The Farm - 05 Read Free Page B

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.”
    “Roger that,” Biggs agreed. “Stay sharp, Powers.”
    “Born that way, Captain.”
    Biggs nodded and rose to her feet. Her back was stiff, and her ass felt half-numb from sitting in one place for so long. Powers slid into her position as soon as she vacated it and stared out into the moonlit night. Biggs eased her way toward her sleeping bag and slowly lowered herself into it. She didn’t zip it up, only pulled it over her after she had removed her ACH and ensured her rifle was secure beside her, leaning against her MOLLE pack. Klein was wrapped up in his own fart sack a few feet away, breathing soundlessly through his wide-open mouth. The kid was dead to the world, and Biggs envied him for that.
    As she lay back in the darkness, she fiddled with her wedding band for a moment. She’d stopped worrying about Paul over a week ago—he was either alive, or he wasn’t. If he’d made it to Fort Indiantown Gap, then she’d likely see him again. If he had been caught back at Fort Drum, where Biggs’s unit was stationed, then he was very probably dead. Paul Biggs had been a civilian contractor on post, a service manager with a company called DynCorp, not a battle-hardened light infantryman. Even though he was capable and resourceful, at the end of the day, he would depend on the lightfighters to protect him. And from what she had heard before the battalion communications net went down, Drum was in the process of being overrun by the stenches.
    At least we didn’t have kids, she thought, and she wondered then why such a sick sentiment would even rise to the surface, in full view of her mind’s eye.
    She didn’t have long to contemplate it. Before she knew it, sleep claimed her as its own.
     
    ~ ~ ~
     
    Black smoke curdled in the sky.
    Biggs looked down the expanse of the George Washington Bridge, where the Marine unit was fighting for its life, trying to repel the horde of stenches that threatened to overrun the motorized rifle regiment’s position. The din of combat rang loud in the air, and helicopters thumped overhead—gunships, Apaches from the Army, Cobras from the Marine Corps. They hovered over the Hudson on either side of the bridge, firing missiles into the stinking mass of necrotic flesh that had collected on the Harlem side of the span. Through her field glasses, Biggs watched the Hellfires and 70-millimeter rockets with fourteen pound warheads slam into the tightly-packed putrid piles, burrowing deep inside them before detonating. She was too far away to make out all the finer details, but judging by the bodies—and disassociated body parts—that were blasted into the air, the gunship attack was probably one of the fiercest displays of firepower she had seen in her nearly ten year career as an officer in the United States Army.
    Then the rockets and missiles were gone. The Cobras had to turn back, as they’d been called in for the tactical air support mission before they could refuel, and now they needed to get some go-juice so they could continue the fight. The Apaches, much fatter and more well-fed, split up. Four of the ugly machines climbed into the sky and passed over the top of the bridge, settling down into positions to the north. The group of eight