Ladies and gentlemen, I was warned. I was warned that the the Doom novels were hilariously fanfic bad. It took a while to acquire copies but by the Bruiser Brothers it was fucking worth it. It’s like reading a train wreck in slow mo, it sort of start off well enough but then the fucking carnage starts.
WARNING: SPOILERS and bad bad fanfic quality writing.
Knee Deep In the Dead
Meet the original doom guy:
Corporal Flynn Taggart, Fox Company, 15th Light Drop Infantry Regiment,United States Marine Corps; 888-23-9912. Everyone calls me Fly, except when they're pissed.
This was my first in text warning that things were going to get shippy.
Of course, there was a lot more to Arlene; she had a brain. Those are in short supply in the service, even in Light Drop,
Imps can ssssnake talk (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SssssnakeTalk). Also zombies are slaves.
Despite my better judgment, I was too intrigued for the moment by the sound of pure evil pleading its case. "Why haven't the others spoken to me?Can you all talk?"
It opened its mouth wide, exposing gums full of squirming cilia and
teeth that rolled and shifted position. "Not... all ssssame, like you-mans not sssame."
The alien crawled on a bit farther. I don't think it was trying to escape; it knew that was impossible. I began to worry that it was leading me toward something. Ahead of me was a greenish stone wall carved in bas relief with a hideous, demonic face. Somehow, I doubted that was an original furnishing in the Phobos base of the Union Aerospace Corporation. "How aren't we the same?" I prodded. I felt in my gut that I was on the verge of something important. "Ssssome . . . fear," it gasped. Its face showed no sign of distress, but I knew from the shudder that wracked its body that it was very near
death. "Othersss sssstrong . . . you ssstrong."
Good Lord--was this alien thing admitting a grudging respect for Fly Taggart? "Few ssstrong, like you ssstrong . . . mosst good for ssslavesss. You-man ssslavesss."
Child zombies too!
It seemed like this could go on forever; but then, out of nowhere, a zombie-child separated itself from the rest of the throng and stumbled toward me.
Jesus! For a second I didn't recognize that she was as dead as the rest. Seeing plenty of zombies recruited from soldiers made it easy to forget the UAC civilians that had been on this base. But somehow I'd never dreamed there would be children here.
Imp fireballs explained:
Then one of them wound up and threw something, some sort of mucus ball that burst into bloodred flames as it left the creature's hand. I dived across a burned zombie, and the flaming phlegm spun me buttocks over boots.
I looked for a weapon, a glint of metal, a tube, something! But no, these demons were actually producing the fire with their bare hands . . .and their aim was deadly.
The demon crawled along the ground with its hands, one leg blown entirely off and the other twisted into a crazy angle. It leaked yellow pus, globules that burst into flame as soon as they dripped off the monster's
body.
They also change the layout of buildings:
The damned monsters bothered me a lot less than the architecture changing on me. I'd never been in Phobos Base before, but I'd talked to guys down on Mars who knew these installations; there was no way this place
hadn't undergone a change as bug-nut crazy as the demonic characters themselves.
And what made that more upsetting than the monsters was the idea that the floor you walked on, the wall you brushed against, the damn place could turn on you and become something else. Like a cartoon world that suddenly
turns everything into rubber . . . except you.
AKA secret hunting:
With no map, I wasn't sure what part of the plant I had reached; then I pushed through another of those trick doors--I would have missed it had I not been sliding along the walls like a mouse--and found the computer room. The lights were blinking on and off, just what I needed for a headache after everything else. When the light was on, it had a sickly blue-green color that didn't do my empty stomach any good.
Rockets explained:
Correction: I had seen one in a UAC weapons demo video when they were trying to sell it to the Pentagon. (We didn't buy it--I wish we had!) Yeah, these were special little babies, all right. But no one from Fox Company had been carrying any rocket launchers. This kind of ordnance was for desert fighting. Where had this rocket come from?
I laughed out loud. Not smart in this situation, but it was becoming a bad habit. If evil demons could be lurking anywhere, and the walls and floors were meta- morphosing into Halloween decorations, why couldn't there be a state-of-the-art tac rocket in a forgotten backpack? Maybe I'd find a tomahawk next.
Doomguy finds a soul sphere:
This one took the cake, and it was nobody's birthday. Picture a perfectly round sphere floating in the air. No strings attached here. A blue sphere, as pure a blue as a perfect spring day back home, with one extra touch: there was a face on this ball. I didn't have very long to appreciate how butt-ugly the mug was because no sooner had I registered all this in the
brain department than the sphere rushed me and smashed into my head before I could even twitch, bursting all over Yours Truly.
I figured I'd had it. For a moment I couldn't breathe with that weird glop all over me, running down the length of my body, reaching the floor so I could conveniently take a header, which I did. My first thought was poison! I could still breathe, though, once my mouth and nose cleared.
With the first swallow, I felt something cold and invigorating rush through my body. Taking a deep breath, the air seemed cleaner and tasted better.
Suddenly, I felt great. If this turned out to be a strange symptom of the alien poison, I could recommend it. Special Endorsements available from Flynn Taggart's coffin . . . reasonable rates. Sitting up, I expected an attack of dizziness; but it never came. The liquid had mostly evaporated by now or maybe absorbed into my body.
With another deep breath--which felt better than ever--I stood up. I hadn't been poisoned--just the opposite, in fact. This crazy floating sphere had been good for me! It was perfectly reasonable to assume that any weird
creature coming through one of the Gates would be bad, and worse, deadly to all things human. Discovering that lovely A.S. had been the most pleasant surprise of the day (yeah, I know day and night are pretty tricky concepts when you're stranded on a space rock the size of an average-sized garbage dump); but the second piece of good news was how this blue sphere had just made me feel like a billion dollars.
Wow they actually remembered that swastika!
Edging up a shallow set of steps, I finally found Arlene's next A.S. and arrow. Grinning, I followed her trail through a room stuffed with computers. Most of these centers had the same basic floor plan; but I was absolutely, one hundred percent unprepared to encounter a freaking swastika! Some sick joker had arranged eight Cray 9000s to form the "crooked
cross" that a certain Austrian corporal had appropriated in the middle of last century. Maybe it was a coincidence, but I doubt it.
Stim-pack!
The only moment when Doc Taggart almost failed his patient was when he--when I--noticed thirty or forty hypodermics, all neatly labeled GENERAL STIMULANT. I don't like needles. Never have.
Doomguy finds the Bruiser Brothers!
On a pair of iron thrones sat the largest, reddest, most horrible demons I could imagine, compared to which the other guys were fit for hosting kiddie shows on Saturday mornings. Giant minotaurs with goat limbs for legs, and curling, savage horns on the top of their flat, broad heads. The chests and arms were carved from pure muscle. Their claws were so vicious that there was no comparison to the puny stuff I'd seen up until now.
Princes of hell. . .
And they were looking directly at me. So far, so bad.
I froze, whimpering like a Cub Scout. All I could think was, Oh Lord, the sisters were right all along!
The hell-prince on the left rose, trumpeting a marrow- freezing roar of discovery.
They pointed their clawed hands at me; but instead of the usual balls of flaming snot, these "demons" fired green energy pulses out of wrist-launchers. I hugged the dirt as the stuff crackled over my head and made every hair on my head stand on end. Not very demonic, but pretty damned deadly!
Doomguy runs around The Shores of Hell ass naked! Hey guys remember that two switch secret in e2m1, the novel has it in e2m2. The following statement are 100% factual as put forth by the novel:
- Doomguy is a chump, not getting to the military base (e1m9), shameful.
- The teleporter at e1m8 acts sort of like time travel for the Terminator movies (no clothes).
- Remember how I mentioned Arlene above?
Oh and Doomguy's secretly had a crush on Arlene : PAGES were devoted to this, he and here no now ass nude on the shores of hell. Ladies and gentlemen where have officially crossed the threshold in to bad fan fiction here, I am not sure if I should laugh or cry.
...didn't know where I was. Instinctively, I reached with my left hand for the machine pistol, the weapon I could most quickly bring into play. My hand slapped bare flesh. There was nothing on my chest but air, I looked down and saw that I was naked. Jesus and Mother Mary. And after all that work gathering shotgun, Sig-Cow, and rocket launcher.
Having lost my clothes during the strange journey didn't bother me, except for the drop in temperature; but I didn't want to turn into dead meat because I didn't have weapons. A naked man is an unarmed man.
Turning a corner, I was greeted by a sight not calculated to reassure a man doubting his sanity. A gigantic skull, half the length of a full-grown man, glared at me through empty sockets. It seemed to be made of brass. I stared into its eyeless sockets before allowing my gaze to lower. The giant, metal skull had a tongue; a curving, snaky, metal tongue.
There was no way this was standard-issue in a UAC refinery!
Of course, the skull's tongue had to be a lever.
"I can't help it," I said, "I'm a born lever-puller."
If I were already dead and in hell, it hardly mattered what would happen if I pulled the lever. I still had my curiosity. And if I were still alive, trying to save humanity from an alien invasion, then I had even more curiosity.
I pulled the lever. It was ice cold against my already chilled flesh. A metallic, grinding noise riveted my attention. It sounded like all the old, abandoned automobile plants in Detroit had started up at once. And with all that sound, one stupid box rose from the ground containing another pair of skull-tongue switches! I pulled the next one in line and heard a
click from the wall directly in front of me.
Moving to investigate, I saw a crack of light in the wall, then another and another until the yellow lines had formed a perfect square. Secret doors were losing their appeal for me. If this one were going to improve my opinion, then it had better offer something better than the usual collection of monsters. I shoved open the door with one mighty heave.
A bloody, naked figure held a gun pointed directly at my face. By reflex, I shoved my own piece right between its eyes.
"DROP THE GUN!"
"DROP THE FREAKIN' GUN!"
"PUT IT DOWN, I SWEAR TO GOD I'LL BLOW YOUR FOOL HEAD--"
"--WHERE I CAN SEE THEM, PUT YOUR HANDS UP--"
"--AND DON'T MOVE OR--"
"--GROUND! ON THE GROUND, MOVE!"
Her eyes. Her eyes were alive. And she spoke . . . words. By now we both stood, each pistol pressed against the other's face, eyes wide with fear, wonder, and hope-- Was it? Could it be? Could she be?--shouting at the top of our voices in pain, rage, and desperate need.
My hammer was cocked, but my finger outside the trigger guard; I had just begun to suspect, just begun . . .
Something clicked in my brain. The penny dropped. I recognized the bloody, disheveled, pallid creature. A dream come true--if true--in a world that specialized in nightmares. Panting before my face, watching warily, ready to fire off half
the magazine if necessary, stood the reason I had come this far and hadn't yet given up.
I wanted to say her name, but I couldn't. We were each locked in a perimeter of silence, holding a gun against each other's face, doubts and paranoia having the only voice. One of us would have to say something.
She went first. "Drop the friggin' gun!" The command came from a lifetime of giving not an inch or trusting without two forms of picture ID ... and that had been back on Earth! She'd worked hard, her every friendship based on a sense of honor. She'd kicked her way onto the Mars mission. And this is what she'd found.
But she'd survived. And I'd survived. She'd kept me alive with every A.S. and arrow; and maybe her fantasy that I'd come after her kept her alive--why else use our private code, a link between just the two of us?
But now there was no room for sentiment, only for certainty.
"You are a dead man if you do not drop the freaking gun now."
Oops. My arm and hand had been through too much to even consider it. My body was wired for instant responses. The same as her body if she were still the old Arlene. The only reason I hadn't blown her away automatically was the time spent praying she was alive, and a willingness to take a risk right now that she wasn't really a zombie. No zombie had ever
spoken before. And somehow, covered with mud and gore, she looked too damned bad to be a zombie. Only the living could look that fried!
"Arlene, your ass is mine," I replied. "I've had the drop on you since I opened the damned door."
Zombies didn't talk that way, either. They didn't tease or smile a moment later when awareness crept across a human face. She returned that smile, and I knew everything would be all right. "Your finger wasn't even on the trigger, big guy. I'd have blown you away before you fumbled around and found it." She was wounded, disheveled, filthy, terrified, naked . . . and totally, totally alive.
"You're alive!" I shouted.
"No, really?" she shouted back.
We slowly lowered our weapons simultaneously, mirror images of each other. Grinning.
Staring me up and down, she commented, "Nice fashion statement." I'd forgotten I was buck naked. My damned reflexes insisted on embarrassing me, and I reflexively covered myself.
Well, I guess it was one more proof I was still fully human. I doubt that zombies are modest. "Turn your back, for Christ's sake," I implored. "I will not" she answered, eyes roving where they shouldn't. "You're the first decent thing I've seen since this creep show began."
If we kept this up, maybe things would get so bloody normal that the monsters would simply pack their suitcases and leave. Arlene could dish out a hard time when she wanted. I decided to get dressed, and finally I noticed the corpses and stripped one. She reached out a hand. "No, Fly; don't put those on yet. Please?"
My right foot was halfway into a boot far too small to fit. It stretched, conforming to the size of my foot: one size truly fits all. Arlene turned as red as the crimson wall. "Jesus, I'm sorry, Fly. You're my buddy; I shouldn't have made you uncomfortable. Forgive me?"
I finished dressing. It didn't take long. Now it was my turn to look her over, which I did with a lot more subtlety than she did with me. I kept my eyes moving where she'd let hers stop in embarrassing places. God, she looked good. All the dirt and blood almost gave her the appearance of being dressed in a weirdly hip-punk outfit. Her slender waist, tight, firm
thighs, medium bust, and long arms made me think of more than the undeniable fact that she had the body of the ideal orbital pilot--her ultimate goal when she'd earned enough in service to take a hiatus, get a degree, and take a commission. Space travel needed the occasional boost in morale.
She finally got the idea. There were plenty of corpses around with uniforms waiting to be stripped. I watched her from the corner of my eye as she followed my example. The best aspect of these form-fitting uniforms was the way they conformed to every contour of the human body. She looked just as good in clothes.
I tried to think of something appropriate to say, then grunted, punching her shoulder middling hard. "Now I forgive you," I said with a grin. The grin didn't last long. I'd completely forgotten about the bullet wound in my shoulder. The pain finally caught up with me as the adrenaline wore off.