“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’ 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’ 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?”