Terminator Salvation: Trial by Fire (26 page)

They deserved a visit from John Connor himself.

Unfortunately, that meant Jik couldn’t be here to help Oxley and Valentine with their task of cleansing the area around Baker’s Hollow.

But as he’d reminded his colleagues so many times, there were always options. If Jik couldn’t help personally with the hunt, he could at least arrange for a substitute.

The wreckage from the T-700s was scattered around the forest where the traitors had dropped or thrown them. Slinging the shotgun over his shoulder again, Jik began gathering those pieces back together.

“Come on, Oxley,” Preston shouted, slapping the barrel of his rifle against the top of the hedge for emphasis. “Oxley?”

Blair peeked out around her end of the hedge, gripping her Desert Eagle tightly. Oxley had to know that Preston’s invitation was a trap. The question was, would he—or rather, the massive Skynet computer that had programmed him—be arrogant enough to take them up on it?

And then, from somewhere in the near distance came the muffled sound of a woman’s scream.

“Damn,”
Preston snarled. Jumping to his feet, he dodged around Blair and took off toward the gap between the buildings that they’d come through less than three minutes ago.

“Wait!” Blair snapped. She’d seen Marcus Wright in action, and running around randomly out there was an invitation to get killed. “Preston!”

“I have to warn them,” Preston called back over his shoulder. “They don’t even know what they’re facing.”

“He’ll kill you!” Blair bit out.

“Then you kill him back.” Preston ducked between the buildings and disappeared.

Straightening out of her crouch, Blair headed after him.

She made it around the hedge and about four steps toward the gap Preston had used when Barnes caught up with her.

“No—there,” he grunted, pointing instead toward a different opening off to the left. Without waiting for a reply, he angled away, heading for a space to their right.

Blair swore under her breath. But he was right. She veered to her left. That scream might have been Oxley’s idea of bait, a way of drawing them back into town. If the Theta was waiting for them to return along that same route, Preston was about to die.

But it could also be that Oxley had simply decided to get on with the task of slaughtering Baker’s Hollow’s civilians, figuring that he could deal with Preston whenever and wherever he chose to surface. In that case, Barnes’s plan for the three of them to hit the town from different directions was the right move. If one of them could spot Oxley and open fire, the others would know where he was.

Blair felt her throat tighten. No, not
him
.
It
. Oxley wasn’t Marcus Wright, who’d protected Blair and gone on to sacrifice himself for Connor. Oxley had given up what was left of his humanity when he murdered Trounce and Smith.

He—
it
—was a Terminator.

There were two more screams before Blair finished weaving her way through the outlying houses to the main part of town. A dozen people had spilled out of the buildings, a couple of them with guns, a few with bows, most neither. All of them were looking around nervously.

“Go!” Blair snapped at them. “Oxley’s a Theta—a Terminator that looks human. He’s already killed at least two people. If you don’t have a gun, get out of town right now and find a place to hide.”

“Look out!” someone shouted, jabbing a finger past Blair’s shoulder.

Blair spun around. Oxley had slipped out of the house directly behind her and was headed in her direction, his arms pumping as he ran, his hands flinging off droplets of bright red blood. His eyes were shining with maniacal energy, his lips curled back in a death’s-head smile in anticipation of his next kill.

Desperately, Blair tried to bring her Desert Eagle up and around. But Oxley was too close, and the heavy gun had too much inertia, and she knew she would never get it lined up in time.

She tried to get out of his way, to dodge clear of those bloodied hands. But she’d been caught flatfooted, and there was no time for that, either. She threw herself sideways toward the ground, still trying to get her gun lined up.

He was nearly on her when a stutter of rifle shots rang out, blowing off bits of cloth and skin from Oxley’s chest and face and bringing him to a sudden and surprised-looking halt.

And as a second volley staggered him a step backward, Blair finally got her Desert Eagle in line and fired point-blank up under his chin.

The force of the blow snapped Oxley’s head back and sent him tumbling onto his back. He hit the ground hard, throwing a spray of red mist from the gaping wound. The shot had disintegrated a fist-sized patch of skin, some of it coming off the chin, the rest coming off the throat, revealing the blood-dulled metal beneath it.

But it took more than that to stop a Theta. Oxley had barely slammed to the ground when he was starting to sit up again. His maniacal smile was gone now, replaced by an expression of cold fury.

But getting to his feet was suddenly proving difficult. The air filled with the sound of gunfire as more and more of the townspeople joined the battle. The rounds hammered relentlessly into Oxley’s body, the heavier slugs knocking him over, the lighter ones digging fresh wounds into his skin.

Blair pressed herself closer to the ground, not daring to try to get up through the fury of the attack. She squeezed off round after round, mostly targeting Oxley’s face, wondering distantly whether she would have time to get clear when all the guns thundering away out there ran dry.

It wasn’t an idle concern. What was left of Oxley’s skin was bleeding profusely, the multiple trickles soaking his clothing and the grass and leaves around him. But he had a Terminator’s single-minded doggedness, and even as the trappings of humanity were stripped away he was still struggling to get up and continue his mission. The volley slowed for a moment, and he managed to lurch to his knees. Behind the last scraps of forehead skin his glowing red eyes locked on to Blair.

Then, to her surprise, he fell onto his side and lay still.

And as the gunfire resumed its hammering at the bloodied metal body, she finally understood.

Lajard had told them that Theta organs were specially bioengineered to avoid rejection problems. She also knew from Kate Connor’s work on Marcus that Theta skin regenerated quickly. The Skynet scientists had undoubtedly also fiddled with the hybrids’ blood chemistry, giving it extra oxygen-carrying capacity and super-quick coagulation.

But there were limits to how fast even bioengineered blood could clot. No matter how fast Oxley’s broken veins and capillaries sealed themselves off, the sheer number of bleeders had finally taken their toll.

Skynet’s T-600s were slow and obvious, but they had to be physically destroyed before they could be stopped.

Skynet’s Thetas, the ultimate infiltration units, could simply bleed to death.

The barrage faltered, and as the noise faded away Blair could hear someone shouting for the remaining shooters to cease fire.

Eventually, they did.

“Williams?” Barnes called.

Blair looked back to see him and Preston hurrying toward her. Beside Preston, to Blair’s surprise and relief, was Preston’s daughter.

“I’m all right,” Blair called back as she got to her feet and went over to what was left of Oxley.

No movement of limbs or head. Blood still trickling from the wounds. No pulsing or even quivering from the carotid artery, partially visible behind the metal mesh shielding around the Theta’s neck.

“Well?” Barnes asked as the others came up beside her.

“It’s dead,” Blair confirmed, looking at Hope. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” the girl said, her voice shaking a little.

“Not from lack of trying on Valentine’s part,” Preston growled, looking apprehensively behind them. “Hope was able to get the drop on her and pin her to a tree with a couple of arrows.”

“Nice,” Barnes commented. “Not going to hold her long, though. You need to get these people out of here before she makes it back.”

“No argument there.” Preston beckoned to one of the women nearby. “Jessie, get everyone out of town, right now.”

“Where do we go?” Jessie asked.

“Head for the old Glaumann cabin,” Preston told her. “It’s as good a meeting place as any, and I don’t think Lajard or Valentine has ever been there.”

Jessie nodded. “What about you?”

Preston looked in the direction of the river. “Someone needs to go see what happened to the people who were with Jik,” he said. “That should probably be me.”

“I’ll go with you,” Barnes said. “Let me stop by Halverson’s first and get the minigun.”

“You still have ammo for it?” Preston asked.

Barnes nodded, patting the strap of his backpack.

“About thirty rounds. Should be enough to take down a Theta.”

Blair grimaced. That was true enough.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t just one Theta on the loose out there. There were two of them.

“You’ll need more than that,” she said. “I’ll get the Blackhawk. Where should I meet you?”

“How about the ford?” Preston suggested. “Jik has to come that way if he’s going to link up with Valentine.”

“Sounds good,” Barnes confirmed. “There should be room enough on the riverbank for you to put down to let me aboard.” He raised his eyebrows. “Unless you want me to go back to the chopper with you.”

Blair focused on Preston’s expression. He knew what he was going to find out there, all right. Not just a killer Terminator, but the bodies of his friends and neighbors.

“I’ll be fine,” she said.

“What about Susan?” Hope asked. “You’ll need a route to your helicopter that she doesn’t know about.”

“No,” Preston said flatly. “You’re going with Jessie and the others.”

“She’ll never find the snaky on her own,” Hope said, just as bluntly.

“What’s the snaky?” Blair asked.

“It’s a route through some of the thickest undergrowth in the area,” Hope told her. “We sometimes go there to hunt rabbits and quail. Susan and Lajard don’t know about it, and they probably couldn’t get through it even if they did.”

“We don’t
know
that they don’t know about it,” Preston warned darkly. “And there’s nowhere for you to go once you’re inside. If they catch you in the middle, you’ll be sitting ducks.”

“If we don’t destroy them, we’re all dead anyway,” Hope said, fear and anger and determination swirling together in her voice and face. “We need Blair and her helicopter, and she needs me to get to it.”

Preston muttered something. “Williams?”

“She’s right,” Blair said. “For whatever it’s worth, she’ll be as safe with me as she’d be with Jessie. Or with you.”

“And we don’t have time to argue about it,” Barnes put in, digging around in his backpack.

Preston sighed, then nodded. “Be careful,” he said, giving his daughter a quick hug. “Both of you,” he added, looking at Blair.

“We will,” Blair promised.

“Here,” Barnes said, holding out his hand.

Blair blinked in surprise. Clutched in the man’s hand were two spare magazines for her Desert Eagle.

“Where’s you get those?” she asked.

“I always bring extra ammo for all the guns on a mission,” he said, an almost embarrassed gruffness in his voice.

“Good idea.” Taking the magazines, Blair slipped them into her pockets. “Thanks.”

“Watch yourselves, and good luck,” Preston said. “Come on, Barnes. Let’s go get your minigun.” The T-700 convoys had made four more round trips to the tunnel face before Callahan finally decided it was safe enough to risk a quick recon.

As usual with tasks that included climbing, this one fell to Callahan. Much of the debris slope he’d used earlier had been collapsed and scattered by the falling concrete slab, but together the three of them were able to build it up enough for him to clamber up to the opening.

The hole itself was smaller than Kyle had estimated earlier, too small for any of them to squeeze through. But Callahan managed to get his head through. Gripping an exposed piece of rebar with one hand and the metal door with the other, he eased up for a look.

He stayed there for a good ten seconds, and in the light seeping down from above Kyle could see his neck moving as he turned his head back and forth. Finally, he pulled his head back through the opening and made the precarious climb back down.

“No watchdog,” he whispered as they all huddled again. “But it looks like they’re almost ready to go with the next blast. They’ve got two of the satchel charges at the base of the tunnel face, and they’ve moved the others way back down the tunnel.”

“Like they’re going to do a second blast further back, too?” Zac asked, frowning.

“No, like they don’t want a second blast at all,” Kyle told him. “Sympathetic detonation—Orozco told me about that once. If you put a bunch of explosives—”

“If you put explosives within four or five feet of each other, triggering one of them triggers the rest along with it,” Callahan finished for him.

“So if everything’s ready, what’s Skynet waiting for?” Zac asked.

“Nightfall, probably,” Callahan said. “The light coming through the roof is pretty weak, so it’s probably getting close to sundown. Maybe Skynet’s planning another attack like last night to cover the noise.”

“Leaving more debris for the Terminators to haul away tomorrow,” Kyle said. “So if we don’t want to spend tonight and most of tomorrow down here, we need to make our move now.”

“The problem is that there aren’t any openings up there, at least none I could see,” Callahan said. “If we want a hole, we’ll have to make our own.”

“You mean with the explosives?” Zac asked.

“Exactly,” Callahan said. “We’ll take the charges, plant them down the tunnel a ways, and blow all of them at once.”

“Wait a minute,” Kyle cautioned. “You know anything about how to place charges for that sort of thing?”

“Zac and I have both had training,” Callahan told him. “And you worked pretty closely with Orozco on some of his demolition stuff. Between us, we should be able to bring down the roof to give us a way out. With a little luck, we might also knock down enough of the roof to seal the Terminators in the other part of the tunnel.”