DOOM: Hoof-Deep in the Dead

NOW ENTERING: HANGER

It begins. The lights flicker above the marine as he steps out the elevator door. He looks like he's got bones to snap--like he's pissed. The door that slid open quickly slides closed as if responding to the evil atmosphere. The stallion shifts his eyes left to right, looking around the room he stepped into. He sees the outside world to his right; Hars' evil-looking atmosphere brightly shines through clouds of orange. Hars... the only planet that was successfully colonized by science teams; the marines were there just to keep peace, even though the science teams said it was a bad idea, like a joke--look who's laughing now. It looks hellish out there, but there's more hellish things to be seen crawling around the base.

The room is grotesque, blood splatters and corpses litter the floor and walls, looking as if they were torn to pieces by some type of machine. The sight would be painful for a normal pony to stomach; as for the Doompony, he sees this stuff daily when he's on tour. He's desensitized to gore, violence, and pain.

Our hero trots over to the passageway to his far left. As he looks inside the room, he sees a stairway leading to a balcony-type room. It has a large window looking outside. On either side of the stairs, two pillars stand, which have a wall lamp on the side closest to the exit. On the top of the stairs, he sees two sergeants, (the marine can easily find a soldiers rank by their uniform) staring out the window. They look like average sergeants, but there's something off about them. They're just standing there. Just staring at the empty canvass of Hars' cloudy atmosphere. They. They are like zombies.

The marine isn't so sure of whether to approach them or not. Then, he remembers that there was some fighting, some very gory fighting by the looks of it. The ponies must be a little new to the whole "watching your friends die in horrible, mind crushing ways in front of your very eyes," and were probably shocked from all the carnage--trying to clear it out of their system. The Doompony remembers the first few times when he saw gore; he had nightmares for many months before it finally got out of his thoughts.

They still look creepy, pale, covered in blood. What the hell happened to them? The marine's only guess is that they were probably pale due to exhaustion, and were bloody from fighting their foes. The Doompony starts to walk up to them to congratulate them on their survival, but in a flash, they turn around to him and stare at him with their evil, red eyes. He resists staring directly at the pairs of red orbs, for conversion is a possibility. The zombified ponies are armed with battlesaddles, shotguns mounted on them. One fires, barely missing the Doompony. Laughing at the horrible aim of the zombie, the marine returns the favor, pulling up his pistol with his mouth, squeezing the mechanism and hitting one of the fiends in the head. Blood splatters and flies onto the other zombie, caking his coat in fresh brains, teeth, and red liquid. The carnage is beautiful. As the slain victim of Doompony's wrath falls over, the corpse crosses the line-of-fire of the other ghoul; the shotgun wielding monster stupidly fires his weapon, discharging it's shells into the fresh carcass. More blood spews out as the meat chunks of slaughter fly all over the room.

The Doompony, now covered in blood from the violent explosion of the carcass, wipes the blood from his visor and props up his pistol for shooting. He blasts the other zombie's head with elite accuracy--brain matter, skull chunks and blood fly behind the now-slain victim. Walking over to the battered bodies of the zombie ponies and holstering his pistol, the Doompony picks up the battlesaddle, adjusts the shotgun and loads in fresh rounds of buckshot. Walking back into the room he started in, he walks over to the other hall leading to a door. A body of yet another fallen comrade lays. The Doompony searches the dead body without haste for loose supplies, but fails to come up with anything.

The marine opens the door to continue through the facility. Not surprising at all, on the other side, zombie ponies wait for him. The Doompony quickly examines the room for exits or other useful things. The room looks to be a small computer room, monitors hang from the ceiling, displaying the status of this sector, and computers line the walls. The zombies are up on a slightly-raised platform in the center of the room, which is surrounded by thin walls on the back, left, and right sides with stairs leading up to the opening. A turbine spins above the zombies, casting shadows and bringing in small rays of light. Passageways leading to a hallway are on both sides of the platform. A window to the left shows the outside Hars in it's glory.

Finishing his quick examination of the room, the Doompony preps his battlesaddle, and aims towards the monsters. He bites down on his mouthpiece, opening fire as one zombie runs erratically towards him, gun in mouth, for a better shot. The buckshot of the shotgun flies rapidly towards the quickly approaching foe and strikes firmly in the monster's right forehoof. The zombie falls to the ground, clutching it's now missing hoof. The flying limb hits the other zombie pony, staggering him, buying the Doompony enough time to sprint up to the hoof-missing zombie and buck it in it's face. The Doompony is effective in shattering its skull and caving the bloody face in. By now, the other zombie regains its footing and aims at the marine with his pistol. The zombie fires, hitting the marine in the torso. It's a slightly painful experience for him, but he recovers enough to blast the assaulter's torso to bits. The liquids splash on the wall behind the zombie, coloring the metal wall with a fresh coat of red paint.

The green marine smiles under his visor at his bloody victory as he goes around the platform. He encounters another shotgun-armed zombie, shooting at him as soon as the marine turns around the corner. The zombie's accuracy is horrible, but he manages to hit a nearby computer, which promptly explodes. A stray chunk of metal from the nearby computer's explosion is ejected violently into the Doompony's visor, cracking it. Blindly, the marine fires at the shotgun zombie, luckily killing it. The marine quickly removes his helmet and throws it to the ground. The rest of the visor shatters on impact.  The green marine thinks nothing of it, and resumes down the hall.

As our marine goes down the hallway to the next room, he is cut off from what he sees next. A fireball is speeding towards him! Using his instincts, he dodges swiftly out of the way and looks up to where it came from. Up, on top of a high platform at the far end of the next room, is an ugly demonic creature unlike anything he has ever seen. It is tan in color, has glowing red eyes, visible fangs in it's gaping mouth, and spikes covering it's entire body. The foul beast lifts up it's hoof and fires yet another fireball out of thin air! The Doompony is quick to act; he dodges the fireball and readies his pistol for a long-range shot. With deadly, trained accuracy, the marine lines up his shots and pierces the demonic presence in the skull. But he still stands! Another blow strikes the demon in the torso, causing him to fall head first into an acid puddle. The cracking of the spine is so satisfying.

The room with acid puddles is completely destroyed by what looks like explosives. An acid pipeline has broken, making large acid puddles all over the room. Only a small path remains, wide enough for the Doompony to traverse without any harm. Not that acid has ever stopped him! As the Doompony trots on the small path, he notices the corpse of the demon is not being harmed by the acid. It's completely resistant! If these things are resistant, could the zombies be resistant as well? Very strange, but oh well, he thinks. He reloads his weapons and walks up to the next door. As it slides open, he strafes a bit to the right as he sees another one of those Imps. He bites down on his baddlesaddle mouthpiece just in time for a direct hit with his shotgun. The imp's body is splayed open by the force of the 12-gauge shotgun, making it fly backwards and smash up against the wall.

Our heroic pony continues on. Just when he's about to open the door to the elevator, he hears the growls of zombies. He spins around and finds that zombie ponies were trying to ambush him! The zombies are behind fence-like walls on either side of the hall, a clever move for some stupid ponies. With precision marksmanship, the Doompony fires upon a barrel of explosive material that causes an explosion. On the other side, he does the same, being successful in destroying two more zombie foes. He notices that a single, unseen zombie is still alive. Only his torso remains. His intestines are falling out of his stomach as he tries without hesitation to crawl with both forehooves to the Doompony; the marine only looks down and laughs--stomping on the zombie's head and flattening it like a pancake. He's ready to go into that elevator. After loading up on ammo and reloading weapons, he opens the door to the elevator and hits the switch. The elevator whines as it starts it's decent into the unknown, the lights flickering.

E1M1 Complete!

KILLS - 86%

ITEMS - 6%

SECRETS - 0%

NOW ENTERING: NUCLEAR PLANT

AUTHORS NOTES

This is just a silly idea that popped into my head late at night. If this story gets enough attention, I might move on to E1M2 and so forth. I might do it anyway if I get bored.