Free Terminator Salvation: Trial by Fire by Timothy Zahn

where he remembered it, he found the old cabin, looking even more dilapidated than it had forty years ago. The door opened about half a foot and then jammed, and it took some serious sweat and leverage to get it open far enough for him to slip through.
    The interior was every bit as dreary as the exterior. To one side was an old cot with deep tears in the canvas, partially covered by a thin mattress that smelled heavily of mold and mildew. Hanging over the cot on a set of hooks was an old rifle of a make and model he didn’t recognize and a thick coil of weathered and fragile-looking rope. To the other side was the cabin’s lone window, broken of course. In the corner between the window and the door was a rusty pot-bellied stove, with a few chunks of firewood lying on the floor nearby.
    For a moment Jik looked longingly at the stove and the wood, then turned resolutely away. A roaring fire would go a long way toward banishing the cabin’s damp and chill.
    But from the looks of the stove and kinked chimney, it would be a tossup as to whether he would asphyxiate himself or simply burn the whole place down. Worse, the smoke might attract the attention of the Terminator by the river. If that happened, smoke inhalation and third-degree burns would be the least of his problems.
    Unless, of course, Jik wasn’t actually here at the time...
    He felt a tight grin crease his cheeks. The obvious solution to his problem, and he felt like an idiot for not spotting it sooner.
    His first impulse was to grab a couple of chunks of wood and get to work. His second, wiser thought was the reminder that racing through an unfamiliar forest after a tiring hike would be a dangerous and stupid thing to do. Particularly given that he might well end up with the Terminator on his tail. The smoke trick would work just as well in the daylight, after he’d gotten a few hours of sleep.
    His first task was to get the sodden mattress off the cot and lug it outside. After that came a quick examination of the rifle on the wall. It seemed to be in decent enough shape, though it was impossible to tell what kind of damage might be lurking in its inner workings. It was a moot point, though, since the weapon wasn’t loaded and there was no place in the cabin where a cache of shells might be stored. If push came to shove, he would just have to hope he could make do with the single remaining round in his Smith & Wesson.
    Ten minutes later, he was stretched out on the cot, which with all its rips and sags and odors was still the best bed he’d had in a long, long time. He would sleep as long as he could, he decided, then see if a fire in the stove might lure the Terminator away from his post. If it did, he was home free.
    If it didn’t... well, he would deal with that when the time came.

CHAPTER EIGHT
    Before Judgment Day, Baker’s Hollow had been a tiny flyspeck community whose main function in life was to act as a jumping-off point for hikers, fishermen, and hunters heading further up into the mountains. At its height, it had boasted fifty houses, many of which were bed-and-breakfasts or vacation rentals, a well-stocked general store, an RV parking area, and three guide services. Nearly two hundred people had lived in town during the tourist season, though many of them packed up and left when the first early snows began to fall.
    That had been Baker’s Hollow at its height. Now, it was at its depth. Only twenty of the fifty houses remained, the rest having been scavenged for wood and brick to keep the others habitable. The old general store had been turned into a workshop for the metal, cloth, and leather workers. The last remaining guide service office had been converted into a smokehouse for curing deer and elk. The permanent population, including the dribble of people who’d stumbled into town over the years, now sat at eighty-seven.
    And better than half of those eighty-seven were waiting outside Preston’s door when he emerged from his house just