A/N - Split for your pleasure. It just wasn't working in one go.
When I woke up I panicked. It was so dark! Had I been unconscious through what was left of the day? Was it night time already? Why was the floor suddenly made of metal when it had been thick, soft carpet before? And what the hell was that dripping sound? I cursed at the darkness, and fumbled for my lighter. Better than nothing, I guess. I had quit years ago at Lisa's insistence, but kept the lighter, figuring you'd never know when a flame could come in handy. And, of course, being able to strike up a conversation with a pretty girl asking for a light never hurt, especially when that conversation lead to a much better...friendship and the occasional motel visit. A very lucky lighter, this. If only it had shown me something a little nicer by its light this time around.
The source of the dripping sound was obvious immediately.The locker had spilled its contents when the door burst. Or, its content. A single mauled body. No, not mauled, mangled beyond all recognition. A mall security guard, judging by his uniform. The baton was blood-stained, the walkie radio emitting nothing but a faint hiss, and his face... oh dear God his face. What was left of it was alive with maggots and worms, the rest had simply been torn off. I grit my teeth and grabbed his radio and baton, they were no more use to him, poor bastard. A flashlight was stashed in his desk, much more reliable than a lighter for seeing my way. What to do with the body, though? I couldn't leave him just sprawled on the ground, it wouldn't be right. Gagging at the stench, I hefted his corpse into the seat at his desk, facing the blank monitor and the window that had showed me so much and so little. By the light of the flashlight, the window became a mirror, showing me nothing but the decay and ruin within. I turned to leave the room and was almost to the door when a harsh electric light flooded the room, and a loud grating of static burst in on my ears. The monitor was on.
I approached it slowly, trying to ignore the way the writhing static lit up the maggots in the dead man's face, making him grin in a grotesque imitation of life. Reaching the seat, I stood behind the seated corpse, trying to make sense of the screen. No picture, no sound, just that horrible static hiss. Nothing so far had made sense, so I guess I shouldn't have been surprised when I checked the power cord and found it raggedly severed a couple of inches from the box. From the front, the dead man's contorted grin looked even worse, the worms within his eyes making him appear to stare at me, the flies crawling up his cheek broadening his grin. I'd rather see the tv screen, I thought. A screen that is on when it shouldn't be might show something even without a signal.
I wasn't disappointed. The static flickered once, twice, and resolved into an image. The first floor was shown quite clear. No other floors had a fountain in the middle, though why the water had gone dark I had no idea. A passageway lead straight out of the mall, it was obviously just a question of getting there. As I turned to leave, a movement on the screen caught my eye. The dark man again! That damn bastard was here too! My injured hand twitched at the thought of him and those god-damn boots. Maybe I could get even with him on the way out. Kill two birds with one bullet, that sorta thing. Crossing the screen, the man's image stopped suddenly, just beyond the fountain from wherever the camera would be. His head raised and tilted to one side, as though listening out. He seemed unnerved, almost fearful. Sure enough, not two seconds after he stopped to listen, the display window to the storefront behind him burst open, and three new monsters came at him from all sides, one from the window, and two from...someplace else. The camera view dropped to the ground and zoomed up to him in jagged, bouncing bursts of approach. He'd found a gun somewhere himself, it appeared. As he ducked a swipe from one monster, he shot it twice in the gut and stomped its head in when it hit the ground. Ducking again, he fell to the floor, and the camera hastened towards him. I caught a look of panic on his face as he rolled, raised his gun, and fired right at the camera. The image failed, imploded, and the monitor burst into flame violently.
The flies from the dead man's face flew into the warmth of the fire, dying horrible, painful deaths, the ceiling blackened but didn't catch, being metal. I decided it was time to leave and make my way out. Leaving the room I headed for the stairs again, but found my way up blocked by cargo crates. What the hell they were doing on an employee stairwell I don't know, but a blood trail running up from the first floor continued up the stairs where I couldn't go. A soft weeping came from the floor above, and somehow that scared me worst of all. Ok, I'll admit it, I was terrified. On legs that could barely support me, I ran like hell down the passageway, looking for the exit to the mall floor, the fire escape, anything to get away from that dreadful sound. I guess you'll say I shoulda felt sorry for the poor girl, and yeah, I did. But as I stood at the stairs I had seen...I had seen bloody footprints splat splat splatting towards me. Not hurrying, not dawdling, just weeping their way towards me. No-one to cast them, though.I froze to the spot, I couldn't move at all no matter how much I wanted to, and still those prints had kept coming. I had stood there terrified as they came right up to me, and then turned off to head on down the stairs. It was a few minutes before I could move again, and when I did...yeah, I ran. I ran like a little girl from a mad dog. But really wouldn't you have done just that, too?
I must have been scared outta my mind, more than I'd've thought, cause somehow I got lost in the employee hallways, and at one point I thought I heard a girl yelling someplace else in the builing, and doors opening and closing just behind me. Every time I turned, though, it was like I'd just missed someone, or something. I remembered seeing the man in the coat on the monitor and could just imagine him messing with the doors, playing tapes of screaming girls, whatever else his twisted mind could bring out to put me out of my own mind. Getting lost in a labryinth like this with him around in the building was not an idea that I liked, so I grabbed my map, got my bearings, and ran out to the mall proper as fast as I could, the metal plates clanking horribly underfoot as I hurtled past the security office, the store rooms, and whatever else all those locked doors hid.
Eventually I made it out of the passageway and found myself in that yawning emptiness of the mall shopping floor, the heartbeat of our economy, someone once told me. Well, the heart didn't look none too healthy by the light of my flashlight. I went to the edge of the walkway, wanting to see if I could maybe drop down. Not a chance, the sheer drop was immense, any fall from even the second floor would cripple me for life if not kill me outright. Three monster corpses littered the ground down there, and I could just about make out the exit passageway. A fourth monster lay some distance from the rest, one of the devil dogs with a bloody mess where its head should have been. Lining up the angles, I saw that it would have been right in the camera's line of sight when it got killed, so why had I seen the other three and not the dog? Unless... Oh no... I couldn't believe it, still can't fathom it... The image on the screen had been the devil dog's view of the scene. I'd been watching through the eyes of a monster.