The Cabin in the Woods (17 page)

Those things outside, the zombies, Jules’s death and her head rolling about on the floor like that... all of that was thrown in just to scare the shit out of them.
And it worked
, he thought, but then he chuckled, too. Jules’s and Curt’s noisy fucking in the shower was probably the most-viewed clip on YouTube right now.

“My parents are gonna think I’m such a burnout.” And then he realized that he’d be the one they’d be focusing on right now, and if they didn’t want him to ruin everything for the others, they’d have to—

The window behind him smashed, and Marty aimed a knowing smile at the fiber optic cable still in his hand.
They’ll have to come and get me.

He turned to the window, ready to see the cameras and the presenter, so sun-baked that he or she had passed tanned and entered somewhere into the orange spectrum. Microphones thrust at him, producers with fingers at their lips silently pleading for him to
Keep the secret a little while longer
, and there would be transport to somewhere from where he could view the remainder of his friends’ ordeal...

And though he felt cruel and immature even thinking about it, he couldn’t wait to see what a job they’d made on the fake Marty-Slashed-Up-And-Dead mannequin.

The zombie wasn’t quite as tall as the big one they’d seen outside, but his face was about ten times as horrific.
Good job, guys,
Marty thought admiringly,
and then the zombie’s arm extended and his hand closed around Marty’s throat.

The fingers squeezed hard and Marty felt things
grinding
in there.

Not so tight!
he thought, but he was already realizing his naivety.

What a dick.

The breath was shut off from his lungs, giving way to pain. The thing pulled him to the broken window, spun him around, closed an arm around his throat and tugged him backward.

As Marty folded at the waist and felt the jagged spikes of broken glass scoring and slitting his thighs and back, he was still cursing himself and his foolish thinking. There was
no way
this could have been reality TV There hadn’t been nearly enough sex.

How could he have been so stupid?

Marty screamed, and it felt as if he was shouting only for himself. The arm across his throat squeezed tighter as the thing tried to drag him backward through the window, and
no one
could make up that smell,
no one
could manufacture the fucking breath on that thing.

He struggled more fiercely, pulling himself back in a little even though the pain of the cuts on his back and legs was just starting to catch fire. The thing pulled even harder and Marty clung onto the window frame, refusing to let go or ease up his own pressure for even an instant.

These arms will not move however hard that thing pulls.
Judah!
Marty thought.
That’s the father zombie out there, the father of Patience, whose image started all this down in the basement with Dana.
It seemed to make sense, ridiculous though it was. And it seemed suddenly more real than any reality TV could be.

But the zombie pulled harder, tugging him so that his back creaked as he bent in half, hauled through the window, and as he lost his grip he reached around with his right hand for anything he could use as a weapon. He knocked clothes and a pouch of tobacco from the dresser surface, then his fingers closed around his thermos-shaped bong.

The cool night air suddenly kissed his bloodied skin as he exited the cabin. It seemed so much colder, and when he thumped to the ground and saw the thing standing over him, the idea that he’d ever thought it false was just so ridiculous.

Judah swung his hand down. Marty rolled, heard the harsh whisper of metal sticking into soil, looked at the zombie’s hand and saw the blade being tugged from the earth.

A second later and that would have been right through my head
. He half stood, but Judah’s other hand knocked him across the shoulders, spilling him to the ground again. Marty didn’t have time to turn his head and watch the blade swinging down for another try, so he rolled to the right and saw Judah stagger as he stabbed the ground again.

Marty kicked out at the hand holding the knife and heard something crumple and snap. But it seemed to
make no difference. The zombie pulled the knife up again and turned slightly, and Marty knew that if he didn’t find his feet he’d eventually be pinned to the ground with that cruel blade. And then...

“And then” he didn’t want to think about.

He kicked out at Judah’s legs, and when the zombie took a staggering step backward Marty found his feet, swaying slightly as if the ground was dipping and lifting. Judah fell toward him, one clawed hand reaching for his throat, the other raising the knife to strike again.

Marty shook the thermos shape in his hand, and felt and heard the familiar
click-clack
as it telescoped out into the giant bong. He’d sure had some fun with this, and it seemed a shame to smash it. But choice had been taken from him. Maybe it had been stolen long ago. Or perhaps he’d never had any choice at all.

He swung the bong into the side of Judah’s head with all his might. The sound Judah made when he hit the ground was like a bale of hay dropped from several feet up; a crunch, and a few snaps. His hand still gripped the blade’s rotten handle, and he writhed briefly before starting to struggle to his feet again.

Fuck this,
Marty thought, and he turned and ran for the forest. He could lose this thing out there, outrun it—hadn’t Romero said that zombie’s ankles would break if they ran? He was the expert, right?—and then double back to the cabin, get inside, and plan with the others just what the fuck they were going to do now.

The things were strong but mindless, just living-dead freaks that needed a good shovel swung at their
necks or a fire set in their—

Something punched him between the shoulder blades. He gasped and staggered forward, losing his footing and wondering what the hell the zombie could have thrown to have unbalanced him so much. And then he sprawled in the mud and leaves as the cool kiss of pain drifted in, and he knew.

Knife...

The knowledge invited the agony to settle upon him and he gasped, never understanding that such pain could exist. He felt entered and violated, the foreign object probing his innards, heavy and hot in his insides. He reached around with one hand, the movement shifting the rusted metal blade in his flesh. Crying out at last, his fingertips brushed cool metal. But he couldn’t gain purchase.

He brought that hand beneath him and reached with the other, but was no more successful.

Get up and run!
he thought.
Don’t fuck around here, get up and run, if you can get... up... then do it and...
run
!

Marty heaved himself up on both hands, screaming as his wounded flesh flexed around the piercing blade, and then he felt hands closing around his ankles. They pulled, he hit the ground face first, and then Judah started dragging him into the forest. Leaves crumpled beneath him, sticks and rocks scraped his groin and stomach and chest, filth getting into his open wounds, and he could barely find the energy to hold up his head.

“Help!” he screamed at last. But his voice was pitiful,
and he tasted blood in his mouth. “No!
Noooo!”

Judah dragged him, not rushing, keeping a steady pace whatever obstacles he had to overcome. A fallen branch snagged on Marty’s clothing and the zombie pulled on, eliciting a scream from Marty as a sharp stick pierced his stomach and snapped off. He gasped, crying out again, and tried to reach a hand down to explore the new wound. But though he managed to reach a hand beneath him, the dragging prevented him from feeling how serious the puncture was.

Warmth was all he felt, and wetness. More blood leaking from him to soak into this unnatural forest’s floor.

Are they watching me even now?
he wondered.
The death and pain’s for real, but there was still that camera, so are they watching me now? Those controllers? Those bastards?

“Help me!” he shouted. “Please!”

They passed over a small rise topped with heavily thorned plants. First he heard them snagging in Jonah’s clothing and dried skin, and then they gouged and pricked at his own—thighs, scrotum, stomach, chest, and then his face, because he was feeling weaker with each second that passed by, and couldn’t hold it up. His back was wet and hot around the knife wound, cooler elsewhere as the night air whispered across the blood. He could smell it, and see it beneath him as he left a bloody trail across the forest floor.

Marty coughed and spat a dark mass. Tears burned his eyes. The darkness grew darker.
“No...
help me
!”

And then the darkness grew deeper still as Judah went down. At first Marty didn’t understand, but as things started to feel and sound different—the ground was damper, his cries and the dragging noises muffled by something surrounding them—he realized what was happening. Judah had risen from a hole in the forest floor, and now he was taking Marty back down into it.

He started struggling with all the energy and determination he had left, digging his fingers into the soil, clawing, trying to gain purchase as the zombie continued to pull. Trees and sky were being drawn away and total darkness hauled him down, and he’d never wanted to be out in that weird forest as much as he did then.

“
Help me!”
he screamed again, voice swallowed by the ground around him. He could see each extreme of the hole now as it framed the outside, and the inside smelled musty and of old decay long given over to time. His strength was leaving him. The knife drained his life and poured it into the ground around him. He smelled wet earth and blood.

One final scream and the outside was cut off from view, and Marty could do nothing but be dragged, and dragged, and dragged toward his doom.

•••

The screen grew still as the screaming boy was taken underground. They had cameras and sensors down
there too, but there was no need to check on what was happening. Old Jonah Buckner was good at his craft, and if he couldn’t extract the knife from the kid’s back to finish the job, he had plenty more. Down there. In the darkness.

Sitterson swiveled his chair away from the control panel and started whistling, glancing around Control as he did so. Truman stood beside the door just down the curved metal staircase, as he had since the beginning. His eyes were wider than usual, and Sitterson thought he saw a trace of sweat on the soldier’s top lip. But they’d have never been sent a raw recruit. Without even asking, he knew that Truman had seen action and had at least three years of combat postings behind him. He’d likely seen friends killed, and might have killed people himself. From a distance maybe, their deaths little more than clouds of dust and a quick dance. Or maybe he’d killed close-in, so he could look into the victim’s eyes as he or she died.

But none of the action he’d seen would have been like this. Sitterson was only glad the soldier hadn’t yet asked what lots of new ones tended to:
But why, when they’re so defenseless?
Mainly because the answer was so glib.
They have to be
.

Still whistling, Sitterson watched Hadley go to the second mahogany panel at the back of the room, slide it open and pull the lever inside. He closed his eyes and kissed the pendant around his neck, knowing that a process was being repeated around and beneath him, blood flowing, grooves and carvings and etchings being
filled, all in darkness as ever it was.

Sometimes in nightmares he dreamed of that shape slowly being traced in blood, the primitive human figure holding a goblet and dancing, carved into a chunk of stone as old as the world itself, and on waking he’d feel a deep dread more basic than anything he’d ever felt before, fearing that
he
was the Fool. Much of the dread came from the knowledge of what he had almost touched, because even dreams were no way to draw close.

And some of the dread came from the mystery of how he knew about the blood, and the carving, and the shapes they picked out.

He had learned to simply accept. Much easier that way. So he whistled, and Hadley returned to his desk, and Truman looked at his feet for a few seconds because he knew it had only just begun.

A rumble passed through Control, and two of the three large screens flickered for less than a second. The sensation passed as quickly as it had begun.

“They’re getting excited downstairs,” Hadley said as he lowered himself gently into his chair.

Sitterson nodded and looked around at Truman, who was standing almost to attention again now, though his eyes flickered left and right as if searching for something.

“Greatest Show on Earth...” Sitterson said. Then he returned to his controls, tapped a few keys and brought up the next screen.

Another rumble filled the room as the last girl did her best to survive.

•••

Somehow she was still functioning. Through all this the fear had clasped her cold around the chest, but she was still moving, still able to stand, still able to think. She had no idea how.

She looked at her hands pressed against the side of the tall dresser as she tried to push it in front of the window, and Jules’s blood was already crisp between her fingers and tacky across the back. Perhaps that was where her strength came from: she knew that Jules would never want her to just give in.

So she shoved, and the wooden base of the dresser squealed across the timber floor.

Patience’s mother was thumping against the window from outside. Two panes of glass had cracked, but the zombie seemed stupid, not realizing that she could shove her way through the glass. She pounded against the wooden frame and around the opening, mouth pressed against the glass, rotten tongue tracing grotesque patterns in the dust. If Dana could just get the dresser across the window.

She’d heard the screams and chaos from Marty’s room. Then the silence. She tried not to think about what that meant, but how could she not? How could she ignore the idea that Marty might have—