The DOOM Chronicles

Chapter 23: Beyond Control

Like they had over a dozen times before, they rolled into their next destination.

Command Control over on Deimos looked in even worse condition than it had back on Phobos. Jack, Jennifer, and Jenkins stepped silently out of the tram after it had settled into its nest and put down a half dozen Imps and zombies hanging around on the platform. It started out weird almost right away, as Jack led the way deeper into the structure. He stepped into what was supposed to be the main entrance lobby.

It didn't look anything like what'd he'd seen so far.

Rotted, pale wood surrounded them. There was a wall dead ahead, maybe twenty feet, that had a window about ten feet up. He could see Demons stomping around beyond the blood-smeared window. What was supposed to be the lobby split to the left and right. He could hear Imps and zombies around somewhere nearby.

"Let's get to work," he muttered.

They went to work and spent the next ten minutes blasting their way through the immediate area. Jack, Jennifer, and Jenkins put holes in a dozen zombies and a quartet of Imps. They made their way deeper into the maze of strange pale woodwork. Sometimes, through holes in it, he could see steel and bare circuitry, proof that the original installation still existed somewhere under there. Jack burned through three magazines for his pistol and as he reloaded the very last magazine, a shot whizzed by his head and he turned around.

They'd made it past the lobby area and had come into a storage bay. The walls had shifted from odd pale wood to a strange slate gray marble. Z-Sec assholes were pouring into the room from three different entrances.

"Open fire!" Jack called as he dove towards the corpse of a Space Marine behind a trio of crates. He quickly patted the corpse down and almost let out a shout of joy when he found a pair of magazines for his SMG. He holstered his pistol, then quickly reloaded the SMG and pocketed the remaining magazine. He could hear Jennifer and Jenkins blasting away at the small army of Z-Sec. As soon as he was ready to rock n' roll, Jack popped up, feeling full of piss and vinegar, and sprayed a quartet of dark-armored assholes down with red hot lead. He splattered their coagulated blood across a stack of crates and they fell to the deckplates.

He grunted as a pair of bullets pinged off his armor, both hitting him in the chestplate, and he turned and finished out the magazine, shattering the visors of two roaring, pistol-wielding Z-Secs. Another round winged his armor and he spun, let the SMG drop and whipped his pistol back out. He aimed and fired, putting four rounds through the chest of another Z-Sec, then fired two rounds into the head of a regular zombie that had wandered into the fray. Only this one was wielding a shotgun and had fired off some shells.

The two rounds tore away a good portion of its skull and brain.

He finished out the magazine putting down the rest of them and hastily reloaded, but no more shots were fired. An uncomfortable silence fell across the area.

"Clear?" he called.

"Clear," Jennifer confirmed as she and Jenkins came out.

"Secure the area," he said.

They headed out, moving through the storage bay. The first thing Jack did was to claim that shotgun he'd seen. He grabbed it and found it empty. Cursing briefly, he slung it over his shoulder and kept searching. In the end, he managed to snag another pair of magazines for his SMG and nothing else. Not even a spare mag for his pistol.

Well, it was better than nothing, he supposed.

They left the storage bay by way of a large door made of that same pale wood. It slid up into the wall just like the regular doors did and as he watched it disappear into its niche, a powerful sense of unreality and dislocation settled over him. Jack tried to shake it off, no time to be in a daze. It was weird how the littlest things got to him. Zombies, fire-throwing monsters, corridors made of flesh, crimson skies, oh yeah, he could apparently handle that. But a door made of wood acting like a door made of metal?