The future war, p.19
The Future War, page 19
One of the women started to retch upon entering.
“You sick?” a guard barked.
“It’s the smell,” a woman snapped. She took the sick woman by the arm and pulled her across to a window, which she threw open. Just in time as the woman threw herself over the sill and was sick.
“You’ll clean that up,” the same soldier said.
A little girl screamed and her mother exclaimed, “Oh, my God! There’s a body here!”
The other women clustered around the bed and stared in horror at the emaciated figure in it. The woman moved and they all sprang back, some screaming.
“She won’t bother you for long,” a guard said. “But we can’t bury her just yet.” The other guards snickered and the newcomers looked at her in deep dismay.
The women looked at one another and then a new look at the place they were to stay. It was filthy beyond description, with a stench that could only come from terrible sickness and much death.
“You said clean,” a woman said, rolling up her sleeves. “Do we have cleaning supplies?”
The guards looked at one another, marking this as one to watch. Then their leader indicated a closet at the end of the long room.
“Okay,” the woman said. “Let’s get to work, ladies.”
“Now remember, the guards are all bad guys,” Reese said. “But the inmates aren’t, and those shacks wouldn’t stop a spitball or a stiff breeze, much less a bullet. Now let’s go.”
He felt himself smiling grimly as they moved in through the thickening twilight.
Somebody designed this camp to keep people from getting out, not in, he thought. And those creeps may be wearing the uniform, but they’re prison guards and muscle, not soldiers. That’s why they don’t have anyone out here.
He still wished he had more night-vision equipment, or that the enemy had less. That could be arranged…
Sergeant Juarez and two men were walking down the road toward the camp’s entrance, which was flanked by two watchtowers. Reese made himself not check his weapon again—that would be fidgeting—and kept still behind the bush that sheltered him. Juarez and his troopers were playing it calmly, walking up with weapons slung; soldiers from the camp—pseudosoldiers, he reminded himself—came out to meet them.
Far too many of them. I was right: that bunch never went through basic.
The last thing you wanted to do in a suspicious situation was crowd a lot of men right out in the open. An experienced and suspicious NCO would have sent one or two men out to greet the newcomers, keeping the rest back under cover and ready to react if anything went wrong.
Which it was about to do. Through the binoculars Reese could see the leader of the camp guards smiling and nodding as Juarez spoke, the broad gestures of the sergeant’s hands…and then one going to the small of his back.
“Go!” Reese barked as the noncom pulled the pistol out and shot the guard in the stomach.
Then Juarez hugged the body to himself and used it as a shield, emptying the magazine into the crowded enemy as the two soldiers following him swung their assault rifles down and opened fire as well.
Reese ran forward, hoping that the dozen others behind him would follow—the rest of Juarez’s squad were over on the eastern side of the camp, and it was all survivalists and odds-and-sods here.
From their yelling, they were following him. “Shut up!” he shouted—not the most inspiring battle cry in the world, but it would have to do.
Ahead of him was one of the observation towers; a wooden box on top of four splayed wooden legs, with a little roof above it. There was a searchlight and two machine guns in the box; the guards there were both looking at the firing around the gate, though…and the tower was outside the barbed-wire perimeter of the camp.
“Go!” he barked, panting slightly as they reached the tower.
Reese went down on one knee, his carbine to his shoulder. The figures up top were dim, until they lit up the searchlight…“Perfect,” he whispered as he gently squeezed the trigger.
Braaaapp. One short burst, and a body toppled over the edge of the railing, falling inert not far away.
That left the other one, who was turning a machine gun Reese’s way.
“Open fire!” he bellowed. “Shoot, for Chrissake!”
The survivalists did, belatedly. For an instant, the man above looked as if he was dancing—bullets went through the floor of the wooden observation box as if it wasn’t there. One of them struck the searchlight, and it went out with a shower of sparks that left orange afterimages drifting across Reese’s eyes.
“You, you, get up there!” he snapped. “Man those guns. The rest of you, follow me!”
Hot damn, he thought. For the first time since Judgment Day he was doing something, something that might help. Striking back, at least, at the machine and its collaborators.
Dennis Reese looked at the…Well, collaborator, I suppose, he thought.
The man had been passing for a corporal when Reese and Mary left the camp. Now he was in Yanik’s quarters and wearing his rank insignia…and not being very cooperative.
“I won’t tell you zip,” he said.
“I think you will,” Reese said, conscious of the slight tremor in his voice.
He’d had time to tour the camp. A lot of the people he’d known hadn’t been buried yet; the matron at the clinic where Mary had worked was lying where she’d fallen near her chair, swollen and purple, with flies walking across her eyes.
“Nada,” the man said; he had a thin stubbled face and hard eyes.
Juarez touched Reese on the shoulder. “Sir, I think you should go for a walk,” he said.
“What?” Reese asked.
“Sir, you should go for a walk. Check on the people. We’ll call you when this is taken care of.”
Reese opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again. There were times an officer should take a walk—not something that was covered in the formal curriculum at the Point, but it did get passed on by word of mouth from generation to generation.
And Sergeant Juarez had seen everything that Reese had. Reese smiled at the man in the captain’s uniform and walked out. There was a lot of work to do…and one of Juarez’s men was bringing up a bucket of water.
By the time the noncom joined him—Reese had carefully not listened to the sounds—the camp inmates were gathered. Reese looked down on them from the steps; they’d gotten the lights working again, and a corner of his mind was wondering whether they could salvage the camp generator and take it with them. It would be so useful…The faces looking up at him held fright, anger, despair.
“What do you mean, these weren’t really the army?” a man asked.
“The American army doesn’t do this”—Reese pointed around; everyone had been shown the mass graves—“to American citizens. This was a bunch of terrorists pretending to be soldiers.”
“And you’re the real army?” somebody called.
“There isn’t one left,” Reese said grimly. “It died on Judgment Day. We’re the…resistance. And we’re not just fighting for America; we’re fighting for the survival of the human race.”
Juarez bent to whisper in his ear. “Sir, you’re damned right about that. We got a lot out of him…”
Chapter 13
DOT LAKE, ALASKA
We’re getting organized, John Connor thought. Which means…paperwork!
Luckily, he and Sarah and Dieter had all been in favor of a decentralized structure, which kept bureaucracy to a minimum. Which did not mean “small.”
He sighed and leaned back in the chair until it creaked dangerously, even with his boots on the table to stabilize it, and took another sip of lukewarm herbal tea. For a moment his mouth crooked up at one corner; the central HQ of humanity at the moment was a man barely old enough to drink, in a nowhere town in the wilderness.
Lists were scrolling across the screen of his laptop, mostly of new recruits brought in by various resistance cells across North America, Europe, and East Asia. Skynet hadn’t had a chance to pulverize Latin America quite as thoroughly, yet—it had probably been much worse in the “original” Judgment Day scenario, which had happened back when the major powers had tens of thousands of ready-to-go nuclear warheads, instead of a couple of thousand all up. Of course, once Skynet got its production facilities fully operational, it would probably make more nukes—
“Christ!” he said suddenly, putting the cup down fast enough to slosh.
Jack Brock had sent in his list from Missouri, from the Ozark Redoubt. One of their more promising cells…
Dennis Reese.
He called up a picture. No absolute proof, but there was a resemblance—thin features, light brown hair, something about the eyes…
How would you define the relationship? Technically he’s my granddad…
Even though the lieutenant was only twenty-five to John’s recently turned twenty-one. John shook his head slowly. I think the reason time travel makes my head hurt is that it makes my eyes spin. Right now his gut was hurting, too. He felt an overwhelming urge to send a priority-one message to Brock: keep Reese safe at all costs!
But I can’t do that, he knew, with a sinking sensation. That might be the exact thing that would keep Reese from fathering the son who’s going to father moi !
The chaos-butterfly-wing thing evidently wasn’t entirely correct; for all the time-loops and frantic attempts to change the past, each cycle tended back toward the original course of events. But the past was changeable; sometimes the future created its own past. He had to be so careful…
John turned his attention to the single truck and bus waiting for passengers in the town square. Poor suckers, John thought. They should be all right, though. He’d moved some of the resistance into that old logging camp and they’d be watching the road for these newcomers. If Skynet tried anything, it would lose.
They planned an attack on the “relocation camp” any day now. As soon as thirty of the new plasma rifles arrived from California. He had no intention of sending his people into battle less well armed than the enemy. At least not if he could help it. Reports on conditions in the camp weren’t good, but they weren’t as bad as the Black River camp in Missouri. For some reason, Skynet seemed to want the humans in B.C. to survive.
Ah, here she is.
Ninel rode up on a blue bicycle, put down the kickstand, and took a clipboard out of her saddlebags. Then she blew a whistle to get the small crowd’s attention.
“If I ever see that white-haired bitch again, I’ll kill her!” one of the mothers who’d survived the massacre had declared.
Can’t blame her, John thought. But Ninel’s okay. I can feel it in my gut.
For a moment he imagined Sarah Connor’s eyebrows going up sardonically.
Okay, okay, my Internalized Mom Superego, yeah, it’s partly another portion of my anatomy. But I’m a good judge of people—have to be, if I’m going to do this job. And my judgment says Ninel’s no mass murderer.
He looked out the window at the exotic blond head—hair a bit rattailed, like everyone’s right now, but still a bright beacon in the gray day. She seemed such a levelheaded sort of woman, not the kind to join a group that would deliberately kill ordinary people for no very good reason. She’d also seemed more like a loner than a joiner. The term lone gunman flitted through his mind.
The truth is I don’t know her and shouldn’t be making judgments about her sanity or lack thereof based on such short acquaintance.
Another phrase he was having trouble tamping down: He was so quiet, so helpful, seemed like such a nice fella. He so didn’t want it to be true. Ninel was such an endearing little thing, she looked kind of like a blond, blue-eyed Björk—elflike.
Although, Tolkien aside, mythology didn’t paint elves as friendly to the average human—but as chancy and extremely dangerous.
It didn’t take Ninel long to process the travelers and soon she was waving good-bye. John kicked his bike to life and roared up behind her. She kept her back to him as she put away her clipboard.
“How is it that you can run that thing?” she asked loudly enough to be heard over his motor. Ninel looked at him over her shoulder. “Are you hoarding or something?”
“Or something,” he said, and cut the motor. “I jiggered it to run on wood alcohol and I’ve set up my own still.” She looked impressed, which pleased him.
Then she frowned. “It doesn’t burn very clean, though, does it?”
He twisted his mouth. “Does it matter at the end of the world?”
She laughed. “It’s not the end of the world, and yes, it does matter.” She grew serious. “It always matters.”
Some small flake of dread sank through his being. Her parents had been activists. Ineffectual activists in an idiot cause, but an upbringing like that had to have some effect on her character.
“Can I buy you a burger?” he asked.
She grinned. “If you could buy me a burger, I’d give you a medal. But you can buy me an elk kabob.” Ninel jerked her head at a nearby café. “What have you got to trade?”
“Never fear,” John said, “I’m prepared. I wouldn’t offer if I wasn’t.” He gave her a reproachful look that made her laugh.
“We can park in front,” she told him. “I’ll meet you there.”
When she caught up with him and had finished locking down her bike, she grinned to see him pull a pair of rabbits from his saddlebags. “That should do,” she said. “If they’re fresh.”
He gave her another reproachful look. “Fresh this morning,” he said. “Guaranteed.”
The burly man behind the counter of the improvised restaurant had a pump-action shotgun and a skeptical expression. That thawed as John shoved the two carcasses across the wood; he bent, sniffed, felt, and nodded.
“Okay, you got credit at the Copper King,” he said. “Rack your weapons there, enjoy yourselves, and no fighting or you go out in pieces.”
“Come again to Burger King, and will you have fries with that?” John muttered under his breath.
The platters of grilled elk chunks on sticks did include potatoes; boiled, of course—nobody was wasting oil on cooking—but still tasty to carbohydrate-starved bodies, with a little salt.
“So,” Ninel said, biting into the juicy meat, “did you get to the camp in B.C.?”
“Not all the way,” John said. “As you said, it’s a long haul.”
She shrugged. “I’m a little disappointed. I’ve been wondering what it’s like and if I should pack up and go. Thing is, I don’t want to leave my dogs behind.”
“Dogs?” he said. “You have a team?”
Shaking her head, Ninel smiled. “Only if you think a pair is a team. No, they’re good hunting dogs, and they’re my buds. I couldn’t just abandon them.”
“I like dogs,” he said, a little wistfulness in his tone. He sipped his chamomile tea, not liking it much; then putting the mug down, he looked at her carefully.
“What?” she said.
“I just”—he shrugged—“I have my doubts about these buses and trucks. Who’s behind this? Do you know?”
“The government, I suppose.” She looked him in the eye.
“Who else?”
“Our government, or Canada?”
“Both, I would imagine.” She frowned. “What are you suggesting? You think these people are being kidnapped or something? By Canadians? You can’t be serious.”
He laughed. “When you put it like that,” he said. “But seriously, you don’t know who is behind it, and I find that worrying. How did they recruit you anyway?”
“I knew some people who were involved and they asked me to help.” She looked at him with concern. “They’re good people, John. I don’t think they’d hurt anybody.”
“So because you trusted them, you were willing to take the whole thing on faith.”
Ninel sat back, frowning. “I feel like I’m being accused of something here. Not least of being stupid, and I don’t like it.”
He held her gaze with a severe look of his own. “I didn’t go all the way to the camp because the buses stopped short of it. Everyone figured it was a rest stop and got off. Understandably, after a ride of about four hours.” She was frowning in puzzlement. “They were attacked.”
“Whoa!” she said quickly. “That doesn’t mean the people who run the transports are responsible.”
“C’mon, Ninel! Who else knew that the automated transports were going to stop right there? Huh? But beyond that, I know that people from the camp came hunting them.”
“Of course they came looking,” Ninel protested. “If the transports never arrived, or arrived empty, of course they went looking. Why wouldn’t they?”
“Hon, something is wrong here.”
“I’m not your hon and maybe the something wrong here is you! Maybe there are people out there who don’t want Americans settling in Canada. Did that ever occur to you? And if the army can discover how to make those trucks run, couldn’t someone else figure out how to run them by remote control? Maybe this is a plot against the people running the transports and the camps, rather than a plot by them. Ever think of that? And what are you doing to try and help? Anything?”
John sat back, wondering where he’d lost control of this conversation. Though he did have an impression that Ninel’s reaction was sincere. “I’m doing a few things,” he said gruffly.
Why am I feeling defensive? he wondered. I’ve spent my whole life preparing to fight Skynet and she’s making me feel like a slacker when it’s her that’s sending people down the damn thing’s maw.
“Look, I’m not judging you,” he said aloud. “I’m just asking questions. Maybe I could ask your friends?”
She looked less belligerent, and a bit uncertain. “I’ll ask them if they’ll talk to you. No guarantees.”
“I take it they’re not still looking for volunteers.”
