Doom Story Update

2k words

***

Andreas crawled back into consciousness, every muscle in his body burning with pain. He tried to move, but something hard pressed into his chest, pinning him in place. His feet were cold, but everything else was burning up, where was he?

His ears were ringing, but behind this white noise rose the crack of a gunshot, the sound spurring him into blinking his vision clear. Was he in a warzone? As he took in his surroundings, the memories came flooding back.

The dropship was sitting on a slant, and the deck was obscured behind a murky layer of water, warning lights bathing the crashed ship in yellows. The nose of the ship had shattered, the slumped figure of the pilot showered in broken glass. Andreas looked away from the grisly scene, only to look upon another. In the crash couch beside him was a marine with a shard of glass hilted through his helmet, its trajectory suggesting it had come from the porthole opposite them. A few inches to the right, and Andreas wouldn’t have woken up.

Gritting his teeth, he threw the harness off his chest, finding the mechanism had jammed in place. He tried again, the armour on his biceps creaking, and the latches snapped away, Andreas cradling his shoulder in a hand as he reached up with the other to slap his helmet.

“Eva! You still kicking?”

“Stop hitting me, and hit the deck, now!”

Without missing a beat, Andreas through himself to the ground, water splashing against his visor. No sooner had he done that, did a swelling heat pass over his flank, and his seat burst into flames.

Glancing up, he saw that the ramp to the bay was open, and one of the cacodemons was plugging the exit, the creature framed by a hellish light. Its fat body was too big to squeeze through, but that didn’t stop it from ramming against the aircraft like a hound trying to break into a chicken pen.

He met the gaze of its solitary eye, the demon closing its giant maw as thought it was sucking in a breath. Andreas was already moving, hauling himself back towards his combusted crash couch, reaching towards the footrest. Fortunately, his plasma rifle had remained secured during the impact, Andreas sliding it out of the holster. He brought the bulky weapon to his cheek, lining up the quad-barrels with the demon, its one eye going wide in surprise.

He pulled the trigger, filling the aisle with a short burst of energy cells, the stream of bolts melting into his target’s face. The breath broiling in the demon’s throat bubbled out as a wet gurgle, licks of flames escaping its chapped lips, its ability to float in the air failing as its face slagged, dropping to the ground with a distinct splashing sound.

Andreas rushed down the bay, the air above the barrel of his rifle shimmering with waste heat. He noted that not all the crash couches were occupied by his fallen comrades, that meant some of them must have survived the crash, or had been thrown clear…

He swung his rifle round as he emerged into the daylight, finding himself upon a beach, the dropship cratered near the tideline coming up from the right. One of the wings had been severed, jutting from the sand a short distance away, the engine tipping it trailing smoke. Beyond it, the shore gave way to towering rocks, ruined paths trailing up towards the beginnings of an urban sprawl.

The dropship had left a blazing trail in its wake, a trench the length of a basketball court cutting through the sand, the extreme friction forming pockets of glass. There was a figure stood at the end of the trench, it was one of the marines, dumping a cone of buckshot into a nearby cacodemon, priming his pump action in quick succession as the demon slowly sunk to the ground with each echoing blast.

Another of the creatures floated from out behind the discarded wing, completely silent as it soared up on the marine’s flank, Andreas waving an arm to get his attention.

“Behind you!” he called, the marine glancing over at him before whipping around, but it was too late. The cacodemon opened its mouth wide, and swallowed the man up from above. Its jaws snapped shut over his hips, the creature twisting its head with a wet crunch, the severed legs falling to the sand as the demon gulped audibly.

Andreas dashed out onto the sand, aiming his plasma cannon at the demon. Firing from the hip, he put the demon down with an automatic burst, the demon still munching on the marine even as the plasma bolts melted its hide as it visibly deflated to the ground.

“Three o’clock,” Eva chimed.

He heard a high-pitched gurgle, turning up to see yet another demon descending on him from above. It splattered to the ground like a dropped melon after Andreas dumped the rest of his magazine into it.

“Thanks, Eva,” he muttered, sliding the spent power cell out of the loader, letting it land with a splash of sand.

“Save for thanks for after you deal with them.”

It took him a second to see what she meant. Another pair of cacodemons were soaring overhead like birds of prey, gliding across the water towards the beach, solitary eyes fixed upon him. Andreas fished inside his rigging for a fresh cell, slamming it into the receiver, the demons splaying their jaws as they closed in.

As he took a knee, applying pressure on the trigger, there was a sound like that of a distant buzzsaw. Through the swirling mist rising off the sea came an unbroken stream of tracer rounds, catching the demons in its arch. One of the creatures was pasted in an instant, the second following suit, turning into a screen of red mist hanging upon the air before disintegrating.

Andreas fought the instinct to duck as the stream arched overhead, the excess rounds chipping away at the cliffs behind him. As the loud burst of gunfire settled, Andreas glanced up to see one of the fighter jets doing a low pass, banking over the length of the beach as it turned about, the scream of its engines muffled by his helmet.

“Better late than never, boys,” Andreas said, raising a hand at the craft as it departed, climbing back into the cloud layer.

Andreas did a full spin, making sure the area was clear, finally able to take in his surroundings without monsters to worry about. The crash site was a bloodbath. What few marines that had stumbled out of the dropship had met a bloody end to the cacodemons, but they had given Hell a run for their money. Carpets of dead creatures lined the beach, the green paint of marine armour visible in the pools of nearby viscera.

He called for a sound off on the squad channel, not really sure what he was hoping for but doing it anyway. There was no response. He was all that was left.

“Fuck, if only I’d been faster,” Andreas mumbled, closing his eyes and exhaling. “Damn it.”

“You were hit in the head by a twelve-pound bar of steel,” Eva informed him. “What more could you have done?”

Andreas chewed his lip, supposing there was no time for dwelling. He looked over the wreckage of the dropship, the ruined craft plumed with a thick column of smoke. He had to distance himself from the crash site as soon as possible, there would be more than just cacodemons swarming this place in time…

“Eva, get in contact with the rest of the section,” Andreas said as he stumbled back towards the wreckage. “See if anyone else is alive.”

While every second spent here brought more risk, he needed all the supplies he could get, Andreas kicking the cacodemon plugging the ramp aside as he returned to the bay. His pack had survived the crash, fortunately, and he clipped the straps to his combat armour, replacing the empty pocket on his chest rig with a fresh plasma cell. He moved over to the other crash couches, looting the gear of his fellow marines for anything useful. It was a morbid task, but dead men didn’t need their MRE’s and ammo anymore.

“Check the lower compartments,” Eva advised. “The cargo should still be intact. This entire beach would be a crater right now if it wasn’t.”

Andreas knelt in the aisle, pushing his gloved fingers below a latch in the floor, the panel sliding open. There were three, footlocker-sized capsules sitting inside the space, each one marked with ARC’s logo.

The capsules were built from two identical halves, Andreas reaching down to give the nearest one a twist, activating the automatic release. The device parted to reveal a pair of mechanical grippers, and clutched in their metal fingers was a small glass ball. It was writhed in an unnatural cloak of red mist, the inside of the casing occupied by a small shard, the black shape contrasting against the bright flames that seemed to emanate from it.

“I ever tell you these things look like Eyes of Sauron to me?” Andreas muttered as he opened the other two capsules, each one housing a similar sphere to the first, the orbs bathing the dropship in crimson light.

“Many times,” Eva replied. “Well?” she added, seeming to notice his hesitation. “Crash or not, the safety of the cargo remains our top priority, Seargent.”

“I can’t carry three containment units all by myself,” he complained.

“Then don’t, just take the cells. Honestly, what would you do without me?”

“Never touched one with my bare hand before,” Andreas admitted, ignoring the comment. “Please don’t tell me I’m going to grow a pair of horns or anything.”

“Argent energy emits nominal levels of unholy malice, and is barely even warm while inside its containment unit,” Eva advised. “It’s quite safe to handle.”

“’Nominal levels of unholy malice’,” Andreas grumbled, seizing the first glass orb, the thing sitting comfortable in his palm. He ran a thumb over the case, his armour making a scraping sound against the glass. As Eva had said, the sqhere was paradoxically cool despite what his eyes were seeing, its weight unsubstantial. He stuffed the orb into his pack, then did the same with the other two.

“I know I said it was safe, but try not to fall on them or get shot from now on, Seargent,” Eva advised. “The containers are rather brittle, and susceptible to strong impacts. A little like myself, actually.”

“Don’t get hit while holding the Eyes, I got it,” Andreas said, turning back to the ramp. “What’s the status on the rest of the section?”

“The other teams encountered no resistance from the demonic,” Eva explained. “Their ships are inbound on the Rallypoint. Sending out an SOS now.”

“Don’t bother,” Andreas replied. “A ping will just drag more attention to us, and rescue’ll just get brought down anyway. Which way’s the Rallypoint?”

“Bearing thirty degrees. Was a two day walk through heavily infested grounds part of the job description as well?”

“It is now,” Andreas replied.

“Proceed up those hills to the left,” Eva said after a dramatic sigh, always annoyed by his lack of apprehension. “the climb will be easier there.”

Before Andreas departed, he hesitated, turning back for the marines. He grabbed each man’s dog tags, severing their chains with his serrated knife, including the pilot’s. With all seven in hand, he stuffed them inside his already laden pack, then set off towards the cliffs.

-xXx-

Andreas paused to catch his breath, the path up the rocks proving far higher than he had expected, memories of boot camp flashing through his mind. At the summit, there was a lookout point built into the cliff face, a platform raised on stilts still standing despite it all, Andreas moving over to peer down the sheer drop.

Some fifty meters below was the smouldering crash site, still trailing smoke from its ruined fuselage. Only twenty minutes had passed since he’d left the wreckage, but dozens more of the demonic had already moved in to investigate. He could see more cacodemons, but there were also tiny humanoid figures, resting on their knees as they feasted on the fallen marines, Andreas grimacing at the sight. It was a grim end for his fellow soldiers, but with no way to extract the bodies, there was nothing he could do about it.

He stepped away from the lookout, surveying the path ahead. To his immediate north, rock and earth gave way to concrete and glass, the beginning of an urban sprawl rising up before him. The coastal apartment complexes would have cost a fortune just a year ago, but now they were weathered by war, their cracked facades plagued by corruption, winding tentacles and crimson growths trailing up the walls like vine creepers.

As Andreas moved out onto the gridlocked streets, he saw not everything had been infested by the demons, but what Hell had left untouched had been obliterated, entire housing blocks reduced to a few scant pockets of crumbling walls.

Hellfire provided an unpleasant backdrop, an aura of red with seemingly no source shimmering off the horizon, his eyes watering if he looked up for too long.

“This place was hit hard,” Andreas mused as he slid over the hood of a wrecked car. The silence was uneasy and he felt the need to break it.