The DOOM Chronicles

Chapter 40: Halls of the Damned

Jack nearly stepped into the waiting arms of an Imp. Still cranked out on the berserker shot, he raised his shotgun and blew the thing's head off almost without a second thought. Twisting as he heard a roar and stomping footfalls, he fired a second and third time, spraying Demon blood all over the place as he put a shot into its skull, then another into its mouth. The big, deep pink thing roared its death cry as it smashed to the floor.

A fireball smacked into his back. Feeling a shot of fury hit him, Jack stepped further away from the pad as he spun around, aimed, and fired once more. The shell took the Imp that had gotten the drop on him right in the neck and effectively severed its head from its body. The body took a few stumbling steps to the left as blood sprayed out of the stump in a huge fountain, then collapsed a few feet away from where the head had hit the floor and rolled. Breathing heavily, he looked around for another threat, but that was it.

For now, anyway.

Jack fed more shells into the shotgun as Jennifer appeared in a flash of light. "Clear?" she asked as she stepped off the pad.

"Clear, for now," Jack replied.

He looked around the room they'd come into. It was a relatively small area of more gray stone. Just two doors, both of them strangely out of place among the gritty masonry, as they were the high-tech sliding UAC doors. He frowned as he spied a pair of zombie corpses over in one corner and moved towards them.

"What is it?" Jennifer asked.

"Not sure," he replied quietly, crouching and studying them. He'd seen hundreds of corpses by now, but he could still pick out certain things. Like the fact that these zombies had been put down with clear precision headshots. And it seemed like the bodies had been ransacked. "I think either McNeil or Lynch was here."

"Well, we're getting closer at least," Jennifer said as she joined him.

They waited for the other two to appear, and once Miller and Pavel had joined them, they moved up to the doors.

"Which one first?" Miller asked.

Jack was getting impatient. "Left. Be ready," he said, moving forward without waiting. He hit the button and the door slid open to reveal a single Demon treading around. It was blown away in hardly two seconds.

The room beyond was about a third the size of the one they'd appeared in, made of red brick, and held nothing of interest. Sighing in frustration, wanting to get on with it, or at least to have something else to fight, Jack moved over to the second door and opened it up. Beyond was a small antechamber of ugly brown metal with just one other exit along the right wall. There were another two corpses, Imps killed by one or both of the other survivors. Jack moved through it and stepped out into the chamber, looking first left, then right.

The way left ended not too far away, opening into some kind of courtyard with pillars and no ceiling. The way to the right kept going, then curved out of sight. He sighed, considered it for a moment. "We should split," he said, looking at the three of them. "We've got three things we're looking for here: our friends, that top-secret weapon, whatever the fuck it is, and a way out. We'll get it done better if we split up." He looked to the left. "There's an acid moat in there...who feels like dealing with acid with me?"

Miller sighed. "I'll do it."

"Fine. Jennifer, go with Pavel. See what you can find over there. We meet back here in ten minutes, got it?"

They all replied affirmatively.

"Then let's get this over with."

Jack wondered how many times he'd said that, or something like it, over the past few days. God, it felt like it was half the sentences that came out of his mouth. He pushed it all aside and focused on the here and now, his blood feeling like it was bubbling, making him antsy to do things, to fight, and he looked out across the open courtyard beyond. He didn't like what he had to look at. Overhead, the skies looked different.