(Another) Doom Story pt. 5

[Tek]

Howdy, here's part 5 of (Another) Doom Story. Please comment and give me your ideas on how the story should continue--I'm running out of ideas!

(Another)Doom Story pt. 5

We cleaned up cellblock A.
All of the corpses were taken out of their cells and all put in one place in the cellblock. We couldn't do anything to clean up the blood stains on the walls and floor, so we tracked crimson footprints all over the nicely polished cellblock tiles. When all the corpses were brought out into the open, we prayed.
I said a few hail Mary's while Stevens, a Jew, performed a Jewish burial ceremony.
This was getting out of hand.
After the final sign of the cross, I picked up my rifle and proceeded to the door leading to cellblock B. Stevens covered me, watching the rear.
Unlike its former brother, the door leading to cellblock B opened without incident. It opened with the satisfying "woosh" sound that comes with the opening of every futuristic air-compressed door. We cautiously stepped in, M-4's cocked and ready.
Cellblock B wasn't as big or populated as A; it only had six cells in it, as I remembered, but they were through a few corridors containing surveillance equipment and a small guard post. We crept through the hallway leading from the cellblock door and turned a corner.
Peterson's group had passed through here. Spent shell cases littered the ground ahead of us, and at the end of the hallway were two dead brothers of the monster I'd killed in the reception area. Their brown blood covered the walls and formed hissing pools on the floor. 7.62mm bullets had pounded through their skulls and necks; Peterson had picked all of the best shots in the squad.
I was amazed that Peterson had been too proud (or stupid) to contact the rest of the squad or send one of the men back to tell us. I had always hated that guy.
I noticed also that the security cameras had been blown out, but they looked to have been burned, not shot. I realized then that the creatures who were invading were actually SMART. Smart enough to blow out the cameras so they could sneak in undetected. Even more so than before, I was afraid.
Regardless, we continued through the halls. We relaxed our weapons a little, now that we had seen the bodies. Maybe Peterson's little group had cleared the place out and was cleaning up?
We still decided it wouldn't be prudent to take that risk, keeping our weapons level, though not as tense as before.
As we walked down the hallways, we heard a constant, though strange noise coming from ahead of us. It sounded like raspy breathing' almost as if someone--or something--was wheezing. We quickened our pace; it could have been another wounded civvie.
We rounded the corner to find the guardpost and doorway leading into the cellblock. Clues of a battle were apparent; bullets had hit the wall nearest us. There was a bloodstain on the wall with the bullet holes, but no body. The bloodstain was red--human blood.
Someone had been shooting one of our boys.
Stevens drew in a deep breath. "Shit."
I nodded in agreement. Our worst fear had come true. They could be dead.

*****

We listened to the raspy breathing as we proceeded to the door leading to cellblock B. As we neared the armored door, I noticed that the sound was coming from beyond it, inside the cellblock. It sounded clearer now that we were closer; like a guy with a deep voice was wheezing. I put it in the back of my mind as Stevens stepped forward and checked out the guard's desk stationed near the door. An expression of dismay played across his face as he bent down to look at something.
"Holy shit."
"What is it?" I asked, jogging over to where he knelt. When I saw what he was staring at, I almost lost my breakfast, lunch and dinner.
It was disgusting.
I wasn't surprised to find yet another corpse in this deathtrap of a scientific base, but this security guard's corpse was just plain wrong. The body had the now familiar expression of utter horror on its countenance, but it seemed to be rotting before our eyes, the flesh shifting in colors, from white to brown to green and back to white.
Its eyes were wide open, but they seemed glazed over and cloudy, not to mention pupilless. Stevens took of the security guard helmet, which had been burned to a crisp, probably by one of the fireballs those spiny things had shot out of their hands.
The hair--at least the hair that had not been burned away--had turned a toxic-looking light-green, and felt greasy when I touched it with my bare hands. The head had burns and open wounds on it, wounds that still bled.
The whole corpse seemed in an accelerated state of decay. It already smelled horrible, even though the man had probably only been killed yesterday. Open flesh wounds covered his arms, red holes perforating the two limbs.
Stevens stuck out his tongue. "Ugh."
I agreed. This definitely was not supposed to happen to a corpse this early on in death. I wondered why whatever had happened to this guy had not taken the corpses in the reception area. This situation was getting weirder by the half-second.
The security guard's corpse still had his Glock and extra clips in his holster and belt. I took the holstered Glock and clips and stashed them away in my backpack.
We proceeded to the door and the raspy breathing noise, which since we had first noticed it had become annoying.
"What the hell is that sound?" Stevens asked, checking the door to see if it was still functioning. It had been torched.
"No idea," I replied, "But I'm guessing it might be another one of those spiny devils, so keep frosty."
Stevens nodded and started to move the door.
He slid the door to the side and we walked in side by side, checking everything., noticing every detail. The two cells that flanked us on our left and right had no one in them, fortunately; I was tired of pulling corpses out of jail cells. The raspy wheezing persisted.
We turned the corner.
There were four charred corpses on the floor near the far wall, all wearing USDM uniforms. We'd found the pointmen.

*****

Give me your comments.

[Burzum]

Its as good as your other writings :)
Go on !

[Wildman]

Good read. The next step would be to follow-up on the clues you have now, the raspy sound, the reason the soldier was decaying rapidly and what happened to the squad. Ask yourself some questions, like:

1) Is the toxic look of the soldier related to an experiment gone wrong?
2) Did the demons find this toxic stuff and are using it?
3) If the demons are intelligent, what is their goal besides just killing everything? (Intelligent beings have reasons for their actions. What is the motive behind the attack?)

Here are some notes that may help you:

1) A story plot is like an onion, each layer of the plot should build on previous plot points until the climax of the story.
2) A plot is built on scenes and sequels. A scene is action, something you could actually act out, where the character is trying to achieve a specfic, concrete goal. A sequel is the thought processes a character goes after having gone through a scene. In the sequel you state what the character feels about what has just happened, then what he thinks he should do next. That will lead into the next scene. It goes: scene->sequel->scene...
3) All ways keep in mind that whatever the character was trying to accomplish in the scene, he should fail, get mistracked, have some sort of disaster. When the disaster happens then he thinks about it in the sequel and comes up with an alternate plan. By having the character fail in scene, you build tension in the story, make the reader want to read to see what happens next.
4) Make the climax almost, but not quite impossible to achieve. The climax has to be a herioc effort and the character has to really work at it.
5) Once you reach the climax, end the story quickly. If you have done it right, the big climax happens, the hero get the girl and the story ends.

Just some thoughts.

[Katgut]

5) Once you reach the climax, end the story quickly. If you have done it right, the big climax happens, the hero get the girl and the story ends.

You know, I hate stories like that. You can't just end it quickly once you reach the climax... that tends to leave people going "what the hell did we miss in there?"

[Tek]

Don't worry about a crappy ending for my story, just yet--I'm just getting started. I'll be writing for months yet (if I stay interested).