The Cabin in the Woods (20 page)

A frog leapt from the bowl of water and flowers, sitting amongst the other girls and looking around.

They chanted something, and at the bottom of the screen a line of subtitles appeared. Sitterson wondered 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 but cautious—a broken ankle now would mean the end of everything—and then back out into the corridor below. First door to the right was Sustenance, and when he drew level with the door to Demolition he kicked it open and ran inside.

There was a guard standing to the left, hand on the butt of his gun. Sitterson glared at him and rushed by.
Just you fucking dare,
he thought.

A second to scan the Demolition control room and he knew where the problem was. One large control panel was dark—power off—and from beneath came sparks and flashes. A man and a woman were working the panel, the man flicking a switch back and forth as if persistence could lure electricity back to him, the woman running diagnostic on a wired-up laptop.

Jesus Christ, where do we find these people?

“It’s not the breakers!” the man said, glancing up as he saw Sitterson approach.

“Fuck is going on in here?”

“We don’t know!” the guy whined. “Electrical said there was a glitch up top, one of the creatures?”

“The tunnel should have been blown hours ago!” Sitterson said.

The woman glanced up at him—pretty, terrified— and said, “We never got the order!”

“You need me to tell you to wipe your ass?” He
shoved the man aside, glanced down at the laptop screen. She was stuck on the fucking
password.
“How do we get past this?”

“We’re fried inside,” she said, a quaver to her voice. “We need a clean connection to the detonator—” Sitterson snorted, dropped to the floor and crawled beneath the unit. If they needed a clean connection then why were they fucking around with switches and trying to run a fucking diagnostic! She was stuck on the password, for fuck’s sake! He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, trying to chill, shedding the fearful anger and shifting focus to what needed doing and what
had to
be done.

After two seconds he opened his eyes again and pulled half a dozen quick-release bolts. Plastic covering fell away and a mass of wires and circuits was revealed.

“Okay, I need you to tell me exactly what went down first and how long after the other systems followed. And hand me a voltmeter.”

“Systems Tech is trying a reboot on the—” the guy started, but Sitterson cut in.

“We don’t have time. Talk me through.”

As the guy talked, Sitterson started checking boards until he found the one that had fried. He noted the number and shouted up for a replacement. It took thirty seconds for the woman to drop one in his hand, and another thirty before he’d replaced it with wire clips.
Should be soldered
, he thought, closing his eyes as he connected the last wire.

Something hummed, and he saw some of the
surface indicators lighting up through the guts of the panel above him.

“We good?” he asked.

“No, that’s just local,” the woman said. “It’s not linked.

“Shit!”

“Lin’s here,” Hadley said through his earpiece.

“Oh, great, she’s just who we need right now. Tell her to go poison someone.”

“The Rambler’s a mile away from the tunnel,” his friend said softly.

“Okay. Okay.” Sitterson scanned the mass of boards and chips, wires and fuses, circuit connectors and relays. A flush of utter hopelessness hit him, but he shoved it aside with an angry growl. He applied the voltmeter here and there, noting where power had failed but also knowing that in each of these places, it shouldn’t really matter. It was the relay to the detonator that mattered, and he’d just replaced...

“Is the detonator button still lit?”

“Yes,” the woman said, “but I told you, it’s just—”

“Local,” Sitterson said. He shuffled further beneath the unit and probed with his penlight, sniffing, smelling burnt plastic.

There!

He held the penlight in his teeth.

“Gary, we don’t have long,” Hadley said in his ear.

“Uh-huh.” He pulled the melted mass of wires apart.

“I mean it.”

“Uh-huh.” In the artificial light, orange and red
were too close, indistinguishable, so he stripped all four wires with his thumbnail.

“They’re approaching the last bend.
Damn
, that kid can drive.”

“Shud the huck up!” Sitterson growled, and he touched wires. Sparks flew, he flinched, and then from above he heard a brief, victorious yelp.

“We’re up!” the man said.

Sitterson spat the torch aside and held the wires together.

“Blow it!” he shouted.

The woman smacked the big demolition button and Sitterson winced as he was shocked.
Been sweating, wet, this might kill me.
But the pain was brief, and when it passed he called out.

“So?”

“We’re good,” the man said.

“We’re good,” the woman echoed.

Sitterson twisted the wires and snaked his way out from beneath the unit. The guy and woman were staring at him, faces slack with almost unbearable relief. The man actually held out his hand to help him up. Sitterson stood on his own, wiping imaginary dust from his sweat-soaked shirt. He examined the burns on his thumb and forefinger, pus-blisters already forming there. That was going to hurt, but all was still.

Downstairs, all was still.

“Wipe your ass,” he said and, leaving them to their shame, he smiled and left the room.

NINE

B
ack up back up back up!” Holden shouted, and Curt slammed the Rambler into reverse, stomping on the accelerator and not even bothering to look in the mirror because he wouldn’t be able to see anything anyway.

Holden and Dana crouched close behind Curt’s driver’s seat.
We should get in back and hide,
Holden thought, but that would have been unfair to Curt. Something kept them together. United by their near-escape, perhaps now they would all die together. At least being crushed by falling rocks was better than—

This is beyond the zombies, and we all know that now
.

Ahead of them the tunnel was in chaos—ceiling falling, slabs of rock pounding down, walls blasting out, dust and grit billowing and scraping against the Rambler’s chassis and windscreen. Visibility was quickly reduced to zero, and their only hope of survival would
be if Curt steered them back out into the open air.

A big rock scraped down the front of the vehicle, fracturing the windshield and tearing metal. Nevertheless, Curt held the wheel straight, foot pressed all the way down on the gas. The engine screeched in protest. They shook from side to side, and at the rear of the Rambler one of the sunroofs shattered and let in a shower of stinging debris.