broken piece, like a huge tom-off strip of silver foil, turned to liquid on the concrete and flowed back to the T-1000's feet.
At the front door of her house, Gabriela had an RPG tube, which she held at her shoulder, kneeling to aim. Now she fired, the rocket-propelled grenade hitting the T-1000 and exploding, showering more of the Terminator's liquid metal parts across the space between the house and the garages. The fragments of T-1000 liquefied when they landed, rolling together like water droplets on a slick surface, struggling back together. How much did it take to destroy the thing? No matter what they threw at it, it was still fighting them.
'Don't let it reform,' the T-800 said. It rushed forward, seizing the amoeba-like main body of the T-1000 and tossing it twenty feet, well away from the liquid metal pieces that had been heading towards it. With an appearance of special effort, the T-1000 pulled into itself, becoming the young, severe-looking policeman John had first seen it as, back in L.A., nearly nine years before. It grappled with the T-800, getting the better of it, and tossing it to one side. The T-800 bounced on its haunches, but sprang to its feet immediately, obviously unhurt. It ran at the T-1000, which moved like the liquid creature it was, somehow getting under its body and twisting round, smashing the T-800 head-first into the gravel.
A silvery liquid blob, the size of a ham, now slid over the ground heading home, for the T-1000's main body. All the broken-off bits had formed into this single mass of mercury-like metal. Sarah fired another grenade, directly into the fast-moving blob, which sprayed into droplets as the grenade hit. But even they started running together. Couldn't anything ever destroy it?
By now, there were dozens of well-armed fighters gathered to help. Many of them had useless weapons, but not all. Bruce Axelrod threw a hand grenade, pitching it hard, right into the T-1000's body. Again, the explosion blew the Terminator out into a free-form shape. Enrique and Franco Salceda fired at it with shotguns, blasting bits off and driving it back. The T-800 pounced on the T-1000, gripping and tearing with both hands. It ripped the T-1000 in half and threw the two pieces aside, well away from each other. Immediately, they liquefied on the ground. Bruce tossed another grenade, then another, hitting each liquid mass, and splashing droplets of the liquid metal far and wide.
Still the droplets tried to rush together. John started to wonder if they could ever defeat it, or whether they'd finally run out of ammunition.
As parts of the T-1000 managed to reform, they'd take on shapes it must have encountered in its travels: machines, animals, strange abstract forms with pincers and snapping jaws. They kept hitting it with more and more explosives, trying to blast it to smaller pieces, faster than it could reform, some of them throwing or firing grenades into it, while others ran for ammunition. The battle waged for hours, until they were exhausted. Finally, the polymorphic Terminator ceased reforming, its pieces liquefying and pooling, but no longer making shapes. As they watched it carefully, dozens of weapons now trained on it, it formed a single large pool of liquid metal, but no solid shape emerged from the pool. It seemed to be dead.
Even then, John didn't trust it. Perhaps the thing could still reform and come back at him, if they left it to itself.'
John said to the T-800, 'Is that the end of it?'
'Yes,' it said. 'Terminated.'
Juanita was close to him. He turned to her, seeing her more sharply than ever before. She'd almost died, just as he had. He realized how terrible that would have been. She deserved to live—and in a better world than this. All he said was, 'Thank you.'
Gabriela walked over to them, and the questions on her lips were obvious. What had the T-1000 done with Raoul? Was there any hope for him?
The T-800 looked at her grimly. 'Your husband is dead.'
They found Raoul's body, dumped by the side of a dusty road and left to rot. He'd been killed by a deep stab wound, up underneath his ribs. To the T-1000, he'd been merely a means to the end of getting close to John.
Night after night, they set sentries to watch the thick silvery fluid, which was all that remained of the T-1000. It never stirred. Each night, John woke with nightmares that the pool had come to life, the polyalloy Terminator rising up out of it like a metallic Dracula, but it never happened that way. Soon, there seemed no chance that it would stir; it appeared their assault on it had actually succeeded. Blasting it to smaller and smaller liquid pieces, again and again, must have disrupted some important part of its programming. Given its capacity to reform, its programming must have been copied many times throughout its body, always able to back-up. But its redundancy must have had some limit: Reduce it to small enough pieces, and only the most basic level of programming was left. It could liquefy and pool, but its sentience was gone.
People now looked oddly at John and the T-800, knowing that one was very strange indeed and the other not human at all. But their wariness was combined with awe. They knew that John and Sarah had predicted Judgment Day. They were coming to know for certain what John had realized as a child: everything was true. There really had been messages from the future. No one who'd been there on the day the T-1000 came doubted their next warning, about the coming of the machines. Preparations continued apace.
Gabriela built a memorial to her husband, an obelisk of rock and concrete, in the round, graveled space outside her home. They mixed the T-1000's liquid metal into the concrete.
ARGENTINA
2003-2006
John's work immersed him, and he grew up wiry and strong. In this harsh new world, powerful rivals fought for control, hurling at each other what remained of mankind's military arsenals. Across Argentina alone, millions more died, many in the local wars of conquest and rebellion, others from cold, disease, and starvation. The Connors and their allies built a strong militia, using survivalist networks that reached northwards through Latin America, into what was left of the U.S.
Sometimes other groups joined them: local military forces; other militia groups that saw hope in cooperation, rather than in an endless struggle of warlords; fragments of the shattered armies from farther north. Remnants of the U.S. forces brought even more impressive weaponry. John foresaw an end to the battles of warlords, but knew there was even worse to come: he awaited Skynet's war machines.
One bitterly cold day in June, Willard Parnell came in to interrupt John's martial arts training with his mother and Franco Salceda, under the watchful eye of the T-800.
'We've got a new group,' Willard said. 'They've made camp five miles north. Looks like they've come to join us.'
John stood puffing from exertion. 'What kind of group?'
'There's about fifty of them.'
'Armed?'
'Yes. Well-armed, but no danger to us. There's not enough of them. They're flying a white flag. I'd say they plan to make contact.'
'We'll take the initiative,' John said. He glanced at Sarah. 'You agree?'
'Of course, John. I'm sure Gabriela will, too.'
John laughed. His mother was gently reminding him that he couldn't yet call the shots—not all by himself. These days, the others deferred to him and kept out of the way of the T-800, his quiet, ever-present bodyguard. Still, it was a government by oligarchy, with many of them having a say. People respected Gabriela and the rest of the Tejada clan, whose property this originally was. The Salcedas were also respected, and Sarah was almost feared. But the military leaders who'd joined also had their say, and needed to be kept on their side. Despite John's charisma, the militia could break up easily. The military personnel were primarily loyal to their commanders. Much of the time, John found himself walking on eggshells, worrying about internal rivalries, people's egos, trying to keep it all together. It seemed that he had a knack.
'They look well fed and well equipped,' Willard said. 'Mostly American, I'd say. They've got a whole convoy of trucks and Humvees.'
'All right,' John said. 'That sounds good. If they're with us, that might be very useful.' He exchanged glances with Sarah. 'We'll talk to Gabriela first.'
'I'll go see her now,' Willard said.
'We'll be there in a minute.' It was good news, but also routine. There was no doubt what Gabriela would think. If the Connors and Gabriela agreed, that was enough for most people, unless something vital was at stake.
