The Farm by Stephen Knight

Author:Stephen Knight
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Horror, Short Stories, Fiction
Publisher: Ronin LLC
Published: 2013-04-09T04:00:00+00:00

~ ~ ~

The three soldiers emerged from the barn, assault rifles at ready. The day was steadily brightening as the sun threatened to pop up over the horizon. Several figures were already silhouetted against the growing smear of light: zombies. And as Biggs trotted toward the house, she saw that number was growing almost exponentially. There were already three of them standing in front of the house, looking up at it stupidly, pushing against the fortified porch walls, trying to find a way inside.

“Oh, shit!” Klein whispered, and he drew to a stop, raising his rifle.

“Hold your fire!” Biggs hissed. “We don’t have a lot of ammo left, so no firing until we have to!”

“What about them?” Klein asked, not lowering his rifle.

“We do it the old fashioned way,” Powers said. He slung his rifle and surged forward, pulling his knife from its sheath. He dashed forward and sank the blade into the back of one stench’s neck and viciously ripped the cutting edge to one side. The zombie fell to the ground like a marionette whose strings had been cut. Its mouth still moved and its dull eyes rolled around in their sockets, but its limbs barely twitched. Powers had paralyzed the stench with one slash. He did the same thing to the second one as it slowly registered his presence, but by the time it had begun to turn to him, Powers was upon it, his blade doing its work in the blink of an eye. The third stench hissed as it shambled toward him, arms outstretched. Biggs pulled her own blade and grabbed the corpse by its natty collar and slammed her blade into its neck. Cutting through the gristle and cervical vertebrae was harder than she’d thought it would be, and the stench struggled against her. It was a man, bigger than she was, and she faltered as she tried to keep her feet beneath her. Powers reached over and grabbed the stench’s head with both hands, holding it immobile for a moment.

“Do your thing, ma’am,” he said, staring into the ghoul’s soulless eyes.

Biggs tore her knife through the thing’s neck with such force that she practically beheaded it.

“More coming,” Klein said, still on his rifle. But he hadn’t fired yet, so Biggs took that to mean he was holding his panic at bay.

“Plan?” Powers asked.

Biggs regarded the house before them as Powers released the zombie. It collapsed to the dusty ground, foul-smelling ichor oozing from the horrific wound she had inflicted upon it. They still had to figure out how to get into the house, and as silently as possible—there was probably a stench inside, and making more noise than was necessary would attract its attention, as well as give the rest of the zombies in the neighborhood a heads-up that something was going down. She looked over her shoulder and saw more stenches moving down the road, their faces turned toward the farm. And across the field, more slowly stalked forward, already reaching for the soldiers, even though they were hundreds of feet away.

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