Parking lot. An endless, nearly unbroken parking lot stretched out around Harvey as far as they could see. Most of the parking spots were filled, and Harvey had yet to spot two vehicles that were the same. The entire expanse was filled with a light mist, just enough to see it was there while not obscuring much visibility, and coating everything with a slight dampness that leeched the heat from the air.
“When I said I wanted to experience the infrastructure of a big city, this is not what I had in mind,” Harvey muttered to themself as they stood on top of a camper van that was not theirs. They brought their binoculars up to try one more time to see anything other than the hanging mist that thickened into a solid dome of fog in the distance that prevented them from seeing the horizon, or even the sun. With a sigh that signaled the first signs of acceptance, Harvey lowered their binoculars and looked at their more immediate surroundings.
The only thing that disrupted the sea of vehicles was the mall that Harvey was pointedly keeping to their back. Of course the only structure to have come with them was the building that held their place of work. The analytical part of them knew that they would likely have to venture into the mall for supplies, planning ahead as always while the emotional side tried to process what they were experiencing to reach a point of acceptance about their situation.
“‘Situation’, ha! That’s one way to put it.” Harvey spoke out loud, the sound of their voice a small comfort compared to the enormity of the supposed reality they were currently facing. But small was better than none, and they would take anything they could get at the moment. They sat down abruptly, letting a small wave of emotion overtake them. They sobbed for close to a minute, huddled in a ball for what warmth and comfort it could provide, the part of their brain that was very much still a teenager freaking out. They may be less than a half year away from turning twenty, but Harvey was feeling very much like a capital T Teenager in this moment, wishing they had some way to talk with any of the adults in their life.
Adult, singular, the Analyst in their brain commented, cutting off the sobs as they reminded the rest of Harvey’s mind that this was ultimately a survival situation, even with the apparent supernatural elements of their predicament.
Taking a deep breath and wiping their eyes, Harvey looked back out at the Lot at the exact moment a shadow of movement blurred past the edge of their vision. Harvey’s stuttered breathing caught in their throat as their head snapped in the direction of the glimpsed motion. They scanned across the Lot - Harvey had started capitalizing the word in their head - following the direction they thought the movement had been going.
Even holding as still as possible, Harvey’s heart rate had ramped up, flooding their muscles with oxygen and adrenaline. Just as the emotional part of their brain was about to bring up a desire to deny what they had seen, something caught their eye. Harvey could swear they saw the top of a truck’s cab move, like something big had brushed against it with enough momentum to rock the truck on its suspension. With hands shaking from equal parts adrenaline and fear, Harvey raised their binoculars to get a better look at the first sign of something other than themself since they woke up in the Lot. Trying to keep their breath steady and their hands still, Harvey watched for any sign that their mind wasn’t already experiencing hallucinations after only an hour into this nightmare.
It took nearly three dozen heart beats until they spotted something again. After the first dozen beats, they’d pulled their binoculars down to get a wider view of the Lot, and it paid off. They caught the shadow blur from behind a sedan and dash across the driving aisle to stop behind another truck. Harvey could have sworn it was moving on four limbs, and it seemed thin to the point of emaciation. Snapping their binoculars back up to get a better look, they spotted what looked like the ragged edge of some kind of black garment as it was pulled behind the truck. The use of clothing and the clear ambush tactics being employed would have been enough to cause Harvey to flee as fast as they could, but a powerful wave of morbid curiosity - or possibly the beginnings of madness, they couldn’t tell which - held them in place as they continued to watch for the creature who was only the equivalent of about two city blocks away. Harvey spent a moment trying to reconcile the emaciated look the creature had with the fact that it seemed to be wrapped in black clothing of some kind. The only image They could bring to mind was that of the classic grim reaper, a skeleton in black robes, which did not help the shake in their hands as they continued to monitor the Lot through their binoculars.
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They managed to track its movement to the other side of the parking block, where it seemed to settle for a few moments. Those moments stretched on, and Harvey took a breath to calm themselves down as their fear started to shift into frustration, their curiosity into impatience, as they strained to see anything more of the creature. They needed to keep their head clear, seeing red wouldn’t help their decision making right now.
Seeing green wasn’t something they had expected. A sickly bright green glow had begun to emanate from the car the creature was currently hiding behind, and Harvey saw the creature move slowly for the first time since they had spotted it as it stood to its full height. Every muscle in Harvey’s body strained to move as a new wave of adrenaline shot through their body even as they remained rigidly still, glued in place by a combination of their morbid curiosity and the fact that, as best they could tell, the creature wasn’t looking at them. The creature itself was almost exactly as Harvey had pictured it: a skeleton, looking like it was about the same size as those twelve foot holiday decorations that one hardware store sold and wrapped in a black robe of some kind. But there was more to the monster than that. Clear tubing was interlaced through the bones, holding the skeleton together. The green light came from some kind of glowing liquid that seemed to be pumping through the tubing, possibly acting as hydraulics that allowed the abomination to move. There was a deeper green glow coming from the chest of the creature, showing through the black robe even in the sourceless mid day light diffused by the fog that blocked the sky from view.
“Likely some kind of mechanical heart,” Harvey muttered to themself. They were immediately grateful that whatever senses this creature employed, it seemed that they didn’t reach far enough to notice them. Harvey dropped their binoculars to look in the direction that held the skeleton’s attention while still keeping the glowing thing within their perception. The skeleton prowled forward into the driving aisle before crouching to all fours and leaping at the next parking block, clearing the first couple cars and crashing down between a few vehicles. Harvey snapped their binoculars back into place to see any and all details they could. The skeleton had immediately started thrashing around, and Harvey could see that the tips of its skeletal hands were carving deep gouges in the bodies of the cars unfortunate enough to be parked there, with no sign that the materials the cars were made of were slowing it down in the slightest. After a few moments, Harvey spotted a black house cat jump up from the center of the carnage onto the roof of a car and hiss at the skeleton before pulling up one of its front paws and smacking the skeleton directly in its skull, catching it mid flail. The large monster slammed down hard, the impact shaking the vehicles around it, the sound reacting Harvey instantly. The skeleton started thrashing after a moment of stillness, looking like it was trying to catch the cat with a random attack. The cat simply looked around for a moment then dashed off, leaping across several cars in a single jump then diving down below where Harvey could see. The skeleton stopped thrashing and rapidly crawled onto the top of a car, the glass of the windshield breaking and the roof denting and tearing under the force of the creature pushing off the vehicle in another leaping lunge as it continued its pursuit.
The part of Harvey’s mind that had been urging them to move finally won over as they quickly scrambled down off the van, taking about twice as long as they really wanted to make sure they didn’t injure themselves. The last thing they needed was to twist their ankle or worse. They crouched low and moved to the front of the van, peaking over the hood in the direction they last saw the skeleton.
Seeing that it was still moving in the same direction, Harvey turned and bolted back towards the mall. They hoped their employee badge and security door codes still worked. After seeing both a giant hydraulic skeleton and a house cat that could bring the smack down to something like a hundred times its size, they planned to stick to the employee only areas of the mall at first, hoping that any other creatures that might exist in the Lot would stick to the publicly accessible parts of the building. More than that, Harvey hoped that the layout inside was the same has it had been in the real world. At this point, the devil they knew was better than the ones they didn’t, and they would take every edge they could get.
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