The Cabin in the Woods

“So let’s sit and wait for a while,” she said. “Maybe they won’t know we’re here.” “Maybe.”

They held hands and waited in silence, listening to the sounds of growling and grumbling, and things being dragged across the floor. Occasionally the growls rose into angry shrieks as whatever was out there fought over a tasty morsel, but mostly the feast was performed in silence. Dana supposed there was plenty enough for all of them.

At regular intervals the elevator doors opened and disgorged something else into the complex. They heard footsteps, the hard clack of claws, slimy sliding things, the flutter of leathery wings, and the ghostly howl of creatures that should never be.

Perhaps ten minutes after the first guards met their ends, they heard the pounding of footsteps and a scream of terror as several more arrived. Dana closed her eyes and tried not to hear, but the elevators pinged, the doors hummed open, and it all started again.

Wet things struck the door.

People screamed.

Dana and Marty hugged, thinking perhaps it would never end, and they’d die in here of starvation and terror as the elevators pinged, and things continued to stalk from the nightmares where they should have remained.

“There’s still a chance,” Hadley said. “Really. Still a chance. Maybe we’ll get lucky and… ” But he trailed off, and Sitterson heard his own hopelessness echoed in his friend’s voice. As they worked feverishly at their control panels-trying to contact people beyond their reach, searching for reasons why this was happening-images flickered at random across the viewing screens.

And the images they saw were of chaos and death. Sitterson had just seen a lab worker with whom he’d sometimes enjoyed drinking taken down by a mutant, thrashing as the stick-thin red thing held his arms and vomited onto his face and head. After an instant of motionless shock the man had started writhing and kicking as wisps of smoke rose from his eyes, mouth, and nose, and his head began to melt.

The mutant had sat back for a while, and then it commenced feeding.

Another camera in a corridor deeper in the complex showed a group of workers-lab technicians and administrative staff-fleeing in panic, moments before a horde of flying, scuttling, running monsters came after them. Sitterson tapped keys to track their progress from corridor to hallway to balcony, before the monsters fell on them at last. He watched only until he was certain that none would escape, and then he moved away to give them privacy in their deaths.

A lab worker was knocked from a high balcony in the rotunda, plummeting to his death. Sitterson switched cameras.

A female guard ran screaming from a strange, floating witch-like woman, her long gray hair trailing behind her like exhaust fumes, her spindly fingers catching the woman’s hair and tripping her back. The guard shot a whole magazine into the witch’s face with no effect. The witch grabbed her head and lifted her from the ground, opening an unnaturally wide mouth that closed around the woman’s face and sucked the life from her.

As the woman visibly deflated in her black uniform, the witch’s hair darkened from silvery-gray to dark gray, strands thickening and becoming more lustrous. She cast the shriveled corpse aside and floated away in her search for more.

Sitterson flipped through image after image, skipping past various levels and rooms, hallways and lobbies throughout the complex. One stairwell camera showed a long, steady line of zombies descending the flights, and he tapped a few keys to see where they were going. He wished he hadn’t. A group of people had taken refuge at the base of the stairwell, barricading the doors against the horrors from outside but not considering the fact that they could descend, as well.

The zombies marched down to feed, and the people died badly

A vampire resembling the classic Nosferatu ripped the throat from a screaming woman, splashing the security camera lens with blood.

“Kevin,” said Hadley.

“Where?”

“Corridor three-B.”

“Who’s Kevin?” Truman said from by the door, but they ignored him. If he watched, he’d see soon enough.

Sitterson brought it up onto one of the big screens.

Kevin.

He remembered seeing this man before, knew what he could do, but even so he was briefly taken in by his appearance-quite, calm, normal-looking, he walked amongst the chaos seemingly unperturbed by the terrible things he saw. All around him people were being killed, eaten, torn apart, melted, shriveled, exploded, digested or crushed, and his gentle smile never seemed to change.

But then an injured guard caught his attention. He stopped, knelt by the man’s side, and exsanguinated the man in a matter of seconds.

“Elevator lobby,” Hadley said. “Got, some unblooded coming through.”

“Unblooded?” Truman asked.