I managed to get them to safety and stick a helicopter with machetes outside of their food court hideout so they'd be safe when I went and fought the chef.
Speaking of the chef, I had a group of like 5 people following me when I accidentally ran up to him. Slappy only got taken down by me spanning in circles with the chainsaw, because the flamethrower and merc guns did fuck all damage to him. What the fuck were these guys thinking making some of them so stupid hard? I can wade through a pile of zombies, the gun wielding mercs, but a chef with a knife or a fat dude with a tiger can take multiple dynamite shots to the face with little damage. Once I stopped time cheating, I got a bunch more missions for survivors and psychos started showing up. Suddenly I feel like the game is rushing by, it seriously can't have more then 6 hours give or take of actual story mode. Gotten further along in the story after spending awhile using the time reverse cheat to keep it 8am on the first day. Finally someone figured out how to get rid of the intro movies.