The Cabin in the Woods

The hanging shape of the slashed-up zombie was starkly illuminated by the dangling lamp, casting a horrific shadow against the far wall. His big hands almost touched the torture room’s dirt floor. The chain wrapped around his wrist bit in deep, and the half-moon curve of the broken bear trap glistened and glimmered with fresh blood.

Holden frowned, because he wasn’t aware he’d been injured that badly. There was so much blood on there.

“Come on,” Dana said again, “we’ve got to try and-”

A rumble came from the wall, and for a moment Holden through it was another of those troubling earth tremors. But then he felt the vibration through his feet and heard the sound coming from a very definite direction.

Then a section of the wall started to fold away. “Back!” he shouted, hauling Dana behind him in some deep-set belief that he should be protecting her. She’s the one who killed the zombie, he thought, and he barked a brief, mad laugh as Dana dashed to the table and brought up a heavy, curved hatchet.

“You feint left, and I’ll get it when it goes for you,” she whispered. Holden nodded, tensed, and when the wall was fully open and the flashlight blinded him he darted to the left… straight into the thing’s arms.

“Hey!” Curt said, squeezing his shoulders. “Hey, it’s me.”

“Curt,” Dana gasped.

“Let’s move let’s move!” he said without even pausing to check out the room. Behind him, the chaotic mess of the main cellar was lit by two hanging bulbs, both swinging and dancing as Curt ducked beneath the joists for the floor above and brushed the wire with his head.

Dana followed, with Holden bringing up the rear.

Should’ve closed the door, he thought, even though he’d seen Dana doing a blade-job on the bastard thing. If it gets out-

“We’re getting the fuck out of here,” Curt said. He moved quickly across the cellar, knocking a bookcase with his thigh and spilling a slew of moldy books across the floor. Dana walked into a chandelier of fine chains hanging from an old wagon wheel, waving her hands around her head as if to shove aside spider webs. Holden went to help but she was through them, one hand fingering through her hair and bringing the dirty, bloody knots to his attention. She’s bleeding more than I thought. He wanted to embrace her again, and he promised himself that he would. Soon. They would hug soon, somewhere safe where terror couldn’t tear them apart again, and where warmth and safety replaced the stink of age and the coldness of death.

Curt stopped below the storm doors that led to the outside, looking around, kicking a heavy shelf from the wall and hefting it as a weapon. A dozen ornaments spilled from the shelf and shattered on the floor, and as he went for the three stairs leading up to the doors he crunched them into the ground.

He turned around and glanced from Dana to Holden, sizing them up.

“Hurt?”

Dana shook her head, denying the blood. Curt pointed at her nose, her scalp. “Not bad,” she said.

“I’m cut,” Holden said. He hadn’t yet explored his wounds from the bear trap, but he could still feel them leaking afresh. Once when he was a kid he’d fallen and scraped his knee, and keeled over in a faint when he looked down to see the slight dribble of blood. Since then he’d been terrified of blood- especially his own- and the last thing he needed now was to pass out.

He turned his left side to Curt, who looked him up and down without his expression giving anything away.

“Think you can you run?” he asked.

Holden nodded.

“Good. I open these doors and we go for the Rambler, okay?” Dana and Holden agreed with a nod, Curt turned to the doors and shoved them open, and darkness flooded in.

No time to talk and plan, Holden thought. This is controlled panic. None of us really knows what’s happening here.

Curt went first, the heavy shelf held across his chest ready to swing. He climbed the stairs, stood in the open beside the cabin, and looked around.

“Okay,” he said, and Dana followed him up. Holden came last, ready to stand and look cautiously into the darkness between trees, but the other two were already sprinting for the Rambler.

And this is when control gets flushed down the toilet, he thought, remembering every horror movie he’d ever seen. The creeping and peering around corners is over. Now we’re just running.

Holden’s side and back hurt more when he ran, and the cool night air was chill across his flowing blood. But he concentrated on Dana, even smiling slightly as he realized that despite all this he was still checking out her butt, and they reached the vehicle without being attacked by any of the walking dead.

“What about Marty?” Dana gasped as they skidded to a stop.

“They got him,” Curt said.