expression, but even a direct hit had not been enough to top it. John squeezed the trigger as long as dared, and the endoskeleton's head imploded from the terrible heat. It fell forward, but more answering fire came John's way.
Juanita lifted her weapon and cut loose with it, though John doubted she'd do much damage. When he looked again, the endoskeleton he'd hit lay on its back upon the ground, disabled by the loss of its controlling nanochip. Yet it was still moving, doing pathetic swimming strokes in the air like a dying cockroach. The T-800 finished it off with another series of well-directed shots.
That was only one enemy taken out.
In a break in the laser fire, Sarah made a dash closer to them, ducking behind another car hulk.
The exchange continued, lasers against bullets and grenades. Another grenade struck home and actually took out a ground H-K. It veered off the broken road, smashing through the walls of buildings, out of control, then exploded satisfyingly. There were, however, many others, and they were getting close.
'They're going to overrun us,' Juanita said hoarsely, as she fired at a group of endoskeletons and centurions. Other guerrillas retreated, finding new positions as they went. The trouble was, they lacked the firepower to keep the machines at bay. They just kept advancing.
'We'll have to move,' Juanita said.
'Correct,' the T-800 said.
'We've got to get Mom out of there,' he said. 'Juanita, you go ahead.' An aerial H-K started gliding toward them, keeping about thirty feet in the air, sizing them up as an available target. John pointed to it. 'Run when I say!'
As he watched the metal monster approach, time seemed to slow down. Everything was happening at once, all around him.
Too many of the humans were pinned down by laser fire, Sarah among them. She was armed with an RPG tube, as well as an AK-47 rifle, but she was protected only by the flimsy, rusted vehicle she'd sheltered behind— that, and a sharp dip in the road. So long as she kept her head down, the ground-based heat beams were going over her, but there was no way she could fire, much less move from her position. The heat beams had caught her in a deadly, glowing lattice work. John stood to run for her, but the T-800 caught his arm in its steel grip.
'Too late, John,' it said.
Sarah must have known that her time was up, that there was no escape left for her this time, for she suddenly moved to a kneeling position and fired a grenade around the car she'd been sheltering behind. As if it mattered, the back blast identified her even more clearly.
Sarah's grenade struck an endoskeleton full in the chest, penetrating its open-work metal structure, then exploded, blasting the machine apart.
But the answering fire was terrible. The aerial H-K that had been headed for John, Juanita, and the T-800 suddenly turned, and it struck back. It pierced Sarah with its heat beam, stabbing straight down at her, then climbed almost vertically.
'Mom!' John said, getting to his feet to see what had happened. '
The H-K started back for another run.
He couldn't believe it. Surely she'd survived. She couldn't die, not now, not when she had so many years ahead, not after all they had been through together. They'd been fighting Skynet together for so long... how could it suddenly
Amongst it all, Juanita was there, dragging him back—Juanita and the T-800. He struggled with them. He had to get to Sarah's body. He couldn't just leave her behind, not like some animal carcass caught in a trap by Skynet.
'No, John,' the T-800 said. 'It had to happen this way. You have to live.'
'Run,' Juanita said. 'They're going to kill us.'
'No.' He was frozen on the spot. His mom had been too young—what? Forty-eight?—it wasn't yet time for her to die. It should have been him. She'd been such a leader, done so much for them all. There must still be something he could do, check whether she was really dead—but she had to be. Her body was a smoking ruin. There were some things no one could survive, not even his mom, tough though she was—had always been. Not even Sarah.
Juanita slapped him. Hard. 'You've got to move, soldier,' she said. 'Move it. Now.' She shook him by the shoulders. 'Now, John!'
It was like a dream. The stabbing lights were everywhere. In another moment...
'All right,' he said. 'We'll run for it.'
Juanita went ahead of him, holding her weapon in both hands, diagonally across her chest. As he followed, John went crabwise, firing off pulses of laser light, trying to face his enemies at all times and to keep the ruined walls at his back, trying to suppress his feelings, all of them, just for the moment, just until they could get out of here. If, indeed, they could.
The T-800 fought fearlessly, not bothering to dodge the heat beams, though even it was vulnerable to them.
The ground machines poured into the street, like an army of giant insects, pursuing the human guerrillas in every direction.
Amongst the ruined buildings, the scattered car hulks and debris, the guerrillas had burnt tires to try to confuse the machines' infrared sensors. They'd also dug ditches in
the road, and built roadblocks by piling trucks and cars, shored up, where possible, by buttresses of concrete and stone. They'd laid out their minefields. But the H-Ks went over or through almost any obstacle they encountered, crushing steel, stone, wood, or bones under their treads.
'We'll make it,' John said, but he wondered how long he could keep running.
The aerial H-K skimmed down the street, launching a heat-seeking missile. It passed just over the top of them as they dodged past one of the fires. John rolled away as fast as he could, using his elbows and hugging his weapon to his chest. The missile smashed into the fire and exploded thunderously.
He was deafened again; his ears hummed and buzzed. He watched the leading land H-K smash— silently, as it seemed—into one of the biggest roadblocks: a tangle of trucks, trailers and armored military vehicles, built up around a wrecked army tank. The crawling juggernaut struck the fifty-ton tank full-on, pushing it back. An ancient Humvee went flying through the air, dislodged from the tangle of metal. It turned cartwheels, end over end, where it landed in the street, careering into a pile of rusted-out cars.
Then there was another huge explosion. They'd mined the roadblock. The ground H-K lifted off its treads for a moment, breaking its back. It stopped there in the street, blocking the other big H-Ks, though the smaller killers simply went around it, like a stream of water round a stone.
More aerial H-Ks buzzed down from the sky, menacingly. Someone managed to fire a rocket-propelled grenade. It missed a swooping aerial H-K and exploded in mid-air, too far away to do the machine any damage. A Centurion gun-pod sized up the situation immediately and stabbed straight back with its laser cannon. A second later, it turned the laser cannon on the T-800, striking it squarely in the chest. That was too much, even for the Terminator. The powerful beam melted through its metal chassis.
Like Sarah, it was gone.
John saw one of the endoskeletons advancing with what seemed like a mad grin across its face, firing at will with two big laser rifles, one in each hand. Somewhere behind, Juanita had taken a position. She'd survived, then! Not everyone was dead...She fired back at the machine, but it walked easily through the metal storm.
A heat beam grazed John's face, searing him beyond pain. He screamed and almost dropped his precious weapon, but he was still alive. He hadn't taken a direct hit.
He was scarcely conscious, the world a dream all round him. Another battle. More scars. More terrible losses, the most terrible he'd yet endured. In one day, in a few short minutes, he'd lost Paco, and the T-800...
The nightmare continued. It was never over. Suddenly, it had grown worse than he could have imagined. With Juanita, he fought his way out of there. They ran like hunted animals. There was no choice but to keep fighting, to the bitter end, without surrender. The only alternative was extermination.
But now he had a burning knowledge, deep in his heart. One way or another, whatever he had to do, Skynet
