The DOOM Chronicles

Chapter 12: Evil Gets An Upgrade

When the computer had informed her that the tramway tunnel, the glass tube that connected the buildings, snaking its way across the surface of the moon, was 'compromised', she'd assumed that it had sustained some damage. Kyra had no idea that it was such a fucking wreck. Huge pieces of the glass had been smashed in by what looked like explosions and there were bodies all over the place, littering the dozens of meters of tunnel ahead of her. A lot of them were fiend corpses, and there were a lot of zombies, too, and pinkies. She saw a few of the deflated corpses of the pumpkins, too. Man, this must have been one hell of a battle.

She stood there staring down the length of the tunnel for longer than she should have, and finally made herself hop down off the platform. Landing with a soft grunt, she began making her way along the passageway, moving cautiously among the dead. She paused every now and then when she found an intact human corpse to search it, but after a few times it became obvious that someone, or something, had been by this battlefield already and picked it clean. No spare rounds, no intact weapons, no magazines of ammo to collect.

She was so focused on any potential lingering threat on the inside of the tunnel that she missed the fact that there was a threat outside of it. The first notion she had that something was wrong was her instincts spiking a warning as she heard the bare faintest noise, and then a hiss sounded behind her, followed by several more.

"Fuck!" she screamed, turning around and raising the rifle.

A half dozen pumpkins had floated in behind her through the holes in the tunnel. The flotilla began their bombardment, launching a half dozen balls of blue electricity her way. She began backing up, shifting to the right, preparing to open fire, wondering how she was going to get out of this one, when she nearly tripped over something that clanked against her boot. Sparing a bare half-second glance down, she saw it for what it was: an air canister. A plan flew together in her mind and she knelt, scooped it up, and hurled it as hard as she could towards the bastards. She tracked it with her rifle, preparing to blast it, but she didn't even get the chance.

One of them did it for her.

A collective roar of pain and fury went up as the concussive blast of the ruptured tank slammed into them. Kyra turned and sprinted away, running towards the far airlock. It looked like it was miles away. That blast bought her a few seconds, disorienting the floating uglies, but it wasn't long before she came under fire again. She ignored them as best she could, just running and jumping over corpses, trying not to get tripped up.

She made it thirty feet, fifty, a hundred, a hundred and fifty...

Finally, after what felt like ages, her muscles burning even with the help of the suit of armor, she all but slammed into that silver airlock door. She hit the open button and turned around. They were closer. They'd almost kept pace with her. As it opened up, she returned fire, throwing a few three-round bursts their way, and hitting two of them. Then the door was open and she slipped through. Smashing her fist on the cycle button, she watched the door close, the pumpkins disappearing from view. For a moment, she just leaned against the wall, getting her breath back.

That had been close. Way too close.

This place was really starting to wear her down. And why not? She'd literally been through hell at this point. All too quickly, the airlock finished its cycle and the inner door opened. She came out on the bottom floor of the corresponding tram station, where they stored all the extra crap and technical bits. Flicking on the flashlight mounted at the end of the barrel, she moved slowly around that area to clear it out, chasing away the shadows and making sure nothing lurked in that darkness. She found only a single zombie, one that looked like it hadn't received whatever upgrades the others had been apparently getting recently, as it hardly reacted to her.