They slipped inside the shopping mall as quietly as they could. The mont they stepped through the entrance, they froze.
Black flesh had spread across the floor like thick roots. It crawled over the tiles and walls, branching in every direction. The strands were larger here than the ones they saw before, thicker and darker. So of them slowly pulsed, rising and falling like the breathing of a living thing.
Thump. Thump. The faint sound echoed through the empty mall.
Cindy and Na-rin both gasped at the sight.
Jaxon quickly raised a finger to his lips. "Don’t make a sound," he whispered. "And don’t step on those. We’ll hide here for a while."
Cindy and Na-rin nodded quickly, switching on the flashlights in their hands.
With his sharpened senses and night vision, Jaxon scanned the interior carefully. The mall corridors stretched ahead into darkness, but for now, there were no signs of infected nearby.
"Stay close," he murmured.
They began moving deeper into the mall, stepping carefully around the black flesh that spread across the ground. Sotis the strands were thin like veins. Other tis they were thick enough to rise from the floor like twisted roots.
They passed several small stores along the corridor. Clothing shops, sports stores, and camping stores stood abandoned with broken glass and scattered items inside.
Jaxon paused at one of them. Since they were already here, he began collecting useful items.
So of them were already ruined by the spreading flesh, but plenty were still usable. Clothes, shoes, camping gear, sleeping bags, vitamins, batteries, small solar chargers, and utility tools all vanished one by one into his storage.
Killing the mutant earlier had pushed him to the next level. His storage space had expanded again, now reaching nine cubic ters.
Na-rin watched him quietly as items disappeared one after another. She tilted her head slightly. "...Does that storage ability of yours have a limit?"
"It does," Jaxon replied while stuffing another bundle of supplies away. "And I’m almost out of space now."
He closed the last store cabinet and turned back to them.
"Thanks for waiting," he said. "Let’s head to the rooftop."
The higher they went, the better their chances of seeing what was happening outside, and maybe finding a safer path out.
As they climbed the stairwell floor by floor, the noise outside grew louder.
Roars echoed through the streets, followed by heavy thumping that shook the walls of the building. The infected had arrived. It sounded as if they were already swarming just outside.
Halfway up the stairs, Jaxon paused and glanced back down the dark stairwell they had just co from.
He watched the darkness for a mont. Then he continued upward.
Far beneath them, in the shadows of the lower floor they had passed, sothing stirred. A pair of sharp red eyes slowly opened. They stared up the stairwell, fixed on the place where the three had disappeared.
anwhile, as Jaxon led the others higher, a faint sound drifted through the stairwell.
"...Help..." The whisper was so soft it almost blended with the echo of the building.
"Did you hear that?" Cindy whispered, stopping in her tracks.
Jaxon had heard it clearly, a young girl’s voice, faint but distinct. It seed to be coming from sowhere just one floor above them.
For a mont, the building fell quiet again. Then the voice ca once more, slightly louder this ti.
"Is... soone there...? Please... help ..."
Cindy looked up the stairs, her brows tightening. "There’s definitely soone up there," she said quietly.
But strangely, she didn’t move. Sothing about the voice made her hesitate, as if an instinct deep inside her was telling her to stay where she was.
Na-rin frowned. When she glanced at Jaxon, she saw the sa suspicion in his eyes.
"Do you think it’s actually a person?" Na-rin whispered. Without thinking, she stepped a little closer to Jaxon’s side, as if seeking protection behind him.
Before he could answer, another sound echoed from above.
Footsteps, they echoed faintly from above. Slow... deliberate steps coming down the stairs toward them.
Jaxon’s frown deepened. He couldn’t see whoever or whatever was up there yet, but sothing about the voice felt wrong.
Without hesitation, he grabbed both Cindy and Na-rin by the arms and pulled them toward the nearby hallway.
A small store stood just beside the stairwell entrance. They slipped inside quickly, and Jaxon gently pushed the glass door closed behind them, careful not to make a sound.
The three crouched behind the store counter, holding their breath and listening.
"No matter what happens, don’t make a sound," Jaxon whispered.
Cindy and Na-rin both nodded imdiately, their faces tense. They switched off their flashlights, plunging the store into darkness.
Only Jaxon could still see. With his night vision active, he steadied the M16 in his hands and carefully peeked past the edge of the counter toward the entrance.
Seconds of silence crawled by.
Then the footsteps grew louder, echoing through the stairwell.
Step, step, step.
At the sa ti, the faint voice continued drifting through the hall.
"...Help ..." It sounded like a frightened girl, pitiful and desperate.
But Jaxon did not move, his eyes stayed fixed on the stairwell entrance.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
The steps were much heavier now, strong enough to shake the floor slightly.
Through his night vision, Jaxon finally saw it clearly, and his grip on the rifle tightened.
The creature was enormous. It stood more than two and a half ters tall. Its body was grotesquely bloated and twisted, as if multiple infected had been fused together into a single body.
Limbs jutted out in unnatural places. Extra arms, so long, so short twitched around its swollen torso. Its thick legs struggled to support the massive fra, while other arms dragged along the floor to help it keep balance.
But the worst part was the heads. There were many of them. So were half buried in the creature’s chest, others pushed out from its shoulders or back. Their mouths hung open, twisted and broken, their eyes cloudy and lifeless.
It wasn’t a mutant. It wasn’t a variant either. This thing looked like the result of a dozen infected forcibly rged into one monstrous organism.
Jaxon felt his stomach twist. He had seen many horrible things since the outbreak began, but this creature was sothing else. Even he had to fight the urge to look away.
Slowly, he glanced back at Cindy and Na-rin. Both of them were crouched behind the counter, their hands tightly covering their mouths, eyes squeezed shut as they tried to stay silent.
They could not see the monster clearly in the darkness. For that, Jaxon felt a small sense of relief. So sights were better left unseen.
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