The Cabin in the Woods

“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

Back 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.

Holden twisted to look and winced as his wounds distorted, and fresh blood flowed.

Through the back of the Rambler he saw a flash of trees.

“Almost there!” he shouted.

The roof was being battered now, dented and ripped where rocks struck. If the whole mountain comes down into the tunnel we’ll be squashed without even knowing what happened, he thought. He held Dana and kissed her, one hand around the back of her neck, another cupping her breast, and he felt her own desperate realization of their predicament.

If there was any way he’d wish to go…

And then they were out, and it was as if the weight of the world had been lifted from around them. There were no more impacts, and Curt looked back past them as he steered the vehicle far from the collapsing tunnel and up against the wall of the roadside cliff. He left the engine running and pulled on the parking break.

Their gasps mingled, and Holden did not let go of Dana’s neck. Given a choice, he never would again.

“Well… ” Curt said. He got up from his seat and kicked the door open. Bent metal shrieked in protest. Dana followed, and she reached back for Holden’s hand as they all exited to stand beside the battered Rambler.

Rumbles still issued from the tunnel’s mouth, and a pile of debris had spilled out across the road. Dust rose in billowing clouds. Grit rained down around them like hard rain.