Read The Farm - 05 for Free Online Page A

and they were driving too fast.
    “ Fuck! ” Powers shouted, belatedly reaching for his seat belt, though by the time his fingertips touched it, the Suburban’s battered nose plowed through the first ranks of the dead like an ice breaker smashing its way through a frozen sea. Biggs fought to control the vehicle as it rapidly decelerated, and then the air bags deployed, shoving her back into the seat and knocking her senseless. She felt her ears pop as the air pressure in the SUV suddenly increased, and felt the hot blast of escaping, superheated air venting out of the bag almost instantly as her hands were torn from the steering wheel. Beside her, Powers swore up a storm as the SUV lurched from side to side like a staggering drunk, the sounds of multiple impacts filling the cabin. The girl screamed as she was flung into the back of Biggs’s seat, and an instant later, the boy was up front, rocketing between her and Powers, sprawling across the worn center console with a cry.
    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