Survivors

The amount of zombies around the fountain should be somewhere near 150. That was not the absurd part of the situation though. On top of the fountain was a middle aged man, who was soaking wet from the spray of water. It appeared that he had scaled to the top of the ten foot fountain to escape from the infected and was doing a fairly good job of it as it was. In his hand was a broom handle that had been broken off and he was in the process of killing any zombie that got close enough.

The number of dead zombies had to be around thirty to fifty meaning that the man was at least proficient with his aim and ability to kill the zombies. From where Matt was viewing the situation, he could see that a number of the zombies had holes drilled into them in various spots until a certain point they all started receiving head blows. Matt, admiring the man for his skill in killing the infected and his tenacity to not give up yet even though he was clearly tired called out to him from his hiding spot.

"You look like you could use a hand," Matt said in the direction of his new potential ally.

The man looked around for a moment before locating Matt and said in response, "Please, help me get away from here and I'll do anything you want."

Hearing this, Matt simply nodded his head and pulled out the crossbow that he had made and began picking off some of the zombies to draw their attention. The first ones to get picked off were the ones that seemed to be in good condition aside from having been bitten as they would be the runners. The ones that had large parts of their of their bodies ripped off or out were much slower.

After picking off around 12 runners, some finally made it to food stand counter that he was hiding behind. As there was a counter in the way, the zombies could not reach him which made it easy to pick them off. Using the short sword, he began to decapitate the ones in his reach. Some of the ones that reached across the counter, Matt proceeded to use his ability that he had begun calling deconstruction to destroy them entirely while gaining more energy to create more items.

After roughly an hour of killing zombies with the man on the fountain, nearly all of the zombies had been cut down or completely destroyed. Matt proceeded to mop up the remaining zombies with his short sword and the man finally climbed down from the top of the fountain.

"Thank you for saving me. I didn't think that I would survive being trapped on that fountain. The name is James by the way," James said.

Matt introduced himself as well as he proceeded to gather up the bodies of the zombies to deconstruct them and improve his ability as well as gain energy that he had spent on killing them in the first place. James witnessing the events in progress was amazed by the sight.

"That is an amazing ability. How do I get one like that?"

"I don't recommend trying to getting one as it took getting bitten to acquire it," Matt said.

James nodded his head as that made sense to him since everyone that he had seen get bitten turned into one of the infected. Matt was the only one that he had seen that hadn't turned into a zombie after being bitten.

"You look like a new weapon should be in order," Matt said noticing that James's make shift spear was basically falling apart. After saying this, Matt used some of the energy that he had acquired to make a steel short spear with a broad sharp tip on it. This ability Matt had begun to call conversion as it allowed him to convert the energy he had into constructs that he imagined in his mind.

James was grateful for the new weapon as it would provide him the reach to stay away from the zombies as well as to kill them more easily. After testing out the weapon for a bit and helping Matt gather up the rest of the bodies so that they could be deconstructed for more energy and improve his ability more.

Finally finishing up, James asked, "So what are our plans now?"

"Do you intend to follow me now," Matt asked?

"Well, you did just save my life so it only seems right that I help you do whatever it is you plan to do for now. Once that is finished, we can discuss our partnership further and decide if we are going to continue working together," James said.

"Thats fair I guess. For now, I want to barricade off this floor and finish clearing it as well as see if there are other survivors on this floor," Matt said.

With this in mind, they headed off toward the escalators that lead to this floor to find a way to block them off for the time being. It could be said that their team work in clearing the infected was decent as they made their way. The only thing that puzzled Matt was the lack of zombies on the floor as this was a fairly popular mall. After rounding a corner and seeing the situation in front of them it made sense as to why they had seen so few zombies. Matt could only sign seeing the number of zombies since he knew that it would take a considerable amount of time to clear the number that he was seeing.

"I guess we found the rest of the survivors on this floor," Matt said with a bit of excitement and dread.