The Cabin in the Woods

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.

Not yet.

She let out an explosive sob and Holden looked at her at last, offering a brief smile. “My door’s stuck,” he said.

“Mine too!”

“Come on.” He held out his hand and Dana took it, and as she climbed through into his room she expected to feel Mother’s hand clasping her ankle at any moment, the skin cold and rough, the strength impossible. But she fell through onto Holden’s floor, wincing as errant glass shards sliced her scalp and scratched across the bridge of her nose. Holden slipped on something and went down with her, and for a moment they were close and she could taste the panic on his breath.

She checked out his room and saw the pile of furniture stacked against his own window.

“That didn’t do much good for-” she began, and his wardrobe tilted inward and crashed to the floor. It threw up clouds of dust and shook the floorboards, and as she and Holden helped each other up she saw big-zombie standing in the shattered window frame.

“That’ll be Matthew,” she said, and giving the thing a name seemed almost stupid enough to laugh. Almost.

“Well he’s big enough to-”