child were even further off the mark than he had always suspected.
What place in either afterlife the wreckage of a crashed 747 occupied was a physical and philosophical conundrum he couldn’t even begin to fathom. The metal hulk was empty, deserted, giving no sign anyone had ever been in it or near it. Striding past, he wondered if this piece of limbo had been raised up exclusively for him. Since regaining consciousness (or whatever it was that he was experiencing) he had not seen any indication that the space he was presently exploring was home to so much as another human being.
Much later, his foot kicked aside something that caught the subdued sunlight. It was a shard of reflective red plastic. Kneeling, he wiped away the sand that half buried it. For his efforts he was rewarded with the sight of a highway reflector. Brushing away more sand and grit exposed pavement and a yellow dividing line. Incongruous though it might be in the complete absence of any vehicles, it did provide him with something he had so far been lacking.
A direction.
More hours of walking found him gaining instead of losing strength. That made no sense, but since nothing else seemed to make any sense he saw no reason to question the contradiction. He accepted it just as he accepted the sight of the nearly obliterated hillside sign that was just intact enough to proclaim “HOLLYWOOD.” From his vantage point he had a good portion of the city spread out before him.
Or rather, what had been the city.
Like the metropolis it had once been, the ruins stretched out as far as he could see, the promontory of the Palos Verdes Peninsula looming like a buff shadow in the distance. Of life there were still no signs. In the entire vast vista of destruction, not even the dust moved.
It took him a while to work his way downtown. There he hoped to find potable water, though so far all he had encountered was wreckage and devastation in close-up, from obliterated storefronts to the dinosaurian hulks of cars and trucks, some of which had crumbling skeletons slumped at the wheels.
Something moved in the distance, walking. Though several hundred yards away, there was no mistaking the human shape of the lone figure. Disbelief gave way to a ray of hope. Cupping one hand to his mouth, he yelled.
“Hey!”
The figure turned toward him. It was humanoid—but not human. No human could have supported the oversized machine gun it started to aim. As a shell-shocked Wright gaped at it dumbly, a grim-faced youth appeared as if from nowhere and slammed into him.
They tumbled together behind a heavy forklift as a hail of heavy-caliber shells tore into the pavement where Wright had been standing a moment earlier. How they missed him he could not understand. Rising to the fore, half- forgotten instincts took over. Rolling deeper into cover, he found himself face to face with the teen. When the boy spoke, he did not sound young.
“Come with me if you want to live.”
More slugs ripped the air around the forklift as the figure that had trained its weapon on Wright started toward them. Red eyes flickered; scanning, seeking, looking to exterminate. The teen led Wright back around the corner of one crumbling structure. They were out of sight of their attacker and out of range. For the moment.
Facing his young companion, Wright jerked his head back in the direction from which they had come.
“What the hell is...?”
Despite the difference in their ages and the disparity in size, the teen did not hesitate. His open hand clamped across Wright’s mouth, shutting off the older man’s query. In an earlier time and place the blatant physical imposition would have caused Wright to rip the youth’s head clean off. Under the present circumstances, however, he was too confused to do more than accept the gesture.
Pointing in the direction of the bipedal creature that had fired at them, the teen then gestured at his own ear. Only when Wright nodded that he understood did the youth lower his hand from the stranger’s mouth.
Time passed: not much of it, and all of it fraught with tension. Advancing toward them, their pursuer was barely visible, and inclined its head in their direction. The muzzle of its rapid-fire weapon rose. That was when the teen slammed his arm down on something metallic protruding from the side of the building against which he and Wright had been pressed.
The wire that looped around the stalker’s right foot was not thick, but it
Not waiting around for the machine to free itself, the teen grabbed Wright’s arm and led him down the alley where they had taken cover.
There was barely enough room at the top of the mound of rubble that blocked the entrance to the ruined factory for the youth to wriggle through. Wright had a harder time, having to rely more on brute force to make his way to the other side. Standing at the base of a disintegrating stairwell, the youth gestured impatiently for Wright to follow. Too stunned to argue, the older man complied wordlessly.
On the street outside, the stymied T-600 fired twice at the cable that had wrapped around its right foot. Most shells missed the gleaming, slender target. Those that struck it glanced off. Responding to the overriding resolve of its pursuit programming, it proceeded to shoot off the restraining foot. Thus freed, it slammed into the pavement below with enough force and weight to buckle the old concrete.
Proceeding to right itself, it limped toward the entrance to the factory.
***
By the time he and his guide reached the roof of the building, Wright thought he ought to be out of breath. That he was not he attributed to the inevitable surge of adrenalin that always accompanied being shot at.
Halting, the teen flashed a succession of hand signals across the flat surface. A second figure emerged from the shadows. Slight of build and grimy of appearance, the little girl was clad in layers of salvaged clothing, child- sized cowboy boots, and an old police hat with a flipped-back brim. A single metal star gleamed on the front of the hat, above eyes that were preternaturally hard. With brown hair that exploded wire-like from beneath this singular chapeau, she looked to be about nine or ten.
In response to the older boy’s gestures she turned toward what looked like an old railcar wheel assembly. The
