Author's Notes: Blizrun, I've corrected the mistake about Doom being right-handed. Sure it's small, but it's better to stick onto as much "real" (i.e. canon) details as possible. I also request your permission to use the excellent weapon-sound words (*Blam!* *Shunk-Chunk*) from your story. They're just so good, I can't think of anything better (the pitiful "bang" for every single firearm in Doom's arsenal starts to be annoying). Plz? And about the garg… what are you talking about? I never said it was a gargantua there! Why, it could be… sigh… am I so obvious? Yes, it's garg.
Well, onto the next chapter (meet… garg…).
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CHAPTER 4
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"Shit…." Was all Doom managed to murmur, as the single red eye of the unfamiliar monster continued to stare at him.
This very big fellow was as tall as a Cyberdemon, but looked twice as massive. The huge head with the wicked-looking sharp teeth, and sinister eye, added to the horrible image of the cyclops.
Moving as slowly as he could afford, Doom started to back out of the alley, always watching for the face and the unblinking eye of the creature.
He was almost out, when a huge roar, sounding like a thousand horns blowing, shook the alley, causing some rubble to go down from the old buildings walls.
The red eye suddenly started to glow a lot brighter, casting a ghostly red light onto the dirty cement.
This reminded Doom of the horrible nightmare he was having only minutes ago. He started to hope that this wasn't a bad sign.
Soon, he found out that indeed it was.
With another deafening roar, the creature suddenly lunged forward.
"Crap!" squealed Doom like a little frightened girl. That behavior was pretty brave though, considering the kind of gargantuan monstrosity that was facing him. Any other person in his place would've probably crap his pants on the spot.
There was never born a Cyberdemon who could run as quickly as this thing. Like a gargantuan crossbreed of a tank and a speeding train, the bluish green thing thundered towards the frozen Doom, causing garbage containers the size of pickup trucks that stood on its way to fly like they were weightless.
Finally, the psychological charm that held Doom in place broke, and he started to sprint down the much wider street onto which the alley exited, trying to put some distance between him and the living nightmare behind.
He should've known better.
Once it gained some open ground, the creature turned out to be even quicker. With huge ground-rumbling steps it followed Doom, who was forced to enter another alley. This time, he picked an even narrower alley, so the creature could not follow him there. Doom could feel it approaching, the ground shakes echoing through his own body and combat suit.
Quickly exiting to the other street, he continued to run.
He ran and ran, but again was surprised when in a green flash, a brown Buggy appeared, charging up a green lightning bolt the second it spotted Doom.
Of course, Doom could use the time it took the Buggy to charge-up in any way he liked…
*BANG*
Doom felt the comforting recoil of the shotgun against his body. This kind of feeling always gave him an utter feeling of security, at least when he was facing something more conventional, something that he could still understand.
The Buggy was not impressed by Doom's weapon, and he demonstrated it by sending an electricity bolt worth of thousands of volts at his opponent.
*WABZZZZ*
*HUMPH!*
Doom was caught off guard. The bolt impacted his stomach, sending him, tumbling, three meters back.
Fortunately, his combat suit was made of an isolator plastic material. It saved Doom from certain death, but the bolt was powerful enough to somewhat hurt him nevertheless.
Now he was really pissed off.
He jumped to his feet, and set off at a charge towards the creature, screaming.
The Buggy was not intimidated by this pathetic human. He was occupied with charging up his next electrical attack.
Doom, of course, knew ahead of time that the Buggy is doomed.
*BANG!*
The shotgun blasted again, this time aimed more carefully by its owner, to the Buggy's head. That, coped with the now closer distance between the two, assured the quick and certain death of the bugger, as it's head exploded like a melon, sending green liquid splashing all over the place.
All this was accompanied by a powerful roar.
The huge creature found him again.
"Leave me alone, dammit!" Doom roared in return. Of course, his pitiful barking was nowhere as powerful and impressive as the monster's one.
The creature went quiet, almost seeming puzzled.
Then it lifted its huge left foot, and stomped down hard on the ground. Cement debris flew to multiple directions, causing small impact craters in nearby walls and objects.
Doom almost lost his balance, as the old beaten road shook, protesting against the violent treatment.
But that was merely the edge of the iceberg.
A red line of superheated matter, originating from the cyclops foot, started to advance toward Doom at high subsonic speed.
That left Doom with slightly less than two seconds to dodge the thing, which he marvelously did. The edge of the strange line slightly bruised him though, leaving angry black marks on his otherwise green suit.
In return, Doom released a barrage of shells in the creature's direction.
Bad idea.
The creature's eye glowed brighter, quietly sneering at Doom.
These little lead shells were less than nothing to this walking tank, and Doom realized this very quickly as the creature started to run toward him yet again, causing the ground to shake… yet again.
This time, Doom was going to stay and fight. Doom could run forever, but he couldn't hide – he has already learned that the creature could find him anywhere, perhaps by scent or some other means.
Doom watched the creature as it grew larger, towering above him, and wondered if it was simply going to run over him and squash him like an insect.
It didn't.
Doom jumped neatly to the side, making a pretty clumsy flip though, as two bright jets of flames unexpectedly erupted from the creature's palmless arm tips.
They hit the road where Doom was a second ago, and after the creature stopped spraying them and turned to face Doom, he could see that the road was now glowing red-hot, and slightly shifting like it was no longer entirely solid.
Those jets must be damn hot!
No time to shoot! Doom took off running, fully knowing that this thing, while still not measuring to the terrible Cyberdemon (in Doom's opinion, at least), was too powerful for him to down with his present arsenal of weapons.
(out-of-story note: there's your answer to whether he has rockets, Blizrun!)
Yes, he planned to fight at first. But the situation was pretty much hopeless anyway
Now, how is he going to loose this huge thing with overgrown Bunsen burners off his tail?
Hearing a high-pitched wine behind him, Doom dodged another superheated red line and continued to run, zigzagging between alleys.
But he could always feel the ground shaking stronger and stronger each time he slowed down even a bit. Wasn't there any way to run? What the heck does this thing want from him, can't it pick unto somebody else?
The chase went on and on for quite some time.
Each time Doom stopped to rest, panting, he would feel the creature getting closer and closer to him. In contrast with Doom, it apparently never got tired.
Once in a while a creature materialized nearby, and Doom was forced to take it out before the monster chasing him could catch-up. All the while he never saw a single Demon – only electricity-shooting Buggies and some acid spitters. It was as if they knew about the powerful hostile being roaming around, and stayed clear from the area.
As the chase continued, the grey, unkempt buildings got taller and stood closer and closer to each other. He was entering deeper into the central part of the city.
It was easier to confuse his tracks here, but the creature was never too far behind, and generally kept up the pace with Doom.
And there came the point, after more than an hour, that Doom felt he could not go on much longer.
After entering yet another alley, he chose to approach a small metal door in the building's wall instead of getting out on the other side.
The door was locked, but the lock was rusty and barely hanging unto its place after all the years. Doom broke it with a kick with no problems.
He entered the building.
For one thing, it was dark. Near-total darkness. That was part of the reason Doom never slept inside abandoned buildings, preferring to sleep in open alleys instead (except for especially bad weather) – if a Demon would find him in the darkness, Doom would find himself at a huge disadvantage, since his night-vision goggles stopped working almost two years ago now, and all Demons (even infested humans – Zombies) had the natural ability to see, or at least find their way, in the dark.
There were other reasons for which he chose alleys – confined space was one of them, danger of the building collapsing was another. All this he learnt after several very narrow escapes from buildings at night.
But this time he entered a 10-floor big hotel, in hopes that the creature would either lose his tracks inside the cement walls, or find itself unable to bring down or breach such a big building and will leave.
Either way, Doom's legs were very soar, and combined with a sharp pain in the stomach convinced him that he has to find an alternative to running.
From what little he could see, he was in what appeared to be a former kitchen, with rotten remains of food littering the floor. The sight wasn't exactly encouraging his appetite, and he was really thankful that he still had his trustful helmet, that was blocking almost all of the smell.
He quickly found the exit to the big dinner room (hardly in a better condition than the kitchen), and from there to the lobby and the stairs going up.
He climbed the stairs very carefully, fearing a collapse, but his luck was apparently still with him, as he slowly kept climbing without any consequence.
When he first entered the lobby the ground shakes got weaker, like they were blocked by the building's foundation, but now Doom felt them increasing.
He concluded that the creature must be right outside the building.
A quiet moan – it was actually a muffled roar coming from the outside – confirmed his deduction.
The building started to shake slightly, and Doom was forced to grab the safety rails in the darkness. The rails shrieked and bent slightly in protest, but fortunately held.
The shaking stopped and Doom started climbing again, faster than before.
After a couple of minutes he popped his head out of a hatch on the roof.
Seeing nothing threatening, Doom pulled himself out of the hatch and stood, cleaning the white dust off of his suit.
He listened.
Nothing.
The ground was still.
No roars.
That kind of stillness usually meant something was going to surprise him from behind, and he quickly spun around in search for a target, but nothing appeared here to harass him.
He went over to the edge of the roof, just in time to see the massive green back of the creature, rounding a far corner, approximately half-a-mile from his current position.
He was finally gone.
Doom took a moment to look around.
While he wasn't standing at a particularly high spot, the sight was very much different than from the ground level.
Instead of giant concrete tombs towering above him, Doom now saw the city exactly like he saw it last time he was standing at a high spot, months ago.
Except for the occasional empty spot were a building or two collapsed, the city looked almost undamaged. But it was only a corpse, a dead remains of the city it used to be. The buildings still stood high and proud, challenging mother nature in their noble posture. But not a flicker of light was to be seen. In the days before the invasion, when there was a major power outage, some lights could still be clearly and easily seen – cars passing by, police and fire department search-lights, trying to locate survivors in troubled buildings. But now, it was dark. The huge blocks of buildings stood on their foundation in a citywide pool of shadow. Like in a colossal, global-scaled graveyard. Actually, Los-Angeles in its current state was not that far from being exactly that. Also, the lack of any noise of any kind reminded Doom yet again of the great loss of humanity. He watched the city quietly, watched the buildings standing oblivious to the catastrophe, watched the even more oblivious stars (that could be hardly seen due to something the Demons done with the atmosphere) mocking him, all alone, left behind along with these buildings.
Doom turned his gaze away from the stars, and from the city.
He went to the hatch climbed down and almost closed it, when something attracted his attention.
A flash of orange lights, somewhere between the skyscrapers.
He pulled himself back to the roof, and watched a swarm of orange dots getting larger.
Lost Souls.
Again.
They were apparently approaching his position, and FAST!
He dived in and closed the hatch. He pressed his ear onto the cold metal of the hatch, attempting to listen to the screeches of the living skulls.
According to the sound of it, they flew by right above the roof.
He opened the hatch again, and saw them streaking in the opposite direction from where they arrived from.
Their destination was apparently a series of yellow and green flashes, somewhere in a familiar place down there, several miles away…
Doom approached the edge of the roof, and bent down to try to see better.
In the frequent flashes of light he was able to barely recognize that street.
The warehouse!
The skulls arrived to their destination, and the flashes started again, even brighter this time.
Doom continued to watch.
It took some time until the flashes started to be rarer and rarer, until the street was dark again. Sunrise was not too far away now. It was a good time to make the raid!
Doom ran toward the hatch and hurried down the stairs.
He has to make it to the warehouse before another wave of enemies appears!
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Doom was eying the target warehouse and the adjacent street.
Except for the plentiful monstrous corpses, there was also a modest number of Imps present.
They were patrolling the area in circular patterns that centered, of course, on the warehouse.
Although the defenses seemed to be light, Doom was very confident that they have plentiful and easily available reinforcements guarding their backs. After all, they had some serious enemy hordes to repel…
And Doom was not going to take his chances in a direct assault…
Moving along the street, he was racing from cover to cover as quietly as he could – what wasn't much considering his strictly assault-oriented training and the combat boots on his feet...
The occasional rubble was his only friend in this risky situation – the Demons could see into shadows and similar hideouts a lot better than Doom himself could.
Fortunately, the Imps were obviously a little staggered after the latest attack, and Doom could take advantage of that to pass between patrols, unnoticed.
A last thrust, and he made it to the warehouse – the door he noted earlier on the sidewall wasn't locked, and easily opened and allowed him to step into the big closed space inside.
The place probably contained some stuff and crates in the past, but currently it stood completely empty. The Demons must've purposefully thrown everything out, to make place for this something they are currently trying to defend.
Doom looked around the dark place, and spotted something sitting right in the middle of the room.
It looked like… a ring? And there was some kind of heavy machinery attached to it with spaghetti-like colorful wires.
He approached carefully to the thing, Shotgun in hand, ready for anything that might jump from the shadows.
But nothing happened.
As he got really close to the ring, he noticed a faint green shimmering inside it.
He extended his hand toward it, and felt static electricity tickling his hairs.
Then, something very unexpected – or rather expected? – happened.
In a myriad green flashes, countless Demons appeared in the room with Doom.
Doom felt a tingle of panic, but relaxed a bit when he saw most of them were storming out of the warehouse main doors, undoubtedly here to repel a new enemy attack.
But some of them turned to Doom.
Only some of them. Not more than a hundred, including a few really nasty ones, such as Mancubuses…
Without much thought, Doom jumped head first toward the ring.
He has already realized it was some kind of portal, although it's purpose and importance remained a bit unclear.
Anyway, it was his only option to survive…
Doom passed through the flickering field, that sent static electricity through his suit, and smacked on the floor on the other side, right in front of a Hell Knight.
"It didn't work!" was his first and last thought when he saw the hellish goat lifting its paw above his head.
The paw smacked into the floor where Doom lied a second ago.
Doom was not there.
He was someplace else, somewhere very far from LA…
Author's Note: What do you think? Liked that? Care for more? Review!