Terminator Salvation - From the Ashes

up with them already?

But no. That pair should still be somewhere to their east. The lone figure he could see striding along the street toward them was coming instead from the west. It seemed to notice the two kids sitting on the slab and changed its course to head toward them.

Kyle whipped his rifle up to his shoulder, uncertainty flicking through him. The figure was big, but he’d seen humans who were nearly that size. And so far, it hadn’t opened fire on them.

And then, as it passed through a patch of moonlight, he saw the glint of metal from the minigun in its right hand.

“Go north,” Kyle muttered at Star. “Go.”

The girl nodded and took off, her legs pounding the pavement as fast and hard as they could.

Aiming at the Terminator’s leg, Kyle squeezed the trigger.

The machine staggered with the impact, pausing as it fought to regain its balance. Kyle fired a second shot, and a third, each one briefly stopping the machine in its tracks. So far, the barrage seemed to be keeping it back.

He frowned suddenly.

Or was that what Skynet wanted him to think?

He squeezed off one final round, then abruptly leaped to his feet and took off after Star.

And as he did so, a burst of minigun fire slashed through the space he’d just vacated.

The other two Terminators had caught up.

Kyle threw a quick look over his right shoulder. They were both still half a block back, but they were taking every opportunity to fire at him as he darted in and out of their view past rusting vehicles, piles of rubble, and clumps of weeds.

But though they were firing, neither Terminator seemed to be making any effort to close the distance between them. In fact, they were actually retreating, backing toward the street they’d just passed.

Kyle looked over his other shoulder. They weren’t chasing him for the simple reason that Skynet had already put the other Terminator on that job. It was striding toward him, all traces of its earlier unsteadiness gone.

He turned forward again, putting everything he had left into increasing his speed as he realized what Skynet was up to. Guessing that Kyle and Star were on their way to the Ashes, it had pulled the three Terminators from somewhere with the hope that the two from the east would drive him and Star straight into the arms of the one to the west.

Now that the plan had failed, Skynet was going to try the same thing, but in a slightly different way. The single Terminator was now going to chase him and Star until they either dropped from exhaustion or else turned east and tried to get back home. Only they would never make it, because the other two Terminators would be paralleling their run along the next north-south street over, which would put them in position to intercept him and Star if and when they tried to turn in that direction.

It was a good plan, and with anyone else it probably would have worked with lethal efficiency.

But there was something Kyle knew that Skynet didn’t. Something that might just get him and Star out of this alive.

He glanced over his shoulder again. Terminators weren’t all that fast, and the one back there was starting to fall behind. But he wasn’t falling behind fast enough. Reaching into his shoulder bag as he ran, Kyle pulled out his last pipe bomb. He’d hoped he could save at least one of them, but he needed to slow the machine down and there was no other way he could think of to do that without having to slow down himself.

Lighting the fuse, he let it run down to just the right length, then hurled the bomb behind him.

It exploded with the usual thundercrack, lighting up the cityscape and peppering Kyle with bits of shrapnel. He looked back again, to see that the blast had knocked the Terminator off its feet. The few extra seconds it would cost the big machine to haul itself back up and continue the chase ought to be enough.

They would have to be enough.

Star had made it nearly to the next corner when Kyle caught up with her.

“Come on,” he told her, grabbing her hand. “I’ve got a plan.”

The bursts of minigun fire echoing through the hallways had become more and more sporadic over the past few minutes. Either the Terminators moving through the building were running low on ammo or, more likely, were running low on people to kill.

And as Orozco reached the lobby he discovered why. Everyone who had managed to evade the killing spree up to now had apparently gathered here, those with guns crouching on the far side of the barricade the fire teams had put together, those without huddling together behind them. Some of the people were whimpering or crying, and Orozco could hear at least one quiet stream of curses being repeated over and over.

They were facing death, and they were terrified. But they were still holding.

Grimaldi rose from the center of the barricade as Orozco approached.

“Thank God—I thought they’d gotten you,” the chief said. His eyes dropped to Orozco’s blood-soaked sleeve—

“I’m fine,” Orozco said, forestalling the obvious question. “What have we got?”

“A dead end,” Grimaldi replied, his voice glacially calm. “Terminators have moved into position on the street about half a block north. Some of our people made a run for it, but were cut down before they got even halfway across. I was wondering if we might be able to set up enough cover fire to let at least some of them get out.”

It was a pretty futile hope, Orozco knew. But it would be better to try something than just sit here and wait to be cut down.

He was opening his mouth to say so when the roar of miniguns erupted from behind him, and Grimaldi’s chest exploded in a spray of blood and bone and flesh.

Orozco threw himself to the side, the bullets that were tracking along the top of the barricade stitching a line across his left shoulder and sleeve as he fell. He hit the ground and rolled over, trying to pull his M16 out from beneath him, where it had landed. Another burst slammed into the barricade just above his head, and with a gurgling scream the man standing behind it toppled forward, dropping his rifle across Orozco’s ribs and clutching at his own shattered legs.

For a second he teetered, and then pitched forward to sprawl across Orozco’s head and shoulders.

Orozco gasped in pain as the man’s weight slammed against his injured left arm. His right arm was pinned beneath the man’s torso, and he fought furiously to work free enough to at least shove him off.

Another burst of fire jerked the man’s body sideways, cutting off his screams forever.

And with that, the end had finally come. The Terminators would shoot everyone, Orozco knew, and then would systematically go around the room and put another couple of slugs into each of the bodies, just to make sure. After that they would probably go through the entire building on the off-chance that they’d somehow missed someone.

There was nothing Orozco could do to stop them. He couldn’t even get to his gun.

The tumult of screams and scattered return fire was fading away now, leaving only the bursts of minigun fire to intrude on the silence. Closing his eyes, wishing he could also close his ears, Orozco waited for death.

There were three entrances to the Ashes’ secret underground gasoline stash. Kyle took the closest, pushing Star in ahead of him and ducking in quickly behind her. He didn’t know whether the pursuing Terminator had been in position to see where they’d gone, but he had to assume it had.

They would have to work fast.

Star got the hidden door open in record time. Kyle slipped past her to the tank and twisted the tap all the way over, starting the gasoline spilling onto the ground.

Spilling way too slowly. Pulling out his knife, Kyle jabbed at the side of the tank, poking hole after hole in the tough fiberglass until the gasoline was flowing freely.

“Go out the second way, but stay out of sight,” he told Star, his eyes watering a little. The smell of the gasoline was overwhelming. “Wait for me just inside the exit.”

She nodded and disappeared out the door and up one of the sloping decoy tunnels. Sliding the bag Orozco had given him off his shoulder, Kyle held it under one of his knife slashes, letting it fill about a third of the way up with gasoline. Then he backed out of the room, carefully pouring a trail of gasoline as he went. He walked about