Lizzie had her back pressed to the only thing keeping her from being seen by the Summoner: a wide concrete pillar holding up the mezzanine deck of the shopping mall through which she was currently tracking her lovable but utterly moronic dog, Charlie.
When Vincent had returned in his camouflage clothing from fixing an external air vent, Charlie had darted out the bunker door and up the cleverly concealed ramp. Before she'd realized it, she had darted out the door and up the cleverly concealed ramp. The bunker had proven so safe that they'd gotten careless about letting Charlie run around in the entrance areas. That carelessness would now get him killed.
Being out here right after the radio had clearly stated a Gore Nest had opened in the area was a stupid, stupid thing to do because Charlie was completely deaf and couldn't hear her calling for him even if there weren't homicidal monsters out here. Even more stupid - royally, monumentally, 'I should get a Darwin Award for this' kind of stupidity - was the decision to leave the bunker in the first place.
A long time ago she'd seen the cult classic I Am Legend, and scoffed along with the rest of the audience at what an idiot Will Smith's character was for following his runaway German Shepherd into a zombie-infested building when it would just get them both killed. Then she had found Charlie at the pound, and the goofy little bundle of cheer and idiocy had changed all that.
So here she was, praying that the thing would pass by without noticing her, and thanking God that she'd gone to the bathroom shortly before Charlie's daring escape, because that meant she had a slightly better chance of not pissing herself if the Summoner came any closer. Small dignities. She clutched the crowbar she'd brought with her. 'Might as well use it on yourself, Liz, and save it the effort of roasting you. Dammit, Charlie.'
She should go back. She really should. It was goddamned suicidal to be out here looking for a deaf dog with fur so white that it was practically neon. He was going to get gobbled up like a donut any second now. As soon as the Summoner rounded that corner it was drifting toward, she should dart through the abandoned mall and circle back to Vincent's bunker, leaving Charlie to his fate. She really, really should.
But then she thought of the first time she'd seen him behind the plexiglass at the animal shelter, wagging his ridiculous stubby tail at her as if he knew damn well she was going to adopt him, so what was she waiting for? She thought of how he watched over her every morning, waiting for her to open her eyes so he could Rooo! with such force that he lifted completely off the ground. She thought of the way he got food all over in his haste to eat, sometimes even putting a foot in the bowl and accidentally giving himself the doggy equivalent of a pie to the face. She couldn't leave such an optimistic, loving, goofy animal to be ripped to shreds.
'Shiiit. We're both going to die out here because he's adorable and I'm a sucker for a lost cause. Especially for a dumber-than-a-bag-of-leaves mini bull terrier who would still be wagging his frickin' tail if you were trying to barbeque him over a campfire.'
She heard the awful rising scream of a Gore Nest whose goopy heart-eye-thingy had just burst. She heard the Summoner reverse direction and dash toward the horrid sound. 'What kind of moron is out here popping Gore Nests? Are they trying to attract more demons?' She hadn't heard tanks or armored assault vehicles, so it wasn't the Army. And the UAC was hit-or-miss these days as to whether they were good or bad. Well, good guys or bad guys, whoever was out there was going to be dead guys in a matter of minutes.
She did hear rapid gunfire, though, so they weren't average civilians. Mercenaries, maybe? There were plenty of those around Denver these days. The UAC started hiring them in mass quantities several months ago when these hellish creatures had first started popping up. Mercenaries were usually cannon fodder, but the guys fighting the Gore Nest demons two blocks over sounded like they were holding their own. There were different types of weapon-fire overlapping so quickly that it had to be at least several people. Among the demons' screeching and flame-throwing, Lizzie heard a Combat Shotgun, an Assault Rifle, a Chaingun, a Gauss Cannon - wow, these guys have all the good stuff - grenades, and even … wait, was that a chainsaw? Whatever this mercenary unit was, they just might live to tell about this.
The gunfire stopped abruptly, replaced by silence in her immediate area and Gore Nest sirens in the distance. Lizzie waited another two minutes for the mercenaries to clear out - she didn't want to get ventilated by a trigger-happy Chaingun operator - before creeping out again to resume her search for Charlie.
The goofy little mutt wouldn't be able to hear her, so she had to keep moving in the hope that he either saw her or caught her scent. God knows he had a big enough schnozz for the job; the elongated face was part of a bull terrier's appeal, along with the triangular little eyes and the class-clown personality.
Lizzie dashed from shadow to shadow, placing her feet carefully amongst the rubble, poking her head out each time to look for Charlie. Unfortunately, when she found him the demons had gotten to him first.
Charlie was standing on a broken slab of pavement, panting happily, and had his head cocked at the demon crouching over him, like it was a giant squirrel and he was wondering if it would run so he could chase it.
When she saw the slimy red-and-green monster scoop up Charlie, her mind's eye saw her neighbor Mr. Edison being lifted from the ground and a demon biting off the upper half of his body like a horse snacking on tall grass. In spite of that terrifying memory, her brain stem decided that it no longer cared very much for the land of the living. Not more than saving Charlie, anyway.
Lizzie leapt forward and swung the crowbar at the demon's beetle-like head. The blow never connected. The length of metal was stopped in mid-swing by its paw, so suddenly that her arms were instantly deadened by the impact, like hitting a stone wall with a wooden baseball bat. Her numb fingers let go of the iron and it remained there in the monster's grip. 'Great, Lizzie, you just gave it something to beat you to death with, you absolute genius.'
She took a terrified half breath as she stepped back, poising as if to run, but knowing she would never leave Charlie behind so they were both going to die right here right now oh God oh God oh God please let it be quick.
Then the gory green demon did something that shocked her like a bucket of water splashed in her face. It dropped the crowbar and held Charlie out to her like a peace offering.
Lizzie's confused thoughts registered that the creature's carapace wasn't actually a slimy beetle-like exoskeleton, but a futuristic armored suit streaked with blood. And there was a man inside.
She snatched Charlie out of his hand and leapt back, just in case Charlie was bait for a laser blast to the stomach.
Looking human didn't necessarily mean he wasn't a monster. She'd been fooled several times over the last few weeks by possessed UAC security staff who didn't seem demonic at all when standing in the shadows with their backs to you. Their monstrous nature only became clear when you got close enough to smell their rotting flesh or see the impossible red glow of their eyes. Or when they shot someone in the head; that was also a pretty good indicator of whose side they were on.
The green-armored soldier did not shoot her in the stomach. Lizzie started to feel sheepish.
"Thank you. I, uh, I'm sorry about trying to hit you with a crowbar. From behind I thought you were a demon. You're kind of a big guy." She kept her voice low in case there were stragglers from the Nest lurking around.
Instead of replying, the armored man picked up the crowbar and held it out to her.
"Thanks, but I can't carry Charlie at the same time. You keep it. Vincent has at least a dozen of them, anyway." Charlie wriggled his barrel-chested little body, asking to be let down. Lizzie made the no symbol in front of his face. "Absolutely not, you little troublemaker. Understand?" When she did the symbol again for emphasis, the hired soldier cocked his head curiously.
"Charlie can't hear. It's a birth defect some dogs get when you breed them to be all white." She bounced Charlie like a baby for a moment. "Did you get separated from your mercenary unit?"
He cocked his head again, probably wondering how she knew that. She indicated his unusual armor.
"This doesn't seem like Army gear to me. Looks custom-made. Anyway, I heard mercenaries fighting the Gore Nest a couple blocks that way, if you're looking for them."
He looked in the direction she'd indicated and then shook his head. Not looking for his unit? Ohh-kay, maybe he was an advance scout or something. All she could see in the way of weapons was a fancy shotgun and the weird turret-like thing on his left shoulder. The crowbar had disappeared.
"Who are you, anyway?"
The mercenary's voice was quiet and rough. The muffling from the helmet and the background noises of distant alarms meant she could only make out "ayer."
What she could see of his face through the narrow visor looked vaguely European, so she asked, "Ayers? Your name is Ayers?" She'd had a grade-school teacher by that name.
There was a slight hesitation and then the mercenary nodded.
"Ayers, it's been very nice to meet you, I'm Lizzie, this is Charlie, thank you for catching him, but we have to get the hell out of here right now. Where there's one Gore Nest there could just as easily be five, and they'll swarm us if we stay in one place for too long."
Lizzie started off on what would take her back to the bunker in a zig-zag pattern to avoid leaving an easy-to-follow scent trail for any demons sensitive enough to track Humans by smell. She heard the mercenary moving behind her.
"You're going this direction, too?" She looked back at him.
He nodded.
"Are you following me?"
Another nod.
"Do they pay you extra to walk civilians home?"
He shook his head.
"Ah. Just old-fashioned, then. Let's skedaddle." She'd been hanging out with the sixty-something Vincent too much; she was starting to pick up his ancient slang. She hurried as fast and as quietly as she could to get back to the old man and his grandson.
The mercenary was fast, but he was not at all quiet. His giant boots kept stepping on wood or glass, and his considerable weight would break or snap the object with an obnoxiously loud noise each time. Lizzie tried to be patient, but the tenth time the hired soldier crunched something delicate beneath his feet that broke with a sound like a rifle crack, she spun around with wide, frustrated eyes and hissed, "Could you fucking not?"
He pulled his head back, offended. She sighed in a soft apology. "I'm sorry. But you're not exactly stealthy, are you?"
He shook his head.
They persevered for another couple of blocks, Lizzie biting back an irritated noise every time he broke something loud, until she judged they were out of Nest-range.
"Don't talk much, do you?" she asked rhetorically. Was he in some strange warrior cult that took a vow of silence? It wouldn't even be the tenth weirdest thing that paramilitary Earth cults had done during this bizarre war. Just look at what a bunch of insane whack-jobs half the UAC had turned out to be. "Is that not allowed in your company?"
Ayers shook his head no, and then nodded yes. Lizzie interpreted that as "kind of."
There were disturbingly few corpses out in the open, considering the sheer numbers of people who had died. Lizzie had a bad feeling that they'd been taken somewhere else. There weren't enough Gore Nests in the greater Denver rubble to account for all of them.
The mercenary halted when she took a sharp right turn.
"What?"
He pointed in the direction of the Denver Fortress's east gate.
Most of Earth's cities had started fortifying themselves almost immediately after the Mars "incident." Dr. Samuel Hayden had shown the world leaders some kind of crazy footage from Mars City and it had scared them so much that they ordered cities over one hundred thousand to pack together as tightly as possible and build the biggest walls that they could manage. Everyone else was to go to ground in the wilderness like it was the Wild West or something.
"I'm not going that way."
He pointed more sternly.
"No," she said, just as sternly as he had pointed. "I don't live there. They don't allow any pets bigger than a gerbil. Unnecessary mouths to feed, they said. And I'm not leaving Charlie out here to be torn to pieces. Besides, Vincent and his grandson Harry live outside the walls too. He's been preparing this huge bunker for forty-some years and is so excited to finally use all that survival gear that he won't go live in the Fortress, either."
He was still for so long that Lizzie thought he might try to grab her and forcibly carry her to the Fortress. Then he gestured for her to continue her route. This time when he followed her he was slightly less noisy.
A few minutes later Lizzie took in a sharp breath and ducked down behind a burned-out car. Ayers came up to stand next to the vehicle but made no attempt to conceal himself. Lizzie slapped his boot to get his attention, then jabbed a finger at the demon she'd seen hunched next to a long trench that used to be a street. An Imp. It was alone, but Imps were the loud, screeching kinds of demons that summoned others when they saw prey.
Ayers looked around as if he realized gunfire would bring more demons down on their position and that she and Charlie could be injured or killed in the crossfire. Stepping quietly around the small piles of debris like he'd seen her do, he snuck up on the thing as it sniffed this way and that, still with its back to them. Likely Ayers was covered in so much dried gore that he wasn't distinguishable from the background odors.
Suddenly he pounced on it. Lizzie couldn't see around his broad back to what he was doing, but he wrenched his hands apart in a box-opening gesture. A tortured alien squeak and splash of blood told the story. The thing's body flopped to the ground at his feet, minus its head.
He turned at the waist to look back at her. All she could think of to do was give him a shaky thumbs-up.
Ayers nodded in acknowledgement.
It was all for nothing, though, because the demon's buddies came leaping around the corner of a library just then and made a beeline for Ayers. He made a slamming gesture for Lizzie to get down. As curious as she was to see him in action, she was less keen to get a fireball or lead bullet to the face, so she hunched down behind the engine block and squashed Charlie to her chest.
The screeching of the Imp flock was punctuated by shotgun fire, faster and more frequent than a breech-loading shotgun should be able to do. Eventually the thumping blasts stopped.
'Oh, no.' Lizzie thought. 'He's out. And there's more than one of them left, I can hear them.' Then there was the snick-snick of a blade cutting flesh, and gurgling noises. Apparently Ayers was proficient with a combat knife as well.
The mercenary came around to her side of the car and stood there as if to say, See?
"Yeah," Lizzie admitted. "Maybe I shouldn't have worried so much about you attracting attention."
The rest of the trek back to Vincent's bunker was uneventful. It was actually kind of nice to be able to walk around at night without fear. Too bad Denver didn't have a Hire-A-Merc guide service. She'd bet people would pay good money for an armed bodyguard this formidable.
It seemed Ayers was going to follow her right up to Vincent's front door. The old man would be suspicious, but one of the things Lizzie liked best about him was that he trusted her judgement, almost from the moment she'd moved in three houses down. It was the reason he'd told her about his bunker, and said if "the apocalypse" ever started, she was welcome. 'Sometimes being nice to the strange old man in your neighborhood can pay off.'
Lizzie pushed aside the brambles that she'd crushed in her haste to follow Charlie. She'd have to get some more in the morning to re-camouflage the ramp and its net roof. She held them aside with her foot for Ayers. "You're going to walk me the whole way, I take it?" He ducked under the drooping net acting as the ceiling of the tunnel and she followed.
"Decon chamber," she said when they came to the concrete box at the bottom of the extremely long, steep ramp. She pushed a button on the wall. "Vincent, I'm back."
A hidden speaker clicked on. "Lizzie. Thank God." There was a high-pitched voice in the background. Vincent said, "Harry wants to know if you found Charlie." His tone said he was preparing to tell the boy bad news.
"Yes! I got him, actually. With a little help from this soldier here."
"Soldier? You brought the military back here?" Vincent sounded disappointed, shocked and surprised in equal measures.
"No, no. An advance scout for a mercenary group. Right?" she asked Ayers. He nodded. "Name's Ayers. He saved Charlie and me and walked us home. He's all right, Vincent. I think, uh …" She wondered, 'Why is he still here? What's he waiting for?' "I think he just needs to refill his water reservoir or something."
She gave Ayers a pointed look that said Don't make a liar out of me, and he nodded that he understood. "He says yes."
A few moments passed where she could only hear the faint hiss of the speaker.
"Look, Vincent. He saved us from demons. A lot of them. He's a good guy."
"All right, Lizzie. If you say so." The entry door sealed shut behind them. "And remember to hold your breath this time."
"Shut your vents," she told the mercenary. "Decontamination." She screwed her eyes shut and held her breath, covering Charlie's nose and eyes with the hem of her shirt. The light misting only took a few seconds, but it still made her hack and cough at the end. She asked Charlie in a hoarse voice, "You all right buddy?" He licked her chin and panted happily.
In the next room she let Charlie down and tossed Ayers a towel. "Clean those entrails off. You'll scare the kid." While she was toweling her hair she asked him, "What are you still here for? No offense intended."
Ayers put his red-stained towel in a bucket next to the door and knocked on the concrete wall in a few spots as if to test that it was solid.
"Oh, I see. You're going to assess whether the bunker is safe enough for me to stay here instead of the Fortress."
He nodded.
"That's a bit patronizing, don't you think?"
He nodded again.
She huffed in amusement. "All right then, Inspector. You may as well come inside."
Vincent met them in the next vestibule, the one with the lights that were supposed to kill bacteria. Wisely, Vincent was not armed for a confrontation. He did have one of his dead-man's-switch devices in his hand, though. It would do something pre-programmed if there was a reason his hand let go involuntarily, like its owner being killed.
Vincent was in his sixties but tall, and in very good shape for his age. He said you had to be prepared for anything, and that included physical conditioning. His faded blue eyes sized up the huge mercenary as if he didn't think very much of him.
"State your intentions."
"He's not much of a talker, Vincent. He's only told me his name. Look, it seems like he operates alone. You don't have to worry about him telling his mercenary company about your bunker. Right?" She widened her eyes at Ayers in question.
He nodded.
"See?" Lizzie gave Vincent a look that said she'd decided the soldier didn't need to know about all the concealed turrets and remote-activated landmines that Vincent had scattered all over the neighborhood. Even if Ayers did tell his company about this place and they tried to break in and take it for themselves, Vincent's traps would cut them to pieces before they could even scratch the first set of pressure doors. "He just wants to assure himself that we're safe down here."
"Ayers, huh? You have a first name?" Vincent asked.
The soldier shook his head.
Vincent raised an unimpressed eyebrow and turned to key the doors open. "Yeah, all right, Madonna. Keep your secrets."
There were several more vestibules - an excessive amount if you asked Lizzie - with different storage purposes, before they came to a wooden set of double doors.
Vincent turned to Ayers and said, "Don't try anything funny. Especially around the kid."
The mercenary nodded.
The doors opened onto a strange scene that had taken Lizzie several months to get used to: a cave-like excavation with no less than a full-size house sitting smack in the center. There were even vegetable gardens and a play area with fake grass. Large floodlights illuminated the place as bright as day.
"See?" Lizzie said. "Not some grubby little hole in the ground."
Vincent planted himself in front of Ayers. "I'm going to give you the one-penny tour, and then you're going to leave, understood?"
Ayers nodded.
"Don't go in the house. It's fine. Running water and septic system." Vincent pointed at various doors spaced evenly around the cave walls. "Rainwater collection and sanitization. Grains. Beans. Freeze-dried vegetables and fruit. MREs -" Lizzie made an involuntary gagging noise. "Liz doesn't like those because she's a diva." She gave Vincent her best glare, but it was undercut by the smile she couldn't suppress. "Clothing and clothing repair. Infirmary. Electronics. Lumber. Generator room." He pointed at the last door. "None of your business." That was where Vincent kept his weapons.
Ayers slowly scanned the entire place through his foggy green visor, and then nodded in approval.
"Gee, thanks," Vincent said snarkily. "Now beat it."
"Thanks for the warm welcome, Vincent. You mind if I offer the person who saved our lives a cup of water?"
Vincent relaxed a tiny bit. "Sure, Lizzie. Just don't give him any expensive stuff, you hear?"
"Of course."
Vincent turned and stalked into the house. Lizzie knew he'd be going straight to his surveillance equipment.
Lizzie turned back to Ayers. "Satisfied?"
He nodded.
"Lizzie! Psst! Lizzie!" A child's voice called from the second-story window. They both looked up. Six-year-old Harry was hanging half out of his bedroom window. "Can he come closer so I can see his armor?"
"I don't think he'll mind. Will you?"
Ayers did nothing for a few long seconds and then came to stand under the boy's window. Harry, always a shy boy, hunched down until all that was visible were his hands on the sill and his face from the eyes up. "That's a cool suit, Lizzie," he said, not speaking directly to the mercenary.
"It looks pretty fancy, doesn't it?"
"Yeah. Pretty fancy."
Lizzie heard Vincent's voice calling up the stairs to the boy's room. "Harry, what did I tell you about talking to strangers?"
"I'm not talking to him, Grandpa, I'm talking to Lizzie."
Vincent's exasperated sigh was so loud that it could be heard outdoors.
"Sorry, kiddo, but Ayers has to get a move on."
"Aww," Harry complained. "Really?"
"Really." Charlie darted past them and into the house through a doggy door. "Give Charlie some dinner, would you?" To Ayers she said, "Would you like to fill up on anything?"
He shook his head negatively.
"You don't need water?"
He shook his head.
"Food?"
Again the answer was no.
"You don't want to change air filters or anything? Some of the Nests have a toxic atmosphere."
Nope.
"Restroom?" She was really curious now. "First aid supplies?"
Ayers tapped his breastplate, specifically the red indicator light on his left chest.
"Your armor takes care of all that?"
Ayers nodded after a tiny pause.
"He pees inside his suit?" Harry asked, still too shy of the hulking soldier to speak directly to him.
Ayers tilted his head to the side, almost like he was amused, although the expression of his eyes didn't change.
"I guess it has a water reclamation system. It looks like very advanced technology."
"Ask him how he poops," the boy urged her.
"Harry," she ordered in controlled irritation, "go check if Charlie needs fresh water, would you?"
"But -"
"I am not going to ask our guest how he poops, all right? Go downstairs and help your grandfather." To Ayers she said, "I'll walk you out."
Lizzie shielded the keypads from his eyes whenever they stopped to open a set of doors. At last she took him all the way to the decon chamber.
"Where are you going next? Back to your mercenary company?"
He did something with his left fist and a huge blade jutted up parallel to his forearm. Lizzie flinched back. She'd thought the sheath was some kind of battlefield repair or makeshift splint for a broken arm. Nope: Ayers had a two-foot retractable sword strapped to his arm. Because of course he did.
"Nest," Ayers said with difficulty. With that huge blade he made a jabbing and twisting motion in the direction of the final set of doors. "Rip. Tear." He lowered the blade with a flick at the end, like he was habitually used to shaking entrails off of it so flesh wouldn't gunk up the mechanism. It retracted automatically.
"You're going to look for Gore Nests?" That was worrisome.
"Spring," he said.
"Wait, you're going into the Colorado Springs Super Gore Nest? Alone?"
He nodded.
The majority of demons who had shown up in Colorado so far were besieging NORAD, the military bunker carved into Cheyenne Mountain, supposedly the most secure place on Earth and the current residence of the US President and the Canadian Prime Minister. So far the battalions of demons had been unsuccessful, given that NORAD was under 2,000 feet of solid rock and behind several sets of 25-ton blast doors meant to withstand a nuclear explosion. What they had managed to overrun was Peterson Space Force Base that supported NORAD. The city of Colorado Springs, almost directly between them, had never stood a chance. What was happening to Peterson and Colorado Springs was awful, but the invaders' fixation on taking NORAD was giving Denver time to make a fortress for two million people.
"Why would you go into a Super Gore Nest without any backup?"
His reply did not make sense. "Daisy."
For a second she thought he was talking about flowers. "Why - I mean, who is Daisy?"
Ayers appeared to ponder that. He gestured from her to the bunker. "Charlie," he said hoarsely, as if talking were doing damage to his throat. Then he gestured to himself and said, "Daisy."
"Your dog is in Colorado Springs? That poor puppy."
Ayers shook his head. He put his fists together thumb-to-thumb and then abruptly wrenched them apart. The meaning was clear: Daisy had been torn in half.
"Oh, God. I'm so sorry, Ayers. That's a horrible thing to do to a helpless dog." She hugged herself, thankful that her own little munchkin was in one piece.
After a moment's pause, Ayers placed his right fist behind his head and extended the first two fingers in a V, giving himself bunny ears.
"They killed a bunny-rabbit?" She didn't know why that got to her more than if Daisy had been a dog. "Those fucking bastards!" She meant every word.
Ayers tightened his fist suddenly, unsheathing the wicked blade again. "Rip and tear," he growled like he'd been gargling razor blades, and so ferociously that she moved back a step.
Lizzie understood completely. She'd learned today that she would run out into a demon-infested landscape for her sweet little idiot, heedless of the agonizing death she would almost certainly suffer. So it made sense to her that a soldier as capable as Ayers wouldn't wait for reinforcements to get justice for a brutally-murdered companion animal. A mercenary company fighting in a planetwide war wouldn't give two shits about avenging somebody's pet, no matter how cruel its death had been. So he was going alone. There was no point in talking him out of something she'd done herself twenty minutes ago.
"Rip and tear, " she echoed, adding, "for Daisy."
Ayers nodded back. "For Daisy," he rasped.
Lizzie opened the exterior doors for him. Ayers strode out like he wasn't marching to his imminent doom.
Unexpectedly he turned back, fishing something out of the one belt pouch that wasn't worn smooth from handling. Ayers extended his fist palm-down and she held out her cupped hands. The object he dropped into her palms was a rabbit's foot keychain.
"Daisy," he said roughly. "For ... luck."
She'd always thought lucky rabbit's foot charms were a bit gruesome, and this one even more so because it had been made out of a dead pet, and by the pet's owner, no less. But Lizzie took it anyway.
"Daisy, for luck," she confirmed, hoping it brought him some comfort to know another person would be thinking about her. Because if he was going into the Colorado Springs Super Gore Nest alone, even a one-man army like Ayers was almost certainly going to die. Caring for his last memento of a peaceful, normal life was the least she could do for him.
Ayers strode briskly up the ramp and then hesitated near the top, looking down at her.
"Rip and tear for Daisy," she said as a last goodbye.
Ayers raised his left arm to extend and retract the blade in quick succession, like a salute.
"Good luck with the Gore Nest, Ayers. And thank you. For Charlie."
I think we can all agree the timeline of the Doom series is a hot mess. I will try to keep events in the right order, but that's all I'm promising.