Michael finished locking up the last remaining shelves of medicine before he sat down on a chair to continue waiting for the store's actual pharmacist to return. How long had it been already? An hour? The man had left to supposedly go on a bathroom break, but typically those didn't take THIS long. Maybe he had Taco Bell for lunch or something, Michael thought with a small chuckle. Or... maybe he got sick. It was kind of an ironic thought, a pharmacist getting sick, but Michael had recalled that much of the medicine that had arrived here at the mall's pharmacy was all geared for treating similar symptoms. Nausea, vomiting, pain, dizzy spells.... perhaps there was some bug going around, and his overseer had caught it. 

"The least he could have done was call in to say he wouldn't be coming back!"

Michael locked the "Employee's Only" room before heading out and closing the shutter of the pharmacy's front behind him. Bad mistake. As soon as he began to walk further away from the place, he spotted a small group of moaning and shambling people. Their clothes were torn and stained with filth and blood.

"What? Is this like a publicity stunt or something?" Michael asked. He had sometimes seen such things being done on the news as pranks, scheduled events, or publicity stunts, so that was the first thing that came to mind. There was some new zombie game coming out weeks from now, so this would be a sure fire way to grab attention.

That's when the stench hit him. It was like the smell of some dead animal, except ten times worse. 

"Kind of overdoi-"

One of the shamblers turned around, revealing a bleeding jugular and flesh being chewed in its mouth.

"Hahaha... nope."

With that, Michael ran around them and sprinted full speed away. That shit was way too real to be a mere publicity stunt, and it hadn't taken Michael very long to realize that small group of "zombies" were actually zombies. He looked ahead of himself, noticing even more groups on the floor down below, some feasting on the bodies of people.

"Shit... where the fuck is Daryl Dixon when you need him?"

Michael quickly scanned the area for open stores that were zombie free when he spotted a girl running frantically. Was that Izzy? Michael had seen her a few times whenever he had gone into Hot Topic to browse. In fact, she was the one that sold him his pretty cool coat. He ran to try and catch up to her.

"Hey! Slow down a bit!"