Terminator Salvation_ The Official Movie Novelization - Alan Dean Foster [82]
As they shuffled forward, the prisoners conversed, or muttered to themselves, or were taken away by the Terminators, or quietly or loudly went mad. The machines were indifferent to it all so long as the line kept moving.
Kyle Reese estimated that he, Star, and Virginia were somewhere in the middle of the queue. Stepping as far out of the line as the guards would allow, he squinted to try and see what was happening at the front of the column. It took him a moment to understand what he was witnessing.
A T-600 was supervising as one prisoner after another was tattooed with a bar code. Though Reese couldn’t see clearly given the distance between them, when the prisoner who had just been stamped raised his hand in a clenched fist, the swiftly applied tattoo on his arm looked exactly like those the youth had seen identifying ordinary packages and goods in ruined stores.
What, he found himself wondering, was the bar code for “human”? Was everyone receiving the same code, or were there variations? Were male prisoners coded differently from the women? Adults from children? What happened when your code indicated that you were past your usefulness time? Did they contain expiration dates?
Could they be altered, to the benefit of the prisoner in question?
He hoped they wouldn’t find the slim length of metal he had slipped up the inside of his sleeve, nor the extra shoelace that was attached to it. Holding it tightly, he considered how he might make use of it. Not yet, he told himself. Don’t give anything away. There had to be a way to make good use of it. Going up against an alert T-600 without anything bigger or more potent would not be the smartest of moves.
In addition to the flanking illumination, a series of more intensely focused lights had been playing over the line of prisoners. Occasionally a beam would linger on a prisoner, as if the light itself was being used to examine the individual. Then it would blink out, or move on. As he contemplated a plate increasingly bare of options, one such bright beam settled on Reese. He ignored it, as did his silent companions.
He could not, however, ignore the powerful mechanical arm that reached down from the ceiling to pluck him out of the line.
Star let out a squeal of fright as her friend and protector was whipped upward and out of sight. When Virginia tried to comfort the little girl, another T-600 approached and separated them, pushing Star off to the right. Attempting to follow, the older woman found the Terminator interposed between them. Gritting her teeth, fighting back the tears that wanted to flow, she pounded on the machine’s chest as she tried to push past.
It did not strike back, didn’t even raise its weapon. It merely shifted its position to block her path. Unable to hurt it, to knock it over, to impress herself upon it in any way, she finally gave up and dejectedly rejoined the shambling procession.
So fast had Reese been snatched away that he had not even had a chance to yell goodbye.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The great bridge had been beautiful, once. So had the city it had come to symbolize. There was not much left of either now. As the hacked Moto-Terminator sped toward the Golden Gate at an impossible speed, the human clinging grimly to its back was granted a vista that glowed with light. At least, the portions that the machines were remorselessly rebuilding according to their own inscrutable design were alight. The remainder of the Bay area was dark with devastation, ruination, and death.
San Francisco, Connor thought to himself as the wind whipped him. Patron saint of the dead. If that was going