The DOOM Chronicles

Chapter 45: UAC Headquarters

"Whoa, what the fuck?" Kyra asked, slowing automatically as the quality of the light changed.

"Yeah...holy shit, what is that?" Powell asked.

"What the hell's happening?" Carpenter muttered, staring up through the windshield.

Kyra brought them to a halt. The trip had actually gone quite well so far. They'd driven across the black desert at a decent clip, with more than enough power to get to where they needed to go. They'd run into a few roving packs of Imps and Pinkies, but had managed to outrun them all pretty easily. Though that didn't stop Powell from chopping at least a few of them up with the mounted chaingun. Otherwise, they had seen nothing.

And then, just now, the sky had changed.

The whole sky had just changed, like someone had flipped a switch.

Kyra finally brought them to a stop. She could actually see the UAC Headquarters now maybe a hundred yards ahead of them. A long building that seemed to be made of large, tan, heavily weathered brick. Even from this distance it had a few hallmarks of UAC occupation. But none of that held her attention.

The sky did.

Because it had gone from looking like roiling red mist to looking like someone had put a bunch of corpses through a masher and then imprinted the results onto a plate of glass. It was red, extremely red, and there was what appeared to be bone and gristle and blood and meat up there. How was that even possible?

"So we're all seeing the same thing," Kyra murmured.

"Yeah. I'm seeing a sky with fucking skulls and ribcages and gutted meat," Carpenter replied.

"Yep," Powell agreed.

"So it's not a hallucination, unless it's a shared one? But that seems unlikely..."

"This whole thing is unlikely," Carpenter muttered.

"Should we be worried, is the real question," Powell said. "As in: is this imminently threatening us somehow?"

"It's at least not moving...I think," Kyra replied.

"Hooray, the sky isn't falling," Carpenter said.

"We should keep moving, I don't think it's a threat," Powell said.

Kyra sighed and got them rolling again. They were almost there. "What could it be though?"

"Maybe it's...like...what you see once you get within a certain distance of the big demon, whatever the hell it is?" Powell suggested.

"That's a terrifying level of reality manipulation," Carpenter said.

"Maybe it's automatic," Kyra said, "like it's not doing it on purpose? Or maybe it's weather? Maybe this is just how the sky is in this realm? Fuck, whatever. We're here. Get ready."

The place was a battlefield.

That much was immediately obvious as they rolled to a stop once more. A big metal room had been erected and added onto the side of the structure, what was obviously intended to be a motorpool. One of the garage doors was ripped open like something had taken a giant can-opener to it, and there were holes punched through the general frame of the room. There were a lot of bodies. Just everywhere. Inside, outside, all around.

Marines, technicians, scientists.

None had survived this wholesale slaughter.

"Jesus. Fucking. Christ," Carpenter muttered grimly as they got out of the vehicle.

"Powell...take that chaingun with us, I think we'll be needing it," Kyra said.

"Way ahead of you," Powell replied, still inside the vehicle. While he unfastened it from within, then climbed out and onto the top of the ATV to finish the job, Kyra walked slowly towards the wrecked motorpool.