The Cabin in the Woods

The screen grew still as the screaming boy was taken underground. They had cameras and sensors down there too, but there was no need to check on what was happening. Old Jonah Buckner was good at his craft, and if he couldn’t extract the knife from the kid’s back to finish the job, he had plenty more. Down there. In the darkness.

Sitterson swiveled his chair away from the control panel and started whistling, glancing around Control as he did so. Truman stood beside the door just down the curved metal staircase, as he had since the beginning. His eyes were wider than usual, and Sitterson thought he saw a trace of sweat on the soldier’s top lip. But they’d have never been sent a raw recruit. Without even asking, he knew that Truman had seen action and had at least three years of combat postings behind him. He’d likely seen friends killed, and might have killed people himself. From a distance maybe, their deaths little more than clouds of dust and a quick dance. Or maybe he’d killed close-in, so he could look into the victim’s eyes as he or she died.

But none of the action he’d seen would have been like this. Sitterson was only glad the soldier hadn’t yet asked what lots of new ones tended to: But why, when they’re so defenseless? Mainly because the answer was so glib. They have to be.

Still whistling, Sitterson watched Hadley go to the second mahogany panel at the back of the room, slide it open and pull the lever inside. He closed his eyes and kissed the pendant around his neck, knowing that a process was being repeated around and beneath him, blood flowing, grooves and carvings and etchings being filled, all in darkness as ever it was.

Sometimes in nightmares he dreamed of that shape slowly being traced in blood, the primitive human figure holding a goblet and dancing, carved into a chunk of stone as old as the world itself, and on waking he’d feel a deep dread more basic than anything he’d ever felt before, fearing that he was the Fool. Much of the dread came from the knowledge of what he had almost touched, because even dreams were no way to draw close.

And some of the dread came from the mystery of how he knew about the blood, and the carving, and the shapes they picked out.

He had learned to simply accept. Much easier that way. So he whistled, and Hadley returned to his desk, and Truman looked at his feet for a few seconds because he knew it had only just begun.

A rumble passed through Control, and two of the three large screens flickered for less than a second. The sensation passed as quickly as it had begun.

“They’re getting excited downstairs,” Hadley said as he lowered himself gently into his chair.

Sitterson nodded and looked around at Truman, who was standing almost to attention again now, though his eyes flickered left and right as if searching for something.

“Greatest Show on Earth…” Sitterson said. Then he returned to his controls, tapped a few keys and brought up the next screen.

Another rumble filled the room as the last girl did her best to survive.

•••

Somehow she was still functioning. Through all this the fear had clasped her cold around the chest, but she was still moving, still able to stand, still able to think. She had no idea how.

She looked at her hands pressed against the side of the tall dresser as she tried to push it in front of the window, and Jules’s blood was already crisp between her fingers and tacky across the back. Perhaps that was where her strength came from: she knew that Jules would never want her to just give in.

So she shoved, and the wooden base of the dresser squealed across the timber floor.

Patience’s mother was thumping against the window from outside. Two panes of glass had cracked, but the zombie seemed stupid, not realizing that she could shove her way through the glass. She pounded against the wooden frame and around the opening, mouth pressed against the glass, rotten tongue tracing grotesque patterns in the dust. If Dana could just get the dresser across the window.

She’d heard the screams and chaos from Marty’s room. Then the silence. She tried not to think about what that meant, but how could she not? How could she ignore the idea that Marty might have—

Jules’s dead eyes urged her to fight on, and the dresser slipped that much closer to the window.

“Keep bashing, bitch,” Dana muttered, and then the sound of Mother’s pounding changed. The whole room began to shake, dust drifted down from the ceiling, dark spidery shapes scurried to safety in shadows, and then the cabin swayed as a great grumbling sound filled the air. Dana looked around in disbelief.

Earthquake? You gotta be fucking kidding!

“What?” she gasped. “No! No, come on!”

The air seemed to vibrate and her vision blurred. She bit her lip—afraid for a second that she was fainting— but then the rumbling started to subside and the floor leveled beneath her. For a moment all was still and even the bashing from the window had ceased. Let the ground have opened up and swallowed her whole, Dana thought, but she was already shoving hard against the dresser when the pounding began again.

With one last effort she heaved the tall item of furniture before the window, standing in front of it and pushing so that it was flush against the wall on either side. As if that was a signal, Mother turned her attention to the glass and soon smashed it out, and Dana felt the dresser starting to rock. She leaned against it for a moment, absorbing the impacts, but they were turning harder and harder as the zombie became more determined to gain entry.

Timing the blows, Dana darted to the bed and dragged it up against the dresser, trying to wedge its feet against differing levels in the floorboards in the vain hope that it would jam the dresser in place.

But it was like putting sticking plaster over a compound fracture. It was only a matter of time until the bitch found her way in, and Dana already knew that the room offered nothing that she could use as a weapon.

At least I’m still working, she thought with unnatural calm. She was amazed that her heart hadn’t exploded with the terror and her limbs hadn’t simply ceased to function.

The dresser rocked and the bed’s legs screeched as they were driven against the floor. Dana went to the door and tried it again. She’d heard the heavy bolts thumping in as soon as the door had slammed behind her, but before she’d been able to investigate the ghostly shape of Mother appeared at the window and started hammering. So who the hell locked me in? she wondered, working at the handle. It turned, but the door was stuck fast in its frame, with not even an inch of give. Solid, like a wall.

Now Dana started kicking at the door’s wooden panels, aiming the heels of her trainers at the corners. The feel and sound of each kick was all wrong, as if the wood was simply a veneer, and beneath lay something solid, like metal. She felt panic starting to well up— Keep calm, calm, I’ve come this far—

—and then the dresser tilted against the bed, scraping it across the floor with its leaning weight, and around the side of the dresser she saw Mother’s gray weathered hand clasping at the room’s air.

Dana had to make a quick choice: stay and fight with the door, hoping she could get out before Mother got in; or try to kill the zombie before it killed her. How the fuck do you kill a zombie? she wondered, and a hundred images from a hundred horror movies flashed across her mind. Destroy their heads, destroy their brains, burn them, decapitate them, take off their arms and legs and they’ll still come at you, jawing themselves along the ground in their search for your flesh, your heart, your braaaainnnns.

She plucked up a bedside lamp and, as Mother peered from behind the leaning dresser, smashed it across her face. The zombie barely seemed to notice. She looked at Dana and continued working her way from behind the tilted furniture, two hands free now, torso, and one leg lifted clear and planted against the bed, ready to kick up and launch herself through the air.

Dana backed against the wall, because she was out of options. She closed her eyes briefly and thought of Jules, and wondered how much it would hurt.

Something thumped with a loud impact, and a shower of glass scraped across her shoulder and past her face. She gasped and jumped, looked down, and saw the bizarre hunting picture, face up on the floor. Then she heard Holden’s gasps and grunts.

She pulled back a little and he knocked out the rest of the glass from the one-way mirror, using a lamp base as an impromptu club. He didn’t smile when he saw her, only looked past her at Mother. From his room Dana could hear thumping, as well, but there were no zombies in there.