Terminator Salvation - From the Ashes

the gang had cleared out.

And he and Star couldn’t steal from ordinary citizens. Even if all the stuff really had been abandoned.

Or at least they couldn’t steal everything.

“Go get two bottles of water and four of the bars,” he instructed Star. “Somebody might still come back for the rest.”

Star wrinkled her nose, but nodded and went over to the stack. She was sorting through the packages when something behind the clothing seemed to belatedly catch her eye. Reaching down, she lifted a shotgun into view.

This time, Kyle didn’t hesitate.

“Yes,” he said firmly.

A minute later, shotgun in hand, food and water in his new jacket’s pockets, Kyle opened the door and they once more slipped out into the night. Where are we going? Star signed.

“Back to the Ashes,” Kyle told her, frowning as they set off along the street. Was that the sound of helicopters just fading away in the distance? Probably his imagination.

“We need to see if there’s anything we can do there to help,”

The streets were eerily quiet, with only the sound of their own footsteps breaking the silence.

Kyle looked around carefully as they walked, wondering if any of the people they’d seen earlier were still lurking around here somewhere.

But they all seemed to have left. Could that have been what the sound of the helicopters had been about?

Too bad. He would at least have liked to find out who they’d been, and whether they’d really been with the Resistance or just faking it. He might have been able to find out whether the people in the bus who had saved him and Star had made it out alive, too. Now, he’d probably never know.

But at least when the men and women had left, the Terminators had left with them.

The Ashes building, when Kyle caught his first glimpse of it, was a shock. The distinctive stone archway was gone, as was most of the front of the building just above it, the whole mass having collapsed into a shattered heap of stone blocking most of the entrance.

Star clutched suddenly at Kyle’s arm.

“It’s okay,” he soothed her. “Remember how Orozco told us that if there was ever an attack he could put bombs in the archway to bring it down on them?”

Star shook her head violently, her fingers digging into Kyle’s arm. Kyle frowned…and then, his fogged brain got it.

He pushed Star against the building beside them, pressing himself there next to her as he fumbled his new shotgun to his shoulder. Heart thudding in his ears, he gave a quick look around them, then turned back to the Ashes building.

There it was, digging diligently through the rocks at the far end of the pile, lifting huge chunks of stone and concrete off the stack and setting them down on the street beside it.

Apparently, not all the Terminators had left.

Kyle frowned, wondering what the machine was doing. Was it looking for other Terminators that had been trapped in the collapse? It was using both hands, he noticed, and he looked briefly for where it had set down its minigun.

But there was no weapon to be seen. It must have lost the weapon, Kyle decided, or else had run out of ammo and dumped it. The Terminator pulled out another block of stone and set it aside.

Then, without warning, it turned directly toward Kyle and Star.

And as Kyle got his first clear look at the torn skin on its torso, skin torn away by a close-range shotgun blast, he suddenly realized who this was. Not some random Terminator, but their old enemy Fido.

For a long moment the machine gazed toward them. Kyle froze, his shotgun still pointed even as he realized how utterly useless the weapon was at this range.

And then, to Kyle’s surprise and relief, the Terminator merely turned back to the rock pile.

Leaning over, it reached both hands into the hole it had dug.

Kyle started breathing again. Maybe the machine hadn’t seen them. Maybe its optics had been damaged by its tumble through the rotten floor near the Death’s-Head compound.

The Terminator was still working at something in the hole, perhaps a stubborn stone that didn’t want to be moved. Then, with a massive tug, it pulled a half-crushed metal arm out of the hole.

Only it wasn’t just an arm. It was an arm that was still clutching a minigun, the weapon’s ammo belt trailing down into the hole behind it.

Fido hadn’t given up on hunting them. It also wasn’t simply looking for broken Terminators or scrap metal to take back to Skynet.

It was looking for a new gun.

“Time to go,” Kyle murmured, taking Star’s arm and backing them along the wall again. They reached the corner, and just as they eased around it out of the Terminator’s sight the machine once again turned its red eyes toward them.

It had seen them, all right. And as soon as it got its new weapon free, it was going to come after them.

“Come on,” Kyle said. Still holding Star’s arm, he broke into a dead run back toward the ganghouse.

Where? Star signed frantically as her feet pounded against the pavement.

“Not sure yet,” Kyle told her. “Let’s first just get some distance between us and it. Distance and buildings,” he added as he pulled her around the corner onto the next street heading north.

He took a deep breath, consciously settling his pumping legs into a steady rhythm, feeling a trickle of frustration run through him. He’d thought the terror of the night was over. He’d needed the terror of the night to be over.

But it wasn’t. Maybe it never would be.

But it didn’t matter. What mattered was that he and Star were still alive.

And they would stay that way, too. No matter what happened, no matter what the universe and Skynet threw at them, they would get through it. If and when that Terminator back there found them, Kyle would find a way to destroy it. Then he’d do the same to the next one Skynet sent after them, and the next one, and the one after that.

Because Star was counting on him.

The street stretched far ahead of them, fading away into the darkness. Watching Star out of the corner of his eye, making sure she was keeping up, he began studying the ruined buildings they were passing. Somewhere along here, he knew, he’d find something he could use.

The quarters General Olsen’s aide took Connor and Kate to weren’t a lot bigger than some of the other places they’d called home over the years. They weren’t all that much better furnished, either.

But it wasn’t bitterly cold, there was space for them to stow their weapons and other gear, and the floor was mostly nice and flat. More importantly, it was safe.

And that was a far rarer and more precious commodity than anything else the Resistance could have offered them.

“Yes, I could live here,” Connor commented as he set down his MP5 and started taking off his gun belt.

Kate didn’t answer. Crossing the room to a table beside the bed, she began divesting herself of her own load of weapons and equipment.

She’d hadn’t said much on the helicopter ride out of Los Angeles, Connor had noticed. Virtually nothing, in fact, except for her brief assurance that she wasn’t injured.

“You hungry?” Connor asked. “There’s supposed to be a twenty-four-hour mess tucked away somewhere.”

“Not right now,” Kate said, her voice low.

Connor watched her, his own heart aching in sympathy. No matter how well an operation went, there never seemed to be any truly solid victories against Skynet. And even those partial victories always had to be paid for in human lives.