The DOOM Chronicles

Chapter 06: Security

Eric nearly had his arm dislocated as the zombie he was punching went down and took his brass knuckles with it.

Grunting with effort, he yanked the spikes free of the thing's skull, its pulped brains leaking from the metal. Flicking his hand a few times to get the worst of it off, he looked around. There were no more undead roaming around, and thank fucking God. He was getting really goddamned tired of having to deal with them already.

Continuing his investigation, he took a quick survey of the feed hall. It was a bloody, chaotic mess. It looked like a prison riot gone wrong, which was genuinely saying something. Most of the tables and chairs were broken and there were corpses everywhere. The amount of blood was staggering. Sprays of it had gotten up onto the ceiling and was still dripping. There were severed heads and hands, broken limbs and caved-in torsos.

He saw a scattering of jagged teeth not too far away. And an eyeball.

"Come on, gimme a break," Eric muttered as he picked up a pipe and then tossed it away when it became clear it was too warped and dented to be of any real use.

He still hadn't come across any kind of usable weapon. Besides snapped shivs and broken pistols, he'd found a whole lot of nothing. Continuing to look around, he saw the vent that Swann had mentioned. Or what he hoped was the right vent, anyway. It was pretty obvious, and it had already been broken open in all the chaos.

Well, no sense in standing around. Eric grabbed one of the few remaining tables left and hauled it over to the broken vent. He hopped up and then hesitated as he caught sight of something nearby. Frowning deeply, he hopped back down and walked over to the strange corpse. An impossible one. Staring at the bizarre, spiked creature froze his marrow and sent a wave of genuine fear rolling through him.

A memory came to him, vague and hazy. He thought he could recall fighting one of these things. He caught a whiff of something bad and mean. Leaning in, he sniffed again, then exhaled sharply and straightened up as the memory came back stronger.

Yes, he had definitely fought one of these when they'd hauled him off and scrambled his memories. Well, that was fine. He'd killed one, he could kill more. This one looked like it had had its head bashed in. What the fuck was it? It was big, and strong, he could tell that. It looked like a bodybuilder on steroids, its tall, rigid form carved from raw muscle and covered in leathery red-brown skin and what looked to be ivory spikes.

"Gremlin," he muttered, then hopped back onto the table.

The undead were zombies and these things were going to be called Gremlins. Eric hopped up and grasped the edge of the vent hole. Grunting with effort, he hauled himself up and into the ventilation shaft, making sure to orient himself the right way. If his mental map of the area was right, he had to crawl about a hundred and fifty yards. He'd put up with worse.

Careful not to stab himself with the brass knuckles, Eric began crawling.

His mind wandered thither and yon as he made short work of the vent shaft. Occasionally it would intersect with another and he'd pause to look around, just to make sure there was nothing in there with him. He doubted the Gremlins could stuff themselves up in here and the zombies didn't seem smart enough, but there might be some hostile humans around. Or something else. He had no idea what the fuck was going on and anything could be out there.

As he crawled, Eric was vaguely surprised to find that he was happy.

That couldn't be right, but there was no denying it: he was in a great mood. He was loving this shit. Maybe it was because he was simply free. He had no oversight, he had no commanding officers, he had no orders of any kind. He was responsible for no one but himself. Sure, he'd be a fugitive if he actually managed to get out of this place, but that was a problem for later, if ever. In truth, some dark part of him in his shriveled core knew that he wasn't getting out of this prison alive. Then again, how many times had he thought that exact thing?