Terminator Salvation: Trial by Fire Read Free Page A

try her hardest.
    But willpower alone wasn’t enough to send an arrow to its target. Susan’s bow was less than rock-steady in her left hand, and the taut bowstring was wavering visibly as she held the fletching close beside her right cheek. Already she’d held position longer than should have been necessary to aim, and there was no indication even now that she was preparing to release.
    It wasn’t hard to guess why. That wasn’t a simple softwood target out there, like the ones Hope had spent all those hours training Susan to shoot at. It was a living, feeling creature, something that would gush blood, go limp, and die. Some people simply couldn’t handle that.
    Hope, born and bred out here in the mountains, had a different take on the ethics of the situation. That buck out there was dinner. For the whole town.
    And she was not going to let it get away.
    Her own arrow was already nocked into her bowstring. Measuring the distance with her eyes, keeping her arrow pointed at the ground in front of her, she drew back the string as far as she could without being obvious about it. If Susan was going to stay in Baker’s Hollow, she was going to have to learn how to do this. Hope could take the shot, and she would if she had to. But she would rather give Susan every reasonable chance to do it herself.
    Maybe Susan sensed that. Maybe she’d come to the same conclusion about this being her make-or-break moment. A small whimper escaped her lips, and with an odd sort of abruptness she released her arrow. It flashed between the small branches of their blind and buried itself in the animal’s side.
    Too far back. The buck jerked with the impact, but instead of falling dead it twisted around and leaped for the pathway that led out of the clearing.
    It was crouching into its second leap when Hope’s arrow drove into its side, dropping it with a thud onto the ground.
    Susan’s bow arm sagged. “Sorry,” she said.
    “It’s okay,” Hope replied, lowering her own bow and pulling out her whistle. “Watch your ears,” she warned, and gave her personal signal: one long, four short. “Come on—let’s make sure it’s dead.” She stepped out from behind the bushes and headed across the clearing. With only a little hesitation, Susan followed.
    The buck was indeed dead.
    “Good shooting,” Hope said, drawing her knife and starting to dig out the arrows.
    “You’re very kind,” Susan said, an edge of weary bitterness in her voice. “But we both know better. I missed, pure and simple.”
    “It’s not easy to hit the heart,” Hope responded diplomatically. “Especially your first time out.”
    Susan exhaled a quiet, shuddering sigh.
    “This is my last chance, Hope,” she said. “I can’t sew, I can’t tan, I can’t cook worth anything. I barely know which end of a hammer is which. If I can’t learn to hunt, there’s nothing left.”
    “You’ll get the hang of it,” Hope soothed her, barely noticing the oddness of a fifteen-year-old mountain girl comforting a forty-year-old former world-class scientist. Maybe because it wasn’t girl to scientist anymore, or even teacher to student. Maybe because it was now friend to friend. “Or else you’ll find something else you’re good at,” she added. “Maybe something you don’t even know about yet.”
    Susan sighed. “I just hope I can find this mystery talent before your father throws me out of town.”
    “He won’t do that,” Hope said firmly.
    But that was a lie, and she was pretty sure Susan knew it too. Hope’s father Daniel was the mayor of the small, tight-knit community that had built up in Baker’s Hollow through the dark years following Judgment Day. From the very beginning one of his jobs had been to make sure that everyone who ate their food pulled their weight.
    And right now, Susan was the only one who wasn’t doing that. Nathan Oxley had been a molecular biologist, and his general medical training was also augmented by a leather-working hobby.