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!

Those imps were scary, the zombies were good for a few scares, but these… these spiders were just plain freaky.

            We stared at the unearthly arthropods for a few seconds, and then Tim revved his chainsaw. Meanwhile, I drew my pistol and quickly checked where I stood ammunition-wise. 17 shots.

            Tim lunged, shoving the spinning chainsaw teeth straight into the first spider’s face. He did this whilst the second spider jumped towards him. With the reflexes of a lemur, I trained my pistol on the 8-legged bundle of joy as it skittered across the floor.

            BLAM! It lost an eye and a whole lot of brain cells. I think I got its attention.

            It turned on me as I fired 3 more shots at it. Just as its face began to strongly resemble a freshly prepared lasagne, it fell to its side, its legs limp.

            Unfortunately, I had no time to examine its delightfully modified façade because the third spider was upon me.

            Let me tell you, those teeth don’t simply look painful. They are.

            The damn thing was on my chest, its teeth wildly ripping into whatever they caught. For a while I flailed at it as I stumbled backwards. And then a little light bulb lit up and I poked the spider-thing in the eyes.

            Freaky as it was, it felt pain. It jumped backwards and began to wander about, blind. This was my opportunity to put it out of its misery.

            Soon, there was nothing but spider goo all over the floor.

            Tim was fine, though a mess.

            “We need to get you a new weapon,” I said.

            Tim looked at me. “And we need to get you a medikit.”

            I looked down and realised I was bleeding where the monster had jumped and teared at me.

            It was like one of those old cartoons. Only after I saw the wound did I feel the pain. I felt dizzy. How much blood had I lost?

            Tim put a hand over my shoulder and helped me walk. Thank god, or I would’ve gotten a face-full of steel.

            “Our new priority is to get you fixed-up,” said Tim

            Right.

            But who said it was gonna be easy?

            As soon as we came round a corner, we were treated to a smelly, filthy zombie. Tim let me drop to the ground and then ‘applied’ his chainsaw. The zombie continued to wander around without a head and grabbed Tim.

            Tim does not like to be grabbed, let alone by zombies. Soon, the zombie was reduced to only a pair of legs. Meanwhile, its severed, headless torso began to inch towards me.

            “Umm, Tim!” I screamed.

            He came around and dug his chainsaw into the monster’s back.

            I think that took care of it.

            Problem is, the chainsaw sputtered and died.

            “No fuel,” murmured Tim.

            He dropped the chainsaw, knowing that it was useless, and helped me up. I handed him my pistol. “12 shots,” I said. “Make them count.”

            Tim nodded, and we walked away.

*          *          *

It felt nice to sit down, even though the steel decks were ice-cold. This didn’t bother me much; I always loved cold weather. And boy, have I always fought over the thermostat. At any point above 25 degrees, I feel as if I will pop. Or ensue in the 20^th century phenomenon called ‘Spontaneous Human Combustion’.

            Tim had busied himself into opening a small storage compartment on the wall opposite of me. There were medikits inside, precisely what we sought. However, the wall panel did not want to come off. One end finally came free, but by then, Tim had already seriously bruised his hands in frustration.

            And then the panel flew out and out rushed a torrent of medikits and MREs. To our surprise, along with them came a human body.

            “Get away!” It screamed and raised some sort of weapon. It fired, rapid machine-gun fire. Tim jumped to the side and I crawled away.

            “Damn monsters, get away from me!” The figure, I could now see that it was an ageing man, stood up and slowly backed away, still holding his weapon.

            “Calm down,” I said. I could see he wasn’t a zombie, though his weathered face might as well have been so. “There’s nothing wrong with us. We’re fine, as I see you are.”

            The man wavered.

            “You’re… you’re human?”

            “Yes,” answered Tim as he walked towards the man. This made the guy nervous, so he raised his gun again.

            “Don’t move!”

            Tim rolled his eyes.

            “Prove that you’re human,” said the man.

            “Tim, let me handle this,” I spoke. “Do I have fangs, blood around my mouth? Do I roar and chase you? Don’t I articulate and speak normally? Put the gun down, it’s ok. I’m happy to see another normal person.”

            The man slowly lowered his gun. “Who are you?”

            “Staff Sergeant Tim Davis.”

            “Corporal Nik Taggart.”

            The guy nodded. “I see. I’m Frederick Harrison.”

            “Can I call you Fred?” I asked.

            “No.”

            “What about Harry?”

            “No.”

            Tim broke our interesting conversation. “Alright then, Mr. Harrison. What are you? What is your job here?”

            “Me, I’m a scientist.”

            “What exactly do you do?”

            He sighed. “I’m afraid that’s classified,” he answered, his voice a little shrill.

            Tim walked forward, somewhat incensed. “Look around you, nothing is classified anymore. Now, you’re a scientist. Can you tell us what the hell is going on in this place? How’d it happen?”

“Not now,” he said. “We’re out in the open. Let’s find a secure spot first.”

Tim nodded, picked up several spare Medikits, and led the way until we found a sort of closet. I decided to leave the stench in the air uncommented.

We walked in, and Tim locked the door.

“Alright, tell us what you know.”

“Well,” said the scientist, still somewhat reluctantly. “We’ve been doing some experiments, trying to create portals from one place to another. It would be so useful: no more would we need to wait months for supplies from Earth; they could be here instantly. You would be able to visit your families on Earth. See, it’s a way to almost instantly get from point A to point B regardless of the distance in between. You’re simply creating a doorway from one place to another. We have had many successful attempts on Earth. So now we are… Or we were trying to create a portal to Earth all the way from Mars and to see if we could carry things.

“This is not an easy task, of course. You are essentially cutting a tunnel through space-time, a tunnel to connect the portal on Earth and the portal on Mars. We tried and tried, but always came short on power. So we drew power from more and more power generators, hoping to achieve the proper power requirement.”

Tim and I looked at each other.

“And then something happened. The tunnel never reached Earth. I don’t know what it reached, but these things came out. Spirits, I’d call them.”

I accidentally snorted. “Spirits?”

“Skull-like, translucent. And they attacked us, entered my fellow scientists’ bodies and regained control. Of course, I saw little of this. As soon as I saw that first skull push its way out the doorway and into our head scientist, I ran. But it was too late. As more and more of these things came out of the portal, more and more power was used, and this power usage grew exponentially. Soon, there was no power left and everything turned off. But the portal remained open, driven on by some unseen hegemony. I saw it myself as I came back later, hoping to find someone.

“Everyone was gone. And then I ran into my first zombie, as you call them. I ran again. I found this,” he said, motioning to his machine gun. “And then I hid, where you found me.”

“So you did this?” I asked, slightly infuriated. “You made these things come, you dirty bastard.” I also threw in some more words and combinations of my own.

The guy simply blinked at me.

“I’m gonna smack you so hard, the penguins on the South Pole are gonna shriek in pain!”

Tim grabbed my hand.

“What’s done is done,” he said as some ancient Chinese monk would recite to his apprentices.

I nodded. It’s not like I was actually gonna hit the guy. It’s just that I’ve been waiting for so long to have an opportunity to use my penguin gag.

“So, you still didn’t explain what we’re up against.”

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Any ideas or theories?”

“I think,” Frederick recited slowly. “I think we opened a portal to Hell.”

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