their side, crossing under cover to the other side, and sending their last C4 grenade directly into the bus.
At which point Barnes and his squad should be able to duck through the more distant and less effective fire from the north end of the street and go to Orozco’s aid.
Connor just hoped they would be in time to do something useful.
They were nearly to the store when some instinct made Connor glance over his shoulder. There, striding silently toward them along the far side of the street, were a brand new set of four T-600s.
Before Connor could even open his mouth to shout a warning, they opened fire.
McFarland took the brunt of that first salvo, his body all but disintegrating under the hail of bullets, dead long before he hit the pavement. Connor swung his MP5 around, flicking the selector to full auto and opening fire, striking the Terminators and sending their next salvo wide.
“Through the window!” he shouted at the rest of his squad.
Peripherally, he saw them charging toward the corner store as he continued to fire. His clip ran dry, and he slammed in a fresh one, ignoring the bullets hammering into the wall behind him.
“Clear!” he heard Tony’s shout as a hail of cover fire opened up at the Terminators from behind him. “Connor!”
He turned and sprinted toward the store. Bishop and Tony were crouched by the window, their rifles blazing as he dived headlong through the opening. He hit the floor and rolled onto his shoulder and back, coming awkwardly up into a crouch.
“Everyone okay?” he called.
“For now,” Joey said grimly. “But that may not last much longer.”
And only then did Connor’s brain catch up with his combat reflexes, and he recognized the trap Skynet had maneuvered them into.
Because if those ambushing T-600s had attacked while Connor’s squad was still in the middle of the block, they would have stopped right there, hammering the machines with enough gunfire to keep them off balance long enough for Joey to take them out with their last C4 grenade.
Instead, by waiting until the squad had this convenient bunker to retreat to, Skynet had put them within range of both the T-600s on the street
Two targets. Only one grenade.
It wasn’t really a choice, Connor knew with a sinking heart. Tactically, the only viable move would be to ignore the bus, use the grenade against the group to their west, and then slip out that way. Taking out the bus wouldn’t be of any help, since Skynet could still pull in the Terminators from the north end of the street to block any exit in that direction, leaving Connor and his squad still pinned.
But if Connor did it that way, if he left the bus alone, Skynet would maintain its control of the street, blocking all access to the Moldavia.
And the people in there would all die.
Joey was crouching beside him, the grenade launcher in his hands, his eyes steady on Connor’s face. Probably he’d run through the same train of logic, and knew that the people in the Moldavia were doomed.
“Get the launcher ready,” Connor told him evenly. “We’re taking out the bus.”
The hallways were filled with smoke and the thunder of machinegun fire, the screams of the wounded, and the bodies of the dead.
Orozco continued backing slowly down the hall, firing at every pair of red eyes he could make out through the drifting smoke. There were a lot of them, at least five sets he could see at the moment. The Terminators were working their way toward him, pausing at each doorway along the hall to check for potential victims.
Sometimes the room was empty, and the Terminators would continue their march forward. Far too often, though, there was someone hiding in there. Then there would be yet another burst of minigun fire, and another person would join the ranks of the dead.
Orozco was alone now. All those who’d once stood with him had either been killed or had turned and fled. He still nursed some frail tendrils of hope that at least some of those who’d run hadn’t actually deserted, but had instead headed back to the lobby to regroup for a counterattack.
He wasn’t really expecting that. But he also didn’t blame them. The Terminators had brought a living, pulsating hell to their home, and men and women who’d never before been through such sound and fury and death could hardly be expected to stand against it for long.
In fact, Orozco hoped that some of them had made it out of the building alive, and would find a way to slip through Skynet’s cordon and escape. Sending a few survivors back to the world would at least give his death some meaning.
A death that wouldn’t be much longer in coming. His left arm was wet with blood, and he knew he’d taken a round somewhere up there. He couldn’t feel any pain, thanks to the adrenaline pumping through his system. But all the adrenaline in the world couldn’t plug leaking skin. Even if he managed to avoid taking any more damage, he would eventually collapse from loss of blood.
But not yet. Not yet. Not as long as there was hope for any of his people.
A pair of glowing red eyes loomed up through the smoke in front of him. Orozco squeezed his M16’s trigger, the impact of the round sending the head bouncing backward.
Clenching his teeth, firing again and again, Orozco continued his slow, steady, lonely retreat.
The exit from the sagging building led through a maze of back alleys and ruins. Kyle and Star moved through them, staying in shadow as much as they could, both of them alert to the probability that there were other Terminators somewhere in the area.
But though the night was filled with the thunder of gunfire, and the broken clouds above reflected an eerie glow from the multiple fires going on across the city, Kyle didn’t spot a single one of the red-eyed killing machines.
His plan had been to head due west, then turn north when they got to the street that passed by the building’s main entrance. They were nearly to the service alley that ran along the rear of the Ashes building when a much louder hammering of nearby gunfire suddenly rolled across him.
Reflexively, he pulled Star down beside him into the partial shelter of a ragged waist-high wall, wincing at the sheer thundering power of the blasts. He’d heard similar barrages on and off throughout the long night, but they’d always been coming from somewhere in the distance, and up in the sky. To hear it up close like this was brain- rattlingly terrifying.
But it was over quickly. Wishing he knew whether that was a good thing or a bad thing, he started to stand up—
And dropped back down as a jet aircraft shot straight out of the alley in front of him, followed by a blast of hot air that knocked both him and Star flat on their backs. He caught a glimpse of an angry red-yellow glow blazing from the inside of the plane as it climbed sharply back into the sky.
The roar faded as the plane headed somewhere else.
“You okay?” Kyle asked as he took Star’s arm and got the two of them back on their feet.
She gave him a quick nod, her eyes tense, her hand gripping his tightly.
“Yeah, I know,” Kyle agreed, peering ahead down the street. It looked clear. “Okay, here’s the plan. We cross the alley and go one more block, then turn north and head back to the Ashes. Right?
Let’s go.”
Somewhat to Kyle’s surprise, they made it to the next street without incident. Stepping up to the corner of a small makeshift shanty that someone had long ago built out of scrap wood and brick, and then abandoned, he looked carefully around it.
His worst fears had envisioned a dozen Terminators marching on the building. But again to his surprise, he found that the street stretching out in front of him was completely deserted.
But otherwise the path looked clear.
“Okay, here we go,” he whispered to Star. Taking her hand, he started to ease around the corner.
As the shanty wall above his head exploded in a shattering hail of gunfire.
