The Cabin in the Woods

“Things that haven’t been used yet,” Sitterson explained. “They’ll be even more bloodthirsty than the rest.” Hadley had brought up a view of the elevator lobby, where the walls were painted red and piles of body parts were scattered across the floor. There were still zombies chewing on bones and rifling through heaps of intestines.

The elevators opened and a man with spinning saws in his head emerged. From another open door, a woman with fire smoldering in her mouth and dripping from her nose. And more, and more, and Sitterson couldn’t understand how any of this was happening.

There were safeguards.Truman started talking into his intercom, his voice quivering in panic. He’d drawn and checked his sidearm, and Sitterson almost laughed at that.

Hasn’t he even been watching?

“Lead Officer Truman to Sec Command, requesting immediate reinforcement. Code Black. Repeat: Code Black. Where the hell are you guys?”

“Why aren’t the defenses working?” Sitterson said, working his control panel. “Where’s the fucking gas?”

“I think something chewed through the connections, in the utility shaft,” Hadley said.

“Something which?”

“Something scary!”

The light flickered and went out. The screens went dead. Sitterson heard a faint cry from Lin down in the control area, and then footsteps as she made her way up to them.

Something hit the door hard enough to buckle its three-inch metal lining.

It’s all going to hell, he thought.

“We can’t just stay here and-” Dana whispered, and then something smashed through the window behind them and stuck against the wall above the control panel. Glass showered over her head and shoulders. She let out a startled cry and jumped up, Marty by her side.

The thing unfurled its leathery wings and turned its head around on a long neck to look their way. A huge bat, with an almost childlike face… a small dragon, with smoke curling from one nostril… she guessed it really didn’t matter which.

The dragonbat growled fire.

“Shit!” Dana hissed. She flicked the lock’s latch and opened the door, backing away from danger even knowing that there might be worse behind her. Marty came with her, gun raised and pointing at the dragonbat thing, and she wondered if he’d even ever fired a pistol.

They slid along the wall away from the guard’s station and scanned the scene around them. The noises were clearer now that they were out of the booth- growling, chewing, wet crunches as skulls were cracked, sucking, drooling, and dripping. The guards were dead and the monsters were eating.

One thing looked their way-it had four eyes and a mouth like something from beneath the sea-and Dana froze. But it dipped its head back to emptying a guard’s holed skull of brain matter and fluid.

Dana hadn’t dared draw a breath since leaving the guard’s booth. And she might have remained frozen there, dinner-in-waiting, if Marty hadn’t grabbed her hand and dragged her toward the corridor that led from the lobby. Things shifted and ate, and just as she thought, Why aren’t they interested in us? a huge, boil-covered monstrosity stood before them and roared.

Boils burst across its body and misted the air, and Marty shot it once in the eye. It staggered back against the wall and slid down, dead.

Dana caught her breath now and ran, Marty by her side. She heard his own heavy breathing, and tried to ignore all the terrible, impossible things around them. They stepped over a body with its guts and organs removed, almost slipped in something wet and warm, and then they were in the corridor leading away from the lobby. Bullet holes pocked the walls here and the entire hallway was a mess of blood and dead bodies. A guard sat against the wall, his eyes wide open and no apparent injury on his body. But Dana has never seen anyone more dead.

As they reached the turn in the corridor Marty said, “When we get around we run as fast-” But he was cut off by a terrible, piercing screech.

Dana couldn’t help looking back, and she saw the dragonbat winging at them from the guard’s station, fire gushing from its mouth and clawed wings ripping at the air.

They took the corner at speed, running straight into a man in a long white lab smock and with a terrible cut to his scalp. He glared at them but didn’t seem to see, and as he pushed past them the dragonbat struck him in the chest.

The impact was immense. It powered him against the opposite wall, cracking plaster and splintering wooden studs, casting them both through to the space hidden beyond. The fracture was illuminated by a burst of flame, and the man’s screams quickly boiled away. The dragonbat rocketed from the hole again, meat and stringy stuff hanging from its mouth. Marty leaned across Dana to protect her and raised the gun, but the creature ricocheted from the walls and disappeared down the corridor, leaving scorch-marks wherever it touched.

They stood, and Dana couldn’t help herself; she took three steps to the hole in the wall and looked inside.