The DOOM Chronicles

Epilogue

Jack reappeared in a flash of black light.

It was less awful this time, at least, the feeling. But...

He looked around. Jennifer was missing. And he was in a small chamber of green brick. The walls were covered with flowing blood and he could see iron bars built into the bricks. Jack took a quick look around, feeling panic rising. Jennifer was nowhere to be found, and there was no obvious way out of the small room. He saw a grinning Imp staring in at him between the iron bars and quickly grabbed for the shotgun he'd scavenged.

Only there was no shotgun.

No armor. No guns. Nothing at all.

He was naked and unarmed.

More Imps were coming now, on the other side of the bars. They began to hiss and cackle mercilessly at him, reaching in, clawing at him.

One of them grabbed his neck.

Jack tried to scream, tried to fight, but he was caught.

He was dying...

* * *

Jack jerked awake, gasping and sitting straight up. He heard someone else gasp beside him and looked around, taking everything in frantically. His eyes first fell to Jennifer, who was staring up at him, eyes wide with worry, her pale face ghostly and beautiful in the soft luminosity offered by distant stars.

"What is it?" she whispered.

"I..." he looked around the room he was in, felt the comforting weight of memory settle into his mind. "I was just having a nightmare," he said, slowly laying back down.

"I'm sorry," she said, and moved against him beneath the blankets, wrapping her arms around him, pressing her nude body to his.

"Me too," he muttered.

"I've been having them, too. I think we're gonna be stuck with them for a little while."

He nodded tiredly. He was exhausted, but he knew he wouldn't be able to get back to sleep. Not right away. To distract himself, to help reassure himself that it was all okay, that it had all worked out in the end, (for the most part), he thought about the past three days. They had been a pretty long three days, but mercifully free of combat.

The final black crystal teleporter had deposited them right back to where they had started, back on Mars City. Jack had no idea, even now, why that was. If it was just total blind luck or maybe something that Fielding had done or even that the Mastermind was using it for its own demented purposes. But they came through, and with their armor and guns, too. Jack thought it must've been the Mastermind causing that to happen, when they came through naked.

They had gone in search of Kelly and Fielding.

Both men were dead. They'd been killed by the demonic horrors before Jack and the others could succeed. He didn't know what had gotten Fielding, but a group of Imps and Demons had jumped Kelly. He'd been surrounded in the Marine HQ by a good dozen bullet-riddled corpses. The old bastard had gone down fighting.

After running the scanners one more time, and confirming that they were, in fact, working, Jack and Jennifer confirmed that they were the last two humans left alive on Mars, and certainly on Phobos or Deimos.

Jack prayed that there were no living humans in Hell.

They had received a call, an answer to a distress call that had been sent out previously, within hours. It was a Marine Recon ship that had picked up the signal and was on their way. They would be there in a little over a day. Unfortunately, for some reason, they wouldn't respond, and Jack could get no one else on the radio as well.