Mutagen

Mark confirmed finally confirmed the fact that Biters were still living infected.

"No wonder why they are too "lively"."

The scene of him, mercilessly killing those Biters entered his mind. But he felt nothing. Even though they are still alive, he felt nothing. There may be some good people among them, he still felt nothing.

The issue now was not them being alive or being a good person before. The most important thing was those people, were now Biters. It was just a matter of survival, nothing more than that.

Looking at the two squirming zombies in front of him, numerous questions entered his mind. Those questions were fueled with both curiosity and thirst for knowledge. He wanted an answer for those questions, thus…

Mark decided to keep these zombies for further studies.

Afterwards, he left the two zombies and continued scouting the area. Mark looked at the bloody footprints on the floor and decided to follow where the footprints came from. He was very sure that these footprints would lead him towards the TechZone.

After killing the Eaters that are on the way, the footprints led him to an open door. Learning from his mistake inside the shoe store earlier, he did not prop his head on the door anymore and went for a new method.

Mark took out his smartphone from his belt and unplugged the earphone from the jack. He pushed the power button, opened the camera app and switched the camera to its front lens. He then saw a cool sci-fi looking helmet on the screen.

Mark could really relate to Mr. Unique when he said something about looking handsome when your face was covered.

While sitting beside the door, he propped his phone in a position that the front lens could view the situation inside.

What he saw worse than he anticipated. The floor was painted with blood and guts. Broken glass, gadgets that were supposed to be on display and unrecognizable debris are scattered everywhere.

From his position, he could see nine zombies. The likelihood that these zombies are all Eaters was high. He could only see nine but he was sure that there were more at the parts that he can see. The TechZone was a wide area dedicated to house quite a large number of gadget and electronics oriented shops and stalls. What could he see from this door was not even a fifth of the whole TechZone.

'If there are only Eaters inside, it will be easy even if there are several dozens of them.'

Several plans were created in his mind. What he found the most suitable was "kiting" the Eaters one by one and eliminating them.

Mark moved his phone closer to the door for a wider view but found out that he could not see anything else but a wall of a store beside the door.

Still, he noticed a shop on the opposite side of the TechZone. The shop was closed by steel shutters. Mark immediately understood that there are people inside that shop. It was likely that the people inside that were the people who followed his instructions.

How can he be sure? There are two reasons.

There are no padlocks attached to the bottom of the shutter indicating that it was not a closed store. All of the stores he saw that was closed even after the mall opened had padlocks on the metal shutters securing the store.

The other reason was that, he just knew and nothing else. Some may say that it was just blind confidence but he was sure that he was right.

Those people inside the store could be saved but now was not the time yet. He must secure the perimeters of the service corridors first. Mark did not want for some unforeseen circumstances to happen while dealing with the zombies inside.

With that, he made sure that there were no zombies to see him and carefully closed the door.

Mark walked past the door and silently dealt with the straggling Eaters. The path he traversed was literally covered with blood along with dead bodies and severed heads.

One by one, he checked every door he can see. If the door is locked, he would just leave it like that but if the door was not, he would carefully check what the door would lead to.

During that process, he found several unlocked doors leading to storage areas of different stores. It is unfortunate that most of the stores he managed to access were those that were open before the zombies appeared which made the storefront dangerous to enter. There were also storage areas that had Biters or Eaters inside. He made sure not to disturb the Biters but dealt with the Eaters properly.

Still, he found a few stores that are actually closed and had the steel shutters down at the storefront. It made him wonder why the storage door was unlocked when the store was closed.

It did not take too long until he reached the end of the corridors within the west wing. In front of him right now was an intersection where the corridor he is standing at, the one that goes towards the central area and south wing of the mall was connected.

He looked at the corridor to his left which led to the Central Area. The corridor going that direction was not long and was just connected to a few stores and led to a dead end. There are several Eaters idling in the area but it was not a threat for him.

On the other side to his right was the corridor which brought him much hardship. It was the corridors that were connected to the cinema. The corridor was stained with blood and was littered with quite a number of dead bodies. The long corridor that led to the southernmost end of the mall had more straggling Eaters. But it was not the Eaters who were the most eye-catching. In the middle of the corridor, there was a large lump of flesh squirming about.

It was the zombie that he tentatively labeled as "Fat Mutant". From this distance, it really looked like a large lump of moving flesh. It is really disgusting. When that fat bastard turned into this, it really gave justice to how disgusting he was inside.

The Fat Mutant seemed to be trying to crawl but because of its heavy and unnecessarily large body, it could not do anything but squirm disgustingly. It looked like the Mark dealt it a fatal blow when he shot its leg before making it unable to stand up anymore.

Mark swung his machete and hacked the neck of the Eater that approached him.

He stood there thinking if he should also secure or at least scout the south wing. There's barely anything there that was of importance. The southern end of the corridors only led to a series of large cinema halls and also led towards the east wing. Thinking about it, he was not interested with anything on the east wing either.

With that, he decided to just cover a few stores on the south wing and clear up the straggling Eaters. If it came later that they needed to secure those parts of the mall, he would make other people do it.

Another killing spree began as Mark beheaded all the Eaters in the vicinity. These slow and stiff zombies are really strong but their strength was nothing if they couldn't even catch their prey.

Mark built a makeshift barricade to stop the zombies past the cinema area from entering the areas he secured. He used trolleys, furniture and items he found in the storage areas of the stores he checked before. Most of the furniture was just storage stands and folding tables though. The other furniture he found like cabinets are too heavy for him to carry. The barricade was tied with power cables. He tried to make it as sturdy as he can.

However, he was not content with the barricade he managed to build and wanted a stronger and sturdier one. But, he would need more people to achieve building a barricade he thought of.

Like the two zombies he caught, Mark decided to leave the Fat Zombie for observation. It was already disabled anyway and it could not move by itself. Mark shoved some rags in its mouth to gag it but it surprised him afterwards.

This guy swallowed the rags whole and in single second! No wonder this guy was so FAT!

Because of that, the gave up on gagging the Fat Zombie and made a mental note to tell others not to carelessly approach this guy later. He wanted to relocate this fat guy but also gave up on doing so. He would not to ever touch this guy and it also looked too heavy to move away.

Leaving the disgusting lump of flesh, he decided to check the remaining doors before going back up to the rooftop.