Terminator Salvation: From the Ashes by Timothy Zahn

archway, crossed the street, and headed down the somewhat narrower cross street that ran along the north side of their sniper nest building. A container-laden burro led by a frayed rope walked beside Orozco. Star, as always, walked beside Kyle.
    “Keep your eyes open,” Orozco warned quietly as they reached the first corner and turned south.
    He glanced back, checking to make sure none of Nguyen’s men were following. “We should be okay, but one of the gangs could be out trying for an early-bird special.”
    “What’s an early-bird special?” Kyle asked.
    Orozco grimaced. “Something restaurants and stores used to use to draw in customers. People who got there early could snatch up the easiest pickings. We don’t want those easy pickings to be us.”
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    “Oh,” Kyle said. “Speaking of stores, the blanket that’s supposed to be stored at the southeast sentry post is missing.”
    “I know,” Orozco said. “Don’t worry about it.”
    “Did Ellis take it?” Kyle persisted. “I checked, and he was the one on shift before Star and me.”
    Orozco sighed.
    “Yes, he took it,” he said. “He also took some food and one of the .22s.”
    Kyle stared at him.
    “He left ?”
    “So it would seem,” Orozco said. “Keep that to yourself, please. I haven’t told the chief yet, and there’s going to be hell to pay when he finds out. Might as well wait until our visitors leave and we can hash it out in private.”
    “Okay,” Kyle said, still sounding confused. “Why would he just leave like that?”
    “Probably just got tired of the place,” Orozco told him. “Or got tired of the people, or the food, or the work. Or he’s just one of those kids who can’t stand to stay in one place very long. I’ve known some like that.”
    Their gasoline stash, the underground fiberglass storage tank from a long-demolished service station, was located three blocks from the main Moldering Lost Ashes building. There had been hundreds of such stations in the L.A. area, and Orozco suspected that a large percentage of that supply was still down there, just waiting to be found.
    The trick, as always, was to make sure that once you found something valuable, it stayed yours.
    The passageway Grimaldi and his people had created leading to the tank went a long way toward accomplishing that, with the main entrance disguised as just another section of demolished building and a couple of decoy tunnels leading off the main route to guide any casual visitors harmlessly back to the surface.
    But Grimaldi’s real genius was the hidden door he’d constructed that led into the storage tank chamber. He’d rigged a sliding door that would only open far enough for a child of ten or younger to squeeze through. Once inside, it was a simple matter of shifting a couple of two-by-fours to allow the door to open the rest of the way. Until that was done, though, adults and teens were out of luck.
    The door was strong enough to stand up against all but the most determined physical attacks, and even if someone managed to force it open all he would get for his trouble would be a booby-trapped ceiling collapsing on top of him.
    Orozco’s personal contribution to that genius was in tapping Kyle for this particular duty whenever possible. Very few people in the Ashes even knew where the gasoline was located, and of those only Orozco, Grimaldi, and a couple of others knew about the special door and how it operated. Star was so much a part of Kyle’s every movement that no one gave her a second thought anymore as she wandered around in the boy’s shadow.
    Certainly no one would ever dream that her presence on a gasoline run had anything to do with the operation itself, let alone provided a vital key to it.
    Which was exactly the way Orozco and Grimaldi wanted it. The gasoline was used almost exclusively as a trade good, and then only sparingly, with virtually none of it going to the building’s own activities. As a result, after five years of