“Barnes,” Barnes said, taking the proffered hand carefully. He had already seen the telltale bulges of arthritis in Sibanda’s knuckles. “You the chaplain?”
“The pastor,” Sibanda corrected. “I was just thinking that there are several children and young adults who haven’t been able to avail themselves of your generosity. If you’re willing, I’d like to take you to them.”
Barnes scowled. First Connor wanted him to waste food on civilians, and now Sibanda wanted him to waste it on the sick and dying.
“If they can’t take the time to get here on their own—”
“Oh, no, it’s not like that,” Sibanda said. “I’m talking about the sentries on duty on the upper levels.” He looked past Barnes at Grimaldi. “With your permission, of course.”
Barnes looked at Grimaldi as well. The man didn’t look happy at the idea of a stranger touring his building, but he didn’t seem ready to get in Barnes’ way, either.
“Go ahead,” he growled.
“Thank you.” Sibanda took a step back and gestured toward a wide stone staircase. “This way, please.”
The trip to the top of the building was more of an adventure than Barnes had expected. The stone staircase, which led up to a mezzanine balcony and a whole group of what had probably once been a selection of retail stores, was as sturdy as anything Barnes had run into over the years since Judgment Day. The next three floors were all right, too, though the stairways that led between them were now the more standard types tucked alongside the empty elevator shafts.
But starting with the fifth floor, things got trickier. Some of the stairs were missing, while others were solid only in certain places along their width. Between the sixth and seventh floors half the steps had vanished completely, forcing a quarter-building detour through a set of hallways even more treacherous than the stairs.
Fortunately, Sibanda knew all the danger spots and was agile enough to make the jumps and long steps necessary to avoid them. Still, Barnes could see why Orozco had delegated most of the high sentry duty to the more nimble kids and teens.
Finally, to his quiet relief, they emerged once again into the open air.
“Here we are,” Sibanda said cheerfully. “This is our southeast sentry post.”
Barnes looked at the two kids sitting by a partial wall at the side of the building. One of them, a boy, looked to be thirteen or fourteen, while the other was a six- or seven-year-old girl. Both of them were staring wide-eyed at the big newcomer.
“This is Zac Steiner and this is Olivia Womak,” Sibanda said, gesturing to the kids. “Olivia’s just learning how to be a sentry.”
“You like it?” Barnes asked the girl.
Her lip twitched.
“Kinda cold up here.”
“It’s kind of cold everywhere,” Barnes pointed out.
“And at least here you have this wonderful view,” Sibanda said.
Barnes turned to look. The city stretched out in front of him, broken but still surviving, its streets and empty areas green with the vines and grasses and weeds that had slowly been coming back across the whole nuke- blasted region. To the far east and south, a haze had set in, softening the edges of the vista.
“It’s okay,” he said with a shrug.
“But you didn’t come up here for the view,” Sibanda continued. “Zac, Olivia, Mr. Barnes is with the Resistance, and he’d like a word with you.”
Barnes turned back to the kids.
“That’s right,” he said. “In the Resistance our job is to fight against Skynet and the Terminators.”
“Are you one of the people Kyle saw yesterday?” the boy asked.
“I don’t know,” Barnes said. “Who’s Kyle?”
“One of the other sentries,” Sibanda explained. “No, Zac, that was a different group. From what I understand, Mr. Barnes’ group was coming in too far north to be visible from this particular station.”
“Oh,” the boy said. “What’s Skynet?”
“It’s a big computer that’s taken over most of the world,” Barnes told him. “You know those HKs—Hunter- Killers, those big metal flying things—and the Terminators, those metal robot sorts of things that walk around with big guns?”
“I’ve seen them,” the boy said, shivering. “Not very close.”
“You want to try very hard to keep it that way,” Barnes told him grimly. “People who see Terminators up close usually die. That’s what the machines do. That’s all they do.”
“That’s…kind of scary,” the boy said.
Barnes looked at Sibanda. But this time there were no speeches or warnings about fear or hopelessness coming from the man. Maybe the preacher really did understand the reality of the world these kids were living in.
“It’s very scary,” Barnes agreed, looking back at the young sentries. “That’s why we fight.”
“Mr. Barnes is offering you—and all the rest of us—the chance to join them and be part of that fight,” Sibanda explained. “It’s something you both need to think about, very hard.”
The boy looked at Barnes, then back at Sibanda.
“Do we have to go right now?”
“Not right this second, no,” Sibanda said. “But soon. We’ll be visiting the other sentry posts, and then Mr. Barnes and his people will want to talk to the people downstairs, so you both have a little time to make up your minds.” Looking at Barnes, he raised his eyebrows. “In the meantime, I believe Mr. Barnes has something for each of you.”
“Oh—right,” Barnes said, digging into one of his jacket pockets and pulling out two of the snack bars. “This is to thank you for listening to me.”
“Though I’m sure that even in the Resistance they don’t get these things all the time,” Sibanda cautioned as the kids’ faces lit up and they started eagerly unwrapping the bars.
“No, we don’t,” Barnes admitted, remembering Connor’s number one rule of not sugar-glazing what the prospective recruit was getting into. “Mostly, what we get is that when the Terminators start shooting, we get to shoot back.”
“And with that, we’ll leave you to your duty,” Sibanda said, touching each of the children lightly on the shoulder before heading back into the building.
They were a quarter of the way around the floor, heading for the southwest sentry post, before Sibanda spoke again.
“You’ll take care of him, won’t you?” he asked Barnes quietly.
“Who?” Barnes asked.
“Zac,” Sibanda said. “He’s going with you.”
Barnes frowned. Last he’d heard, the kid was still undecided.
“When did he say that?”
“He didn’t have to,” Sibanda said, a deep sadness in his voice. “I know these people, Mr.
Barnes. Olivia is interested, but she’s not yet ready to leave her family and friends. But Zac is older, and he’s been listening to Sergeant Orozco. He understands the danger lurking out there.”
Barnes grunted. “He’s ahead of Grimaldi on that one, anyway.”
“The chief’s heart’s in the right place,” Sibanda murmured. “You must give him that. He also understands organization and resource management. Under other conditions, he would be the ideal man to run a place like Moldering Lost Ashes.”
“You mean conditions like no Skynet?”
Sibanda sighed. “He’s not blind, you know. We see your planes battling the Hunter-Killers, and we get word from other parts of the city. He knows what Skynet is doing. But he truly believes that you Resistance people are baiting it, that it’s just reacting to your attacks. He believes that if we stay quiet and leave Skynet alone, it will leave us alone, too.”
Barnes barked a laugh.
“Yeah. Right.”
“I know,” Sibanda said with another sigh. “But what else can we do? We can’t fight, not all of us—we have
