The Farm - 05 (2 page)

“I don’t see how they’re going to make it to the barn unless they, you know, actually come down off the hill and walk toward it. But hey, listen. If you’re worried about me killing them, rest easy. I could’ve done it a long time ago. Near, far, it doesn’t matter. If I can see it, I can kill it.”

Biggs nodded again, not sure how else to respond.

“Don’t forget, you leave at first light. Come near the house, I’ll kill you. That’s our arrangement, Army. Remember that.”

“I read you,” Biggs said.

“Sleep well.”

~ ~ ~

The barn was
mostly empty, and without many hiding places. Biggs, Powers, and Klein inspected it very carefully, just the same. With the world slowly being overrun by carnivorous corpses, the soldiers had a huge reservoir of caution to draw from, and they scrutinized every shadow, every nook, every cranny inside the weathered structure. Other than some old, unused sand bags, a few empty barrels, and various rusty farming implements, there was nothing exciting to be discovered. That suited Biggs just fine. She’d had enough excitement over the past few weeks to last several lifetimes.

She clambered up the rickety ladder that led up to the hay loft. The slatted floor there creaked beneath her weight in places, but the loft was entirely serviceable for sleeping, and it was big enough to accommodate all three troopers and the remains of their gear. An added bonus was that stenches, to the best of her knowledge, hadn’t yet mastered the art of climbing ladders. Or hadn’t they? She’d heard the stories from the troops in Manhattan how some of them seemed to exhibit a kind of cunning, an ability to recall past abilities, such as operating weapons and some common machinery. Would a ladder be much of a deterrent?

Biggs walked over to the wide loft door and, with some difficulty, slid it open. Its casters squealed inside the rusty metal track, a noise that seemed so loud to her that she wouldn’t have been surprised if it alerted every zed in the state as to their whereabouts. The door finally seized to a stop before the she could get it halfway open, but that was good enough. Even though it afforded coverage of only one direction, the view was excellent; she could keep an eye on the house and the surrounding territory. The fact that the loft was right above the barn’s main door was a bonus point. The lightfighters would be able to maintain surveillance of the only easy axis of attack available to the carnivorous ghouls, should the stenches suddenly elect to try and force their way into the barn.

And it also allowed them to make sure the crazy bastard in the house didn’t traipse across the field and murder them while they slept, should he be so inclined.

Movement caught her eye. She raised her rifle to her shoulder and looked through the 4x mag red dot scope on the weapon’s upper rail. Two stenches bumbled down the hill the soldiers had used to recon the farm. Their gait was slow and clumsy. One wore only a pair of cargo shorts, and its head was covered with a crust of dried gore. Its lips were gone, and it seemed to leer at the world behind a skeletal grin. The second ghoul was a woman, almost totally nude except for one shoe and a pair of filthy pink panties. Its breasts had been savaged, virtually torn from the pale white chest they had previously been anchored to. Its lank hair ruffled in the cool breeze. The sun had set, and twilight stood poised to emerge.

Crack. Crack.
Both stenches went down within two seconds as bullets slammed through their skulls. Biggs started to swing her rifle toward the house, to try and get a look at the shooter in his second floor lair, then thought better of it. He was probably paying attention to the barn, just as she was observing the farm house. Seeing her put a bead on his firing position probably would not be well received by him, even if she had no intention of engaging him. The sniper had said he didn’t kill the living any longer, but Biggs was pretty sure he would do it in a heartbeat if he felt threatened. She didn’t want to go there, so she lowered the rifle from her shoulder instead.

“Guess he’s going to defend God’s Little Acre for as long as he can, huh?”

Biggs glanced over her shoulder to see Klein standing behind her. Powers was hauling himself up the ladder in the background.

“What?”

Klein motioned to the house, visible through the open hay loft door. “Our new pal. The jarhead.”

Biggs shrugged. “Where you from, Specialist?” It was a question service people asked each other all the time. Klein was brand new to her unit, and she didn’t know him at all. As a matter of fact, she could only remember seeing him a few times when they were securing the New Jersey side of the upper George Washington Bridge, along with three other infantry battalions and one New York Army National Guard military police unit.

“Chicago,” Klein said. He seemed to reconsider his answer. “Well, Winnetka, actually.”

“Winnetka...ain’t that a money ‘hood?” Powers asked as he stood up in the loft. He looked up at the wood beam ceiling overhead, scowling at the dusty cobwebs that swayed gently in the air.

Klein shrugged. “Yeah, I guess.”

Powers glared at him. “I hate rich kids,” he said.

“Then you got no beef with me, Sergeant. I’m not rich.” Klein pulled on the mandarin collar of his ACU coat. “If I was, I probably wouldn’t be wearing this, right?”

Powers grunted, and said nothing further.

“Where you from, Sergeant?” Klein asked, after the silence had grown uncomfortable.

“I come from a place where they kick people’s asses for fucking around. Get your shit squared away. I’m hungry, and I want to take a load off and have somethin’ to eat,” Powers said. He looked at Biggs.

Biggs nodded to him, then leaned her rifle against a nearby wall and shrugged off her pack. As she opened up the bag, she looked over at Klein.

“People in this part of the country don’t abandon their homes, Klein.”

Klein looked at her, confused. “Ma’am?”

“You said the guy over there”—Biggs jerked her chin toward the farm house—“was going to defend his home for as long as he could. I’m telling you, you’re right. People like him, they’re the salt of the earth. You couldn’t pry them out of their houses, any more than you could take away their guns.”

“Aw, the guy’s nuts, Captain. He should’ve evacuated days ago.” As he spoke, Klein removed his own MOLLE gear and dropped it to the floor at his feet.

“Maybe he is,” Biggs agreed. “But our Marine pal is helping us out, so show some respect.” She reached into her pack and pulled out an MRE packet. It was chicken with noodles, in her estimation the worst field ration the military had ever created. A few weeks ago, she would have just pitched it or given it away. Now, the sturdy, tan-colored plastic wrapper practically contained a banquet. Biggs never expected the day would come when she would look forward to a Meal Rejected by Ethiopians, especially the reviled menu item #3. But here they were, and she and chicken with noodles were practically BFFs. She cut open the thick plastic liner with her knife and pulled out the bag’s contents as she settled down onto her haunches, spreading the culinary bonanza out before her. Across from her, Klein did much the same thing with his own MRE, as Powers ambled over to the open loft door and regarded the world outside.

“Anybody want to trade me for my beef enchilada?” Klein asked.

“You out of your mind?” Powers said. “Even the stenches won’t eat that.”

“Powers, I’ll take first watch,” Biggs said. “My NVGs are just about out of power, so I might as well use them up now. You take second, and Klein, you get the last one. We don’t fire unless the barn’s been compromised. Hooah?”

“Hooah,” Powers said, turning away from the door and reaching for his own pack. “Sounds good to me, Captain.”

Biggs nodded and dug into her MRE.

~ ~ ~

Biggs sat near
the loft door and looked out at the night. A full moon loomed large in the sky, bathing the landscape below in a lambent, silver glow, bright enough to provide enough illumination to see by. A blessing, since she was on her last NVG battery, and wanted to conserve it for as long as possible. The farm house was dark and lifeless, still surrounded by a ring of bodies that were finally beginning to stink. Biggs regarded the farm house for a time, wondering what was going on inside its fortified walls. She had no doubt now that the corpse right outside the porch had been the lady of the house, and that she had gotten sick with the virus and died, only to reanimate shortly thereafter. Had she bitten someone before the sniper had put her down? The gunshot wounds to the body’s torso indicated there had been some sort of struggle, perhaps at close range. More than enough possibility that someone had a chunk taken out of them.

Ultimately, it didn’t matter. Unless the sniper had been bitten and turned before dawn, Biggs and her soldiers would have to move on. While the sniper had said he no longer killed the living, she wasn’t willing to risk it. Even though there were three of them and they stood a pretty fair chance of gaining entry—they still had some grenades, and they could just blow a hole through a wall—the sniper seemed to be a damn fine marksman. While it didn’t take a remarkable amount of skill to kill the shambling dead, there was always the possibility he was one of those magical shooters who could blow the nuts off a fly at a thousand meters. Biggs wasn’t interested in finding out just how good he truly was.

Something moved in the silvery gloom. Biggs watched as a small shape stumbled over the bodies in the semi-darkness, picking its way across the corpses. Biggs zeroed in on the motion, and watched from her perch as a small child moved across the field. She raised her rifle and looked through the ACOG scope mounted to the top rail. The target wasn’t a child any longer, obviously—just another stench, making its way through the night. Through the 4x scope, Biggs watched the shambling cadaver turn its head toward the barn and regard the structure with lifeless eyes. She held her breath for a long moment, wondering if the corpse might be able to divine her presence in the darkened doorway. The stench stared at the barn, and not even a flicker of awareness crossed its pallid face. Its chin was blackened by a dried crust of gore, and it was missing most of its right hand. It stumbled a bit as it walked on, then abruptly stopped when gunfire sounded in the far distance. The zombie turned toward the noise and made a small, dry mewling sound in its throat, then began picking its way back across the field of human remains. It walked right past the house without even a parting glance. Again, gunfire cracked in the still night, probably over a mile away from the farm.

Biggs watched the stench creep away, then glanced at her watch. It was time for her to rouse Powers, and she was looking forward to that. She was so exhausted that she felt jittery and vaguely nauseous, though she had her doubts that sleep would find her tonight.

Something creaked behind her, and she turned. Powers had already crawled out of his fart sack, and was gathering his gear. He nodded to her in the darkness as he stalked toward the open loft door.

“Okay, Captain. You’re relieved,” he said.

“Did you sleep, Sergeant?”

“Oh, yeah.” Powers strapped on his ACH, the Army’s Advanced Combat Helmet, which had replaced the fairly-despised PASGT helmet that Biggs had first strapped on in early 2002. Like a lot of soldiers, she’d been distrustful of the ACH, since it was smaller and didn’t provide as much cover for a trooper’s head, but the lighter weight and ability to add modular accessories to it made up for the reduced coverage. Powers dropped his AN/PVS-14 monocular night vision device over his right eye, and it powered up automatically.

“Anything I should know about?” he asked.

“Negative. Nothing to report. Stenches have been passing through the area, but they’re not stopping.”

Powers grunted and sank to his haunches beside her, cradling his rifle. “Thought I heard gunfire.”

“So did I. Not that close to us, but someone’s mixing it up. Probably attracting every stench in the state, too.”

Powers looked outside through his monocle, then pushed it back on its mount. He looked at Biggs with his regular Mark One eyeballs. “You look like hell, ma’am. You’d better get some shut-eye, or you’ll be dead on your feet. Not a good thing, considering we’re going to have to hump out of here tomorrow.”