The DOOM Chronicles

Chapter 29: Pandemonium

There was just a single object in the room.

"We'll need that, I'm sure," Jennifer said, retrieving the blue skull-key that was lying in the center of the room.

Jack expected something to happen as soon as she picked it up, some kind of negative reaction, a trap, something, but there was nothing. She pocketed the key and they hurried back up the stairs. Once they'd reported what they'd found to Green, the quartet pressed on. The sounds of the damned were getting closer again. This place was a fucking madhouse. They couldn't seem to catch a break. As they hurried through the maze, the sounds of the damned grew louder, closer, coming up from behind them. Imps, Demons, and zombies.

Standard fare for this nightmare.

They kept going until they hit a dead-end. Well, not a total dead-end. They came to a big door, studded with skulls, painted in blood and trimmed with blue and silver. The sounds were getting louder. Jennifer slotted the skull-key as quick as she could and the door slid open. Jack caught sight of the room beyond, there was a lot of red, and then they were through. He spun around, facing the way they'd come, and saw a clutch of Imps, followed by a group of Demons, suddenly coming at them down the corridor, practically scrambling over each other. As soon as they were all through, they closed and re-locked the door.

"Oh shit, I hate this room," Stratton said.

Jack turned back around and finally got a good look at it. He immediately agreed with the man. Ahead of them was a simple path of rock extending through a pool of blood to either side of it. The walls all around them were bleeding. The four of them moved slowly across the rock path, hoping that they'd earned themselves at least a small reprieve. Jack was almost tapped out for SMG ammo yet again.

He'd hoped that at this point the ammo situation would be better, and yet here he was.

They managed to make it across the blood pond to another door at the other end, which was also of UAC design. It opened into what appeared to be a storage area in a typical UAC outpost. Unlike the other places, this one felt like a bastion, an eye in the bloody hurricane. It wasn't a particularly big room, and there were a lot of crates around.

"Secure the area," Green said, jogging forward into the room.

They took a few minutes to do just that, and found only one other exit. The monsters banged at the door they'd come through for just a few minutes before giving up and wandering off. They found nothing and no one in the storage bay.

"Come look what I found!" Jennifer called suddenly.

Jack moved across the room, which was mostly empty, taken up in one corner mainly by stacks of crates that, he discovered, formed a little maze. They followed it to its core and discovered Jennifer standing among the remains of a small encampment. They found several opened up crates, among them were some foldout chairs, a foldout table, tools, empty MREs, and guns and ammo. Several of the crates were marked for such.

"Watts and his team must've been through here," Stratton said.

"Here's a PDA," Jack said, spying one on the table among the debris. He grabbed it while the others began collecting up and inventorying their newfound treasure trove of guns and ammo. Jack fired it up.

"Watts here." The man looked worse this time, exhausted, pale, his eyes bloodshot. There was a crack on his visor and a lot of blood on his helmet. Jack could hear others moving around. "Not a lot to say really, to whoever the fuck is watching this. If anyone is. It's been pretty nonstop, especially since hitting this freaking nightmare. Lot of dead ends in this place." He hesitated, looked away, finally looked back. "We lost Davis back near the beginning of this place. Lost Soul got him. Goddamnit." He paused again, then sighed heavily.