The Cabin in the Woods (24 page)

Perhaps if she rushed him, striking at an angle, shoving him off balance and then tripping him into the lake... maybe then she could run and hide before he managed to crawl out. She spat blood, readied herself...

And then Matthew kicked out and struck her knee. She screamed and went down, spiking her hands and forearms on the splintered wood.

Crying, and hating herself for doing so, she tried to crawl, direction hardly a consideration anymore. Soon he’d swing the bear trap around and bring it
down on her back, or her head, and then she’d die and join the others.

A board moved beneath her, one end shattered and sticking up from a strike from the bear trap. Maybe if she levered it up, bent it away from the nail still holding it down, stood and turned before his next strike, she could—

He brought his foot down on her arm, and she screamed. She twisted to look up and back at him, and he shifted all his weight onto that one leg. Desperate to scream again, even more desperate not to, she bit her lip until blood started to flow.

At least that’s a wound
I
made,
she thought, and something about it gave her power.

“Fuck you,” she gritted.

He started swinging the chain around his head, picking up momentum for the final strike.

Ching... ching... ching...

I won’t look away,
she thought.
I won’t close my eyes, I won’t look away, the bastards won’t get that from me
.

Matthew grasped the chain’s handle with both hands, let it swing behind his back, tensed, and brought it up and over his head.

This is it
, Dana thought, and as she imagined kissing Holden, she smiled.

There was a loud
clunk!
and Matthew jerked to a standstill. He remained motionless for a moment, staring out over the lake in surprise, instead of down at Dana. And then he stumbled backward, off
balance, and fell onto the dock.

Beyond where he lay, Dana saw Marty with his bong in his hands and Matthew’s chain wrapped around it. His clothes were torn and covered in blood, and he stood arched forward as if trying to escape a pain in his back. But his breath came thick and heavy, and she saw the hatred in his eyes.

“Marty!”

“Dana, get away!”

Between them, Matthew was already getting to his feet, and Dana could see Marty’s hesitation. He tugged at the chain but it was solid. And if he let go of the bong, it would return the weapon to Matthew.

But she wasn’t about to leave.

She pried up the broken plank, standing and levering it from the last nail. It sprung up with a jolt, she reversed it so that the unbroken end was away from her, then she held it back over her shoulder.

“Hey, stinking shithead fuck-face!” she called. Matthew turned slowly to face her. “Yeah, that’s right... I know your name.” She swung the board with all her might and smashed it into his face.

The zombie fell backward from the dock and splashed into the lake.

Dana staggered past where the thing had fallen and fell into Marty, welcoming his embrace and giving one back. They both groaned and hissed from their wounds, but the contact was essential right then, a sharing of warmth and hope that drove back some of the darkness.
“Marty, I thought you were—”

“Not yet. Not quite.”

“Everyone else is...”

“Yeah.” He pulled back a little and there was little of the joker left. Dana felt her friend’s blood on her hands, from open wounds in his back.

From behind them came a splash as Matthew stood close to the edge of the lake and started striding toward them. He still dragged the chain behind him.

“You lost your bong,” Dana said ruefully.

“C’mon.” Marty grabbed her hand and they ran up the shore toward the cabin.

“Where are we going?” she gasped. She didn’t want to go back in there. That was the
last
place they needed to go, a warren of traps and locked doors, hidden basements and stuff meant for torture.

Anywhere but there.

But Marty didn’t reply, and when they were twenty yards from the cabin the door thudded open. For a brief, mad moment Dana thought,
Jules! She’s survived too, or maybe Curt, up from the ravine and not burnt nearly as badly as
—

But it was Mother Buckner who emerged onto the porch, her portly frame giving her gait a monstrous sway, and that terrible saw swinging by her side.

“This way!” Marty said, steering them around toward the rear of the building. They were still holding hands. Marty squeezed tight, and she thought perhaps he needed that contact to keep going, to help him fight the pain. Because now she’d seen the hideous puncture
wounds on his back, and she wasn’t sure how he was moving at all.

•••

Marty steered them for the treeline. Passing between the first of the trees he felt resistance from Dana, and pulled harder. There was no way they could slow down or change direction. Time was of the essence. Out here was chaos, and danger, and a plan the scope and depth of which he could barely comprehend.

But there was one place they might yet survive. They had to make it to the hole into which Judah had dragged him earlier, or they’d be finished.

“Marty, wait!” Dana said, pulling back harder.

Behind them, he heard a terrible scraping sound as Mother Buckner rounded the corner of the cabin, saw dragging across the ground. It would still have wet flesh between its teeth.

“Dana,
c’mon
!”

Moments later they reached the hole, a dark wound in the land where Marty had been dragged and from which he had emerged again, rebirthed and enraged. It was darker than the shadows, foreboding, but he knew it was their only hope of survival.

“We’re going in
there?”
Dana gasped.

Marty glanced toward the sounds of the scraping saw and wet footsteps. Behind Mother Buckner, Matthew had emerged from the lake and was slogging toward them, hauling the bear trap behind him.
“I need you to keep the faith right now, sister,” he said, gripping Dana’s shoulders. She frowned, and then past the hole a shape pressed through a mass of undergrowth.

Anna Patience Buckner, her single arm swinging by her side as she walked quickly toward them. Marty saw doubt disappear from Dana’s eyes as she considered their predicament.

She nodded and went for the hole.

Of all of them I thought she’d be the first to die,
he thought, but he instantly regretted it. Dana had surprised him with her strength and determination; he’d seen her fighting the big zombie as he’d crept up behind it. He’d never believed that he judged by appearances, and he never would do so again.

Marty knelt by the hole and reached in, grasping around for the ring he knew was there. He found it quickly, curved his hand through and pulled, and the hatch—like a storm door, only hiding something more than just a shelter—hinged up easily. Leaves and soil slipped away from its upper surface, and the stars reflected on the smooth, clean metal underneath.

Dana held back for only a second. Around them sang the sounds of pursuit—Mother’s saw, Matthew’s bear-trap, Anna’s inexorable footsteps. Then she nodded to Marty and slipped down through the hatch.

He followed her and slammed it closed behind them, turning the handle and hearing the satisfying
clunk
of locks engaging. Moments later he heard scratching from the other side. The ring on the topside flipped
over and hit the lid, something scraped the metal, and then came a faint, chilling cry of zombie frustration. It was the kind of sound never meant for human ears, and Marty and Dana quickly backed away.

The sound of their breathing echoed from the metal walls of the small, poorly lit chamber. It was barely tall enough to crouch in, but a good twelve by twelve feet square, with another metal hatch in the middle of the floor. A faint light came from a panel in the metal ceiling that had been removed to reveal several glowing cables. Hanging down from the panel was a spaghetti of wires, some stripped and spliced, others disconnected.

“What is this place?” Dana asked.

“You better—” Marty began, but then Dana stepped on Judah’s mewling face. She stumbled back from the pile of zombie parts, and Marty held her hand and guided her away. Each part was moving, twitching, throbbing with unnatural life.

“Yeah, I had to dismember that guy with a trowel,” he said. “What’ve you been up to?”

Dana stared at him in despair. Her mouth opened but nothing came out, and he saw the terrible truth in her eyes.

“Nobody else, huh?” he asked. She shook her head, and he added, “I figured.”

“You figured everything,” she said.

“Not even close,” he said. “But I do know some stuff. Check this out.” He went to the hatch in the floor and slid it open. The faint whiff of antiseptic he’d caught the first time he’d done so came again, reminding him
of hospitals and endless echoing corridors and places that people only ever wanted to visit when there was something wrong.

Dana’s mouth hung open. She shook her head and looked at him, her expression saying,
What?

“It’s an elevator,” he said. “Two sides metal, but two are thick glass. You can’t tell unless you... dangle your head in there. Somebody sent these dead fucks up to get us. There’re no controls inside, but there’s maintenance overrides in there.” He nodded up at the dislodged panel. “I’ve been playing around. I think I can make it go down.”

“Do we
wanna
go down?” she asked.

“Where else we gonna go?” He glanced at the closed ceiling hatch in the corner. “Sure as fuck don’t wanna go back up there.”

“But down there must be... ”

“Whoever’s done this to us? Yeah.” He moved to her side and they both knelt, arms around each other.
What has she seen?
he wondered. Curt and Holden were dead and gone, and it must have been terrible. He could ask her, but he didn’t really want to know. The terror came off her in waves, but also the defiance that he himself had been feeling ever since taking Judah’s head off. That brief triumph had given him power, and he felt the power thrumming in both of them.

He’d already destroyed one of the puppets. Perhaps it was time to find the puppeteers.

“Okay,” she said, nodding. “Okay. We got nothing else going for us, I guess.”
“Only our anger,” he said.

“I thought you couldn’t get angry on dope.” “Haven’t had a smoke in over an hour.” They grinned at each other, then Dana dropped down into the small elevator.

Marty moved to the open ceiling panel and the mass of wires that hung from it.

“Get ready,” he said. “The timing on this might be pretty tight.”

He wound two wires, flicked a switch, then slid across to the elevator. The hatch was already sliding shut and he fell in just in time, the metal brushing his head as he landed next to Dana... and something else fell in with him.

Dana screamed and kicked him in the shin. The elevator started to drop. Something grabbed his leg, and he looked down to see Judah’s arm flexing as its fingers squeezed against Marty’s leather boot.

“Ah! Fuckin’ zombie arm!” He kicked and stamped, and for a moment he thought it was his movement shaking the elevator. But then he stopped, the arm trapped beneath his foot, and instead of dying away the tremors increased.

“Now what?” he shouted.

“Another earthquake,” she said.

“Yeah, and you think it’s not connected?”

From above them came the sound of wrenching metal, and then a loud crack as something broke. Yet the elevator continued down at a slow, steady rate, apparently unhindered.
“Something up in the room,” Dana said.

“Yeah.”

“Almost like they’re following us, driving us toward—”

“Nah,” he said, shaking his head. “I should be dead. And so should you. Whoever’s been fucking with us, I’ve got a feeling we’ve stuck a monkey wrench into the works.” The thought made him smile grimly.

They descended for almost half a minute, then jolted to a halt. Marty turned full-circle to see which wall would open—one of the metal sides, or one of the glass—but then they started moving again. Only this time the movement felt different, and it took a moment for him to realize why

“Are we moving
sideways
?”

“Yeah...” Dana said, leaning against the glass wall. Marty looked around the elevator. The faint illumination came from behind an opaque screen in the ceiling, and there were similar panels spaced at regular intervals along the shaft. He looked down at Judah’s arm still flexing beneath his foot.

“You’re going home, dude.”

Then the elevator stopped. Behind Dana, Marty made out something strange. Another elevator? They were pulling alongside of it, and then—

The enraged werewolf smashed against the glass wall of its own enclosed box, mere inches from their own. The impact was loud, and Marty saw the glass flex, distorting both its appearance and the reflected image of Dana’s terrified face. She fell back into him,
screaming, as the creature scrabbled and scratched at the glass. An inch of air and two glass walls was all that lay between them.

It was drooling. Its eyes were intelligent, and starving. Its teeth...

“It’s a fucking
werewolf,”
Marty said, but voicing the fact made it no easier to believe. “So... no.” He shook his head, and Dana turned to him and held his cheeks.

“Marty?” There was something about her voice, something calm and in control, to which he so wanted to submit.

Far too much bad dope,
he thought.
I’ll wake up in the Rambler in a minute with Curt driving and Jules preening in the front seat, Dana and Holden flirting and acting coy, and I’ll scream myself awake and they’ll laugh at me, laugh because...

He laughed then, high and hysterical, and the elevator started moving again. Another vaguely lit blank metal wall, and then the light from behind them changed. He and Dana turned together to see a second identical elevator revealed. This one contained a grotesque alien, straight out of the movie, all sickly suckers and flailing limbs. It leapt at the glass and stuck there, its grotesquely sexual mouth sliming and sucking as it tried to probe at them, impregnate them, and then they moved on again, descending before jerking to the side once more.