arrow through her skin. Half turning, she got a grip on the arrow shaft with her left hand.
And gasped again as Hope’s second arrow flashed through her left thigh and pinned her leg to the tree.
A second later Hope was again sprinting through the trees, heading back toward town as fast as she could. The arrows wouldn’t hold Susan for long, and she’d heard enough stories about Terminators—many of them from Susan herself—to know she wasn’t going to take one down with nothing but a quiver of arrows.
But her father was in town, and Barnes, and Blair. They would know what to do.
She was nearly to the edge of town when she heard the first sounds of gunfire.
In a single flick of his eyelids, Jik abruptly saw the awful truth.
The men and women trudging through the forest around him weren’t his friends or his allies. They were his enemies. People who had sworn to destroy him and the Resistance.
People who had lured him out here into the wilderness to kill him.
But that wasn’t going to happen. Not if John Connor had anything to say about it.
Halverson was the closest, striding along beside Jik a few feet away. Casually, Jik angled his own stride in that direction, watching the other out of the corner of his eye. He was within reach when the big man finally seemed to notice Jik’s presence.
“Trouble?” Halverson asked quietly.
Reaching over, Jik wrenched Halverson’s rifle from his hands and slammed the weapon’s shoulder stock into the other’s rib cage.
With a choked gasp, the man folded around himself and collapsed to the ground. Rotating the rifle into firing position at his hip, Jik spun around to face the rest of the traitors marching along behind him and opened fire.
The first four went down without so much as a yelp. Jik was taking down the fifth when the rest finally burst into action, dropping the pieces of broken Terminator they were carrying and either returning fire or scattering madly for cover like ants from a poked anthill.
Jik strode back through the cowering ranks, coolly squeezing off shot after shot until Halverson’s rifle was empty. Dropping it, he picked up two more weapons from men who no longer needed them and kept going. When those were empty, he dropped them and found two more.
The bullets were beginning to fly now as the would-be assassins finally got their own weapons up and set their murderous plan into action. Most of the shots buzzed harmless past Jik’s head and body before one actually found its target, slamming into his chest and sending a jolt of agony through him.
A blow like that would have killed a lesser man. But John Connor was made of stronger stuff. Regaining his balance, he put a round into the offending shooter and continued on his way.
Those who remained had now gone to ground behind trees, rocks, and bushes. Steadily, methodically, he went to each hiding place in turn.
The traitor called Pepper pleaded with him, calling his name over and over as if it was a magic spell that would drain him of his will and purpose. The one called Singer died with a curse on his lips, uselessly calling down the wrath of God. The one called Half-pint simply stared silently at Jik with fear and agony in his eyes.
But Jik knew better than to listen to any of it. He was John Connor, and these were his enemies and the enemies of humanity. They deserved to die.
So he killed them.
By the time he lowered his last rifle a total of seven rounds had found him, each slug adding a new splash of throbbing pain. But none of the blows was powerful enough or accurate enough to kill him.
Dropping his last empty weapon, ignoring the agony burning through his body, he did a quick but careful survey of the bodies scattered across the blood-stained greenery around him. It had been close, but once again he’d managed to cheat death. Skynet’s agents, all of them, were dead.
All except one. He’d only disabled Halverson at the beginning of his preemptive counterattack, knowing that the wounded man could wait until Jik had finished dealing with the others. Time now for that final loose end to be tied off.
He’d paid close attention to the firefight, and had already concluded that all the rifles and pistols scattered across the ground around him were empty. But he still had Williams’s Mossberg M500 slung over his shoulder, and the shotgun had one round left. Giving the dead assassins one final look, he turned and headed back to the front of the line.
To find that Halverson was gone.
So were the bow and quiver that one of the dead men nearby had been carrying.
Jik gave a contemptuous snort as he looked around. Did Halverson seriously think he could take down John Connor with nothing but a bow and a few arrows?
Apparently not. There was no sign anywhere of the injured hunter. Instead of staying to fight, he’d taken advantage of Jik’s preoccupation with the others to run like a rabbit.
Jik snorted again. Let him run, because there really wasn’t anywhere for him to run to. Now that Jik had finished his own defense, he could hear the sounds of fresh gunfire coming from the town itself.
That would be Oxley, also refusing to simply roll over before the Resistance-hating assassins. Jik had no doubt that he would carry the day there, just as Jik had done here in the forest.
In the meantime, some of the townspeople had probably escaped into the trees. They would have to be tracked down and eliminated.
He shook his head. It would be a long and wearisome task, but it had to be done. All of Baker’s Hollow had heard the false accusations Barnes and Williams had brought against him, and those treasonous thoughts could not be permitted to survive. The reputation of John Connor had to stay clear and clean if he was to lead the people of the Resistance to victory over Skynet.
And toward that end Jik would need to leave soon. The Eugene group had been one of those who had defied Command’s order to activate their transmitters during the climax of Skynet’s grand scheme to destroy its enemies. As a result, they’d been one of the few Resistance groups to have survived. They deserved recognition for that.
They deserved a visit from John Connor himself.
Unfortunately, that meant Jik couldn’t be here to help Oxley and Valentine with their task of cleansing the area around Baker’s Hollow.
But as he’d reminded his colleagues so many times, there were always options. If Jik couldn’t help personally with the hunt, he could at least arrange for a substitute.
The wreckage from the T-700s was scattered around the forest where the traitors had dropped or thrown them. Slinging the shotgun over his shoulder again, Jik began gathering those pieces back together.
“Come on, Oxley,” Preston shouted, slapping the barrel of his rifle against the top of the hedge for emphasis. “Oxley?”
Blair peeked out around her end of the hedge, gripping her Desert Eagle tightly. Oxley had to know that Preston’s invitation was a trap. The question was, would he—or rather, the massive Skynet computer that had programmed him—be arrogant enough to take them up on it?
And then, from somewhere in the near distance came the muffled sound of a woman’s scream.
“Wait!” Blair snapped. She’d seen Marcus Wright in action, and running around randomly out there was an invitation to get killed. “Preston!”
“I have to warn them,” Preston called back over his shoulder. “They don’t even know what they’re facing.”
“He’ll kill you!” Blair bit out.
“Then you kill him back.” Preston ducked between the buildings and disappeared.
Straightening out of her crouch, Blair headed after him.
She made it around the hedge and about four steps toward the gap Preston had used when Barnes caught up with her.
“No—there,” he grunted, pointing instead toward a different opening off to the left. Without waiting for a reply, he angled away, heading for a space to their right.
Blair swore under her breath. But he was right. She veered to her left. That scream might have been Oxley’s
