The DOOM Chronicles

Chapter 38: The Citadel

Jack did another headcount of his own, making sure everyone was upright and alive, then followed Hollenshead up the path and through the door at the end. They came into a narrow passageway of somewhat more refined rock, with those strange, diamond lights overhead, the ones that always reminded Jack of old movie theater lights. They at least provided better lighting. He followed Hollenshead with the others moving in a single file behind him, (not that they had any other choice, it was barely wide enough to walk in this place), taking a few turns until finally they found a stairwell that led up.

They kept going until finally the stairs ran out, and led them into...

A simple, square room.

"The fuck is this shit?" Hollenshead muttered as he looked around.

Jack studied it, making room for the others. They all came up, and Abrash hung back, watching their six to make sure nothing came up the stairs after them.

The floor and ceiling were made of simple brown wooden planks, and more planks made up the walls, but they framed...something. It was tan-yellow and had a strange pattern to it that reminded him vaguely of sand dunes in the desert.

The only way out seemed to be one section of green marble dead ahead of them, with what looked to be a roaring, deformed lion's head done in burnished silver mounted in the center of it. There was no button, though. No switch, no control, no obvious way to open it.

Outside, he thought he could hear the sound of creatures.

"We gotta be close," Cortez said.

"Yeah but how do we open this butt-ugly thing?" Hollenshead replied, staring at it, coming to the same conclusion as Jack.

They spent a few minutes puzzling over it, and then finally Jack aimed his rifle at it. "Fuck it, get ready," he replied, and shot the stupid thing.

It worked.

The face lit up green and the panel lifted into the ceiling, revealing...

The outside. And a few Imps wandering around. He and Hollenshead were out first, putting down the roaring Imps like they were nothing.

"Too easy," Hollenshead said, laughing and then stomping on one of the dead Imp's head, caving it in in a gory display.

"Maybe we'll get lucky and that'll be too easy," Jack muttered, staring up at and to the left at the huge shaft of pulsing blood red light shooting into the skies overhead.

They were just outside the portal, or so it felt.

Definitely within a few hundred meters of it, at least.

They stood on a dark gray, stonework ground. To the right was a sharp drop off into a moat of acid that continued on ahead and curved around to the left, disappearing behind the thing that took up most of their field of vision in that direction: a huge wall of giant white stone bricks, covered in green vines. There were several doors and windows cut into it.

That was the way they had to go.

"Okay, come on out everyone. We're getting close," Jack said, approaching the nearest doorway that was cut into the white-stone wall.

Within, he saw a vast, open space. Almost like an arena or a courtyard.

He paused, looking back once, at the city that surrounded them. Skyscrapers burned like massive torches, bleeding smoke into the black-red sky. Not even a hint of blue was left. How many tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands were out there, dead or dying? For a second he felt the titanic weight of responsibility and even the likely impossibility of the task that lay before him. Not just closing the portal, but pushing back this apocalypse.