The Cabin in the Woods

Truman was firing into the face of a straw man who was climbing through a wrenched gap between door and frame. The bullets passed through the scarecrow’s head without any effect, and he lashed out with long bladed fingers, catching the soldier across the forearm. Truman cursed and stepped back, firing again at the creature’s chest. More climbed in after him, four in all, and as the soldier changed magazines one of them bit into his left bicep.

He screeched and tore his arm away, losing a good weight of muscles and flesh in the process.

Hadley let rip with the machine gun. A scarecrow danced and jittered as the bullets ripped through him, writhing like a marionette. then laughed and advanced on the shooter.

“Our monsters have a fucking sense of humor?” he shouted. “Since when? I didn’t know about this!” He fired some more, concentrating on the scarecrow’s legs and amputating one at the thigh. It fell over and started to crawl.

“I need ten more seconds!” Sitterson said.

“Running out of time!” Hadley snapped back.

“It’s on emergency lockdown! I’m bypassing…”

“Come on, come on!” Lin said, pressing herself against his side, breasts squashed against his arm. He glanced at her and saw that her hair band had come loose, hair spilling over her right shoulder.

“Jesus Christ,” he said, “you’re gorgeous!”

“Oh,” Hadley said from somewhere behind him. “Right. Grenade.”

Sitterson glanced back at the melee by the broken main door. Truman had dropped his gun and was batting at the scarecrows as they sliced and bit him, and in his right hand he held a small black object. He bit away the pin and held it up.

“Son of a bitch,” Sitterson mumbled, “that’s against regulations.” The grenade exploded.

He sprawled across the trapdoor, Lin spilling from his back and crying out as she struck the console.

Burning straw started to drift down around them and Lin looked past him at his desk.

“Hadley!” she shouted.

“What?” Sitterson snapped.

“Blast… blew him over…” She stood, shaking her head as blood leaked from her left ear. Burning straw landed in her hair and she waved it absently away.

Sitterson stood and leaned over his ruined console, resting his hand in something that had once been part of Truman. Down in the main control area, smoke drifted as the main door fell open, and Hadley was crawling slowly for the stairs back up to Control.

But something followed him. Something dark, swimming through the smoke as if passing through water, a fin breaking the surface, black hair visible here and there, black eyes, its wet black mouth opening wide, and Sitterson knew what was to come. If it hadn’t been so ridiculous he might even have laughed.

The merman closed on Hadley and turned him over, placing a huge webbed hand around his throat.

“Oh, come on!” Hadley said, and the creature bit off his face.

Hadley’s gone, Sitterson thought, falling to his knees and turning back to the trapdoor. “Steve’s gone.”

“So will we be if-” Lin said, and then the trapdoor gave an electronic buzz and its red-lit panel showed green. “Got it!” he swung the heavy trapdoor open and turned to Lin with a grin, about to say, Ladies first.

A tentacle appeared from the gloom and wrapped around her throat, constricting so quickly and powerfully that her tongue protruded, eyes bulged, and she spat blood as she was whipped back out of view. Sitterson fell sideways into the hole, hands around his head to lessen the impact.

He landed in a small chamber and stood quickly, reaching up to close the trapdoor, expecting something to fall on him at any moment and go about destroying him. We were so close, he thought, and he actually felt tears welling as he swung the trapdoor shut and locked it from within.

Maybe he was the last one left. Control was gone, the whole complex was infested, but the Virgin and the Fool might yet be alive.

“I can stop all this,” he whispered. The chance was minimal but it was still there. And he had nothing left to do.

To his right, a ladder led through a hole in the floor. It would take him down into the deep corridors, into places he had been watching on the screens as they crawled with monsters and impossibilities. But he had no alternative. He had to find the Fool and kill him, before he himself was killed.

He lifted the pendant from within his shirt and kissed it. Perhaps they would view this as their greatest entertainment, and he would be lauded. But he shook his head as such foolishness. Nothing about himmattered. Whatever the outcome, things had changed beyond redemption. Even if he did manage to reverse the situation, there would be a whole new set of rules and demands after this.