From the Ashes Read online

  Barnes snorted a laugh.

  “Safety?” he bit out. “You think you’re safe here? From T-600s and HKs? Here?”

  “Gentlemen, please,” a soft voice came from behind Barnes. “There’s no need to frighten the children.”

  Barnes turned to see a slender, almost gaunt man standing a respectful two paces behind him. The man’s skin was darker even than Barnes’s, his face pockmarked with tiny scars, probably from some childhood disease. First or maybe second generation African, Barnes guessed.

  “You have a problem with fear?” he challenged the newcomer.

  “Not at all,” the man said calmly. “Fear is an excellent motivator, though not as strong as duty, honor, or love.” He inclined his head toward three young children digging eagerly and blissfully into their snack bars. “But hopelessness isn’t.” He held out his hand. “Reverend Jiri Sibanda.”

  “Barnes,” Barnes said, taking the proffered hand carefully. He had already seen the telltale bulges of arthritis in Sibanda’s knuckles. “You the chaplain?”

  “The pastor,” Sibanda corrected. “I was just thinking that there are several children and young adults who haven’t been able to avail themselves of your generosity. If you’re willing, I’d like to take you to them.”

  Barnes scowled. First Connor wanted him to waste food on civilians, and now Sibanda wanted him to waste it on the sick and dying.

  “If they can’t take the time to get here on their own—”

  “Oh, no, it’s not like that,” Sibanda said. “I’m talking about the sentries on duty on the upper levels.” He looked past Barnes at Grimaldi. “With your permission, of course.”

  Barnes looked at Grimaldi as well. The man didn’t look happy at the idea of a stranger touring his building, but he didn’t seem ready to get in Barnes’s way, either.

  “Go ahead,” he growled.

  “Thank you.” Sibanda took a step back and gestured toward a wide stone staircase. “This way, please.”

  The trip to the top of the building was more of an adventure than Barnes had expected. The stone staircase, which led up to a mezzanine balcony and a whole group of what had probably once been a selection of retail stores, was as sturdy as anything Barnes had run into over the years since Judgment Day. The next three floors were all right, too, though the stairways that led between them were now the more standard types tucked alongside the empty elevator shafts.

  But starting with the fifth floor, things got trickier. Some of the stairs were missing, while others were solid only in certain places along their width. Between the sixth and seventh floors half the steps had vanished completely, forcing a quarter-building detour through a set of hallways even more treacherous than the stairs.

  Fortunately, Sibanda knew all the danger spots and was agile enough to make the jumps and long steps necessary to avoid them. Still, Barnes could see why Orozco had delegated most of the high sentry duty to the more nimble kids and teens.

  Finally, to his quiet relief, they emerged once again into the open air.

  “Here we are,” Sibanda said cheerfully. “This is our southeast sentry post.”

  Barnes looked at the two kids sitting by a partial wall at the side of the building. One of them, a boy, looked to be thirteen or fourteen, while the other was a six- or seven-year-old girl. Both of them were staring wide-eyed at the big newcomer.

  “This is Zac Steiner and this is Olivia Womak,” Sibanda said, gesturing to the kids. “Olivia’s just learning how to be a sentry.”

  “You like it?” Barnes asked the girl.

  Her lip twitched.

  “Kinda cold up here.”

  “It’s kind of cold everywhere,” Barnes pointed out.

  “And at least here you have this wonderful view,” Sibanda said.

  Barnes turned to look. The city stretched out in front of him, broken but still surviving, its streets and empty areas green with the vines and grasses and weeds that had slowly been coming back across the whole nuke-blasted region. To the far east and south, a haze had set in, softening the edges of the vista.

  “It’s okay,” he said with a shrug.

  “But you didn’t come up here for the view,” Sibanda continued. “Zac, Olivia, Mr. Barnes is with the Resistance, and he’d like a word with you.”

  Barnes turned back to the kids.

  “That’s right,” he said. “In the Resistance our job is to fight against Skynet and the Terminators.”

  “Are you one of the people Kyle saw yesterday?” the boy asked.

  “I don’t know,” Barnes said. “Who’s Kyle?”

  “One of the other sentries,” Sibanda explained. “No, Zac, that was a different group. From what I understand, Mr. Barnes’s group was coming in too far north to be visible from this particular station.”

  “Oh,” the boy said. “What’s Skynet?”

  “It’s a big computer that’s taken over most of the world,” Barnes told him. “You know those HKs— Hunter-Killers, those big metal flying things—and the Terminators, those metal robot sorts of things that walk around with big guns?”

  “I’ve seen them,” the boy said, shivering. “Not very close.”

  “You want to try very hard to keep it that way,” Barnes told him grimly. “People who see Terminators up close usually die. That’s what the machines do. That’s all they do.”

  “That’s... kind of scary,” the boy said.

  Barnes looked at Sibanda. But this time there were no speeches or warnings about fear or hopelessness coming from the man. Maybe the preacher really did understand the reality of the world these kids were living in.

  “It’s very scary,” Barnes agreed, looking back at the young sentries. “That’s why we fight.”

  “Mr. Barnes is offering you—and all the rest of us— the chance to join them and be part of that fight,” Sibanda explained. “It’s something you both need to think about, very hard.”

  The boy looked at Barnes, then back at Sibanda.

  “Do we have to go right now?”

  “Not right this second, no,” Sibanda said. “But soon. We’ll be visiting the other sentry posts, and then Mr. Barnes and his people will want to talk to the people downstairs, so you both have a little time to make up your minds.” Looking at Barnes, he raised his eyebrows. “In the meantime, I believe Mr. Barnes has something for each of you.”

  “Oh—right,” Barnes said, digging into one of his jacket pockets and pulling out two of the snack bars. “This is to thank you for listening to me.”

  “Though I’m sure that even in the Resistance they don’t get these things all the time,” Sibanda cautioned as the kids’ faces lit up and they started eagerly unwrapping the bars.

  “No, we don’t,” Barnes admitted, remembering Connor’s number one rule of not sugar-glazing what the prospective recruit was getting into. “Mostly, what we get is that when the Terminators start shooting, we get to shoot back.”

  “And with that, we’ll leave you to your duty,” Sibanda said, touching each of the children lightly on the shoulder before heading back into the building.

  They were a quarter of the way around the floor, heading for the southwest sentry post, before Sibanda spoke again.

  “You’ll take care of him, won’t you?” he asked Barnes quietly.

  “Who?” Barnes asked.

  “Zac,” Sibanda said. “He’s going with you.”

  Barnes frowned. Last he’d heard, the kid was still undecided.

  “When did he say that?”

  “He didn’t have to,” Sibanda said, a deep sadness in his voice. “I know these people, Mr. Barnes. Olivia is interested, but she’s not yet ready to leave her family and friends. But Zac is older, and he’s been listening to Sergeant Orozco. He understands the danger lurking out there.”

  Barnes grunted. “He’s ahead of Grimaldi on that one, anyway.”

  “The chief’s heart’s in the right place,” Sibanda murmured. “You must give him that. He also understands organization
and resource management. Under other conditions, he would be the ideal man to run a place like Moldering Lost Ashes.”

  “You mean conditions like no Skynet?”

  Sibanda sighed. “He’s not blind, you know. We see your planes battling the Hunter-Killers, and we get word from other parts of the city. He knows what Skynet is doing. But he truly believes that you Resistance people are baiting it, that it’s just reacting to your attacks. He believes that if we stay quiet and leave Skynet alone, it will leave us alone, too.”

  Barnes barked a laugh.

  “Yeah. Right.”

  “I know,” Sibanda said with another sigh. “But what else can we do? We can’t fight, not all of us—we have women and children here. We can’t run, either—where could we go where Skynet couldn’t find us?”

  “There isn’t any place,” Barnes agreed grimly. “But don’t sell your women short. We’ve got women in our group, too. Most of them are damn near as good at fighting as the men.”

  “Perhaps,” Sibanda said. “But there are still the children. I doubt you have any of them in your group.”

  Barnes grimaced. “We’ve got a few. Civilians. Mostly because they didn’t have anywhere else to go.”

  “Then you see our problem,” Sibanda said. “Even if Chief Grimaldi was willing, there’s little he can do.”

  The southwest post had a lone sentry, a teenaged boy who clearly wasn’t interested in anything but Barnes’s snack bar bribe. The lookouts in the northwest and northeast posts were pretty much the same, though the girl in the northwest post was at least willing to listen to Barnes as she ate.

  “Is that it?” Barnes asked as they headed back down toward the lobby.

  “There’s a sniper’s nest in the building across the street,” Sibanda said, “and I daresay Sergeant Orozco probably has a few other places around the neighborhood where people can watch or shoot from. But I would guess he’s already called all of them in to hear your recruitment talk.”

  Barnes nodded. “I can check with him on that before we go.”

  By the time they returned to the mezzanine balcony, the snack bars had been distributed and Tunney had formed the residents into the circle he liked to use on these occasions. In this case, there were enough folks to form a circle three people deep, centered around the broken fountain in the middle of the lobby.

  Tunney himself was standing on the inner part of the circle facing the balcony. A dozen steps behind him, a few meters inside the distinctive entrance archway, the other two men of their foursome were standing in a loose guard circle around their cached weapons, their arms folded or clasped parade-rest style behind their backs, eyeing the two men who’d taken up guard duty at the entry. From the voices drifting up to the balcony, Barnes gathered that Tunney had finished running through his standard sales pitch and was in the process of answering questions.

  There were a lot of questions, too, Barnes noted as he and Sibanda walked down the stone staircase and settled in unobtrusively at the rear of the circle. Maybe the preacher was right, that the people here didn’t have anywhere else to go. But that didn’t mean they’d all bought into Grimaldi’s ostrich plan, either.

  And it was pretty clear that Grimaldi didn’t like that. He was standing a quarter of the way around the circle to Tunney’s right, flanked by three other men. All four of them had rifles or shotguns slung over their shoulders, and all four of them were glowering.

  But for the moment, at least, they seemed willing to let Tunney talk.

  Finally, the people ran out of questions. Tunney let the silence hang in the air for a few seconds, just to make sure, then cleared his throat.

  “If there are no more questions,” he said, “it’s time for you to make your decisions. What we offer isn’t much, but it’s better than sitting here waiting for the inevitable. Are there any who would like to come with us?”

  For another handful of seconds no one moved. Then, from the front row directly across from him, a young man took a step forward.

  “I will.”

  A quiet stir rippled through the crowd.

  “Your name?” Tunney asked, gesturing him forward.

  “Callahan, sir,” the young man said, circling the fountain and going up to Tunney. “I’m not very good at fighting. But I can learn.”

  “Indeed you will,” Tunney promised, motioning the man over to stand beside him. “Anyone else?”

  A young couple stepped out from the middle row, the woman clutching at the man’s arm like she was afraid to let it go.

  “Leon and Carol Iliaki,” the man said. “I’m not much of a fighter, either, but I can also learn. And Carol has some skills you might find useful.”

  Barnes looked at Grimaldi. The boss man hadn’t looked happy when Callahan had deserted him, but that was nothing compared to the stiffness of his expression now as he watched the Iliakis cross the circle.

  “She’s a master seamstress,” Sibanda told Barnes quietly. “Amazing woman. She can take nearly random bits of cloth or leather and fashion them into clothing that’s both warm and durable.”

  Barnes nodded. No wonder Grimaldi didn’t want to lose her.

  “Anyone else?” Tunney called.

  “Can I come, too?” a familiar voice called from behind Barnes, and he turned to see the kid Zac Steiner hurrying down the stone staircase.

  Apparently, that was the final straw.

  “Hold it, Steiner,” Grimaldi called, stepping into the circle. “What are you doing down here?”

  The boy faltered to a confused-looking halt.

  “Mr. Barnes said I could—”

  “You’re on sentry duty, boy,” Grimaldi cut him off. “You think these people want someone who deserts his post?”

  Zac sent Barnes a look that was full of sudden guilt and fear.

  “But I sent Amy Phao up—”

  “You sent Phao up?” Grimaldi echoed. “Since when are you authorized to make changes in the duty roster?”

  “It’s all right,” another voice put in, and Barnes turned in mild surprise to see Orozco step into the circle across from Grimaldi. Either the Marine had just arrived, or else he’d managed to blend into the crowd so well that Barnes hadn’t spotted him a minute ago from up on the balcony. “The sentries have permission to leave their posts under extraordinary circumstances.”

  “This is not an extraordinary circumstance,” Grimaldi countered. He shot a glare at Tunney. “This is a circus.”

  Barnes’s mind flashed back to the gangs he’d locked horns with so many times when he was growing up. They’d all had the same kind of single-man rule he could see happening here... and with most of them, this kind of ridicule had been the next-to-the-last resort when they didn’t have any other way to counter someone’s argument or demand.

  If ridicule didn’t work, it was always followed by violence.

  Carefully, Barnes shifted his weight, picking the path he would take through the people in front of him on his way to telling Grimaldi up close and personal exactly what he thought of him—

  A hand touched his arm.

  “No,” Sibanda murmured. “Let him talk.”

  “I’d hardly call matters of life and death a circus,” Tunney said mildly.

  “I wasn’t referring to matters of life and death,” Grimaldi said. “I was referring to you. You and your little band of amateurs.”

  “Amateurs?” Tunney asked, his voice still calm.

  “Listen to me,” Grimaldi said, raising his voice as he looked around the circle. “We’ve been here, some of us, for over ten years now. We’ve kept ourselves and each other alive, and fed, and clothed.” He leveled a finger at Tunney. “And yet now these men come along promising the moon; and you’re actually listening to them? These men who were so eager to talk you out of here that they were foolish enough to give up their guns?”

  And without warning, the three men alongside Grimaldi swung their weapons up, leveling the barrels at Tunney.

  “This is the tactical brill
iance these men have?” Grimaldi went on sarcastically. “And yet they promise to keep you alive while they pick and poke and prod at Skynet and the Terminators?” He snorted. “I don’t think so.”

  Sibanda’s hand was still on Barnes’s arm. Gently but firmly, Barnes pushed the hand away.

  “Please,” Sibanda pleaded. “They have guns. You don’t.”

  “The man needs a lesson,” Barnes told him grimly. “It’s time he got one.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Orozco felt his heart seize up inside his chest. Suddenly, in a single instant, the whole thing had gone straight to hell.

  “Put those down,” he said sharply, walking swiftly around the fountain toward Grimaldi. “Have you lost your minds?”

  “Stay out of it, Sergeant,” Grimaldi ordered, raising his own shotgun now to point not quite at Orozco’s feet. “Our people need to see the hollow shell these men really are.”

  Orozco looked through the stunned crowd toward the archway where Tunney’s other two men were guarding the group’s weapons. But they, too, were standing motionless, with Barney and Copeland now holding their rifles on them.

  “This isn’t an object lesson,” Orozco ground out, shifting his glare back to Grimaldi, his body tingling with the adrenaline of impending combat. The man had drawn down on a Resistance group, for God’s sake. “This is mass suicide.”

  “Is it?” Grimaldi countered. “Do you see anything to indicate that they aren’t helpless?”

  “Chief, you’re playing with fire,” Orozco warned.

  “Do you see anything to indicate that they aren’t helpless?” Grimaldi repeated.

  Orozco clenched his hands into fists.

  “Not at the moment,” he had to admit. “But—”

  “But nothing,” Grimaldi said firmly. “As I said: these men—this John Connor they go on and on about—have the tactical skill of hamsters. They’ll be lucky to keep themselves alive, let alone anyone they con into going with them.”

  And then, at Orozco’s left, the crowd abruptly parted and Barnes stepped into the circle.