Doom - Evil Unleashed 1.5

Knee-deep in the Dead – Part 5

****

The big hall at the comm. station in the Command Control building was littered with corpses. I had just killed off a horde of enemies and was now looking for traces of surviving marines. The place had been assaulted from all sides as could be seen from the many corpses of monsters lying on the floor at several inlets and outlets of the building. Several bullet marks could be seen on many of the dark gray metal walls and I could tell from the patterns of these that the soldiers had been firing in blind panic at the enemy.
This was where the initial contact between my buddies and the uglies had occurred.

After a bit of searching, I could safely conclude that there were no survivors left. With my mind filled with dark thoughts, I went over to the mutilated bodies of my friends. The sight was horrendous. One of them had had his skull and a great deal of his face crushed - one of his eye sockets were empty and looking around, I saw the eyeball resting on the light brown, hexagonal tiled floor a few feet away. Another soldier had been eaten alive – doubtless by one of the "bulls" – his torso was nothing but bloody ribs and small chunks of shredded flesh and his face was still distorted in painful agony.
Most of the other guys would probably have lost whatever they had eaten at this sight, but I had seen mutilated corpses before. I had even seen worse than this, but I knew that these aliens were completely emotionless and apparently very sadistic too, so I was sure that I would see worse sights later.

I found the body of Henderson. His eyes and mouth were wide open in surprised horror. His body was full of bloody bullet holes, which showed that he had had a more pleasant death compared to some of his buddies.
"He won't annoy me anymore" I thought sadly to myself as I relieved the corpse of ammunition.
I had been annoyed with him all the time I had known Steve Henderson, but now he was dead and I couldn't help thinking about his parents. Most of my buddies up here had a family, but not me and I was still alive.

"Dear God" I thought. It just seemed so horribly meaningless to me that I didn't die, but a lot of people with a family died instead. I of all the marines on Mars should've been the one who died. I felt awfully empty inside and a sting of guilt, but I quietly told myself that staring at what had been my comrades wouldn't bring them back and that I had better move on instead.

I looked at the slaughter once again and then it occurred to me that there were surprisingly few corpses of my friends. What had happened to the rest of them?

I reached two conclusions after a bit of thinking.
The first possibility was that they had been turned into those mindless "zombies", but I hadn't recognized a single of my buddies among the former humans I had encountered this far, so if they really had been "reanimated" then they had moved away from this station.

The second possibility was that my buddies had decided to split and flee the Command Control Station. I decided that the latter possibility was the most feasible, which meant that I still had a chance of finding some of them alive.

I went up to the comm. station to look for clues as to what had happened to the rest of my comrades. Much to my surprise, I noticed a computer screen with some text on it. Most of the text had been turned into weird symbols, but some of it was readable. From what I could make out of it, it was a list and short descriptions of the projects here. Most of it was too incoherent, due to the fact that some of the text had been turned into symbols and numbers, but then I saw something, which drew my attention:

"Pr/mary project
Project: Intertravel
Loc%tion: Ph@bos Resea¤ch 5[cility and Deimos R+search Facility
Description: Two translocators ("gateways") will be activated on M{rch #9."?§<5. =ne source translocator is locat\> *; the Phobos Researc8 Facility and one receiving tr?<slocator is %@!½ted at the Research Facility on Deimos. By creating a type of d]£l black holes, kn[}]0 as a "wormhole", the translocators §$£ transport perso6&el and cargo from one place to another almost instantly.

P0wer c§nsumption: Tr¤nsl2cators 6re powered by a cla§s C3£@ po#er generator"

The rest about the project was just meaningless scribbling.

I stared at the screen again. From what I could make from this, the UAC had found means to create some sort of teleportation device. My guess was that the class "C3£@" power generator referred to in the text file was one of the new class C325 power generators, in which case these "translocators" had an enormous power consumption.
I activated the computer's main menu, happy that I had been through that boring computer course one year ago, and barely managed to find the comm. recording program – a computer program, which recorded and stored radio transmissions within a log file. Having found the log file, I touched the "replay" field on the screen and a panicked voice broke the eerie silence as the last recorded message was played:

"Heelp! We require immediate military support! Something frigg..*screech* evil is coming out of the gateways! Most ..*crackle*.. guards *fzzzzt* dead! Computer systems *kzz* .. gone beserk *crackle* *fzzt* out of control! *screeeeeech* nowhere *buzzzzzz* security failed *fzzzzztz* backup, NOW!………"

The radio went silent.

I stared grimly at the machines in front of me. I had now found answers to some of my many questions, but I still had lots of unanswered questions. I believed that the gateways had somehow been messed up and were the source of those critters. It was also quite possible that it was the Phobos translocator, which had caused the disturbance on the monitors back in the landing pod, before my friends had been assaulted.

"They" had come from the gateways, so the only way to stop them, would be to shut down the machines powering the portals.

Having digested the information I had just found and fueled by the anger of seeing the corpses of my comrades, I proceeded onward through the base with senses all alert. My helmet computer, after having downloaded data from some of the bases computers, had notified me that there was a direct rail connection all the way to the Research Facility from this building.
I decided to go straight for the gateway – shutting it down as quickly as possible would eliminate the possibility of the uglies getting reinforcements, which could give the remaining marines a fighting chance wherever they were – if there were any human marines left at all.

-

The monorail station below the Command Control station was a mess of dead bodies. Looking around, I noticed a working monitor. It showed a computerized image of the whole base seen from above. The map also showed some glowing green lines indicating functional monorail tracks. I noticed that the line leading directly to the Research facility was red, indicating that the track was broken.
This meant that I was forced to take the monorail train to the Labs Facility and from there fight my way through both the Central Processing Plant and the Computer Station before I reached the Research Facility.

"Dammit!" I thought angrily as I entered a train locomotive on the track leading to the Labs Facility.
This would delay me a lot.

---

The once human soldiers fell backwards with several ugly holes in their bodies, as I let loose a swarm of bullets in their direction.
I had just stepped out of the elevator from the monorail station beneath the Phobos Labs Facility when a bunch of unfriendly guys saw me, but they were put to sleep now.

I ran as quickly as I could across the canal of toxic waste which flowed across the room. The slime burnt my feet, but I bit my teeth firmly together and avoided attracting attention by yelling in pain.
"Damn slime" I thought as I shook my burnt feet as I put the chain gun down on the floor and whipped out my shotgun from the holster on my back. "Now I need a Goddamn stimpack!"
Lucky thing that my boots offered some protection against such things or my feet would've been far worse off now.
The slime probably meant that there was a leak in the waste disposal systems of the Labs Facility, which warned me that I could expect more such slime pools around.

A guttural grunting sound somewhere nearby made me bring my gun back up in firing position, but I couldn't find out where it came from exactly. I looked cautiously around in the room and noticed a barrel of waste next to a bulky metal door. A label warned against smoking near the container, as the thing contained explosive chemicals. I stepped further into the room, but stayed clear of the barrel.

Just then the door opened and one of these brown humanoids accompanied by a "bull" rushed into the room. I swung my gun around faster than they could perceive and fired at the barrel, which exploded in a flash of pyrotechnics and smoke. The brown thing's ruined body was hurled backwards by the force of the explosion and the pink monster staggered sideways roaring out loud in pain. I quickly pumped another shell into the firing chamber and killed the "bull" with a well-placed shot in its wide-open mouth, ripping its jaw apart in a cloud of blood.

The welcoming party of the Phobos Labs Facility was now taken care of and I cautiously moved on.

...

Where is part 1 & 2? They are great! Have you ever thought about becoming a writer?

Intro episode, part 1 (0.1)
Intro episode, part 2 (0.2)
Intro episode, part 3 (0.3)
Intro episode, part 4 (0.4)
Intro episode, part 5 (0.5)
On to episode 1:
Episode 1, part 1 (1.1)
Episode 1, part 2 (1.2)
Episode 1, part 3 (1.3)
Episode 1, part 4 (1.4)
And you're currently looking at Episode 1 - part 5.

I hope this'll help (hopefully I haven't screwed up on the bb code).

Thanks! I will enjoy your stories, especially those to come...

sweet story makes my story's look crap well my story's are crap...

Originally posted by JACKEL
sweet story makes my story's look crap well my story's are crap...

Yes, your stories do suck

Originally posted by Baron-Of-Hell
Where is part 1 & 2? They are great! Have you ever thought about becoming a writer?

or an artist?

Originally posted by JACKEL
sweet story makes my story's look crap well my story's are crap...

Yeah, because it's "stories".

Originally posted by Maonth
or an artist?

I have thought of becoming an artist. But writer, no - I just write stories on this forum because I find it interesting to try and do better than the novel authors.