Page 4 of Doom

“We have to go down Fourth Avenue, anyway,” I said, trying to sound more confident than I felt. “If we can get to them, great. Otherwise, we’ll just have to get the heck out of Dodge.”

Andy’s relief was palpable. He didn’t want to abandon our patients any more than I did. But he also didn’t want to die needlessly. Funny how he let me call the shots when I was just out of residency, and he’d been practicing for a few years already.

We hadn’t realized there were so many people still in the area, many of them running out of their houses, bags clutched in their hands. Those with functioning vehicles took to the roads, creating traffic we could have lived without and forcing us to find new side streets. Others ran on foot, waving at cars to pick them up.

No one stopped. Nor did we.

I wanted to believe it was purely because we genuinely had no room in the van, with both front seats taken, and the back filled with our scavenged loot. Even if we had wanted to ditch all our loot to save those people, by the time we’d finished unloading, the bugs would have been upon us. So why did it feel like I was rationalizing my way out of a guilty conscience?

We finally turned onto Fourth Avenue only to be met by a vision of horror. A little over a hundred yards ahead, two dozen Kryptids were hauling screaming people out of their cars before injecting them with that thing that made them go limp. They then dragged the bodies and tossed them unceremoniously onto a hovering platform which already carried multiple paralyzed victims. Other Kryptids pulled the empty vehicles to the side with a single hand, as if they weighed nothing.

Andy slammed on the brakes, preparing to back up, but three more vehicles pulled up behind us. We could try to ram our way through, but with the bugs’ herculean strength, I doubted we’d make it. The other cars, realizing what was going on, started backing away, but it would take too long. My gorge rose as Andy charged forward.

We’re not going to make it! We’re never going to make it!

Unfazed, a couple of Kryptids advanced towards us, their throats undulating as if they were regurgitating something massive. I screamed when, less than fifty yards from them, Andy made a sharp turn into the parking lot of a gas station where many of the victims’ cars had been discarded. Two loud clanking sounds resonated as something impacted the back of our vehicle. I didn’t know what it was and didn’t care. Andy navigated to the other side of the station which connected with Third Avenue.

He made a hard right only to be faced with another Kryptid standing in the middle of the street. Tires squealed as Andy pushed full steam ahead, intent on running the giant bug down. The alien didn’t move, didn’t flinch, his throat doing that weird thing, too. As we drew closer, his lips parted and a massive, black dart-like appendage appeared between his needle teeth. He spit it at us, and it flew like a bullet. Andy swerved to avoid it, but it smashed his side window. Thankfully, it struck at an angle that had the dart bounce outside instead of hitting him. But Andy lost control of the vehicle. I screamed again as the vehicle rushed towards a lamp post. It slammed against my door, sending a painful jolt through my right arm.

Before Andy could get the van going again, the Kryptid was already on us, tearing the driver’s door right off its hinges.

“RUN!” Andy yelled at me while the alien tore his seatbelt before yanking him right out of his seat.

But I couldn’t run. My door, beaten in by the impact, wouldn’t open. I pulled out my gun and, with a strange focus I’d never known myself to possess, I took aim and fired. The bullet struck the Kryptid’s shoulder, shattering the chitin armor there, but not penetrating. Visibly angered, he injected Andy with something at the same time my friend was firing a shot of his own. It was a blind shot, but a lucky one that struck the top articulation of the Kryptid’s three-segment leg. The alien shouted in pain, dropping Andy. Without missing a beat, I fired on that same leg, which gave beneath him. While he writhed and screeched on the ground, I put him out of his misery with a bullet through the eye.

Scrambling to the driver’s side, I tried to back up the van. The wheels spun, burning rubber, but the van wouldn’t move. Something was holding it underneath. I raced to Andy’s side, but his eyes were already glazing over. He appeared conscious but had visibly lost most motor control. His lips moved, soundlessly forming the word ‘run.’

Choking on a sob, I kissed his forehead goodbye, picked up his gun, and ran.

I didn’t get far. The bugs, like cockroaches, were coming out of the woodwork, continuously forcing me to change direction, always away from the way I needed to go. Heart pounding, blood roaring in my ears, I skirted buildings, sticking to the shadows and whatever cover I could find. I couldn’t seem to breathe through the fear choking me. I’d never felt so helpless and so alone.

Hastening down the road, I barely suppressed a scream when a giant ball, covered in dark, shiny scales, rolled onto the street. It stopped and uncurled into an alien beast. Bigger than a Tibetan mastiff, the creature had the body of a pangolin, but with longer legs and what resembled dagger-like spikes beneath the scales of its back and tail. Its face also had none of the sweetness of a pangolin but more resembled a dragon with a square jaw full of razor-sharp teeth and reptilian eyes that spelled murder.

Its head turned sharply towards me. For a second, I couldn’t move, hypnotized by its dark blue eyes boring into mine. Spinning around, I ran blindly away, praying to whatever forces were out there to please get me out of this nightmare.

As I rounded the corner, a cold, hard hand closed around my neck, choking my startled cry. My scream of terror died in my throat as the Kryptid pressed himself against me, pinning me against the brick wall of the house. The plates of his chitinous outer shell dug painfully into me while his lips parted in a horrifying grin.

“Young. Ripe,” the Kryptid said with that terribly grating clicking voice. “The General will like you.”

Wiggle as I might, I couldn’t break free, not even to kick him or try to head butt him—not that I’d want to, considering the vicious spikes on his forehead. I tried to reach for my gun, but he let go of my neck to pin both of my wrists above my head. Holding them with one hand, he took something from his belt, a device different from the one the Kryptid I’d killed had used on Andy.

“What is that?” I asked with a trembling voice. “What are you going to do to me?”

Another voice behind him said something in that same alien language. That’s when I noticed three more of them surrounding us. My heart sank, and tears pricked my eyes. Whatever awaited me would be horrible.

But the Kryptid never got to inject me with the weird syringe’s contents. Three black darts embedded themselves on the right side of his neck, in his armpit, and at the junction of his narrow, ant-like waist. He released me with a powerful screech that temporarily deafened me. His three companions also screamed, two of them holding their forearms in front of them. From the bracer-like attachment on their wrists, a rectangular shield that seemed made of energy appeared before them. Crouching to make myself smaller, I watched in awe as the dragon-pangolin alien rolled closer to the Kryptids before stopping to fire more darts from the sharp protrusions beneath its back scales. The bugs shot at it with their lasers—although they were more like energy blasts—which bounced right off the creature’s scales.

Relentless, it fired a few more darts at the bugs whose shields appeared to waver under the assault. I didn’t dare move from my position for fear of getting hit in the crossfire. The creature darted towards the three invaders, rolling like a bowling ball intent on knocking down some pins. Two of the Kryptids ran out of its path while one used his unusual legs to jump high over the alien pangolin.

Big mistake.

The creature stopped beneath him, arched its back, and fired three more darts upward. They all found their marks. The Kryptid collapsed to the ground with none of the grace his peers had previously displayed when jumping down from buildings. No sooner did he land than the pangolin threw itself at him. With vicious, razor-sharp claws, it slashed at the Kryptid’s chitin armor, which cracked under the assault, and then it spit something into the vulnerable spot.

The creature rolled after another target while its victim writhed in agony, clawing at his chest as if being eaten alive by acid.

Just as I began to get up, a dozen nightmarish, golden aliens appeared out of thin air a few yards away.

They were nearly seven feet tall and covered in a layer of thick, golden-scaled armor. The plates on their cheeks and above their brow fused into helmets that covered half of their faces. Thin, tightly packed, vicious-looking spikes protruded from their foreheads, growing thicker and more spaced out in the back. They looked even more lethal than the ones on the Kryptid’s forehead, which had kept me from headbutting him earlier. Thinner spikes jutted from the skin along the arms of the newcomers. That would certainly be effective in preventing enemies from grabbing them. They had a scythe-like projection from each of their forearms which extended over their hands. These blades looked razor-sharp, as did the long claws at their fingertips. Frilled membranes stood on their backs like nightmarish fairy wings; the clawed tips and blade-like edges seemed capable of slicing through metal or through anyone dumb enough to jump them from behind. And last, but not least, two scorpion tails jutted from their backs, arching over their shoulders with vicious spikes at the tips.

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