The Cabin in the Woods

who in control was translating. He didn’t really care. He knew the gist of what it would say.

“Now Kiko’s spirit will live in the happy frog!”

The girls laughed and hugged. The picture flickered, went to static and then cut to black. Sitterson hoped that somewhere in Japan, heads would roll.

“Fuuhhhcck yooouuu!” Sitterson shouted.

“Not good,” Hadley said, shaking his head. “Not good.” Sitterson turned to his friend and colleague, a useless anger brewing, and then something buzzed and something else flashed and he had an incoming communication.

“That’ll be Lin,” Hadley said, wheeling himself back to his control panel as Sitterson composed himself a little. He flicked a switch and a monitor on his desk lit up. Lin stared from it. It looked to Sitterson as if she’d had her hair pulled back even tighter since he’d seen her last. Maybe she had a machine that did it.

“You seeing this?” he asked.

“Perfect record, huh?” Lin said without expression.

“Naruto-watching, geisha-fucking, weird gameshow-having dicks! They fucked us!”

“Few injuries, but zero fatality,” Lin said. “Total wash. Any word from downstairs?”

“Downstairs doesn’t care about Japan,” Sitterson said, sighing. Move on, he thought. Accept it, stop stewing, stop blaming everyone else when everything is down to you and everyone else here and… Move on!

“The Director trusts us,” he said softly

“You guys better be on your game,” Lin said, voice even more impersonal than ever over the electronic link.

Before Sitterson could spit out something offensive Hadley cut in. He knows me so well, Sitterson thought as his friend spoke. “You just sweat the chem, Lin,” he said. “While these morons are singing ‘What a Friend We Have in Shinto’, we’re bringing the pain.”

“Fuck was up with that fool’s pot, anyway?” Sitterson asked. “He shoulda been drooling, and instead he nearly made us.”

“We treated the shit out of it!” Lin said, and her defensiveness was the first real expression he’d seen on her face. He shouldn’t have enjoyed that—they all worked together, after all—but he did.

“Got ’em in the Rambler, headed for the tunnel,” he said to Hadley, spotting the vehicle’s movement on a big screen. He turned the central monitor back to focus on their own concerns, now that the Japanese were out of the picture. They never messed up, and deep inside he found that cause for concern.

But it also presented a challenge.

And what a challenge, he thought. But he couldn’t go that way, couldn’t let the implications get on top of him. Right now he needed to focus like he never had before.

“The Fool is toast anyway,” Lin said from the monitor, as if that could excuse the mistake. “You better not fuck us on the report.”

“Shit!” Hadley said.

“What?” Lin asked. “Shit why?”

Yeah, shit why? Sitterson thought, looking across at his colleague. Hadley glanced up and flicked his fingers across his throat.

“Work to do,” Hadley said, and Sitterson could hear the urgency there. “Gotta go.”

“You guys are humanity’s last hope, don’t tell me—” Sitterson cut her off.

Don’t tell us what we are, bitch, we already fucking know.

“So?” he asked.

“There’s no cave-in,” Hadley said.

“What!?” We can’t fail we can’t fuck up we can’t let anything go wrong—

Hadley worked his keyboard and pointed at the main screen. It was a view through the tunnel, a staggering transfer through the fifteen cameras along its length. It went from moonlight at one end, to moonlight at the other, with no obvious blockage in between.

“The fucking tunnel is open!”

Sitterson breathed deeply for a second, composing himself. Then he hit a switch and spoke into his microphone.

“This is Control to Demolition.” He waited for a response but heard only static. “Shit, they’re not even picking up!”

“What?” Hadley asked. The panic was brewing in him, the constant nervousness expanding. He looked gray.

“Don’t worry,” Sitterson said, though he was more than worried. He hit another button and spoke again. “Broadcast, can you patch me in to Demolition?” “We’re dark on their whole sector,” an anonymous voice replied. “Might have been a surge in the—” Sitterson cut them off. Sat there breathing for a while. Looked up at the screen, tracking the progress of the Rambler as it careened around the forest track too quickly, wheels spitting grit and mud and the Jock driving it expertly.

He stood quickly, sending his wheeled chair rolling across the floor to strike the wall below the mahogany panels. Two open, three still closed. He blinked at them, then turned to Hadley, who was busy tapping away on his keyboard.

“See if you can bypass—”

“Fuck you think I’m doing?” Hadley snapped. Sitterson started to reply but decided better of it. Instead he turned and walked toward Truman.

“Get the door.”

The soldier shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other.

“Mister Sitterson, you’re not supposed to leave the—”

“Open the goddamn door!” Sitterson snapped. He was standing in front of Truman now, the soldier’s uncertainly evident, but his professionalism was also clear. He glanced down at the boy’s pistol, then snorted. What the fuck are you thinking?

“You got family, Truman?” Hadley asked without looking up from his screen. He was sweating, leaning closer to the computer than ever, eyes alight with text and numbers and whatever else he was absorbing.

“Yeah… ” the soldier said.

“Kids get through that tunnel alive, you won’t anymore.” Hadley didn’t even glance up. Sitterson nodded at the screen—the Rambler sliding around a curve, headlamps lighting the trees, wheels spinning—and decided to give Truman three seconds.

At the count of one he’d stepped aside and hit the panel to open the door.

“Good choice,” Sitterson said, and he started to run.

Demolition was one level down, and the staircase was at the end of this corridor, past the dog-leg and past Chem. He reckoned thirty seconds. He wasn’t as young or as fit as he used to be, but he ran faster than he had in years, ignoring the pains in his toes and shins, the burning of his lungs, the thumping of his heart.

Maybe three minutes ’til they reach the tunnel, he thought, running through their route in his mind. That’s if they don’t blow a tire or hit a tree or skid into a ditch. And with what was at stake, there was no way he could rely on anything so remote as luck.

“Make a hole!” he shouted at a couple of guards milling outside Chem. “Fucking move!” They pressed back against the wall and he ran by, wondering whether at that moment Lin might have glanced up at the door and seen his panicked shape rush by. Maybe she had. And if he didn’t run faster, maybe she’d never have the chance to ask him what it had all been about.

In his earpiece Hadley’s voice was shrill.

“I can’t override! It’s asking me to run a systems diagnostic!”

“By the time that’s finished, we’ll be finished!” Sitterson panted.

“Good luck, Buddy.” Sitterson smiled and ran faster, skidding around the dog-leg, pushing between two strolling workers and barreling through the swing-doors leading into the stairwell. He slid down the handrails, quick