The DOOM Chronicles

Chapter 42: Dis

This teleport felt different.

The previous ones, with the exception of the gateways themselves, were pretty much instantaneous, just a weird kind of buzzing feeling with a bright green flash. This one, on the other hand, hurled him into a pit of screaming darkness. Frozen black fire spilled through him, over and under and inside, and he tried to scream, but had no mouth to scream with. And then there was a jump, like an earthquake rolled all up into half a second, and he was staggering on a flat stone ground, utterly disoriented.

Jack fell over, grunted in pain as he dropped the shotgun, but that was a relief at least. The notion that he was still armed, that he had come through the other side with his armor, his guns, (he could feel their familiar, comforting weight on his body), helped ground him back to reality. He used it, groping around as his vision came back to him, and finally gripped the black, pitted barrel of the shotgun. It scraped across the stone as he pulled it to him. Jack fought the urge to vomit. When it passed, he lurched to his feet.

Jennifer appeared in a black flash. She cried out and he caught her. She tried to jerk briefly out of his grasp, but relaxed as he talked to her, bringing her back. As he did, he looked around. They'd arrived in a small stone chamber lit by torches made of...no, they weren't torches. They were human arms. The fingers were acting as wicks, burning. There was just one way out of the chamber, a stone tunnel dead ahead.

It was clear, for now, but he could see an awful red light spilling in from its far end. As if in direct contrast to the bad shit he was finding around him, the periphery of the room was packed with tables and crates, and they had ammo in them. And guns.

"Holy fuck," Jennifer said as she noticed it too.

"Yep," Jack replied. "I wonder what all this is doing here..."

"This looks like someone's preparing to fight a war." She paused. "I don't get it. They already slaughtered almost everyone on Mars, Phobos, and Deimos, and-" McNeil appeared in another flash of black light and yelled hoarsely.

They helped get him back to his feet and stable again, and then did the same thing for Pavel once he appeared.

"Man, that sucked," McNeil muttered.

"Yeah. Jennifer, you were saying something," Jack said. "It sounded important."

She looked pale and uncomfortable. "They've already wiped almost everyone out back where we came from. And pretty much all of them have the ability to produce deadly attacks on their own. Why would they need all this, except to arm the zom-" She froze. "Oh God, the zombies. That's...oh crap," she muttered.

"What?" Pavel asked. "What is it?"

"Did you notice anything weird about our enemies? Did you notice how the Imps are absolutely nothing like the Demons, which are totally different from the Cacodemons? The Barons of Hell? The Lost Souls? It's like they don't come from the same regions, the same planets. It's more like they're...attacking and conquering wherever they find, and inducting them into their ranks. They take them over, and-"

"And we're next," Jack muttered.

"They're preparing to attack Earth..." Pavel whispered.

"How could they get there?" Jack asked, frowning, thinking furiously. "I mean, it's obvious that the only way they're going to get in is through portals. But the UAC only had portals here, unless-"

"Unless they experimented in other places," Jennifer said.

"They aren't so stupid that they'd built a gateway to Hell on Earth," Jack said. They stared at him silently. He sighed. "Okay, well...yeah, they probably are. Fuck! So how the hell are we going to deal with that then!?"