Hell on Earth

by Dafydd ab Hugh

“Sorry. No choice.”

  Jill altered course and headed northeast. We didn’t speak for the rest of the short flight. None of us could think of anything worth saying.

  Finally, Jill was bringing the plane low over Burbank International Airport. “Can you do a rolling stop?” I asked. “Slow down to about fifty kilometers per hour, then turn it into a touch-and-go?”

  “Uh,” she said. After thinking about it, she continued: “Yeah. Why?” I let the silence speak for me. She gasped and said, “You’re crazy if you’re thinking of a roll-out!”

  “I’m thinking of a roll-out.”

  “What the hell,” said Arlene. “I’m crazy too.”

  Jill shook her head, obviously wondering about both of us.

  She cruised in over the airport, ignoring the standard landing pattern and dodging other planes, which answered my question about lousy zombie pilots.

  We were low enough that the passenger cabin was pressurized again. Arlene and I went aft, picking our way over a planeful of zombies and two Clydes that were examples of the only good monsters. Jill kept calling out, “Are you ready?” She sounded more nervous each time. We reassured her. It was easier than reassuring ourselves.

  “Open the rear cargo door!” Arlene shouted so that Jill could hear. We hit the runway deck hard, bouncing twice; the C-5 wasn’t supposed to fly this slow. The rushing wind made everything a lot noisier. But we were able to hear Jill, loud and clear, when she said the magic word:

  “Jump!”

  We did just that, hitting the tarmac hard. I rolled over and over and over, bruising portions of my anatomy I’d never noticed before. I heard the sound effects from Arlene doing her impression of a tennis ball. But I didn’t doubt this was the right way to disembark the plane; couldn’t risk a real landing.

  I got to my feet first. Jill was having trouble with her altitude. “Jesus, no!” shouted Arlene at the sight of Jill headed for a row of high rises.

  “Lift, dammit, lift!” I spoke angrily into the air. There wasn’t time for a proper prayer.

  At the last second, bright, blinding flares erupted from under both wings, and the C-5 pulled sharply upward. A few seconds later we heard a roar so loud that it almost deafened us.

  “What the hell?” Arlene asked, mouth hanging open.

  “Outstanding!” I shouted, fisting the air. “She must have found the switch for the JATO rockets.”

  “JATO?”

  “Jet-assisted takeoff!” I shouted. “They’re rockets on aircraft to allow them to do ultra-short-field take-offs.”

  “I didn’t know that plane would have those.”

  “She probably didn’t either,” I said, so proud of her I wished she could hear me call her daughter the same way Albert had.

  We watched until Jill became a dark speck in the sky, circling until we could get the field down.

  We tucked and ran, jogging all the way to the huge Disney building; the Disney logo at the top was shot up—somebody’d been using it for target practice.

  “Ready?” I asked.

  “Always.”

  I took a deep breath; pistols drawn, we popped the door and slid inside.

  My God, what a wave of nostalgia! It was like old times again . . . back on Phobos, sliding around corners, hunting those zombies!

  Up the stairwells—couldn’t trust the lifts . . . I mean the elevators. Any minute, I knew I’d run into a hell-prince—and me without my trusty rocket launcher. Thank God, I didn’t.

  We played all our old games: cross fire, ooze-barrel-blow, even rile-the-critters. The last was the most fun: you get zombies and spinys so pissed, they munch each other alive.

  Every floor we visited, we looked for that damned equipment. Nada. We climbed higher and higher, I began to get the strong feeling that we’d find the field generator way, way up, fortieth floor, all the way at the top.

  It’d be just our luck.

  We took Sig-Cows off’n the first two zombies we killed; better than the pistols, even though they were still just 10mm. The next one had a beautiful, wonderful shotgun. I’d take it, even if it was a fascist pump-action.

  “Like old times,” I said.

  “Back on Deimos,” she agreed.

  “They die just as easily. I like my new toy.”

  “Hold your horses, Fly Taggart,” she said. “Haven’t you forgotten something?”

  “Like what?”

  “A certain wager.”

  No sooner did she mention the bet than I did indeed remember. There was only one thing to do. Change the subject: “Those zombies were probably the least of our troubles, Arlene. We can settle this later—”

  “No way, Fly! I jumped out of a plane for you, and you’re gonna pay your damn bet.” When she got like this there was nothing to do but surrender. All the demonic forces of hell were like child’s play compared to welshing on a bet with Arlene Sanders.

  “Well, now that you mention it, I do have a vague recollection,” I lied. “And that Sig-Cow looks like a mighty fine weapon at that.”

  “Good,” she said. “You take the Sig-Cow. The shotgun is mine.”

  We resolved this dispute at just about the right moment, because a fireball exploded over our heads. We were under bombardment by imps. Now the new weapons would receive a literal baptism of fire.

  Blowing away the spiny bastards, up the fifth floor stairwell, I turned a corner and found myself nose-to-nose with another Clyde. This close, there was no question: it looked exactly the same as the one we’d killed in the alley in Riverside, the same as the two who’d disarmed us getting on the plane.

  There was no question now: they were, indeed, genetically engineered. The aliens had finally made their breakthrough . . . God help the human race.

  He raised his .30 caliber, belt-fed, etc., etc.; but we had the drop on him. He never knew what hit him—well, it was a hail of bullets and Arlene’s buckshot, and he probably knew that; you know what I mean! But now I had my own weapon; she looked envious . . . but she’d had her pick. The bet was paid.

  As a final treat, thirty-seven floors up—Jesus, was I getting winded! I felt like an old man—we were attacked by a big, floating, familiar old pumpkin.

  It hissed. It made faces. It spat ball lightning at us.

  I spat a stream of .30 caliber machine-gun bullets back at it, popping it like a beach ball. It spewed all over the room, spraying that blue ichor it uses for blood.

  “Jesus, Fly,” said my partner in crime, “I’m going to lose my hearing if this keeps up.”

  “What?”

  “That machine gun! It’s almost as loud as Jill and her jets.”

  “What’s that?” I asked, grinning. I was delighted with the results of my belt-fed baby.

  She gave a “playful” punch on the arm, my old buddy. I yelped in pain.

  “Where’s an uninjured place on your body?” she asked.

  “That’s a very good question. I think tumbling down the airstrip eliminated all of those.”

  “Same here,” she said. “But you can still make a great pumpkin pie.” She kicked at the disgusting remains on the ground.

  “Shall we find the top of the mouse house?” I suggested.

  “After you, Fly.”

  In battlefield conditions, a proper gentleman goes ahead of the lady. If she asks, anyway. I was happy to oblige; but the nose of my machine gun actually preceded both of us.

  At the very top we found a prize.

  The door wasn’t even locked. Inside was a room full of computers hooked into a new collection of alien biotech. This stuff gave off a stench, and some of it made mewling sounds like an injured animal. I wished Jill could be with us, plotting new ways of becoming a technovivisectionist.

  “Got to be it,” said Arlene.

  I had trouble making out her words, not because my hearing was impaired, but because of the noise level. My machine gun contributed a good portion of it. So did Arlene’s shotgun. And there were several explosions. A nice fanfare as we blew awa
y unsuspecting imps and zombies tending the equipment.

  I picked up a fiberglass baton off the body of an ex-zombie guard and used it to bar the door. I expected more playmates along momentarily. The idea didn’t even bother me; not so long as I could buy us some time.

  Arlene waved the smoke away and began fiddling with the controls on the main console. She frantically started flipping one push-switch after another, looking for the one that would kill the field.

  “There has to be a way of doing this,” she said, “or finding out if we’ve already done it.

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “Well, what if the aliens wanted to fly to Hawaii?”

  I nodded. “I can just see a pinkie in one of those Hawaiian shirts.”

  “Damn! I wish we had Jill and Ken with us.”

  “Defeats the whole purpose, A.S. They’re ready and waiting, forty thousand up, ready to blow for the islands as soon as we cut the bloody field.”

  “Most of the switches require a psi-connection to activate, and I can’t do that!”

  By now there was a huge contingent pounding on the door. The fiberglass bar was holding them . . . so far. These sounds did not improve Arlene’s psychological state or aid the difficult work she was trying to do.

  “I’m not getting it,” she said. “I’m close, but I’m not getting it. Damn, damn, damn . . .”

  “Is there anything I can do?”

  “Hold the door. Hold the door! I’m sure there’s one special button, but how will I know it even if I find it?”

  As if to mock her, the entire panel went dark right then. She looked up and saw . . .

  Me. Me, her buddy. Fly Taggart, technical dork, first-class. In my hand I held a gigantic electrical cord that I’d sliced in half with my commando knife. I knew that knife would come in handy one day.

  “When in doubt, yank it out,” I said with a smile.

  She tried to laugh but was too tired for any sound to come out. “Did you learn that in VD class?” she asked.

  I was saved from answering her because the door started to give way under the onslaught. Then the shred of a feeble plan crept into my brain. I ran across to the windows and smashed them open.

  We were forty stories high, looking straight down on concrete, but it seemed better to open the windows than leave them closed.

  “We took the energy wall down, at least,” I said over my shoulder. “Jill’s got to notice it’s gone and tread air for Hawaii.”

  Arlene nodded, bleak even in victory. She was thinking of Albert . . . I didn’t need alien psionics to know that. “The War Techies will track her as an ‘unknown rider,’ ” added Arlene bleakly, “and they’ll scramble some jets; they should be able to make contact and talk her down.”

  “Would you say the debt is paid?”

  I didn’t have to specify which debt. Arlene considered for a long time. “Yeah,” she said at last, “it’s paid.”

  “Evens?”

  “Evens.”

  “Great. Got a hot plan to talk us down?” I asked my buddy.

  She shook her head. I had a crazy wish that before Albert was blinded, and before Arlene and I found ourselves in this cul-de-sac, I’d played Dutch uncle to the two love birds, complete with blessings and unwanted advice.

  But somehow this did not seem the ideal moment to suggest that Arlene seriously study the Mormon faith, if she really loved good old Albert. A sermon on why it was better to have some religion, any religion, lay dormant in my mind.

  Also crossing my mind was another sermon, on the limitations of the atheist viewpoint, right before your mortal body is ripped to shreds. Bad taste, especially if you delivered it to someone with only precious seconds left to come up with a hot plan.

  She shook her head. “There’s no way,” she began, and then paused. “Unless . . .”

  “Yes?” I asked, trying not to let the sound of a hundred slavering monsters outside the door add panic to the atmosphere.

  Arlene stared at the door, at the console, then out the window. She went over to the window like she had all the time in the world and looked straight down. Then up. For some reason, she looked up.

  She faced me again, wearing a big, crafty, Arlene Sanders smile. “You are not going to believe this, Fly Taggart, but I think—I think I have it. I know how to get us down and get us to Hawaii to join Albert.”

  “And Jill,” I added. I nodded back, convinced she’d finally cracked. “Great idea, Arlene. We could use a vacation from all this pressure.”

  “You don’t believe me.”

  “You’re right. I don’t believe you.”

  Arlene smiled slyly. She was using the early-worm-that-got-the-bird smile. “Flynn Taggart . . . bring me some duct tape from the toolbox, an armload of computer-switch wiring, and the biggest, goddamned boot you can find!”

  DOOM Novels Available from Pocket Books

  KNEE-DEEP IN THE DEAD by Dafydd ab Hugh and Brad Linaweaver

  HELL ON EARTH by Dafydd ab Hugh and Brad Linaweaver

  INFERNAL SKY by Dafydd ab Hugh and Brad Linaweaver

  ENDGAME by Dafydd ab Hugh and Brad Linaweaver

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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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  This work is based upon the computer software games DOOM® and DOOM H®. DOOM copyright © 1995, 2005 by id Software, Inc. All Rights Reserved. DOOM and the id Software name are registered trademarks of id Software, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries.

  Originally published in paperback in 1995 by Pocket Books

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  ISBN-13: 978-0-671-52562-0

  ISBN-13: 978-1-416-52512-7 (eBook)

  First Pocket Books printing August 1995

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