The DOOM Chronicles

Chapter 34: The Inmost Dens

"I really don't like the look of this place," Diaz muttered.

"That's been my default ever since hitting Mars," Jack said, staring up at the strange building.

It had been a quick and relatively easy drive to the distress call. They'd made their way down three streets and over a few blocks, zeroing in on what might once have been a warehouse or factory of some kind. Jack had no idea because now it was made of some strange ugly tan-brown material that vaguely resembled cobblestone. There were windows built into it, too high up to see from where they stood before it, made of old wrought iron.

They'd already tried reaching out over the comms, but there had been no response of any kind.

"Something's wrong," Jack muttered.

"What?" Rhodes asked, standing to his other side.

Behind them, the APCs idled, thrumming with power, like beasts of burden resentful of their present immobility.

"It was too easy to get here, too easy to track the signal," he murmured.

"We did just install that comms booster," Diaz pointed out.

"Yeah, but...I don't know. My gut says 'trap'. I've rarely been wrong since learning demons are real."

"So do we not go in?" Rhodes asked uncertainly.

"Oh no, we're going in. I doubt they can fake a distress call at this point, so good chance there's actually Marines in there, and we're going to help them, just...need to be ready." He keyed the team radio. "Rhodes and Diaz and I are heading into the structure to find the Marines, everyone else stay in the APCs and stand guard, we'll be as quick as we can."

"Understood," Abrash replied.

Jack sighed heavily as he checked over his shotgun once more, then popped his neck. "All right, let's fucking do this."

He led the way, walking up to the only obvious entrance to the building. The doors had once been big, heavy, wooden ones, also studded with strips of wrought iron, held in place with big, rusty nails. It was obvious that the Marines had blasted their way in with explosives. The trio of Marines walked slowly into what might once have been some sort of lobby. Their boots echoed in the large room. The floor was made of some strange sort of pale green marble and a great deal of blood had been spilled across it.

Somewhere north of twenty corpses lay scattered across the area, most of them zombies, some of them Imps. Shell casings lay everywhere, but Jack's experienced eye could see the pattern of attack. The Marine squad, there had probably been over half a dozen of them, had busted in, guns blazing, and mowed down everything in the room with a savage proficiency, then marched on. There was just a single way out of the room beyond the entrance they'd just come in through, so they pressed on towards it, boots squelching in the blood.

It was quiet now. Jack had gotten used to the grinding of the APCs and their engines, or the omnipresent stew of sound that Hayden had become: the chatter of automatic fire, the occasional explosion, the distant screams. But it was silent in here. The noise had fallen away, save for the idling of the APCs outside. But even that seemed remote now as they crossed the threshold into the next room. It was a curious place: long but shallow, stretching away about half a dozen meters to either side, but perhaps two meters across. Just one more door, again directly across from the one they'd just come in through, and a few more of those iron windows. More corpses, more blood, more spent shell casings. Jack walked up to one of the windows.

Something about what he saw through it made him anxious. He could just make out a little walkway immediately beyond the wall, and beyond that was a moat of blue liquid that he wouldn't be surprised to learn was not at all water, and within that was a small, square island of stone. There were more signs of battle, but nothing alive from what he could see.