Rising Storm

grenades, explosives…

'I suggest you arm yourselves,' he said to the two gaping would-be merchants of death. 'Things are going to get a bit excessive.'

'Use your shotgun, use your shotgun!' John yelled, fighting back a surge of panic.

One of the Sector agents was staring incredulously as a Terminator sat up, its

belly chewed to fragments of flesh held together by blood-sodden cloth. The pistol in its hand came around again, and John winced as the back of the agent's head blew out in a shower of bone fragments and brains. The other black-clad man obeyed, unlimbering the longer weapon from his back and firing as fast as he could rack the slide of the battle shotgun. The dull massive thudump-thudump-thudump split a night full of screams and shots, a huge bottle-shaped flare of gases lancing out with every round. The gun was loaded with rifled slugs—

heavy grooved cylinders of lead, meant for smashing open locks or other demolition work. The massive frame of the Terminator lurched back as each round struck its torso; with the last it toppled backward like a cut-down tree, striking the ground hard enough that John could feel the earth shake beneath him.

'Grenade!' he yelled.

The Sector agent reacted with automatic obedience to something in John's voice, something that struck too deep to remember that he was a teenager or had been a prisoner less than a minute before. John leapt to his feet with a scrambling gracefulness, snatched the smooth egg-shaped mass out of the man's hand.

'Illuminating!' the agent warned.

'All the better,' John called back, pulling the pin as he ran and letting the spoon clatter off into the night.

Ought to take him at least fifteen seconds to reboot, he thought— he'd listened carefully as 'Uncle Bob' explained the weaknesses of the T-101 class. Sure enough, the massive limbs were just starting to stir as John reached the recumbent form, jammed the grenade into a hole blasted by one of the rifled slugs, jumped, and slammed his heel down on it to drive it deep into the

Terminator's bulky form.

That gave him footing for a backward leap. He blessed the endless hours of practice Sarah had put him through, practice in every form of martial art she could find and gymnastics as well. That let him back-flip back to where the surviving Sector agent waited, staring incredulously as his hands automatically reloaded the shotgun.

'You stuffed a grenade into his—'

Several things happened simultaneously then. The Terminator came to one knee, arm extended to aim its pistol. The thermite grenade exploded in the same instant, a brilliant flash of fire and white light; John squinted as he forced himself to feel across the head of the dead man an arm's length away. The head shot hadn't wrecked the man's goggles, and John slipped them over his head after wiping off the worst of the clotted matter on a clump of grass.

'Thank God,' he muttered—there was part of the enemy's advantage gone.

He scooped up his rifle; it was an ordinary hunting model, bolt action, but the rounds inside were hard-points with much more penetrating power.

'You stuffed a grenade right into that guy's chest,' the Sector agent said.

'Yeah, except it isn't a guy. You know any guys who can take fifty rounds of 5.45 and then six rifled slugs and get up again?' John asked.

He was impressed at the speed with which the Sector agent rallied. 'No,' he said, shaking his head. 'Either I'm crazy—

'Or I'm right,' John said. 'C'mon.'

The night-sight goggles didn't show contrast very well; when they leopard-crawled to where the Terminator lay smoking, the vision was more than enough to show the warped metal 'bones' protruding through the false flesh. The Sector agent gave a grunt of horrified nausea as the head turned and a face half stripped of skin snapped at him. John pulled another grenade—one of the dead agent's—

and judged his time carefully. The next snap closed on the butt of his rifle, and he jammed the grenade in after it. Terminators didn't spit very well…

'Fire in the hole!' he barked, and rolled away.

This time the Terminator didn't get up. The problem was that it was only one of them, and—

John threw himself convulsively backward. A hand like an ax slashed into the hard clay where he'd just been lying, burying itself wrist-deep. That gave him just enough time to bring his rifle up and fire as the T-101 wrenched itself free and turned toward him. The round struck with unintentional precision in the right knee joint, and the machine fell. When it tried to rise again the limb was locked; it lurched forward more slowly, eyes riveted on the priority target.

Terminators were like that; one-track metal minds. The Sector agent rose to his knees behind it and fired his shotgun again and again, a rippling blast of fire that outlined the hulking figure of the murder machine against the night like a strobing flashbulb. It toppled forward again, landing with an earthquake clamor.

John scooted backward on his rear, firing as fast as he could work the bolt of his rifle. Rounds punched into the thing's arms and shoulders, but its eyes flickered

and began to focus again…

The Sector agent was a man of resources. He came running up behind the prone machine and imitated John's tactic, buried the grenade with a stamping kick and then hurtled across the reviving killer. He grabbed the younger man by the collar of his jacket, half dragging them back to the lip of the gully.

'Down!' he shouted. 'Whatever it is, it's got a thermite grenade up its—'

Badoom!

Another sheet of white flame, and the forward half of the Terminator's torso shot by them, tumbling down into the gully and grabbing at loose rocks and shallow-rooted bushes in an attempt to stop the slide. A huge slab of rock came free under its impact, followed it down, bounced, and landed atop it with a precision no intelligence could have produced. Sparks sizzled out from beneath it, and the outstretched hands clenched, quivered, went limp.

'This isn't happening,' the Sector agent repeated to himself as he reloaded. 'This isn't happening.'

'Unfortunately it is,' John whispered—and then cursed himself. Terminators had very sensitive auditory pickups, and they'd be looking for his voiceprint.

Dieter laid Sully down behind a boulder, one of many dotting the sandy floor of the arroyo, then continued crawling. The Sector agents seemed to be fully engaged now; there were firefights going on around half the rim of the gully, the muzzle flashes giving the hole cut in the desert floor a weird flickering illumination, like an old-time silent movie. And if his hunch was right…

The distance was a good twenty yards, but he could see the resemblance between the hulking figure that strode down the slope toward the arms dealers' car. It even moved a little like him, if you imagined Dieter von Rossbach as one of Romero's living dead. He got a whiff as it passed; if Romero had had scent sprays for one of his brain-eater flics, that was the perfume they'd have used.

Uncertain voices cried out from behind the car, then screams of terror and the flicker of two assault rifles being fired on full rock-and-roll auto. That made Waylon and Luke worse shots than they'd have been naturally, and only half a dozen rounds struck the machine. It lurched, staggered, came on inexorably, pistol extended and cracking out one shot after another. Someone else—Luis, probably—was firing more steadily, and making better practice, until he stopped a round.

Definitely Luis, Dieter thought; the voice screaming for its mother was in Spanish. The Terminator walked slowly forward, and its gun cracked three more times—making sure of the targets and making sure of its identification.

That gave Dieter time enough to extend the fiberglass casing of a LAW and flip up the simple post-and-ring sight. 'Big mistake,' he muttered, and squeezed the trigger.

There was little recoil. The blare of the rocket motor lancing out behind him was a different matter, igniting weeds and sagebrush and pointing to him with a finger of fire. He threw the empty launcher aside and dove for