Other Floors

The two women, introduced themselves as Lane and Mel. They had been hiding in the service corridors on this floor when they heard the announcement. They made their way into the shelter that had been created out of the sports store to rest. At this point it was time to rest up and plan how to make their way down to the other floor as well as rescue other survivors. After a few hours of rest, Matt went over to the computer and opened the live chat that connected to the rest of the stores in the mall.

In the chat, there were already quite a few messages for aid. Matt quickly replied to all of the messages asking for the number of survivors as well as their locations on the floors. There were a couple of messages from a store on the fourth floor that had already been secured stating that the shop they were in had its emergency protocol active so the shutters were sealed tight and they could not deactivate them. Matt promptly sent a reply stating that he would be over shortly to free them and left the chat. He then put James in charge of communicating with the survivors on the lower floors while he went and freed the ones still trapped on this floor.

After arriving at his destination, he gave a call out to the man that he had been talking to whose name is Carl. Carl was a soldier on leave and would have a way to contact for a rescue if he could be freed and was able to get back to the gym on the second floor where all of his items were. After receiving a reply from Carl, he reached out and began deconstructing a door sized hole in the shutters that would allow the two occupants to escape.

After they were freed, there didn't appear to be anymore people on the floor so that just left a total of nine people to defend a whole floor. Well, eight people and a hybrid, which is the only thing that he could think to call himself. Back at their base of operations, Matt proceeded to convert random items from various shops into energy and then into weapons and armor that the new members of the group could use.

Fully equipped and rested again, Matt and the men of the group, to include Carl and his brother Jessie, decided to use the platform that had already been created to block the zombies from entering the fourth floor to lure the zombies and up as far as they could go and then pick them off from the platform. To do this they would need something to create a fair amount of noise to draw the intended zombies.

Matt located some radios in the sports store and gave them a charge using his ability, which was becoming slowly more versatile as more uses were discovered. Carl went to the security office to monitor the zombies and relay what was happening to the other team members during their plan. The main issue would be the large infected on the first floor. If it made a move the team would have no choice, but to retreat and hide from it until it left or they found and opportunity to kill it in one go.

Matt approached the stair well platform with Chris, both of which had an air horn in their hands. Using the air horn, the zombies on the third and maybe the second floor should be able to hear them clearly. Matt was the first to go since he was the strongest of their group and could put the largest dent in the number of infected below. As the air horn was being used, all the zombies in immediate sight of the stairs began to rush forward at the new prey that they had just set their sights on.

After reaching the top of what was left of the stairs though, they had no way to move further ahead. Using their spears, the zombies began to fall fairly quickly. Some even fell backwards into other zombies which created a domino effect of sorts and took a lot of the zombies out as they fell directly over the side of the stair to the floor. It didn't kill all of them, but most of the ones that fell broke legs or arms making it difficult for them to move around further.

After about thirty minutes, the number of zombies had greatly decrease and most of what was left were either stragglers or they had fallen over the railing and could no longer climb the stairs. Seeing this, Matt made his move by jumping from the platform and begin killing what remained of the infected while also clearing the bodies. By this point, he was beginning to feel that his power was reaching a peak and that if he pushed past the peak then his power would grow greatly.

After the group gathered on the third floor, Matt proceeded to block off the stairs and escalators to this floor as well using the same method that he had used to block of the fourth floor. This floor was different however as there were several spots where the lower floor could ascend to this one.

As the group fought more and more zombies on their way to the other zones that had to be blocked off, they began to get in sync with each other and it became like a moving meat grinder as the zombies were cleared faster and faster.

Finally having all of the routes to the third floor blocked, the group found a secure spot to sit down and rest. As they were resting, Matt felt extremely tired from the constant absorbing and releasing of his power. He called Chris over and said, "Post up here for time being and be on guard, I need to take a nap." Chris then nodded and left Matt to rest. Right after closing his eyes, he felt a pain in his head and a surge of energy then promptly passed out. Chris was relaying information as Matt was laying down and was working with James to let the survivors that could leave their shops know where they could meet.

At that moment though, Carl came over the radio with grim news from the floors below.