Am back things have been very busy for me so here's another story that has to do with one of my favorite video games doom.

~ Chapter 1 ~

"This is bulls***." Jack Ward growled darkly as he stalked through the bloody, flickering corridor. The shotgun was a dead, warm weight in his hand, as if surgically attached. It might as well have been.

"Aw, come on, babe. You telling me this isn't want you had in mind for our honeymoon?" Kyra Ward replied over the wraparound earpiece comms unit. He grinned briefly at her snide remark, keeping his eyes on the shadowed doorways, locked in the crimson trim of emergency lighting. He shifted his view intently to the double doors at the end, the hangar to his back. Getting in had been easy, getting in further might not be.

"Not quite. I was hoping to go to Hawaii." Jack replied. Something growled distantly, echoing through the ventilation system.

"Earth's overrun, remember?" Jack hesitated, mentally. He flashed back to their trip into Hell a year ago to kill what Kyra had so aptly named Baphomet. Returning to Hell on Earth had been fairly easy compared to burning into Hell Itself. Jack's theory had held true...for a little while. He had bought them a week before...something...regained control and the invasion continued. But by that time they had managed to save what was left of Humanity. Since then, they'd been spread across the stars, sparsely thinned across the solar system.

It made for crowded living, but the Human Race currently inhabited several mining colonies along the Belt, a few permanent installations on the Moon and several of Jupiter's Moon and Mars, and several hundred colonies orbiting Earth, Mars, Jupiter and Venus. That was all that was left, now. That was the legacy of mankind. With a total population count of roughly ten million. Jack tried to put the thoughts aside.

"Yeah, but we still own Hawaii, remember?" he asked, reaching the double doors at the end of the corridor. He tried them. Locked. He sighed.

"That's classified, remember?" Kyra replied. Jack chuckled.

"Come on, babe. There's no one here but us. This is cake, remember?" Kyra was silent.

"Yeah. Honey...I'm sorry if you're upset about this...but you know how it is. You know how we operate. For the best of mankind...even if it's on our honeymoon...I love you." she said finally.

"You know I love you, too, babe. Don't worry. I love killing demons. I love the way you look covered in blood. Preferably someone else's. Let's just...get this done and go home. Now, remind me why we're here again." Jack replied. Really, he just wanted to hear her voice. And have some more time to figure out how to get around this locked door, short of blasting it open. As if they'd given him enough ordinance for that anyway...Kyra started it off with a sigh.

"Let me run through the briefing again...Sergeant. Before UAC royally s*** their pants on Mars, they tried the same thing in a controlled environment. Same technology, different place. Io. If you look around, you'll notice that's where we currently are. Demons invaded, lots of people died...they locked the facility down. Abandoned it." she explained.

"So...what? It just disappeared off the face of the record book?" Jack replied. Kyra sighed again while he began hunting through the various side doors, only finding several small maintenance closets and storage rooms.

"You know the UAC, Jack. They bought Mars. And her two moons. How hard would it be for them to sweep something like this under the rug? Or hide the facility entirely? I mean s***, we thought the two moon bases on Phobos and Deimos were meant for waste disposal."

"So why didn't they just nuke it from orbit?"

"It was worth a lot of money. They were basically hoping that if they just cut the power, lock the doors and wait it out...everything would eventually die and they could go in and clean the place up. Try again."

"And they never got around to it, eh? So what brought us back?" Jack was beginning to enjoy this. He pulled open another door and found a small maintenance closet that came complete with a service hatch. He popped it open and stared down a flickering shaft. Jack lowered himself after a moment and began climbing carefully down.

"Command picked up a power surge from the base. After that another more intensive scan revealed a mobile power surge in the core of the facility. Whatever it is...it's had time to move around the whole base and do...whatever it is it does." Kyra explained. Jack didn't press her anymore. He knew the rest. He hoped off the ladder, staring down the length of the dark tunnel he'd gotten himself into.

After kicking ass on Earth, and ultimately running away, Jack and Kyra had been put to a different test: helping Humanity without shooting a gun. They spent about ninety percent of their time over the past twelve months either going from one place to another or personally training the new recruits to fight the Forces of Hell. Although no actual plans had been made to take back Earth yet. As far as Jack had heard. In between training exercises, long retellings of events not so long past and tweaking on the not so Universal database on the demons, he managed to find time for eating, sleeping, keeping in shape, (with Kyra as often as he could), and more recently, getting married.

Jack stared down the tunnel, keeping his shotgun shouldered. So far, they hadn't run into anything living. But there were no corpses around, Human or otherwise. That sent Jack's combat senses screaming. That, plus the awful, ominous feeling he was getting from the Io Installation. Jack reviewed exactly what it was he was doing here while he stalked down the narrow passageway. Steam leaked into the air from several ancient pipes, giving the area a diffused, surreal look. The plan seemed simple enough.

After the mobile power source had moved around quite a bit, final scans, done by Jack from the speed ship he and Kyra had taken directly to Io from the Belt, had indicated that it had come to rest in the very center of the base: the fusion reactor. Something that Jack had all intentions of setting to overload and blowing to Hell. And he would be doing that if Humanity didn't need the room. After clearing the base, Command was giving the go ahead for technical and reconstruction crews to come in and make the place livable again. Things were crowded enough as it was and everyone was getting desperate, all the while trying to have babies and restart the population for the ultimate miracle attack on Earth that would reclaim them the planet.

Jack had little hope of that. He had heard whispers of special research being done based off of the UAC's designs, but it was very top secret. Namely because if anyone caught wind of more experiments based off the technology that had gotten everyone into this mess in the first place, there'd be a rebellion or mass rioting or...something dangerous and boring like that. Honestly, Jack found it hard to get excited about anything anymore besides Kyra. Maybe it was why he found himself in the current weapon predicament he was in.

Maybe it was because they were growing lax from no real combat since Earth, but when they'd gotten the call, all they had on them were their shotguns and pistols. No rocket launchers. No chainguns. No BFGs, (not that he'd run into any since the first). Not even a double barrel. Just plain old shotguns and pistols. Throw in a pair of radios and medikits and that made a full field kit. As far as the manual was concerned from way back when. Of course Jack wasn't caught completely on unawares. He had his armor at least.

He finally found a corresponding ladder and slung his shotgun, hurriedly clambering up it. He popped the hatch atop the ladder and found himself standing in a similarly dark, old, dusty maintenance chamber. Jack opened the door and stepped out. He was past the locked door, and now found himself staring at an even larger pair of double doors. Or at least, where they had once been. They were broken down now, busted outwards by what looks like sheer, brute force. Jack would put his money on a Hell Knight, or maybe a lot Demons in a pissy mood.

He made his way through it, walking beneath a flickering sign proclaiming: Main Engineering. A good place to be if you were on your way to the Fusion Reactor. Jack missed Kyra as he stepped into the large, domed room. It was huge, dark, full of shadows and could be hiding anything. He wondered again why they had decided to enter the base from separate locations as he slunk along the wall, skirting the edge, looking for anything lurking in the darkness. The area remained as still and silent as a long abandoned tomb.

Kyra could have watched his back. But he trusted his combat instincts enough for that. She'd do fine on her own, and he'd do fine on his. A lesson he had learned back on Earth. He kept his eyes open, staring at four large pillars that dominated the rounded, domed room. Each pillar was lined with technology that had once glistened but now was dead and inert. Power wouldn't last forever. The air tasted stale and the crimson lights were getting to him. He wanted to do this fast, get in and get out and have a real honeymoon with his wife.

Jack finally made it around to the other side of the room, locating the corresponding double doors that led deeper into Main Engineering. At least his path was simple. Main Engineering led on to Research and then that led to the Reactor. Three simple sectors. Easy as pie. He stopped before the large double doors and stared up at them.

"I've got a problem." Jack muttered.

"What? Resistance?" Kyra replied immediately.

"Not of the alive kind. More of the 'locked door' variety. And it's a big one. Can you...reroute it or something? Get to a security station, hack it?" he asked.

"Negative. If you can't find a way to open it from there, you'll have to go around. Security Centers are shot, far as I can tell. Besides, there's not enough power for a hack."

"Yeah, and there's not enough time to go around."

"There is if you stop b****ing and do it. Besides, we already planned for this, remember?"

"Uh...vaguely?" Kyra heaved a weary sigh across the channel.

"Christ, babe. You never pay any attention when we're planning. Where would you be without me?" Kyra asked.

"Dead, probably." Jack replied.

"Not with your luck. Listen, honey, we already went over this when we looked at the map on the way here."

"I was busy looking down your shirt." Another sigh. Jack smirked.

"Well, I was busy trying not to get us killed. There should be a maintenance hatch in the upper right hand corner of the room. That will take you to the Comms Center. From there, you can work your way around through Oxygen Purification and Storage. That will bring you into an alternate entryway into the lab, my entryway. We'll meet up there, tackle the Labs and Reactor together. Got it?" Kyra asked.

"Got it." Jack replied. While she was speaking, he had hunted down the service hatch and pulled it open. Another ladder, another tunnel. Wonderful. "Love you, dear." he said as he lowered himself into the darkness.

"Love you too, babe. Try not to get yourself killed."

Your pretty good at writing good job

Thanks am glad that you like the story here's another chapter to the story "Final Doom".

~ Chapter 2 ~

Tunnels again. He hated tunnels. Bad things always happened in tunnels. Jack still had spine shuddering memories of the waste tunnels down in the forsake starbase. His first encounter with the Revenant. He suppressed a shudder and kept his shotgun tight to his shoulder. Skeletons creeped him out now a lot more than they had before. Jack tried to keep focus. He stalked down the corridor that seemed to be closing in on him. Apparently over a year of being dead caused a lot of the pipes to rust and ultimately rupture when the base was reactivated. Which they were still trying to figure out how that had happened.

As a result, mist clung to the ground, the walls, the ceiling...the very air itself. It made for a very creepy environment. Something Jack had plenty of experience with, but had yet to build up a tolerance to. He still got scared. He wished for something bigger in the terms of armament, but his trusty shotgun had yet to fail him. Again, though, he hadn't had any real combat in a year. That was even assuming that there was anything left alive in this base. His mind drifted back over the clues and possibilities as he stalked.

Why had they not found any bodies? Where were the corpses? Marine or otherwise. Surely they men stationed here couldn't have been that unprepared. Then again...he and Kyra were the only ones to survive all three bases. And there were signs of conflict. Blood on the walls, ancient spent shell casings, bullet holes, structural damage...but no bodies. Typically when something was out of place in a situation like this, it was never good. Jack was just waiting for the other shoe to drop. He just knew there were demons lurking somewhere in the misty shadows.

The place had been zero atmosphere and dead cold for a while. Months. Did that kill demonic entities? It was cold in Hell, but not that cold. And there was atmosphere there. Did demons breathe? Some of them had to. Cacodemons shot fireballs out of their mouths. Lots of them roared...they had to draw breath, to roar, right? In all of his thinking, Jack didn't notice the unmoving lump on the ground ahead of him until he had almost tripped over it.

He let out a startled yelp and jerked his shotgun down to face it, but it remained immobile. Jack knelt by the corpse, studying it after making double sure that the area was still secure. It was a Marine, badly damaged. He had been in a suit, but a lot of good it had done him. His legs were missing and his left arm had been torn asunder. The poor bastard had died a bloody, bloody death. Jack grimly checked his pockets, but found nothing of use. Just an old, broken Sig-Cow. Nothing worth salvaging. He straightened up.

"Finally found a body." he murmured into the radio as he pressed on. He had to be close to the Communications Center soon.

"What kind of body?" Kyra replied.

"Human. Marine. Very severe trauma. Got his legs ripped off." Jack explained.

"Wonderful." She fell silent and he kept the silence. He wanted to make some sort of small talk with her, for comfort, but knew they both needed to be sharp and clear. Focused. Another ladder seemed to materialize out of the mist. Jack decided to take it whether it led to communications or not: he was getting a really creepy vibe being down in such tight quarters. He slung the shotgun over his shoulder, looked back the way he came, then forward, then mounted the ladder as soon as he was sure it was still clear.

The Marine quickly scrambled up the ladder and popped the seal at the top. He crawled into another cramped, back maintenance room. Finishing his exit, he turned, resealed the hatch and stood, unslinging the shotgun. The maintenance room exit led him into another tight corridor, much smaller than those in Main Engineering. Jack sighed and pressed forward. As much as he liked toying with Kyra, he had paid attention to the map. Again, he just loved hearing her voice. He knew enough data to navigate the narrow passageways he was in.

The walls were sparsely sprinkled with doors, some broken open, some locked. Jack poked into all those he passed that weren't locked. They were mostly equipment bays: areas meant to contain data storage and the technology meant to make realistic solar system spanning communications equipment actual and operational. There was more blood on the walls, splattered liberally here, there and everywhere, but no more bodies than the first one.

Jack reached a T junction in the corridor and broke left, remembering the general direction of his location. He froze up as he heard an all too familiar groan. Something lurked ahead of him in the corridor, its back to him. He stared at it, hesitating to squeeze the trigger...it had been twelve and a half months since he had seen his last Zombie. And that wasn't nearly enough time. From the back, the guy looked pretty mangled. His clothing at least. He'd been a technician, clad in a generic blue, torn jumpsuit.

While the cloth was torn and stained with blood, the flesh beneath looked solid, even if it was way too pale and a little decayed. The Zombie held a pistol and released another generic groan. Why did they groan? Jack decided that he was better off not knowing that one, shouldered his piece and squeezed the trigger.

It was just like good old times as he realized that popping Zombie skulls never lost its fun. The Zombie went to its knees like in a movie or something as its head blew apart as if it had a grenade in it. Freshly coagulated blood splattered thickly across the dead walls. The corpse finished collapsing forward to the ground. Jack grinned and kept an ear open for anything else that might be around. Nothing came running or screaming as he knelt and retrieved the pistol from the Zombie's hand, as well as a pair of clips from its belt.

He got up, pressing deeper into the comms center.

"I made contact. Zombie." Jack said.

"Really? Funny. I just blasted a pair of Imps. Looks like everything didn't die." Kyra replied with a hint of grim satisfaction. She missed it just as much as he did. Jack chuckled.

"Yep. Let's do what we do best." he replied.

"Roger that, babe." She punctuated her sentence with another shotgun blast, followed by a loud roar of pain. Jack turned another corner, coming into a somewhat broader corridor where he found himself facing another trio of Zombies. These guys were Marines and were all holding Sig-Cows. And they weren't facing away from him this time. Jack raised his shotgun and fired true, blasting the center Zombie off its feet with a chest shot that ripped its ribcage to shreds. The others roared their replies and raised their weapons.

Jack fell back around the corner and cocked the gun as the gunfire plinked around where he had been. When it ceased, he popped back around and fired. Another head exploded in a shower of blood. Gathering initiative, Jack swiveled his barrel, zeroing the sights on the final abomination and pounded out another shell...as well as another gallon blood. The final Zombie fell and all was silent once more. Wary but motivated, Jack continued forward and knelt. He frisked the Zombies, hunting for anything useful, and took one of their Sig-Cows.

It had been a while since he'd seen the little beauty, as apparently their use had only been specific to Earth. Since then, they'd reintroduced the Raptor SMGs and even started passing out copies of the plasma gun Jack had been so fond of back on Phobos. Apparently, it seemed that the UAC was good for something at least. He collected up a few fifty round clips and pocketed them, then pressed forward. The corridor ended in a set of double doors that had to be pulled open. They revealed a very dark, very bloody secret.

Jack had found the heart of the Communications Center, a large, rounded room with a section of glass that served for the middle of the walls. A ring of windows ran along the outside of the room, giving a view of what lay beyond, further into the Comms Center. Apparent in this core, where they actually broadcasted and received signals was where at least one of the last stands had taken place. Most of the windows were broken and bloody, with strips of skin still hanging on the razor sharp shards of glass. There were pools of blood and there were even a few bodies to complete the scene. Spent shell casings carpeted the metal floor.

The still intact door gave Jack a pause, but he quickly realized what had killed them as he continued his investigation. It looked as if the Marines at the time had fallen back and locked themselves in. They had to have figured it was a good place to hold your own. The fact that only the ringed middle section, about waist high, of the wall was all made of glass was not lost on them. A perfect place to duck down behind to open fire on all sides. And the demons must have been coming from all sides.

Blood surrounded the Communications Core in the passageways outside of it. They could had held their own, at least until the ammunition ran out, if...Jack looked straight up...if not for the ventilation shaft directly above them large enough to hold an Imp or Trites or anything skinny enough to come down like death from above. It must have been a slaughter. The thought turned Jack's stomach despite all he had seen so far. He still hated seeing Humans being killed, or even thinking about it. There had been enough dead already.

The thought sent a shock of cold through him. Humanity was teetering on the edge, the brink of extinction. Maybe not for years, decades even...but they would die, eventually. Unless they managed to regain Earth. Space stations, colonies...environmentally sealed places could only sustain life for so long before there wasn't even a reason worth living for anymore. And it wasn't as if there were plans to terraform Mars...

Jack realized his thoughts were becoming dark and gloomy, the way they always did when Kyra wasn't around to distract him. And even sometimes when she was. She said that was her job, besides loving him: making him happy. Typically that meant keeping him out of his own head. It liked to go to dark places, despite his hatred of said dark places. Jack walked forward and hunted along the broken glass for a suitable way through. He finally found one that was at least not positive to get his hands shredded and climbed through.

Jack let out a startled yelp as a fireball flew past his face and he caught a godforsaken, horribly familiar stench of brimstone, death and blood. He spun on an Imp, which had been hiding in a side corridor, out of view. Jack shouldered the shotgun and fired, blowing the thing's chest to pieces. It stumbled back, still alive somehow, and prepared to wind up for another shot. Jack beat it to the punch and never gave it a chance, working the pump action fast and hard and blasting the rest of the thing's torso to bloody bits.

More things growled in the not so distance. Things ahead of him, waiting for him, lurking in the shadows.

Io Installation had been dead, but now it was coming back to life...

Interesting it looks like you got a talent for writing is this your first story to write?

Not really I have other stories saved that I have typed up this is just one of the many am quite proud of my writing and thanks for the support that you like my writing.

~ Chapter 3 ~

"Alright, I'm in Oxygen Purification." Jack said into his radio.

"Roger that, babe. I'm working my way through barracks and messhall right now. Looks like they had themselves a grand old time here." Kyra replied. Jack kept his shotgun poised for action as he stalked down the passageway. The deeper he penetrated the forsaken Io Installation, the bloodier things got. And some of this blood looked recent, too. He wasn't sure how that fit in, but when the Forces of Hell were involved, little made sense. He'd managed to put down another half dozen Zombies and Imps so far.

Oxygen Purification was a big, ugly place of huge rooms stuff with technology that helped keep humans alive out in the dark, deep vastness that was space. Jack frowned unhappily as he stalked through the machinery laden corridor. Humanity was never meant to live out in space. It took so much effort to keep them alive. Granted, it was a lot easier and maybe a little cheaper than it was a hundred years ago...but it would probably always be this difficult. And now creepy bastards from Hell were making it that much harder.

Jack snapped his shotgun up and fired, blowing the Zombie's skull clean off its neck. The corpse slammed against the wall behind it, splattering the readout screens with coagulated blood. He stooped to gather a few shells and clips, pocketing them, and then pressed on. This was looking easier and easier every minute. Jack again worried in the back of his head that he was getting arrogant in his demon killing abilities.

So why not prove him right? The Universe has a way of doing that. As Jack entered a large room made small by huge pieces of beeping, glowing equipment covered in bloody dust, his combat senses sent a ripple of apprehension through his nervous system and down his spine. He tightened his grip on his shotgun. There was something...darker, about Oxygen Purification. Something more ominous than the Communications Center.

He took it nice and slow, sliding in between the huge pieces of machinery that created unnatural alcoves and tight, narrow passageways. What hid around each corner? Nothing, so far. Except that Zombie-Jack pounded out another round and dropped the corpse, stooping to gather a bit more ammunition. Something sent a peak of paranoia and he glanced over his shoulder, and nearly crapped his pants when he caught a glimpse of...something.

Jack straightened up, tightened his grip and crept forward. Something was stalking him. He chewed on his lip and prepared for something new. When were the bad guys going to run out of brand new bad guys? Jack turned the corner into another tiny corridor in between a pair of processing units. Again, he barely caught a shadowy glimpse of something going down another alcove. It felt like a Specter, but...then again, it didn't.

Sometimes Jack's combat senses played hell with his mind. He stepped it up, made the turn and found himself staring at something...new. And yet not.

"Oh s***." Jack whispered. He was staring at an Imp, at least, that's what it looked like. Only all wrong. It was too tall, and too ghostly. And it looked a hell of a lot meaner.

"s***!" Jack yelled, blasting out a slug shell into the huge thing. The thing roared and shrieked and took a swing at him. It connected, swiping a gash out of his chestplate and sending him stumbling back several feet. Jack kept tracking the thing as he stumbled and slammed out another slug shell. Blood splashed across the equipment and the thing shrieked again. It took a few steps closer to him and he fired a third time.

The thing finally went down. As he tried to catch his breath, lances of sharp pain tore through his chest. He glanced down and realized the bastard had torn through his armor. What use was armor if it didn't do anything? He put his own personal suffering aside for the moment and knelt by this new terror. The Imp was like something out of a nightmare, maybe a new nightmare...

"Hmm..." Jack muttered. "Nightmare Imp..." he whispered.

"What was that, babe?" Kyra asked.

"Gear up for something new, Kyra. It's...an Imp. But bigger, taller, more transparent and a hell of a lot stronger. So be careful." Jack replied.

"Roger that. And logic dictates that if they've upgraded the Imps...they'll upgrade everything else. This mission just became a lot more important."

"Yep. Fun, fun." Jack straightened up and winced in burning pain. He needed to fix up that wound...Shepard brought his shotgun to bear and hurried on. No way in hell he'd patch himself up in Oxygen Purification...although he might have to. He retraced his steps back to the original Zombie corpse and continued on. He navigated the tight, narrow passageways between softly beeping technology and kept an eye out for new Nightmare Imps. Kyra's words echoed ominously in his head. What else new would they throw at them?

Were they going to upgrade everything? Was this unique to the Io Installation? Or were there Nightmare Things wandering around on Earth, too? Imps and Zombies were fun because they were easy to kill. A few shots from a Sig-Cow, a shotgun blast...you had em down. Where was the fun in making an Imp as strong as a Hell Knight? Would they go that far? Of course, it probably would give them the edge to finish off Humanity. Provided they found some way off Earth and into or onto all of the ships, stations and colonies.

Jack could just picture a group of Imps with big, goofy goggles and hammers banging away at a crude, metal space ship. He chuckled and finally reached what looked like it might be something of an exit out of Oxygen Purification. Or at least a more civilized area of it. He hit the access button and suddenly found himself staring down the gaping, dark, stinking maw of a Demon.

"Hello darkness, my old friend." Jack muttered. He stuck the business end of the shotgun in the thing's mouth while it was still roaring, sending a stink like low tide into Jack's face, and squeezed the trigger. Blood splashed everywhere and sent the Demon stumbling with a big, bloody hole in the back of its neck. Jack put another slug shell into its face just to be certain and shoved another few shells into the gun, then cocked it. He proceeded down the next passageway, which was much broader and led into a transitional area between sections.

That meant a broad corridor with doorways punched into the walls, each conveniently labeled. Bathroom, lounge, infirmary, security station...Jack went promptly to the bathroom. He hit the activation button and hunted through the whole length of the area, even making sure to check the stalls. Nobody was home. Did Zombies still have to piss? Did Imps ever take a leak? Did Demons dump everywhere in big, messy piles? Or did they wipe, even? Jack put aside these deeply philosophical issues as he came to stand before a urinal, set down his shotgun, unzipped his fly, (which was conveniently tied into his combat armor), and took a leak. Once his business was done, he zipped back up and retrieved his shotgun.

Next on the list was the Infirmary. It was a beautiful sight.

"Where were you on Phobos?" Jack muttered as he opened the door and stared around the at least half fresh looking medical bay. At least there wasn't any blood on the walls. A few partially rotted corpses occupied some of the examination tables, but nothing Jack couldn't ignore. He walked over to an unoccupied one, took a seat and began pealing his armor off. After making sure the room was clear, of course.

Jack hunted down a small, handheld mirror once he pulled his armor and shirt off and held it up to investigate the severity of the damage.

"Well, good news is I won't need to play seamstress." Jack muttered to himself.

"Ah, damn. That was my seventh fantasy." Kyra's voice whispered into his ear. Jack chuckled.

"Hey, last I check, you owed me a fantasy." he replied, abandoning the mirror and pulling out the medikit he'd swiped from the shuttle. He cracked it open.

"I'm pretty sure you owe me. Last one we did was yours, remember? Do it in a hot tub in a public location." Kyra replied.

"No...that was a dare. There's a difference between fantasy and a dare. So, you owe me a fantasy. I believe that tied up nurse will do fine, next time we get a free hour or two." Jack said, pulling out some wipes and cleaning up around the wound.

"Ooh, fun." Kyra replied. And sounded like she meant it. Jack grinned, one of the reasons he loved her. He poured some antiseptics into the wound, gritting his teeth against the burning pain and then bandaged. Finally feeling a bit better, Jack pulled his torn, bloody shirt back on, then reattached his armor. Feeling better already, he grabbed his shotgun and decided against restocking his medikit due to the fact that this was all old equipment. He realized he might come to regret this later on, but figured it was just better not to get injured.

Jack slipped back out into the corridor and decided to crack open the lounge just for the hell of it. It was a depressingly sad lounge, just like the one back on Mars before all the s*** went down. But at least these guys had Super Turbo Turkey Puncher 2. Which was better than three had been. At least in Jack's opinion. Better graphics be damned, nothing compared to good old fashioned storyline and tight gameplay. He still couldn't get over dumbing down the gameplay and story telling just for stupid noobs and casual gamers that couldn't be bothered to learn how to play a game properly or keep trying when it got too hard.

Jack abandoned the empty lounge and settled on the Security Center. The door had been ripped off and whoever had been hiding inside had been splattered all over the interior. Jack didn't even bother with that one. It looked too trashed.

Preparing for the worst, Jack pressed forward into the next section of the base, ever closer to his destination.

This is an great read, I love Doom as well, I play the Doom RPG all the time on my iPod.

I agree it's been awhile since I played the first Doom on computer the graphics even today are liked even for it's time know that alot of copies of Doom were sold as popular as it is today I would not give up playing it for anything.

~ Chapter 4 ~

Up next was the storage area. It was a lot dimmer than Jack would like. He stared up into the vast warehouse that he had come into from the transitional chamber. The place was huge and a lot scarier than he was accustomed to. Hundreds, thousands, of crates must had occupied the vast warehouse, stacked in precarious piles to the ceiling dozens of feet overhead. The lights above flickered and went out for a second. Jack froze up, didn't take another step, and hoped and prayed that the lights would come back on.

God must've been listening for once. The lights came back on, but not as bright as he would have liked. Jack wished he had packed a flashlight as he continued on in between the cramped confines of the crates. Why was it always narrow passageways and poor lighting? Was that just a side effect of Hell being there? Or at least those that worked for Hell? Did they get paid? How do you pay a demon? Souls? Virgin blood? Well, Jack and Kyra would be no use to them if that was the case. He decided good old fashioned lead checks would be enough.

Jack came around another corner and paused. He found himself standing in a 'doorway' that led into a large, open squarish area. In the middle of all that open space sat a chaingun. It looked beautiful. There was only a little blood on it. Jack chewed on his lip in indecision and stared intently at the gleaming chaingun. There was even a box of ammo for it...he glanced apprehensively at the three other darkened openings along the walls of crates and then stared up at the edges of the tops of the crate walls: these particular piles weren't up the ceiling.

They remained empty, stygian maws of gaping abyssal content, but that didn't mean it would stay that way. All his instincts told him it was a trap, had to be. But...having a chaingun was pretty damned tempting. He was pretty sure he could survive whatever it was they were planning on throwing at him. Holding his breath, he dashed forward into the square and snatched up the chaingun. Just as he assumed, there was a trap. And, as luck would have it, the chaingun was fully loaded and ready for action.

And it needed to be, because suddenly Zombies, Imps and Demons were pouring out of every possible location they could have been hiding. And even a few Jack would swear in a court of law weren't possible to hide in. He pointed the six barrels of the chaingun into the thickest mass of the creatures, a huge amount of roaring, gun toting Zombies prepping to blast his ass into oblivion, and squeezed the trigger.

The chaingun kicked to life with an equally loud roar and began turning the rushing monsters into bloody, chewed up meat. Jack could feel several impacts from bullets that were finding their mark on his armor and a few too close fireballs cut burning grooves through it as well. Once a decent amount of undead bastards had been properly put down, he swung the barrel around in a wide arc, blasting huge holes into a group of Demons that were advancing far too rapidly on him. One fell, two...three...a shotgun blast took him in the gut.

He grunted, stumbled, but didn't feel any burning pain. Just blunt. The armor had held. No one knew how long that would stay and he wasn't willing to bet on it. He turned the blaze on a few other Zombies wielding shotguns and blew their heads clean off. Another pistol shot glanced off his shoulder pad. Jack cursed as the chaingun ran dry. He dropped it, whipped out the shotgun and blasted an Imp away. He continued working the pump action, blowing off Imp and Zombie heads until the thing ran dry.

As luck would have it, the Forces of Hell ran dry at that exact moment as well. The last Imp corpse dropped with a resounding thud and all was silent. Save for the sound of reloading. A sound that Jack had come to love, almost as much as he loved the sound of things dying and bullets flying. He shoved another seven shells into the pump action, scooped down, retrieved and fed the second box of chaingun ammo into big, silver gun and began retrieve spare clips and shells and even a few grenades from the Zombie corpses.

"Jack." Jack jumped at the sudden voice in his head. He knelt and gathered the shotgun shells he'd scattered.

"Yeah, babe?" he replied, keeping an eye out for survivors or wanderers.

"Just ran into a pair of those Nightmare Imps you were talking about." Kyra said.

"So, by your report...I imagined you survived the attack."

"No, honey. I'm being held down by a pair of demonic things." Jack chuckled.

"Hmm, speaking of a pair of things...I don't supposed you've reconsidered that threesome thing?" he asked, finishing his sweep of the battlefield and plunging deeper into the storage area.

"I told you, sweetie, don't really feel like that." Kyra replied.

"Yeah...how about if it was girl on girl and I just watched?" Jack suggested.

"Hmm...she'd have to be hot."

"Well, yeah."

"Ha. You find me a hot, pale, skinny redhead that will go down on me you've got yourself a deal."

"Fun, fun. I'll get right on it when-s***!" Jack narrowly leapt back to avoid a way bigger than normal jaw full of way bigger than normal teeth.

"Honey! You okay!" Kyra's voice sounded distant and faraway as Jack took another step back and fell on his ass. He brought the shotgun up and pounded out a round. Blood flew, but the beast kept coming. He pounded out another round, all the while trying to dig in his heels and push his ass backwards to avoid getting his no-no area chopped off. More blood, but not enough. Not enough damage.

Jack finally brought this new killer thing down with another pair of slug shells. What appeared to be a Nightmare Demon crashed to the floor, nearly crushing his feet.

"I'm here, honey. New thing. Nightmare Demon." Jack reported breathlessly. He scrambled to his feet and shoved a few fresh shells in.

"Affirmative." Jack pressed on, determined to get through the godforsaken warehouse.

"Well, good news is I'm almost to the laboratories. You?" he asked.

"I'm getting through Water Purification. That should lead to the main entrance of the labs. You'll be going in the back way...we should be meeting up in little over fifteen minutes." Kyra replied.

"Alright. See you then." Jack snapped up his shotgun and slugged a shell into another moaning Zombie with its back to him as he turned another corner. These guys were so stupid. He wondered if being dead or isolated for over a year with no Humans to hunt and kill was dulling them. Then again, these new Nightmare creatures seemed to be popping up with increasing frequency. And on that note...Jack ducked a fireball as he rounded another corner and spotted two things: a Nightmare Imp and an elevator.

The Nightmare Imp was standing in between him and the lift. Jack raised the shotgun and pounded out three rounds, only managing to take another gut shot that sent him stumbling, doubled over in pain. Those bastards really could really pack a punch. He caught his breath, then approached the elevator. He kicked the Nightmare corpse for good measure as he walked by, and screamed when it reached out and grabbed at him. Jack shoved the barrel into the thing's face and squeezed the trigger, splattering its brains all over the place.

He hit the button and leveled his shotgun at the doors as they split open. Nothing inside but blood and a corpse. Wonderful company. Jack stepped in and hit the up button. The doors closed for a few seconds, then opened again to reveal a huge corridor that curved out of his line of sight. The walls were lined with openings that led into small, slanted corridors that ended in storerooms. Jack squinted, hesitating.

"This looks familiar..." he murmured.

"What does?" Kyra replied.

"Hmm? Oh. Big corridor curving out of sight, lots of offshoot corridors. Storage area." Jack replied.

"Hmm. I remember a place like that on Deimos. Fun, fun. Looks like the UAC recycles. Be careful, lots of tight spaces there." Kyra advised.

"Roger that." Jack plunged into the vast, flickering corridor and switched to his chaingun. Something tickled his combat senses and he stuck close to the right wall, moving in between several large boxes. The flickering light wasn't doing much for his eyes. Jack hesitated as he thought he heard something not so distantly. A sharp snort. Then something scraping...he licked his lips and pressed on, hurrying a bit. He wanted to know what was waiting just beyond that line of sight around the corner...waiting to kill him.

And then he found it. Back to the wall, he peered around the corner and spotted a Hell Knight guarding the secondary entrance into the labs. And it was looking at him in that way that things with no eyes look at you. It issued a roar and hurled a ball of green plasma at Jack. He dodged behind a large crate and raised the chaingun, opening fire and spraying the huge thing's position with gunfire. It roared as small fountains of blood gushed out from impact wounds. Jack felt the crate shudder under the impact of another blast. He cursed and popped up, sending out another spray of gunfire that caused the Hell Knight to stumble.

"You bastards are getting weak!" Jack shouted as he dodged another ball of plasma. The world abruptly turned sideways as something powerful picked him up and threw him sideways into the nearest wall. His first thought was: barrel. His second thought came out through his mouth:

"Two can play at that game." he growled, groped for his shotgun and tracked the Hell Knight. Which was now on the move. His vision slid back into focus and he spotted the trio of barrels the Hell Knight happened to be walking past...he squeezed the trigger.

The explosion was so violent it knocked him back a few feet and out for a few seconds. But when he came to it was still raining Hell Knight bits and toxic goo. Jack painfully crawled to his feet and hurried forward. He hit the access button on the transitional door and stepped through.

One step closer to figuring out just what the hell was in the Power Core...