Trial By Fire

* * *

They had just passed through the town, which as far as Barnes could tell consisted entirely of a bunch of ramshackle houses and a couple of larger buildings, when the sound of gunfire erupted from somewhere dead ahead.

Their leader, Hope’s father, was off in an instant, breaking into a sprint with his rifle held high in front of him. Grunting, swearing under his breath, Barnes followed. His legs were already feeling leaden from all the weight he was carrying, and the soft, draggy ground beneath him wasn’t making things any easier. But he’d told Preston he could keep up and he was damned if he would fall behind now.

Three minutes later, they burst through one final barrier of low-hanging branches onto the scene of battle.

Barnes had seen Terminators picking their way through city rubble, striding across empty fields, even climbing up the outsides of shattered walls. But up to now he’d never seen one standing shin-deep in the middle of a narrow river, plumes of whitewater churning around its legs, trying to push forward against the current and the relentless impact of heavy rifle rounds.

Heavy, but not heavy enough. The T-700’s approach was being slowed by the gunfire, but it wasn’t taking much damage. There were some dents in its torso and skull, and its gun arm had been dislocated at the shoulder, but that was about it.

Well, Barnes could do something about that. Braking to a halt, he slid his right foot behind him for stability and dropped the muzzle of his minigun into firing position. Lining up the weapon on the Terminator’s torso, he squeezed the trigger.

The gun thundered to life, pouring out its stream of destruction. Barnes leaned into the recoil, fighting to keep the hail of lead centered on its target.

He probably wasn’t as accurate with the minigun as an actual T-600 would have been. But at this range he was accurate enough. The T-700 staggered back, its arms and legs snapping free of its torso and flying into the churning water, the torso itself denting and then shredding and finally disintegrating under the assault.

And as the machine collapsed into a heap in the roiling water Barnes let up on the trigger.

“Anyone else?” he challenged.

He hadn’t expected a response. He got one anyway. On the far side of the river, thirty meters to the north, a pair of bushes were shoved violently apart to reveal a second T-700. It strode to the riverbank and then turned to its right and started downstream toward the ford.

“Look out—there’s another one!” someone shouted.

Barnes glanced down at the minigun’s ammo belt. There were only about thirty rounds remaining, about half a second at full auto. Best to save those until the machine was closer. He dropped into a crouch and lowered the big gun to the ground.

And as he did so, a burst of gunfire from his left burned through the air above him.

He twisted his head to look in that direction, swinging his shoulder-slung SIG 542 into firing position. A third T-700 had appeared from the trees, this one fifty meters south, also moving along the riverbank toward the ford.

But unlike the one coming down from the north, this Terminator was ready for battle. Its G11 submachinegun was pointed and ready, its metal skull swinging back and forth as its glowing eyes tracked the human defenders scrambling madly for cover.

Sinking a little deeper into his crouch, Barnes swiveled as far around as he could at hips and waist and fired off a three-round burst from the 542. At this range the shots did little but stagger the Terminator back, but it was enough to give the rest of the men time to get to cover.

“Never mind the one to the north,” someone shouted over the renewed gunfire. “The south one. Focus your fire on the south one.”

As if to underline the urgency of the order, the southernmost of the two T-700s fired again, this burst digging gouges into the side of a wide tree two of the riflemen were huddled behind. Barnes sent another burst bouncing off the Terminator’s torso, then checked the T-700 coming from the north. Its gun hand was still hanging at its side as it strode toward the ford, with no indication that it was preparing to open fire.

That would change soon enough, Barnes knew. But for the moment, whoever had called out that order had the situation properly nailed. The second Terminator was the one doing all the shooting, so that was the one they needed to deal with.

From Barnes’s left came a familiar thunderclap as Williams opened fire with her Desert Eagle.

“I need to get closer,” she shouted to Barnes as her shot staggered the Terminator back. “Cover me?”

Barnes gave a curt nod.

“Go.”

He flicked his rifle’s selector to single-shot as Williams ducked around behind Preston and his men and sprinted in a broken-field charge for the river. Deliberately, methodically, he pumped slug after slug into the T-700, spacing his shots so as to conserve ammo while still keeping the Terminator off balance and unable to get a clear shoot at the woman running toward it. A few of the other men, Preston among them, caught onto the plan and added their fire to Barnes’s, their shots alternating with his.

Ten seconds later, Williams reached the river, her Desert Eagle now holstered and the Mossberg shotgun unslung and clutched in front of her. She was just closing the weapon’s action, which told Barnes that she’d exchanged the shotgun round that had already been in place for one of the solid slugs from her ammo pack. The machine turned its G11 toward her, its burst going over her head as she threw herself into a feet-first baserunner slide that carried her to the very edge of the riverbank. The Terminator fired again, this burst also going wide as Barnes and Preston simultaneously hammered it.

And as the machine once again staggered back, Williams’s slug blasted at point-blank range into its gun.

Terminators were made of incredibly strong, incredibly hard alloy. The G11s, on the other hand, were not only not as strong, but also had a couple of critical weak points. The gun’s receiver was one such weakness, a spot where a heavy rifle or shotgun slug could jam the action and possibly ignite the chambered round. The magazine with the exposed explosive of its caseless rounds was another.

And if you were really, really lucky, those two weaknesses intersected. Williams’s round slammed into the gun—

And suddenly the entire magazine went up in a sputtering, multiple flash as the close-packed ammo blew up, each round triggering the one next to it. The T-700 staggered back as the exploding rounds lit up its torso.

“Look out—here it comes!” someone shouted.

Barnes looked away from the sputtering fireworks display. The northern T-700, the one that the earlier voice had ordered everyone to ignore, had reached the ford and started across the river. Cursing, Barnes swung his rifle around toward it.

“Don’t shoot!” the same voice called again. “It’s not after us. Don’t shoot!”

Barnes frowned. Ridiculous. The thing wading through the whitewater toward them was a Terminator. Terminators were always after humans. That was what they did. That was what they were.

But the machine’s gun hand was still at its side, its head and eyes angled to the north instead of toward the small group of humans standing against it. From all appearances, it really did look like it was ignoring them.

“Don’t shoot!” the voice called again.

Barnes swore again, shifting his grip on his rifle. Appearances or not, he didn’t trust the damn machine farther than he could spit at it. He would hold onto his ammo for now, but the instant the T-700 stopped pretending and launched its attack he would make damn sure he was ready to blow its head off.

He was still crouching in the grass and dead leaves, waiting for that moment, when the Terminator finished crossing the river, turned north, and headed off again along the riverbank.

Barnes watched its back as it strode stolidly along, an eerie sense of unreality creeping across his skin, until it disappeared among the trees.

A movement caught the corner of his eye, and he looked across the river to see the other T-700 stride past the ford and continue north on the opposite bank. Its gun, he noted, was lying in a tangle of twisted metal on the ground behind it. Its right hand, which had taken the brunt of the multiple explosions, was in impressively bad