Terminator Salvation_ The Official Movie Novelization - Alan Dean Foster [71]
Emerging blackened and scarred from the intense flames, his clothing mostly gone, Wright sprinted for the taller trees that lined the riverbank.
Above and behind him, Connor stared at the impossible survivor as the figure dashed for the cottonwoods that lined the river’s edge. Grimly, he eased forward on the controls, sending the chopper in pursuit. Behind him, soldiers crouched at both open doors were firing at the target.
“We’ve got him,” he exclaimed into the radio’s microphone. “He’s between outer perimeter markers forty-six and forty-nine, trying to dodge fire. Converge on the river. If we don’t take him down before he reaches it, we’ll trap him in the water.”
Other explosives and shells joined additional napalm in erupting all around Wright. They jolted him, occasionally slowed him, often enveloped him—but they did not stop him. He reached the river.
Moving far faster than Wright, Connor’s ’copter now hovered just above the water, its searchlight scanning the surface, hunting for him. One of the gunners tossed out a flare, further illuminating the scene.
Something bubbled within the river, as if the water was being brought suddenly to a boil. Then the surface erupted.
There were at least a dozen Hydrobots. Segmented like worms, wholly serpentine in shape, eyeless but equipped with a host of other sensors, they exploded out of the water to clamp razor-lined metal jaws on the underside of the low-flying chopper. Though barely four feet in length, the weight of their numbers caused the helicopter to skew wildly to one side.
Screaming, one of the gunners fell out of the open door on his side while his counterpart scrambled to maintain a grip and footing inside the sharply slanting cabin.
Connor could not help. With the hydraulics already damaged by the initial attack from below, it was all he could do to maintain minimal stability and stay airborne. Meanwhile several of the rapacious steel serpents had chewed their way into the main cabin where they were wreaking havoc on anything within reach of their whirring jaws.
Frantic kicking and firing didn’t save the surviving gunner. As his desperate shots spanged harmless off the armored intruders, one bit through his right leg. Blood spurted in all directions. A sharp crunching sound filled the cabin as metal teeth began to munch their way through bone.
In the water below, the soldier who had been dumped out of the helicopter barely managed to fight his way to the surface before he was pulled under, eyes wide and shrieking as he was sliced up from beneath.
When the last of the chopper’s hydraulic fluid ran out, control was lost completely. As it lurched toward the dark surface below, Connor half jumped and was half tossed from the mortally crippled machine. Slowing blades barely missing him, the ’copter crashed into the shallows that fronted the riverbank.
Gasping for air, he floundered in the water a moment before realizing that it was barely hip-deep where he had landed. Drawing his pistol, he struggled shoreward. The ground underfoot was a maddening composite of sand and mud that did everything it could to slow his progress. Somewhere behind him the Hydrobots were butchering the last remaining soldier.
Then they found him.
Even in the dim light it was hard to miss their gleaming, reflective, deadly surfaces. One after another took a slug from his oversized pistol and went down, writhing and convulsing in a horrible approximation of real life. A stride at a time, he battled his way toward the shore.
At last the muck underfoot gave way to more stable gravel and rock. Water drained from his legs as he staggered out onto dry land. Designed to operate and survive in water, the limbless Hydrobots could