The following story is a work of fiction. Apart from being based on Doom 3,
the work itself has no ties to id Software whatsoever.
No parts of the story should be used without consent.

by Nick P.

Special thanks to Tim Corwin for helping with the story and of course, Paul!

By the time we ran out of ammo, we were fairly close to the power generators and their operating room. Not much to describe, besides dark corridors and another zombie that got a face-full of chainsaw. It had a pistol full of ammo. When I unloaded its clips, I felt like I was celebrating a little Christmas.

            Dead zombies don’t smell like gingerbread cookies. And I don’t think that’s mistletoe hanging from the ceiling. In fact, it was a zombie ear.

            How did it get there?

            Death by chainsaw is a bit… messy.

            On our way to the power generators, we also passed by a bathroom. There were some crunching sounds coming from inside it. I don’t want to know. We didn’t stick around long enough to find out.

            And after another stupid zombie wandered into the bathroom behind us, we snuck around until the large metal doors to the power generator operations room were in front of us. Now, maybe the engineers to this place weren’t the brightest in the world, putting doors that require electrical power as the entrance to the control room. Still, they had enough grooves in their brains to put a manual override on the door, in case of emergency.

            This, I think, qualified as an emergency.

            Manual override involved smashing through a glass cover and pushing a large button that released the locks. From there, it was all muscle-power.

            Tim did this and pulled the door open.

            We walked inside and I shut the door behind us.

            In front of us lay a series of computer monitors and enough buttons and switches to drive a NASA engineer insane. Imagine what it does to the layman.

            Tim however seemed to more or less know his way around.

            “Hmmm,” he said, lowering himself into the seat. “System is ready, it says.”

            “Good, cause so am I.”

            “You know what that means? There is power. It seems that our power cells have synthesised enough power to render everything operational again. The power is just sitting there, waiting to be used, to be activated.”

            “So what happened before that?”

            “I don’t know, this computer must keep a log somewhere.” Tim said as he ensued in scouring the computer files.

            After what seemed thousands of directories with four-letter, syllable-less names, Tim announced that he might have found something. “There are several log directories. I have to find the one that contains all of them.”

            “Oh?” I said.

            “The computer describes all operations in separate log files that are eventually compiled into a single copy that is meant to be viewed. The other log files are encoded and aren’t meant to be read.”

            “Uh-huh.”

            “I think this is it,” he said as a new window came up.

            The window read: FORMAT UNRECOGNISABLE.

            “Wrong one, this must be it.”

            A larger window came up that read:

LOG File- Personnel Formatted Version

            “Voila, as the French say,” Tim said.

Hmmm, a military person that appreciates the French? Nah, impossible.

           Upon first examination, it was as if the log file was kept in old English: the words were recognisable, though hardly so. There were many other symbols and letters thrown in.

            “I don’t think a computer would ever win a Nobel Prize for literature, eh?”

            “Look at this,” said Tim, pointing to a part of the screen.

1845:48 Main computers accessed > *password swap

% Insufficient Data #

All power re-routed to power generator 4

>Area of access = Sector 6.

            “And this means what?” I asked.

            “Someone re-routed all of the power, from all the generators to a single location.”

            “Is that possible? I mean, aren’t nearly all of the emergency generators in this place totally separate?”

            “Apparently not; all of the power generators on our settlement were emptied into a single location, this location being Sector 6.” Tim shook his head.

            I thought about this for a while. “Sector 6— That’s those black, unmarked buildings, the secretive ones. Why did they need all of that power, though? Half of it is enough to feed an ion engine so that it reaches Pluto and back 10 times. And how does this relate to these… zombies and stuff. It makes no sense. Is there any other part of the log book of interest?”

            “No,” said Tim. “The power outage was then. Even the emergency generators that run this room were emptied so all information after that point was lost. This is unusual as well.”

            “Now what?”

            “We turn the power back on. After the power outage, the synthesising machines began to create electricity, and they have been doing so for the last 18 hours. They are simply waiting to be activated again.”

            “I see.”

            After that, nothing interesting happened. Tim worked, and worked, and worked. And after that, he worked some more. Following endless menus, programs, and modules, the room lit up, as did the rest of the facility.

            “And there was light,” said Tim with self-satisfaction.

            “Great,” I said. “Now we can open those big hangar doors fly away from this hell!”

            “Yeah!” Tim answered enthusiastically. “And then we go back to Earth, tell what happened, and then get reassigned to some new Marines battalion.”

            “Err, yeah. But I think I’d like to take a piss first.”

            “Amen to that!”

            “So,” I said. “Do we use the bathroom like civilised people, or do we rust the steel walls of this place.”

           Tim shrugged. “Let’s get going towards the landing pad. If we find a bathroom along the way, great. If we find a wall, even better.”

            I laughed. “Ok.”

            With a groan, I pushed the door open and was pleased to see light; Tim had successfully restored all power.

            We headed along the corridor until we came to a stop by the entrance of the bathroom I had seen earlier.

            Hmmm, I had heard some strange sounds from inside. Then again, you can hear all kinds of stuff in bathrooms even when there aren’t any zombies strolling around.

            When nature calls, I answer.

            “So?”

            Tim examined the door to the lavatory. “Alright, but we’re gonna take turns doing this. I need someone to hold my chainsaw.”

            “Ok. Here, let me take care of business first.” I pushed the door and walked inside.

            And at that moment, I knew that I wasn’t gonna relieve myself in that bathroom.

            Why?

            The light was flickering, giving me an uneasy feel. The air was heavy and some strange, disgusting smell was driving my odour receptors wild. It was a rotten fragrance, like meat that has spent too much time in sunlight… Like $ 1.99 perfume…

            And then my eyes fell to the centre of the bathroom.

            There were bloody streaks everywhere, leading to the corpse of a zombie. In the dim, flickering light, I could barely make out its open stomach and entrails. Towering over the zombie was something… large. From my angle, I could just see a pair of mechanical hindquarters that dipped down as the strange monstrosity feasted upon the zombie’s flesh.

            It was a monster on four legs, like a very large dog. Very large, the top ridge of its exposed spine must’ve come up to my chest. And I’m not a very short person, either. So I suppose it’s better to describe it as a bull.

            Fortunately I couldn’t see its mug.

            Let’s leave it at that.

            I inched out of the bathroom and gently shut the door behind me.

            Tim must’ve not seen my pale face. “Hold my chainsaw,” he said.

            “I wouldn’t go in there without it,” I said. “In fact, I wouldn’t go in there at all.”

            “Why?”

            Tim and I began to briskly walk away.

            “There is some… monster there. Huge, four-legged… I didn’t see it in its entirety, thank god.”

            Tim didn’t question me any further, he understood.

            “This is an interesting development. Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse… I can’t even take a normal piss!” Tim seemed rather outraged.

            “It’s Murphology, my friend.”

            “What?”

            “You know, Murphy’s laws? Here is one that applies to our situation: The number of zombies we encounter is inversely proportional to the quantity of our ammunition.”

            Tim nodded. “I see. Well, at least we have power now.”

            “Every solution breeds new problems,” I said wisely.

            In our hurry, we almost tripped over a damn spider.

            A gigantic metre-long spider, that is. With a human head for a body.

            Now, whatever demented mind engineered this thing must’ve been very pissed off when one of its workers mounted the head upside down.

            The thing roared, revealing its fangs.

            Tim and I backed away.

“Here’s some more Murphology for you: If you perceive that there are four possible things that can get in our way, then a fifth thing will promptly develop. Who would’ve thought we’d come across something like this?”

            And then, from the ceiling dropped two more spideresque entities, spiralling downward on their webs until their 8 legs came in contact with the steel decks. With the appropriate clang, of course.

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