Chapter 269: Survivors In The Mall

I got my Guardians to wait outside since the stench was quite unbearable...

Most likely, the corpses have been inside here for quite some time and because the door was closed, the stench had built up in this confined space without any way to ventilate itself.

Maylene groaned from outside the room, "Uggghh... I’m so glad I gave Boss a filtration function on the mask... It’s meant to protect him from poison gas attacks but... This certainly came in handy."

I made a mental note to thank her a lot later for that function while I inspected the corpses that were stuck inside here.

They were clearly in the late stages of decomposition to the point that plants were actually growing out of their bodies, turning a part of the room into a small floral garden. Is this what causes the plants to grow in this world?

The only thing was... The room didn’t look that old or broken down so either the bodies went through the process of decomposition rapidly because of the miasma... Or the living beings in this particular World just decompose faster as compared to ours.

I’m more inclined to believe that it’s the former at least.

One other thing I noted, however... Was that that the bodies look a little... Well... Eaten?

That was when I realised that even for the corpses... It was separated into two groups with one pile being pushed up against the corner of the room and their bodies seemingly missing limbs and parts of their flesh... But there was a single corpse that lay at the far end of the room and it was surrounded by a bunch of bones while being the one that was the most intact... And also the one that was the least decomposed...

It took me only a moment to piece things together.

These people must have had to hide themselves inside this small room for some reason, probably because of the Anomalies breaking into the mall.

They managed to hide inside here but were unable to leave and... Seeing that there was no food inside here... One guy managed to kill everyone else and used the corpses of his fellow survivors to prolong his survival.

But I’m guessing the bodies then started to rapidly decay which then prevented him from eating them and he later succumbed to his own hunger and died there.

Kind of ironic that he probably suffered the most out of everyone in this small room. The only problem was that I’m not sure if these were the survivors that the first group wanted us to find.

I was just in the midst of turning to leave the room when I heard some static coming from the corpse of the last guy.

I swivelled back and spotted what looked like some kind of device laying on the floor near the corpse’s hand, the black colour of the device having blended in with the shadows and making it hard to see.

I went over to pick it up, half expecting the corpse to suddenly move or jump at me like those horror movies but of course that didn’t happen.

The device looked like a circular stopwatch crossed with a walkie talkie... Which I suspect was what this world’s version of a walkie talkie is.

I tapped on the device, trying to see if it would react again and as though responding to my action, the device sparked to life as a green light lit up on top of it and static could be heard coming from the centre.

There were a few buttons around the sides with one of them resting directly under my index finger which I assumed was the button I needed to press to activate the device.

I pressed on it and spoke into the device, "Hello? Anyone receiving this?"

I let go of the button, hearing static from the other side of the walkie talkie.

I’m not surprised that there wasn’t an immediate answer since who knows how long this thing has been left here? It could have been days, weeks, months or even years.

It’s not like I know how long the lifespan of a battery is in this world anyway... So for all I know, maybe a battery could hold a charge for years on end.

Stepping out of the room, I tried to talk into the walkie talkie again, "Hello? Is anyone there? Please respond."

My Guardians watched me without trying to stop me, already aware of what I was trying to do as I waited a while more for a response.

"You think there’s someone on the other end?" Dan asked.

I shrugged, "I dunno. I just found it there and might as well just try it right? We did end up finding a group of survivors thanks to the radio didn’t we? So there could be someone around for all we know."

Olivia looked around the deserted and quiet mall, "Perhaps we should keep searching, my Lord. That device might only work in short ranges so we might be able to send a message if we go around the building to repeat the message."

I agreed with her so we continued on our hunt for any signs of survivors within the shopping mall itself.

Periodically, I would also just lift up the walkie talkie and try to talk into it, hoping that we would get a response but so far... It has just been static.

I even made sure to check that the volume dial was turned up so it wasn’t a case of not hearing anything because of the volume being dialed down.

We basically searched through the entirety of the ground floor and found no traces of any survivors unfortunately.

What we did find was that the place was essentially trashed with practically all the stores broken into and any store that might have been selling foodstuffs were essentially picked clean with not a single shred of food remaining on the shelves.

Some places looked like fire had torched it before being put out but there were no more blood trails to follow at least.

We decided to head up to the second floor and I tried the walkie talkie again, which at this point I have started to troll a little since I was bored of repeating the same message over and over again.

"We’re no strangers to love~ You know the rules and so do I~"

Dan groaned at me when he heard me but kept his comments to himself, especially since he was the only one aside from me who got the reference as the others weren’t familiar with the joke.

I chuckled at him and was just about to nudge him with a joke when loud static came from the walkie talkie itself.

Everyone turned to look at me as I lifted the walkie talkie up, making sure that the volume dial was indeed at the maximum before trying to check if there were any voices coming from the device itself.

Another static came from the device once again and I almost gave up, believing it was just the device shorting out because of how old it was.

But the device crackled again before a voice came from the device that was muffled by the static.

"Krrrkkk... He... Krrrkk... Read... Krrrkkk..."

I stared back at my Guardians, all of them also looking back at me with the same look I was giving them, though they couldn’t see it since I was wearing my mask.

I pressed on the button again, "Hello? Say again?"

I released the button and waited again, hoping that the voice would come back again.

There was static again before another voice came through the speaker once again.

"Krrrkkk... Break... Krrrkkk... Close... Krrrkkk..."

I’m guessing we’re too far away from them which is why we’re getting this static.

We started moving towards another direction, walking down a few hundred meters or so before I tried to speak into the walkie talkie again.

"Say again? Do you hear me?"

"Krrrkk... Krrrrk..."

Ok, the other way then...

We moved to the opposite side and I tried one more time.

"Do you copy? Say again."

"Krrkk... We are hearing you... Krrrkk... Are you survivors? Krrrkkk..."

I couldn’t help but feel a little triumphant.

"Yes we are survivors. We have cleared out the mall of these An-- Ahem... Those monsters. Where are you located?"

There was no response from them for a while, probably the survivors discussing amongst themselves at the unexpected appearance of other survivors in the mall.

"Krrrkkk... Come to the theatre at the top floor... Krrrkkk.."

Ah, so they were all the way at the top floor which was two more floors above us. No wonder we were struggling to receive them.

"Copy that," I concluded the exchange before heading up to the location that the person had told us to.

I thought we would end up needing to search around before we found the theatre but it was obvious where it was since there was only one part of the top floor that was completely barricaded with furniture and metal sheets that completely separated one part of the mall from the other.

Looks like we found our next group of survivors.