Terminator Salvation: Cold War by Greg Cox Read Free Book Online Page B

giving up!”
    Molly glanced back. The merciless snow plow drove under the pipeline, trampling over the dead—at least she hoped they were dead— before turning to chase the fleeing dog sled. It slowed long enough to let the other T-600s climb onto its running boards, then picked up speed. Gruesome red stains glistened wetly on the upraised blade of the plow.
    The Terminators fired at the sled. Bullets whizzed past Molly and Geir as they jumped a snow-covered embankment. A hard landing rattled Molly’s teeth.
    “Haw! Haw!” she shouted, steering the dogs left. “Gee!” They raced parallel to the pipeline, weaving in and out of saddles to avoid being tagged by the Terminator’s bullets. It was like navigating a slalom course while under fire. The massive pipes and their supports shielded them from the mechanized monsters in pursuit. Machinegun fire tore up the snow banks, while the plow itself would roll right over them if it caught up.
    The sled was smaller and more maneuverable than the larger plow, but the tank outweighed them by several orders of magnitude. Its blade would smash them to pieces.
    “Haw!”
    The sled veered left, putting the pipeline on her right. The Terminators fired under and around the pipes, still taking care not to damage the vital artery. Skynet was like a vampire, sucking up Alaska’s resources to perpetuate its genocidal agenda.
    Too bad I don’t have a silver bullet, Molly thought, then an idea struck her. Maybe I don’t need one.
    She glanced up at the raised pipeline, skimming past just a yard above her head. In theory, the pipes were supposed to be bulletproof, but it hadn’t always worked out that way. Back around the turn of the century—a couple of years before Judgment Day—a trigger-happy drunk had managed to shoot a hole into one of the welds connecting the lengths of pipe, causing a serious oil spill. The damage it had caused had appalled Molly.
    Now it gave her an idea.
    Hooking her elbow around the handlebar to free up her hands, she awkwardly loaded another clip into her assault rifle. “Straight ahead!” she urged the dogs, keeping the pipeline on her right. She waited until another weld came into view, then let loose with a blistering blast of 45-millimeter vandalism.
    Let’s see how bulletproof that plumbing really is!
    At first, her desperate ploy appeared to have failed. The bullets ricocheted off the thick metal pipe without breaking skin.
    “Fuck!”
    But then a scarred steel weld gave way spectacularly. Gallons of unprocessed crude oil gushed behind them onto the snowy landscape below. A black tide flowed across the terrain.
    Eureka, Molly thought. Once upon a time, she would have been horrified by an oil spill of this magnitude, but that was before Judgment Day. Now she needed to do whatever was necessary to protect an endangered species: Me.
    The speeding plow came careening after her. Its wheels hit the oil slick, losing traction with the earth. The entire tank went into a spin. Gun-toting Terminators grabbed onto safety rails to keep from being thrown from the vehicle. The T-600 in the turret tumbled backward, away from the machinegun fixture, and rolled off the side of the plow.
    The dislodged Terminator landed with a splash in the spreading oil. It struggled to right itself, its human clothing and camouflage liberally coated with crude, only to find the blade of the spinning plow heading straight for it. The slick black figure threw up its hands to protect its cranial case, but its titanium-alloy endoskeleton was no match for the bloodstained blade’s sheer mass and momentum. Metal crunched and clanged as the blade collided with the T-600. Its optical sensors shattered and went dark moments before it was ground into scrap metal beneath the plow’s chains and snow tires.
    The tank kept on spinning, leaving a mess of flattened Terminator parts behind it. Severed metal limbs, still imbued with a spark of life, flailed about uselessly in the oil. The