And then the Suburban crashed to a sudden halt, tilted crazily to the left as the engine died.
“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” Powers screamed as the airbags wilted, deflating with small whines. He fought against the collapsing bag before him, trying to get to his rifle. As the bags shrank, Biggs saw the mass of zombies outside, converging on the disabled vehicle like a rotting avalanche crashing down a smooth hillside. One was already lying across the crumpled hood, its body battered and broken and leaking viscous black fluid across the sun-faded blue paint. It raised one mangled hand and flopped it against the cracked windshield, leaving a smear of gore. Powers stared at it as he finally found his rifle and pulled it into his hands. His eyes were wide with fear.
“Oh, hell!”
“Powers.” Biggs had to raise her voice over the vicious pounding that suddenly filled the vehicle’s cabin as the stenches slammed against it, trying to find a way in. “Powers, help me with the boy.” She reached down and gently turned the boy over on the narrow center console. His eyes were closed, and his jaw was slack. He was either unconscious, or dead.
Powers looked down at the boy and let out a panicked bray of laughter. “What do you want me to do for him, Captain? Sing him a lullaby? We’re fucked, Captain—all of us!” he shouted, as the pounding seemed to rise to a crescendo. Twisted, disfigured faces appeared outside his window, pressed against the glass, pounding on it. Others appeared outside the window to Biggs’s left, pressing against it, mashing themselves against the Suburban’s battered body. Sheet metal squeaked as it was compressed.
Glass exploded inward behind her, showering her with fragments. The girl in the back seat let out one pale cry, and Powers twisted in his seat, a snarl on his dark face. All traces of the rational, experienced, disciplined NCO Biggs had trusted her life with were gone. Powers had devolved back into his most basic form, and he was going to go out fighting. He raised his rifle and fired into the mass of dead flesh that surged into the cabin through the shattered rear window, descending upon the girl there like some demented swarm of locusts. She screamed, in agony this time, and Biggs felt the struggle against her seatback. She grabbed the boy’s still form and tried to pull him forward, but something already had his legs; an instant later, he was ripped from her grasp. A cold, foul-smelling hand reached around the seat and grabbed her left shoulder. Biggs cried out and struggled against it as he found her own rifle. Powers burned through his entire magazine as the dead continued to pile onto the Suburban, their writhing bodies covering every window, blocking out most of the morning light, casting the soldiers in almost total darkness. Biggs leaned forward against the steering wheel, and the horn blared as she pressed against it, trying to get enough room to turn and bring her M4 to bear on the stenches in the back seat. The reek of the dead filled the air, along with the brighter, coppery scent of fresh blood. The girl was no longer screaming, and to Biggs’s utter horror, she could see she had already been torn asunder by the abominations behind her. One of them was crouched over her, feasting on her lips and cheeks, ripping them away in great, gouging bites, ignoring the nonfatal bullet wounds to its shoulders and chest. Biggs managed to get her rifle into a decent firing position and popped the stench right in the skull at close range. The corpse fell forward over the girl’s body, but then another one shoved it out of the way and began ravaging the girl even further. Beside her, Powers was weeping, his tears cutting swaths through the grime that covered his face, as he struggled to load one of the Magpul magazines from the house into his M4. Biggs was surprised to see the window behind him had imploded; she hadn’t heard it, as she was half-deaf from the close-quarters gunfire and the never ending moans of the dead. A dozen hands pawed at Powers, dragging him backward, and Biggs knew that he wanted to reload his weapon so he could fire one last shot: the one that would end his life before the dead could do their work.
Biggs turned and fired two rounds into his face without a word. The soldier’s lifeless body flopped and went limp, but that didn’t seem to bother the dead. They still hauled Powers’s fresh corpse out of the vehicle like kids tearing open presents on Christmas morning. And that’s exactly what they did to Powers—tore him right open before Biggs’s eyes.
And then, more squeezed in through the shattered passenger door window, reaching in for Biggs.
Her ammunition lasted longer than she’d thought it would, but it wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough.
The Farm - 05 Page 4
