The DOOM Chronicles

Chapter 24: Meltdown

The tram came to a halt in the receiving station, but Jack thought it was a damn near thing. It was worse than ever out on the surface and there'd been Lost Souls and a few zombies actually in the tram tunnel with them. They hadn't raised the alarm, as far as Jack could tell, and the Lost Souls had just bumped harmlessly up against the glass in the rear compartment when they'd been waiting for the airlock to open for them.

He wasn't sure if their luck would hold out one last time.

"Are we clear?" Jenkins asked quietly.

Jack peered cautiously around, through the glass of the driver's compartment, crouching, his movements slow. After a few moments of staring at the platform and anywhere else he could see, he finally stood up.

"Clear," he said. "But stay sharp."

Was there even a single place on this fucking moon where they could let their guard down? Jack felt like he was going to have sore muscles and stomach problems for weeks from how many hours he'd gone around, his whole body clenched from tension. That is, if he was lucky enough to survive that long.

They left the tram and swept the station. There was nothing, only the brutalized, bloody remains of the dead that hadn't been put to use by the demons. Jack felt his stomach turn over as he thought of that infirmary. He pushed the thoughts away. Needed to focus. Always needed to focus. Their sweep turned up nothing. No zombies in the shadows, no Imps in the vents, nothing. Jack didn't like it, as thrilled as he was not to have to shoot it out again.

But something seemed off.

They approached the main exit and as he got close, he hesitated again.

"Jenkins to the left, Jennifer, right," he whispered. They tensed up, picking up on the apprehension in his voice. They moved in quickly and he brought his SMG into play, crouching down behind a stack of crates. Once everyone was in place, Jennifer opened the door. Jack licked his lips, his hands trembling slightly. He didn't like that, it had been happening a lot more just lately. The door parted down the middle, sliding into its niches, slowly revealing the room beyond. Jack did not like what he saw at all.

The trembling got worse.

The receiving lobby had been replaced in totality. This wasn't just knocking down some walls or a little restructuring, this was flat out changing the building itself. A corridor that was about ten or fifteen meters long stretched away from them. It ended in a large stone door. The walls had been replaced with something...something that Jack wasn't entirely sure he was seeing. It was like his brain was trying to hide reality from him.

Then it hit him.

"Oh...oh God..." he moaned sickly.

The walls were made of pinkish flesh and bleached bone. He was looking at exposed spines of some kind. The fact that it only took him about ten seconds to recover from the horror of seeing this impossibility told Jack that either he was getting good at dealing with this kind of crap, or he was getting bad at it. And by that he thought that he might be just...repressing it, or pushing it away, and not actually dealing with it.

And that could have bad side effects.

And given the number of psychotic breaks he'd had just recently, he thought that it was the second option more than the first. Whatever, he'd deal with it later. Wordlessly, he marched into the corridor of flesh and spinal columns. He heard the others following behind him. Swallowing nervously, Jack found himself wondering just how he would handle this if he hadn't had these two with him. He probably would have lost his mind.

They reached the door at the other end.

The big stone slab sat, inert and unyielding. For a moment, he was stymied. He saw no way to open it, no way for them to progress. As he took another step forward and suddenly the door began grinding open, sliding into the floor. They all jerked back in response, weapons raised, ready for anything, or so they hoped.