doom - evil unleashed 1.1

[dsm]

Knee-deep in the Dead – Part 1

****

The body lay on its face. Corporal O'Brien could see from the neon green lab coat that the man had been a scientist. The Corporal kneeled next to the corpse and turned it over. He stared surprised at the mask of horror that stared back at him.
Corporal Timothy O'Brien was a hardened veteran who had seen a lot of terrifying things, but he had never seen such an expression of utmost terror on any corpse he had seen before.

The scientist, who looked like he had been around 40-45 years of age, had been shot as could be seen from two bloody holes in the upper part of his torso, but O'Brien asked himself why the scientist's face was so distorted of terror – something was clearly not right.
The scientist lay with his right arm stretched out in front of him. It seemed that he had tried to reach the elevator a few feet away from the body – the same elevator from which the marines had just arrived

"There's another one 'ere, Sir!"
The squad leader went over to the other corpse. His torso was a mess of blood and chunky, shredded flesh – he had been shot at close range with a shotgun. Again the distorted look of utmost horror in the man's face. He had been fairly young, probably a lab assistant.
Adams found a spent shotgun shell lying next to a crate a few feet away from the dead lab assistant. It would seem that the murderer with the shotgun had been hiding behind the crate and jumped out of his hiding spot, when the lab assistant came running towards the elevator, and fired at the victim at close range.

A few spent bullet cartridges were found about 20 feet from the dead scientist nearest to the elevator and a few more were found further away. Apparently, the older scientist's killer had pursued the poor wretch, firing a couple shots in his direction before hitting the victim.

****

I felt a chill down my spine. It was only there briefly, but it was there. The reports about corpses with a frozen look on their face as if they had seen something that had scared them half to death puzzled me as much as they freaked me out. From what I could hear, the poor bastards had both been shot – apparently with standard military arms. But what had terrified them so much?
I looked at the monitors again – no sign of movement outside the base, but there seemed to be some more disturbances, making the screen flicker on occasion. It annoyed me a lot.

I sat back and stared grimly out of the pod door opening at the place where the other marines had entered the base 15 minutes ago.

****

-

The squad entered a larger hall. They had just arrived at the nuclear plant – a building where they made experiments with radiation, trying to shorten the half-life of radioactive materials. The end wall was covered with consoles and monitors. The monitors showed nothing but rows upon rows of flickering numbers, but that wasn't what caught the squad's attention at the moment.

Scattered around on the floor lay several dead bodies.

"Jesus!" Henderson exclaimed in a low whisper as he entered the room.
Andrews knelt down beside one of the corpses lying on its back. It was a marine. As he turned the corpse around, he could see that the marine's armor had been penetrated by something hot, as Andrews noticed the scorched black area on the front side of the dead soldier's armor. He took off the body's ruined armor and saw that the torso had been burned everywhere. He looked at the face – same look of horror on his face. Things were beginning to look really grim. Andrews knew of no weapons, which could make such burns. Even the plasma rifle didn't leave quite the same burn. These scorched areas on the corpse were made by fire, but they weren't left by a regular flamethrower either.

The other corpses had either been shot like the first two bodies the squad had encountered, been burnt like the marine Andrews had just checked or seemed to have been ripped apart as if some animal had mutilated them. Two of the corpses had had their chests torn out and a third – a red-haired woman – had had her torso separated from her legs. O'Brien took a closer look at these corpses.
The first one was another marine. His armor was almost burnt away, but his chest was nothing but a gory mess and some of the dead marine's ribs protruded from the wound. The other body was a scientist with a gray, full beard. His spinal cord had been ripped out of his back and the rest of the victim lay on his face. The woman was apparently another lab tech. Her mouth was terribly distorted in a scream of terror and agony.

Henderson went up to the computer monitors displaying rapidly changing numbers.
"The computer system must be pretty fucked up, Detective Sir."
O'Brien looked briefly at the monitors, and then nodded slowly as he saw the rolling numbers rapidly flicking on the screen. He had no answers to what could've messed up the system.

The Corporal sent a couple of two-man teams out to check the area. They all returned reporting that they had encountered several corpses lying around, but no sight of whatever had killed them.

"All right troops" O'Brien said, doing his best trying to hide the strong uneasiness, which he felt. "Let's move. We've still got a job to do"

****

As I listened to my buddies on the radio, I began to understand that something had suddenly taken the base by surprise. The guards at the docking area had apparently been called further inside the base to assist their buddies, where they had met their dreadful fate.

I had experienced many weird things before, but never anything like this. Whatever we were up against wasn't just humans. The enemy, whoever they were, must have unleashed some sort of lethal animals upon the base, as humans didn't leave claw marks on their victims. Unless it was a bunch of psychopaths, armed with some sort of claw gloves.

No matter how I looked at the situation, it all seemed absurd and I only found more questions – no answers.

The disturbance on my monitors changed from bad to worse for a while, then returned to normal again. What was causing all this disturbance? This wasn't normal either.

****

-

The squad finally arrived at the Command Control station. On their way they had found several more corpses, but had met no resistance or found no clue as to what had happened. All the computer screens the squad had come across either showed a blank screen, lots of weird symbols, numbers or snow. All computer systems seemed to be malfunctioning.
Some of the other squads had arrived at the station as well. O'Brien's squad was ordered to guard the south side of the station.

Captain Bill Howard, who was in charge of the unit sent here, was at the communications station of the building, trying to gather information.

Second Lieutenant McDowell, who was second-in-command of the marine contingent sent here, went up to the Captain after receiving Corporal O'Brien's report. The Captain's radioman was busy repairing the comm. System – it had been ruined completely and was a mess of wires and other internal machinery.
"Sitrep, McDowell?" The Captain asked routinely, trying not to reveal how tense he was.
"All squads have encountered several dead bodies and no survivors or info whatsoever, Sir. Some of the people here have been mutilated beyond recognition. None of us have a clue as to what the Heck has killed them"
"That's exactly what my own squad found. What do you think McDowell?"
The Lieutenant thought for a while.
"Frankly, Sir, it scares the shit outta me. We're up against a pretty ruthless enemy and it seems like they have a sort of trained killer animals, judging from some of the corpses. They sent in those critters and then they went in and mopped up the rest after calling back those animals, seeing as most of the corpses found at the outer base installations have been shot. But I can't really come up with a suggestion as to what has transpired here, which makes any real sense."
Howard thought out loud. "Let's hope that we can extract some info from those computers once my radioman has fixed them" The Captain replied, looking over his shoulder at the soldier working on the machines.
"Are all squads assembled, Lieutenant?" the Captain asked looking at McDowell again.
"All except one, Sir. Echo squad hasn't shown up yet!"
The Captain looked speculative for a moment. "They were sent to check the research facility at the far end of the base" the Captain mumbled to himself rather than to McDowell.
"They could be here any minute, Sir"
"Call them up, Lieutenant. Tell them to speed up a bit. We'd best get ready A.S.A.P!"
"Right on to it, Sir!"

...

--------
NOTE: In case you didn't know, 'Sitrep' is an abbreviation for 'Situation report'.

[sleepy_boy]

keep going...i'm getting intreagued

[Tek]

Here's a critique for you:

I enjoyed your story, though some spots need a bit of polishing. I recommend you polish the story up in ways you think it is weak and re-release it as a sort of "Gold Edition."

I've a few beefs with your story, though I feel bad because you've given my story a pretty spotless report. However, you asked for honest critiques (though not in so many words), and I'm obligated you return the favors you have done me. I won't pretend to be an expert in this kind of thing, but these are a few points that I believe can be improved upon:

1)I noticed that you are writing in both 3rd and 1st person perspectives. I, as a reader, am annoyed by that. Having to make the transition from 3rd to 1st is not a very fun experience when you have to do it every other paragraph, though I can see myself enjoying it if you did it every other PART of the story.

2)I've also noticed that, when typing numbers, you use the character instead of spelling them out. Don't do that. It's alright when you don't want to type out a really big number, but when it's a small number, you should type it out. Failure to do so doesn't help to draw the reader into the story, in my opinion.

3)In the later part of the story, you wrote about some of the characters thinking and saying, "Hmmmmm." I usually write that the character "thinks out loud" instead writing "Hmmmmm" because the latter doesn't look or read professionally.

I hope you consider these points, however nitpicky they may be. Other than that, though, I'm really liking this story and look forward to future releases, blah blah blah.

Great Work!

[dsm]

I recommend you polish the story up in ways you think it is weak and re-release it as a sort of "Gold Edition."

That's actually what I intend to do once I've released the whole story. You once made a compilation of your "Another Doom story", which was a nice thing and I intend to do something similar.

I've a few beefs with your story, though I feel bad because you've given my story a pretty spotless report. However, you asked for honest critiques (though not in so many words), and I'm obligated you return the favors you have done me.

No need to feel bad. Intelligent critique is something I'm happy to receive as this story is my "baby" and I would like to make it as good as possible.

1)I noticed that you are writing in both 3rd and 1st person perspectives. I, as a reader, am annoyed by that. Having to make the transition from 3rd to 1st is not a very fun experience when you have to do it every other paragraph, though I can see myself enjoying it if you did it every other PART of the story.

I added these transitions to add some spice to my story. I figured that only seeing it from the Doomguy's point of view would get boring. I will, however, take your advice into consideration and do what I can not to make too many transitions in the future.

2)I've also noticed that, when typing numbers, you use the character instead of spelling them out. Don't do that. It's alright when you don't want to type out a really big number, but when it's a small number, you should type it out. Failure to do so doesn't help to draw the reader into the story, in my opinion.

Ah yes, numbers. I've always had a problem about how to write them, so I find this piece of advicevery valuable indeed :-)

3)In the later part of the story, you wrote about some of the characters thinking and saying, "Hmmmmm." I usually write that the character "thinks out loud" instead writing "Hmmmmm" because the latter doesn't look or read professionally.

Thanks a lot! That's a good advice. You can expect that this'll be improved in my later installments (I might correct it right away)

I hope you consider these points, however nitpicky they may be.

Indeed I will. And I'm grateful that someone took it upon himself to give some good advice, thanks :-)