The DOOM Chronicles

Chapter 37: Tenements

Jack's paranoia was reaching a boiling point.

The doorway they'd found had led them to a tunnel. It wasn't very big, it wasn't very threatening, and their flashlights provided enough light to see by. There were no surprises. There were no demons. There were no hiding spaces.

It was just a simple, straightforward tunnel of generic rock.

It was really starting to get to him.

No one spoke and they received no contact of any kind, which didn't surprise him. Jack had no idea how deep underground they were at this point. He didn't even understand why this tunnel was here. Only that it was in the general direction they needed to, which was truly all that mattered in the moment.

They had to get to their destination.

They had managed to get themselves to within half a mile of their destination when the tunnel finally ran out, terminating abruptly in a simple steel silver door. It was so normal-looking, so bland, so like the generic doors that he'd gotten used to seeing on Mars that it only heightened his paranoia. Jack took a deep breath and let it out slowly, willing himself, his body, his mind, to relax. They weren't done yet, and he couldn't afford to snap.

Way too much was counting on them.

"I've got a door here. Going to open it. Everyone fall back a bit," he said.

They responded affirmatively and fell back a few meters. Jack stared unhappily at the little button beside it, built into the silver frame.

He pushed the button.

There was light beyond, a strange mixture of white light from brilliant halogens stacked up on either side immediately beyond the door in columns of rectangular luminescence for some reason, and the murky green glow of toxic gunk. Double-barrel at the ready, Jack slowly edged forward onto a simple concrete platform. A basic room awaited him beyond, barely six feet across and six high. The walls to either side were iron slabs studded with bolts, the roof a rough green rock similar to that of the tunnel they'd been walking through, and ahead of him opened up into a much larger, broader room. The stone floor narrowed into a pathway that continued dead ahead, and to either side of it lay bubbling pools of toxic waste.

Like lava on Saint Patrick's Day.

The stone path that led through the sludge opened into another room maybe twenty feet away. As Jack stepped up to the edge of the tiny area he was in now, he immediately heard several warning roars and hisses, and then fireballs were coming his way from the left and right, high up. There were iron bar sections among the plating, and behind each he saw the shadowy figures of Imps. And they were chucking fireballs like there was no tomorrow.

"Someone get up here, we got Imps to clean out!" Jack called.

Cortez joined him and each of them picked a side, using the walls as cover. It didn't take long to cap all the Imps that revealed themselves up in the strange chambers. Jack wondered why this room had even been built, what they were doing up there, what the purpose of this place was, but that train of thought quickly derailed. None of this made any kind of sense, it just was. It was all just another place for them to kill their way through.

Once they finished off the Imps, Jack reloaded and looked around.

"Cortez, with me. We'll scout ahead, everyone wait here," he said, and set off.

The pair of Marines walked slowly along the stone pathway, wary of any further dangers. Jack was ready for a Baron to drop down from somewhere, for the path to drop down from beneath his feet, for a tidal wave of toxic sludge to cascade down onto him. But nothing happened as they reached the next room. Several ways out and potential paths awaited his inspection. Dead ahead was a short corridor that ended in one of those tall tech-studded doors. It came complete with not just more of those racked halogens, but a pair of brass torch-holders that burned with wavering red-yellow fire. To either side of him was a stairwell that led up to a caged room. To his right was a dead-end that seemed to hold nothing, save for a single severed leg, complete with Marine fatigues and regulation combat boot, hanging upside-down from a chain in the ceiling, slowly dripping blood.