Medora Wars by Wick Welker Page A

get infected themselves. Let’s just... stay right here.” As Sheffield turned to look up, an overweight woman had walked up from behind him, and was propping herself up on the side of the stage.
    “Don’t use your gun!” Elise yelled as he turned to face the woman. “It’s too loud.”
    Standing, he walked over to the woman, who had a small baby strapped to the front of her chest. Inside a tightly wrapped blanket, the baby loudly wailed with each erratic movement from his now undead mother. The woman’s face was bloated with a carpet of blisters that ran down her cheeks. Green fluid seeped from her nose and pooled around the corners of her lips. She shuffled toward Sheffield, trying to maintain her balance while each of her legs jerked out wildly—trembling as they took her weight.
    Sheffield took a step back from her, turned the barrel of the gun into the palm of his hand, and swung the butt sideways into her head, breaking through the skull. She wildly whipped her arms up and down, which pushed Sheffield off her—the gun remaining butt-end first lodged in her skull. The baby continued to cry as it bounced with its mother’s movements. Sheffield reached for the barrel of the gun as it bobbed up and down with the woman, grabbed onto the end, and yanked. Catching onto the rim of the hole in the skull, the movement of the gun brought the side of her skull off with it, exposing pulsating brain tissue that had now become gelatinous as it dripped down her hair. Coughing up blood, she fell to her knees. Sheffield crouched down and brought the baby out of the carrier on her chest.
    “Is it infected?” Elise asked, getting back to her feet.
    He wiped bloody mucous off of its head. “No, no it’s fine.”
    The armed men shouted at each other and retreated back toward the shops of the mall as the infected crowd pushed outward. Elise saw a teenaged boy clumsily swing a fire extinguisher at a burly man who he missed. The man fell forward onto the boy, toppling him onto the tile below, and crushing him with his body. The boy cried out as the man brought his head by his neck and bit down, moving the flesh with erratic chewing.
    “They’re leaving. The assholes are trying to run.” Sheffield pointed as the guards shouted on their walkie-talkies. Looking at each other, one of them by the mall entrance gave a few brief hand movements prompting all the men to turn and run, leaving the infected crowd behind.
    “Now we move,” Sheffield said, handing the baby to Elise. “Take it.”
    Elise brought the baby to her chest and shushed it while standing from her knees. She pushed Sheffield toward the woman whose brain now dripped onto the tile. They stepped around her body while crouching.
    Sheffield led the way with his gun pointed outward. He saw that the armed men had now left, leaving the mall behind to its mayhem. Taking Elise by the back of her arm, they ran the opposite way as more of the infected took notice, and waddled in their direction. The other end of the mall was wide open and without people to stop them as they ran past a bank of escalators and through the food court.
    “It’s…” Elise was trying to catch her breath, “a deliberate outbreak. Why would anyone—”
    “Is the garage compromised?” Sheffield interrupted.
    “How would I know?” Elise turned to him, and then realized he was talking into a mouthpiece in his shirt cuff.
    “Understood,” he said into the mouthpiece. “Miss Whitten, I have backup agents in the area who will meet us the on street level, on the south side of the mall.”
    “You think we should get out onto the streets? Those men could be anywhere out there,” she said.
    “It shouldn’t matter. We’ll have pick-up in five minutes.” Sheffield motioned to a row of glass doors on the other end of the food court.
    “Okay, fine. Were you in the D.C. outbreak?” she asked impatiently.
    “No.”
    “All right, then you need to listen to everything I say. I’ve been through