dream military base

A wall of crimson-red flesh surrounded him. Strangely, this wall integrated itself with the rest of the architecture, making a very grotesque look on the wall. It actually amazed one to look at such a sight. To see that machinery and living tissue can be mixed successfully would bewilder even Einstein. If the technique for this integration was found out, it could possible pave a new way for medical technology. Unfortunately, Hell manufactured this type of technology.

But this wall of flesh was not like anybody would think of it to be; no visible source of other organs could be found anywhere. As far as anybody knew, the flesh spontaneously sprouted out of the wall. What's more, this flesh pulsated and perspired. How could that even be possible without a nervous system to power it? Could it be the power of the computers giving it life? No, they couldn't have, the power was shut down. McKnight should have know this because he had already failed at restoring full power down at the nuclear plant. Not even the monsters he faced up to this point could be frightening now. This demonstration of combining life with manmade objects in a horrific fashion showed McKnight the possibility that anything could happen next...anything. He could die in two seconds, or he might actually be the savior of humanity, if he lived past this next step.

He was so mesmerized by this astounding sight that he forgot about the elevator that just came down. As it was about to ascend again, he put his foot within the area of the floor so that it would come back down. It might as well have been called a "hellevator", considering all the events he had experienced in the past few hours. Without another second to waste, he stepped on and rose to the top.

During the trip up, McKnight noticed that the shaft was illuminated by an unknown source. His reflection shone on the metal of the floor. Something strange changed about his looks, however. He had less wrinkles (not to say that he was old), his hair had the style of a young marine just out of basic training, and even his muscular build had deflated somewhat.Perhaps the bending light of the reflection was to blame for this, but the changes were too drastic. Something was not right.

This elevator took less than a minute to reach its destination. No, this was not a lift to the next level, as he went up in stead of down. Rather, this lift took him to a different section of the current level he was on. Now if the merged flesh-wall amazed him before, nothing prepared him for what he gazed his eyes on next.

After a careful examination the room, McKnight's horrors escalated to the point of total fear. This room couldn't have been designed by one of the original architects. Whoever, or whatever, made this room was in for a serious beating by McKnight. That is, if he wasn't so filled with horror right now. This room has the shape of a pentagram, no joke. Not only that, but the floor was almost the same color as the flesh-wall he had just seen. It looked as though it could burn through even the toughest titanium bulkhead on this base. Yes, it emitted a glow so bright that it could almost blind an eagle from twenty miles away. McKnight did not want to be the first one to find out.

On top of a small staircase in front of him stood what looked like a small bunker. But the door on this structure must have been made by the same architect who designed this room. It had a gothic appearance to it. A small gargoyle head fixed itself right in the dead center of the door. Though not at all frightening, just the idea of gargoyles on a space station made McKnight think that this was not at all a human creation. His flesh crawled over a thousand times more than it had ever did in his entire life.

He walked up the small path just a little bit farther. The idea of going in no direction but towards the structure almost made the seat of his pants turn brown, literally. His suspense was about to be relieved, though not quite the way he imagined. Just two steps forward and he triggered open an invisible trip wire that opened the door in front of him. As it opened, it reminded him of movie he once saw when he was a child. Two victims had fallen into a pit, and when a huge gate opened in front of them, a large creature emerged and devoured one of the unlucky victims. Oh, how true this was becoming now.

This door opened slowly, just like in the movie. What came out is too horrible to describe at this point. McKnight just stood on the path like a lamb to the slaughter, with this "thing" being the butcher. Out of the darkness came a gigantic arm carved out of pure muscle. Unfortunately, this arm did not belong to God, if he even existed. At this point, McKnight doubted that. As if the bulk of this arm was not intimidating enough, at the tip of each finger was a claw shaper than a samurai's blade and blacker than total darkness. It came closer with every breath McKnight took. With each footstep this creature made, a large "THUMP!" accompanied it, until at last it stopped just in front of McKnight.

McKnight could barely see the form of this monstrosity in the darkness of the room. To tell the truth, he had no intention to. But the fear ran though him so fast that he remained motionless. He shook so convulsively that he could not hear his own heartbeat, and it beat louder than a bass drum.

Without another second to waste, this "thing" grabbed McKnight's neck, letting the claws sink into his flesh. As it did, he struggled in vain to let loose this thing's grasp. He also starting screaming for his own life so loud that he couldn't believe it. He had never been this afraid before, not even in combat! He was a Marine, dammit! Nothing should have scared him!

No matter how hard he tried to loosen the grip of this monster, McKnight could just not make it let go. In fact, it sunk its claws deeper into his neck. The blood started to trickle down slowly. As the claws went deeper, he was in just enough pain to not knock him out. The color of the blood reminded him of the crimson on the flesh-wall. Did the wall serve as a foreshadow to his own death? How could it? It wasn't even his flesh.

The gigantic arm began to lift McKnight slowly into the air. At this point he finally got a good glimpse of what it looked like. This arm was mightier than the arm of Sampson. The continuing curves and cuts of the muscle would make the strongest weight-lifter seem diminutive. Not even the toughest Marines could rip the flesh off of this horrendous visage. No hope seemed possible for McKnight now.

As the beast finally lifted McKnight to full height, it brought about its other arm, its right arm. Now McKnight could not control himself any longer. He struggled violently hoping that the creature would drop him, but to no avail. Now he screamed and yelled louder than before. He knew there was no escape from this. His own death awaited.

Now the other hand reached for the side of McKnight's body. It grabbed without question. He finally stopped screaming, though he still winced in the tremendous pain. Just before the fateful moment came, however, McKnight finally saw a better glimpse of this thing's face. He could barely make out what looked like a snout of some sort, though not necessarily a pig-like one. It made a grunting snort, like a deep version of the demon snort, only with more resonation, like that of monster truck staring up. With each snort that it made, a small stream of steam came out of its nostrils. It WAS the ultimate monstrosity at this point.

McKnight only had the last few seconds of his life to stare in awe at this grotesque face. He yelled one final yell just as the creature roared just a little bit louder than before. With just one movement of its right arm, the beast ripped McKnight's body apart from his neck. The torso made a few bumps on the floor before it stopped and started shaking wildly like a chicken after its head had been chopped off. The blood gushed out of the opening of the rip, boiling and evaporating as it hit the hot red floor. The creature tossed McKnight's dead head aside, and roared a deep yet high-pitched roar so loud that it shook the universe...


*************

The scream he made in the small elevator compartment woke him up. Yes, the nightmare was finally over. He then put his hands over his mouth almost as fast as he had opened it. The stunning realization came to him that he still stood in the middle of a monster infested moon-base. Also, he was a alive and not in the grasp of some demonic creature beyond this universe.

Not wasting any time, McKnight quickly pushed himself up, almost reflexively. He knew that the scream he made might be heard by something nearby. Whether it was a contingent of imps or an unlikely survivor, he was not wanting to take any chances. Chances were, however, that more likely the former waited for him. Thus, he raised and cocked his shotgun, ready for anything.

He noticed that he was perspiring not unlike in the dream and that his heart beat at the pace of a timid rabbit. That dream sure did have an effect on him. It proved that just because he was a Marine, it did not mean he was the bravest soul in the world. Even the mightiest of the few and the proud had his limits.

About 3 minutes passed, but nothing happened at all. "There should be some large concentration of bodies here, be it monster, zombie, or human," McKnight said to himself, "unless....". First he took a look at his watch. At the time he left the toxin refinery, it had been about 0900 hours, standard time. The watch read 1230 hours. "My God! I could have been meat for those critters! Guess I just got off lucky," McKnight said again. Oh well, at least he stood breathing right now. Yet one thing still puzzled him; of all places on this base, Command Control should have housed the greatest pack of monsters anywhere, yet nothing investigated the screaming. "Well, looks like I'm gonna have to do some investigating myself."

He got out of the lift and finally noticed why no monsters had tracked him just yet. In the room just outside the door to the elevator was a marquee above another door. It read:


WELCOME TO U.A.C PHOBOS LAB MILITARY ARMAMENTS BASE - AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY BEYOND THIS POINT

"I just knew something wasn't right when the lift to this place was hidden!" McKnight said, quite annoyed. He had come all this way just to find himself at the wrong destination? Well, at least he didn't have to find out what lay behind the blue security door back at the toxin refinery.

Just like before, he hoisted up his shotgun and opened the door to the next level. He could not much beyond where he looked, however, since this hallway was somewhat cramped. What he did see looked like the outer corner of a cage made of the same fencing that barred the giant slime pool one level up. A few more step and he finally found out what this cage was for. In it were housed about 15 imps, all madly clawing and hissing like caged zoo animals who wanted out. Before he took a step back, McKnight noticed the sign at the top center of each side of the cage, 'Specimen Containment'. Obviously these imps were subjects of experimentation during the early phases of the portal project.

McKnight examined the openings of this cage closely. A barrage of bullets from his minigun would do no good; they would only hit the cage and let sparks fly, if they didn't miss the cage altogether. Yet, the openings looked just big enough for a rocket or two to fit though. With careful aim, McKnight took a little bit of time to get just the right position and fire into the cage. With two pulls, he fired two rockets into the cage, being knocked back only about an inch. He stood far enough back not to let the blast radius do him damage. In the end, three imps remained, if a bit burned by the blast. McKnight put the rocket launcher down and pulled up his shotgun. One...two...the first two went down easy. As he was about to make the final shot, the last surviving imp heaved a fireball at him and struck him in the face. The shotgun fell out of McKnight's grasp. Wincing from the shock of the impact, he decided not to grab the shotgun and instead pulled out his pistol. Two unaimed shots managed to take the last imp down. "Pop goes the weasel," McKnight said, blowing the barrel of his gun.

All good things come to an end. Just as McKnight put his pistol away, two zombies each came from a staircase parallel to a side of the cage, eight zombies in all. He sprang for his shotgun and let off the first shot at lightning speed. Big mistake. One of the zombies next to him took a shot at McKnight and hit his right side. Thankfully, the armor helped with the pain. Then McKnight remembered the old tactic, make one zombie shoot another and let nature do the rest. He did so, and some of them even started to beat the others with the butts of their guns when their ammo ran out. Two zombies were left, one of them heading for another right in McKnight's line of fire. He waited for the opportunity. Just as the second zombie entered the line of his shotgun sight, McKnight squeezed the trigger both zombies fell "dead". "Two birds with one stone...not bad," he said.

He then turned around and went down the staircase behind him. Just before he got to the bottom, he noticed a yellow glow of some sort on the floor of the room at the bottom of the staircase. It looked like a yellow security card. The only way to find out for sure was to go down. As he went down farther, he also saw that whatever made that glow lay behind a barricade that he could go behind. However, he wasn't alone at the bottom. Two more zombies and another imp greeted him, along with a barrel of sludge. McKnight decided to let the zombie do the work this time. As luck would have it, the big dope of a zombie shot the barrel while standing behind it and was turned into a brown spot in the wall in no time. The blast injured the imp somewhat too. Two shotgun shells was all McKnight needed to finish this job. Afterwards, he grabbed the key and moved on.

Another staircase to the right of the barricade led down to another room. At the bottom, McKnight noticed something odd and eerie. In the middle of the room was a small pentagram shaped pad surrounded by a small slime pool. "This can't be a deja vu of my dream. In it, the room was shaped like a pentagram, not just a portion of the floor. Plus, this room is way too small," McKnight said to himself. Nevertheless, it still frightened him.

Another rocket launcher, a box of rockets, and two medical kits stood atop this pad. McKnight also noticed something strange. "Why would there be sensory apparatuses at the tip of each point of the star? The monsters couldn't have possibly made that now," he said to himself. No matter, he walked onto this pad, not knowing the surprise that would happen next.

Just as walked off and back up the stairs, he heard something like a "whirr" and a "schoom" behind him. Accompanying that, he also heard an imp's hiss. That pad was an incoming teleport pad from a room he had no idea of the location of. Now the monsters started coming in by storm, and not just imps. A few demons spiced up the mix, along with what looked and sound like blurry apparitions of the aforementioned creature. This was one battle McKnight did not want to take part in. He hauled tail back up the staircase. Then the incredible happened. Apparently the imps were blind to the blurry demons. One of the fireballs hit one of the blurs, and everybody and his brother on one side attacked everybody and his brother on the other. McKnight sieged the opportunity and scrambled back to the main lobby.

This time he decided to take the room directly opposite of him. Like before, a staircase led down to a room, but this one was darker and more open. More opposition met him on the other side as well. About five zombies and two imps made his company this time. However, these zombies, for the most part, carried weaker firepower. They all came from one direction too. "Maybe I can tuck myself in this dark corner, they'll have a hard time firing at me," McKnight thought to himself. He headed for the corner to the right of the staircase he just came down. As he set himself on the floor, it started to descend. When it hit the bottom, McKnight found himself in a small sea of green slime. "Well I'll be, I just found myself a secret room!" he said to himself.

Right in the middle of this pool was a platform with a minigun and two boxes of bullets on it. He dashed across as quickly as he could, so as not to burn himself in the slime. He made it, but actually did start to fell some stings here and there. Just to the right of this platform stood another one, this one against the wall and with three first-aid kits on it. The reach was just close enough to grab them from where McKnight stood. He pocketed the contents into his backpack.

Not wanting to go back up the same lift that he came down from, McKnight decided to take that lift just across the other one. Though the wade in the slime was no fun, at least he met only a clear room on the other side. In the middle of the room stood a large rectangular column of brown brick. At each corner lay a red, burning torch. Since when did anybody use fire for light in this age? Ignoring this detail, McKnight walked straight ahead and into a red door. He checked to see what color the key he possessed was. Nope, it was yellow. "Damn," he said, "time to go a'scouting."

Sure enough, the yellow door stood in the opposite direction of the red door. As McKnight opened it, yet another contingent of zombies, most of them holding shotguns, and a few imps stood with their backs to him. They must have been dumb, for the door was right behind them, and they didn't notice a thing! They did, however, once McKnight fired off a continuous spread from his minigun. The boxes of bullets he found ended up saving his life. Yet another shotgun blast hit him in the chest this time, and unlike the last time, it actually did some damage to the armor. But this zombie just went to show the lack of brains, for this one fired shot into a barrel in front of it as well. Bye bye zombie brains.

As luck would have it, the one treasure that McKnight came to look for lay right behind him, the red security card. He grabbed it from the floor and moved on. As he took his first step, however, the sound of a door slowly opening was heard behind him. He turned around and wanted to kill himself at this next sight. Yet another platoon of imps and shotgun zombies emerged from this newly opened room. McKnight just about had enough and sprinted back up to the yellow door, pressing the locking mechanism just in time to block an imps fireball. "I'm getting too old for this stuff."

Now for the red door. He slipped in the card and the door "whizzed" open revealing....well, the drill is pretty obvious by now. Needless to say, McKnight finally got fed up and released one rocket into the room, causing a chain reaction with the barrels inside. After observing the new red paint job, he ventured further. Around a small corner was a switch on the wall behind a row of more barrels. "Great, just like the designers of this place to put toxic chemicals in the most inconvenient places," McKnight said out loud. One shotgun burst did the trick. Making sure that the swish wasn't damaged in the blast, he flipped it.

A door opened nearby as well as a wall or something lowering in a room somewhere. "The column," McKnight thought. As he went to check, he was right. The column did lower, along with an entire pack of demons on top of it. Now this whole escapade was getting very ridiculous as well as terrifying. But, his hopes went up when he noticed a opening to his left that wasn't there when he entered. He went up it without question. At the top: one box of shotgun shells and one medical kit, just what the doctor ordered, no pun intended.

He had a better view of the lowered column now. Right in the dead-center of it was something he had no idea was even needed in this base, a blue security card. "Wow, all of the primary colors too," he said to himself. This distracted him from the demons charging at him at flank speed. Luckily, yet another small row of barrels stood in front of him atop the staircase. One shotgun blast and a few dead demons later, McKnight finally regained consciousness. He swiped the blue card and moved on.

Just one more hallway was left for him to explore, and it was just directly opposite to him. "Jeez, this place is too linear for my tastes," McKnight grunted to himself. When he reached the next door, he thanked whatever watched over the universe for him finding the blue security card, for in front of him was the blue door. The key went in, and.......

The zombies and imps went down in no time. What McKnight failed to notice, however, were the two blurry demons hidden around each corner on the other side of the door. He was too late to try to avoid them. One of them knocked McKnight onto his back. The breath was just putrid as the first demon he met in the toxin refinery. It almost managed to take a bite out of his chest, that is, right before McKnight drew his shotgun and placed it in the mouth of the demon at point blank range. It fell to the ground with a "THUMP!", splashing blood all over McKnight. The second demon came into contact with the shot and started squealing in pain. This sound was worse than a real pig squealing for help. McKnight looked around for a few seconds, and then turned to the yelping demon and silenced it with one last shotgun shell. "You know, I can't just call you 'blurry demons'. Why not.....ah, spectres." He was glad to have found a name for these things.

In front of him on the wall was another switch and just above that, the one thing he longed to see since he entered this military base...the EXIT sign. Only problem was, however, a medium-sized gap separated him and the switch. Could he take the leap of faith? "I got this far, I'm not going to stop now just because of slime-pit gap!" McKnight said. He took a few steps back, breathed a few breaths, and took the daring jump. He landed with no problem, rolling just as he hit the ground, a wise tactic. "There, now that wasn't so hard now, was it?" he asked himself. With a click of the switch, McKnight waited for a lift or something to lower. Something unexpected happened instead. A clear cylindrical tube lowered from the ceiling. When it touched the ground, it surrounded McKnight. Then floor underneath his legs opened up, and he was sucked down into it, like a person slurping up a raisin from unfinished raisin bran, just as the opening closed again.

(for more stories, go to the fiction section of my DOOM Station)

Good story, loyal to the original Doom.

Good story, loyal to the original Doom.

It's supposed to be.

Not bad at all (makes my Command Control story look like shit). I only wonder why Mcknight allowed himself to fall asleep while the surroundings are still crammed with monsters.

Because if you read my last story at all, you might remember that as he was descending to the military base, he fell unconcious from being totally worn out.

Oh, and I don't mean to spoil anything for you guys, but that dream in the beginning is a foreshadow (obviously) of what's going to happen to somebody in E1M8.

Oh sorry, it's quite a while since I read your last story, so I haven't remembered every little detail from it.

Heh.

Oh, and DSM, I've finished my Command Control story already...just be lucky I haven't submitted the link to Rick Clark yet :)

Great job, though you could leave a little time for description. The whole thing is written very methodically, without much depth. The reader isn't totally immersed; rather he is told what the character did, then did, then did. Overall, however, it's pretty well-written without spelling/grammar errors, as far as I know.

It's DOOM...how else can it be told?

Great story, i await the next one.

Great job, though you could leave a little time for description. The whole thing is written very methodically, without much depth. The reader isn't totally immersed; rather he is told what the character did, then did, then did.

Heh, kinda the same style as I wrote my Command Control Station story.
I was actually keeping Cren's writing style in mind when I wrote that, because so far, Cren's the one who stays closest to the detail of the Doom levels.

Oh and Crendowing: Just because I already submitted a story set in E1M4 to Rick doesn't mean that you can't do it too :-)

Just because it's Doom doesn't mean you have to write like a machine is telling the story! At least write like you put some effort into it--that is, do it if you want people to ENJOY your stories.

...that is, do it if you want people to ENJOY your stories.

And they don't? :)

...that is, do it if you want people to ENJOY your stories.

And they don't? :)

I actually found it a bit hard to get through your story, not because it wasn't good or anything, but it did become a bit repetitive I think.