The Farm - 05 Read Free Page A

MRE.
     
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    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