Today you readers are in for a treat. A few hours ago, I finished a project that has been in the perpetual state of "almost done" for the past three and a half months. It began the last week of October, when I came up with the idea to add a Halloween feature to my website, similar to 2001's "Top Ten Tips to Survive Halloween This Year." I had originally planned on some sort of Javascript-based role playing game, but due to the incredible lameness of that, combined with the fact that I really don't know how to program a video game, I figured that I would just do what I do best: write a good apocalyptic short story.

But what to write about? I suppose I could have finished my 110+ page alien-invasion story, "The Last Hours of the World", but something inside me wanted to do something new. I thought back to middle school, when I had written a few pages of a short story called "Doug's Doom." It starred my friend Doug Schaffer in a choose-your-own-adventure story. And the Doom part was based on the id Software game of the same title. While this story had been abandoned almost right off the bat, the idea intrigued me. The first choose-your-own-adventure book I'd ever read was starring Indiana Jones. The way it worked was simple: you would read through the book until the author presented you with a choice. Say that Indiana was on a dock by the ocean, watching Nazis load ancient artifacts onto a submarine. You would then turn to page "x" if you wanted Indiana to stay where he was hiding and wait for a better opportunity, or page "y" if you wanted him to jump up, screaming and shooting his guns at the Germans. To say the least, the latter choice would probably get you killed and then you'd have to start the book all over again.

I've basically done the same thing with this story. It is loosely based on DOOM by id Software, but the vast majority of it came from my imagination. And if you don't believe me that it is loosely based, then you can read the official id Software DOOM story here. This past summer, I downloaded several screenshots from the upcoming "DOOM III" and have wrapped the story around my interpretations of the pictures.

That's all I really have to say. I feel that the story speaks for itself and to quote the old literary cliché, "I hope that you enjoy reading it as much as I've enjoyed writing it." Just click on the zombie above or the link below to begin. Have fun and thanks for reading!

-Rob Pierce
February 17, 2003