had been about?

Too bad. He would at least have liked to find out who they’d been, and whether they’d really been with the Resistance or just faking it. He might have been able to find out whether the people in the bus who had saved him and Star had made it out alive, too. Now, he’d probably never know.

But at least when the men and women had left, the Terminators had left with them.

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The Ashes building, when Kyle caught his first glimpse of it, was a shock. The distinctive stone archway was gone, as was most of the front of the building just above it, the whole mass having collapsed into a shattered heap of stone blocking most of the entrance.

Star clutched suddenly at Kyle’s arm.

“It’s okay,” he soothed her. “Remember how Orozco told us that if there was ever an attack he could put bombs in the archway to bring it down on them?”

Star shook her head violently, her fingers digging into Kyle’s arm. Kyle frowned…and then, his fogged brain got it.

He pushed Star against the building beside them, pressing himself there next to her as he fumbled his new shotgun to his shoulder. Heart thudding in his ears, he gave a quick look around them, then turned back to the Ashes building.

There it was, digging diligently through the rocks at the far end of the pile, lifting huge chunks of stone and concrete off the stack and setting them down on the street beside it.

Apparently, not all the Terminators had left.

Kyle frowned, wondering what the machine was doing. Was it looking for other Terminators that had been trapped in the collapse? It was using both hands, he noticed, and he looked briefly for where it had set down its minigun.

But there was no weapon to be seen. It must have lost the weapon, Kyle decided, or else had run out of ammo and dumped it. The Terminator pulled out another block of stone and set it aside.

Then, without warning, it turned directly toward Kyle and Star.

And as Kyle got his first clear look at the torn skin on its torso, skin torn away by a close-range shotgun blast, he suddenly realized who this was. Not some random Terminator, but their old enemy Fido.

For a long moment the machine gazed toward them. Kyle froze, his shotgun still pointed even as he realized how utterly useless the weapon was at this range.

And then, to Kyle’s surprise and relief, the Terminator merely turned back to the rock pile.

Leaning over, it reached both hands into the hole it had dug.

Kyle started breathing again. Maybe the machine hadn’t seen them. Maybe its optics had been damaged by its tumble through the rotten floor near the Death’s-Head compound.

The Terminator was still working at something in the hole, perhaps a stubborn stone that didn’t want to be moved. Then, with a massive tug, it pulled a half-crushed metal arm out of the hole.

Only it wasn’t just an arm. It was an arm that was still clutching a minigun, the weapon’s ammo belt trailing down into the hole behind it.

Fido hadn’t given up on hunting them. It also wasn’t simply looking for broken Terminators or scrap metal to take back to Skynet.

It was looking for a new gun.

“Time to go,” Kyle murmured, taking Star’s arm and backing them along the wall again. They reached the corner, and just as they eased around it out of the Terminator’s sight the machine once again turned its red eyes toward them.

It had seen them, all right. And as soon as it got its new weapon free, it was going to come after them.

“Come on,” Kyle said. Still holding Star’s arm, he broke into a dead run back toward the ganghouse.

Where?
Star signed frantically as her feet pounded against the pavement.

“Not sure yet,” Kyle told her. “Let’s first just get some distance between us and it. Distance
and
buildings,” he added as he pulled her around the corner onto the next street heading north.

He took a deep breath, consciously settling his pumping legs into a steady rhythm, feeling a trickle of frustration run through him. He’d thought the terror of the night was over. He’d
needed
the terror of the night to be over.

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But it wasn’t. Maybe it never would be.

But it didn’t matter. What mattered was that he and Star were still alive.

And they would stay that way, too. No matter what happened, no matter what the universe and Skynet threw at them, they would get through it. If and when that Terminator back there found them, Kyle would find a way to destroy it. Then he’d do the same to the next one Skynet sent after them, and the next one, and the one after that.

Because Star was counting on him.

The street stretched far ahead of them, fading away into the darkness. Watching Star out of the corner of his eye, making sure she was keeping up, he began studying the ruined buildings they were passing. Somewhere along here, he knew, he’d find something he could use.

The quarters General Olsen’s aide took Connor and Kate to weren’t a lot bigger than some of the other places they’d called home over the years. They weren’t all that much better furnished, either.

But it wasn’t bitterly cold, there was space for them to stow their weapons and other gear, and the floor was mostly nice and flat. More importantly, it was safe.

And that was a far rarer and more precious commodity than anything else the Resistance could have offered them.

“Yes, I could live here,” Connor commented as he set down his MP5 and started taking off his gun belt.