Terminator Salvation_ The Official Movie Novelization - Alan Dean Foster [29]
“I don’t know where you came from or what you do or much of anything else about you, but I do know that there’s obviously still a lot you don’t know about Skynet. How it works, how the machines work—all kinds of stuff. Stuff that if you don’t know can get you dead. It’s too dangerous for us, for anyone, to go there.”
“What about the ‘L.A. Branch’ of the Resistance? Who’ll fight the machines here if you leave?”
Reese hesitated, uncertain if the older man was being serious, having fun at his expense, or a mix of both, and decided to take him at his word. He turned to Star.
“Come on, man. We need to get out of L.A.” He nodded at Wright, then indicated the jeep. “If you can actually make that thing go, that is.”
The girl wasn’t waiting. Clambering over the side of the vehicle, she settled herself into the passenger seat and waited. Ignoring her, Wright continued to tinker with the engine. Something coughed under the hood and sputtered to life. Half expecting it to die at any moment, he was more than a little surprised when it did not. In fact, the longer the engine ran, the smoother it sounded.
No telling how long it had been sitting busted and unmoving, he told himself.
Alone in the idling jeep, Star studied the profusion of knobs on the dash. Since no one told her not to do otherwise, she began playing with them, twisting and turning one at a time. None of them did anything until she pressed a button slightly to the right of the steering column.
That there was a CD in the player was not exactly a revelation. That the unit functioned was considerably more of a surprise. A startled Star gaped at it in amazement. Reese both looked and listened in awe.
“What is this?”
Coming around from the front of the 4x4, Wright gazed at the indicator lights on the in-dash entertainment unit.
“A CD player.”
“No, no,” Reese corrected him impatiently, “the music.”
Wright’s thoughts were ping-ponging back and forth between the inexplicable present and a less-than-inspiring past.
“Doesn’t matter. Something my brother used to listen to. ‘Us and Them’, by Pink Floyd.”
And what about me, he wondered silently. What’s happened to the world? What kind of wall am I another brick in?
The music was bringing back too many memories. Reaching in, he switched it off. When the girl gave him a cross look, he motioned impatiently for her to exit.
“Come on,” he prompted her, “let’s go.” She didn’t move, confused both by his words and his suddenly abrupt tone. He clarified his meaning for her. “Get out.”
Her eyes never left him as she slowly climbed over the far side of the jeep. At least, that was how he felt. He could not meet the wide-eyed girlish gaze.
Reese gaped at him, unwilling to countenance what he was hearing. Despite the doubts he had been feeling, the stranger’s words still left him in shock.
“You’re leaving?”
Ignoring the teen, Wright dropped the hood, made sure it latched shut.
“You’re just gonna leave?”
Reese continued as the stranger carefully collected the tools he had scavenged and put them in the back of the jeep. By this time he was crowding the older man. Wright tolerated this invasion of his space even as he ignored the increasingly accusatory teen.
“We saved your life.”
Reese wanted to grab Wright, to shake him and make him look into his eyes. It was a good thing he didn’t.
“You’re going to leave us here?”
Realization suddenly dawned and he stepped back.
“I get it. I understand. We’d just hold you back, right? Slow you down. You can move faster without us. It’ll be easier for you alone.” Somehow he kept in check the anger that had been building within him.
“You know one of the differences between us and the machines? We bury our dead. They don’t bother.” Taking the bewildered Star by the hand he started to back away from the now silent stranger, eyeing him as if he carried some incurable communicable disease.
“Go on—you