The Cabin in the Woods

scared and terrified. But her voice now was tinged with defeat.

“Did you see it?” Holden asked. “What’d he hit?”

But she was looking at something far more distant than either of them could see.

“Marty was right. God.”

“Get in the van!” Holden said urgently. There was just the two of them now, and if those zombies could run—

“Marty was right…”

“Dana, get in the fucking Rambler! We can talk about this later, but right now we have to get away from here. They’ll be attracted by the…” Explosion, he thought. Our shouting. The impossible explosion, and our useless shouting, because whichever way they turned—

But he would not be defeated. Curt would have snorted even at the thought of defeat. He had died trying to save them all, and Holden would run and fight and do every single thing he could to honor his friend’s sacrifice.

He grabbed Dana’s hand and pulled her toward the van. She was slow—he was almost dragging her—and he wanted to shout and rage at her to not give up, never give up. But when they reached the Rambler she let go and opened the door, holding it open for him to jump in first. And though distracted, he could also see something new appearing in her eyes: anger.

Holden jumped into the driver’s seat and Dana sat beside him. She was deliberate, almost calm. All the fear had dropped from her face. And she’d been talking about… puppeteers?

He gunned the engine and swung the Rambler around, away from the tunnel and back the way they’d come. Perhaps he’d pick out one of those fucking zombies in the headlamps and be able to run the thing over. Then reverse. Then run it over again.

“You’re going back,” she said.

“I’m going through,” he said. “We’ll just drive. There’s gotta be another road, another way out of here.” “It won’t work,” she said. “Something will happen. A bridge will collapse, a road will wash away. We’ll fall into a sinkhole.”

“Then we’ll leave the roads altogether!” he said, unreasonably angry at her sudden sense of defeat. “Dana, we’ll drive as far as we can into the forest, go on foot from there—”

Dana shook her head.

“You’re missing the point.”

“I am?” He hated her fatalism; he was trying to help them here. And he had never seen that in her before. I thought I was getting to know her, he thought, glancing at her sidelong. “Hey,” he said. “Look at me.”

She looked. She even smiled a little, but it was one of the saddest smiles he’d ever seen. “This isn’t your fault,” he said.

She laughed softly but it did nothing to lift the sadness.

“I know. It’s the puppeteers.”

“Please don’t go nuts on me, Dana,” Holden said. Puppeteers? What the…? “You’re all I got.”

She continued staring at him. He glanced at the road, back at her, and her relaxed, sad expression did not change. She looks as far from mad as I’ve seen her since this began.

“I’m okay,” she said.

“Good. ’Cause I need you calm.” He took a tight bend, fighting with the wheel, unused to the big vehicle and almost letting the rear end swing out from behind them. He’d have to go slow—if he wrecked or rolled the van that’d be it for them. The thought of being trapped inside while those zombie bastards bashed and hacked their way in… “No matter what happens, we gotta stay calm.”

A rush of optimism hit him. He didn’t know where it came from but he grabbed on, relishing the way it brightened his view a little, and made Dana feel just that little bit closer. They drove on, sweeping around bends and making their way back toward the cabin. And still flushed by optimism he smiled and opened his mouth to say, “Everything’s—”

Something pressed against his throat. His voice ended. And the newly enlightened world grew suddenly dark.

Dark red.

•••

She’d sensed a changed in Holden, but she knew it was nothing like the sense of doom that had settled over her. They could drive, they could run, they could hide, but the Puppeteers would find them. They’d find them because they were controlling this, and perhaps even now they were being watched by someone or something she couldn’t understand. In a way she hoped it was something, because if someone was responsible for all this… how sick must they be? How twisted?

She glanced at the road ahead of them, then looked back at Holden in time to see the shadow moving behind him. He was smiling as the scythe curved around his throat and flicked, opening his skin, tearing the meat of him, spraying the windscreen with a splash of blood, and she screamed, falling from her seat and pressing back against the side door as she saw who was there.

Father Buckner. The family killer, the murderer, the zombie, pressing his knee to the back of the driver’s seat as he tried to tug the scythe free.

Holden’s hands were still on the wheel, his eyes wide, body pulled back tight against the seat by the rusted blade buried deep in his throat. Blood bubbled there as he tried to scream.

Dana screamed for him, high and clear. Buckner did not even look her way. He tugged and shook and growled, throwing Holden’s body around in the seat like a— —like a puppet—

—and then the scythe came free with a wet sucking sound, and arterial blood geysered from the wound as Holden’s terrified heart thumped and pummeled, splashing the windscreen and spattering across Dana’s face and throat. She held up her hands and felt its warm impact, soft as a wet kiss across her wrist, and she screamed again because she knew what was to come.

Holden’s hands lifted from the steering wheel as he tried to hold in his blood. They pressed to his ruined throat, finding meat and bone and gristle instead of skin, and the big wheel jerked and spun unchecked.

We’ll hit a tree, Dana thought, and Father will go through the windscreen and I’ll pull Holden aside and—

But the Puppeteers would never allow that to happen.

As she wiped thick arterial blood from her eyes a shadow whipped through the air and she heard thwack! as Buckner buried the scythe’s point into the side of Holden’s head.

Dana gasped at what had been done to the man she had kissed and caressed just hours before. His throat was open and spewing, one eye had erupted from its socket, and his face was distorted by the metal buried deep behind it.

At least he’s free now, she thought as he slumped forward over the steering wheel, leaning to the right and turning the van to the left.

And then Dana tried to scrabble up to see over the dashboard and out the windscreen, because she had to know where they were going. For a second she thought, There’s nothing out there at all… no forest, no sky, no stars… it’s all make-believe… And then she saw that they were going for the lake, its calm expanse speckled only with the memories of long-dead stars.

She braced against the dashboard moments before the van hit the water.

If they hadn’t been moving so fast maybe they would have splashed down and floated for a while. But they hit hard and fast, and the already-fractured windscreen exploded inward. Lake water powered in, shockingly cold as it flowed down and lifted her up against her seat, pinning her there as the Rambler’s momentum drove it onward and increased the weight of the water pouring in. She kept her mouth squeezed tightly shut. Don’t scream don’t scream hold your breath and when we stop moving it’ll be time to swim—

Holden was thrashing in the seat beside her, and it was more than the water waving his limbs and battering his body. He was still alive! The zombie Buckner had gripped the scythe’s handle and was now struggling to free it from Holden’s skull.

How can he still be alive? Please let him be dead… I don’t want him to be alive if he’s like that,