Tim Lebbon - The Cabin in the Woods

Marty pressed his finger to his lips, shaking his head slowly. Don’t speak, don’t answer . Maybe this was just another trick. But the voice was soothing in a strange way, and if it could offer any reason why this had happened, there was no way she couldn’t listen.

“You won’t get out of this complex alive,” The Director said. Dana swallowed, chilled by the calmness in her words, but the idea did not surprise her. She’d been thinking it herself. “What I want you to understand,” she continued, “is that you mustn’t try. Because your deaths will avert countless others.”

The heavy footsteps had ceased now, and she could hear the furtive shuffling of people approaching along the corridor. They’d be close soon. Close enough to shoot. But the voice had her pinned like a butterfly to the air, and Marty seemed the same. Their hands tightly linked, they continued to listen.

“You’ve seen horrible things: an army of nightmare creatures. And they are real. But they are nothing compared to… to the alternative.” That was the first kink in her voice.

She’s afraid, Dana thought, and she’s trying not to show it. And that was almost as terrifying as everything else she had seen.

Marty nudged her and pointed along the corridor, where shadows shifted slowly against the wall. Someone was just around the corner.

“You’ve been chosen to be sacrificed for the greater good,” The Director continued, voice firm and confident once again. “Look, it’s an honor. So forgive us… and let us get on with it.”

Marty handed Dana Judah’s blade and hefted the gun, then headed to the empty guard station. She followed close behind. They had maybe seconds in which to act, and much as all she wanted to do was shout —Screw you, Come and get us !—she knew that Marty was thinking straight.

Did they really think that asking them to lay down and die would make them go any easier?

As Dana reached back to close the door behind her, there was a shattering burst of machine-gun fire. Bullets struck the door and pushed it closed, and when the handle clicked up she turned the latch, locking it.

Screaming, shouting, she fell back against Marty, and they huddled together behind the metal door. The top half was glass, but it must have been of the same toughened construction as was used in the elevators. Bullets ricocheted off of it, leaving little more than tiny white impact stars where they struck.

“They’re fucking shooting at us!” Marty shouted. Dana couldn’t think of any suitable response, so she raised her middle finger at the door.

Fuck them.

Marty lifted himself a little, looked through the glass and ducked back down again. A fresh salvo of bullets thudded into the door, the sound horrendous, and he had to cup his hands around her ear to make himself heard.

“Five of them, big guns, mean—”

The shooting stopped suddenly, and he screamed his next word into the shocking silence.

“—motherfuckers!”

“Right on,” Dana said. She glanced around the guard room, wondering whether there was anything they could use to help themselves, or if there was another way out. And then she saw the control panel at the back.

It quite obviously controlled all of the eight elevators outside. There were eight monitors, and beneath each were at least three dozen switches. The images switched every three seconds, and each one showed a monster in its elevator pod. A couple she had seen before, but most of those she saw were new.

“Sweet Jesus, how many are there?” she muttered. And the evidence here suggested that their numbers were almost beyond comprehension. Beside the buttons were dials, and above and below them small banks of switches.

At the far end of the panel was a small red button on its own. A wire grille covered it, presumably to prevent it being pushed accidentally by someone settling down a mug of coffee or a book. And the single, etched word above it read, “Purge.”

Dana nudged Marty, but he’d already seen. He was pale beneath the blood that smeared much of his face, and his eyes had grown more serious than she’d ever seen. He needs a joint, she thought. She experienced a sharp, intense pang for the brief time she and her four friends had spent together happy. It hadn’t lasted nearly long enough.

“An army of nightmares, huh?” she said. She stood and moved to the console, her appearance above the door’s metal lower half prompting a renewed round of shooting. She watched the guards for a couple of seconds through the scarred glass, wondered how long it would last before shattering, and then raised her middle finger at them.

This time, they saw.

“Let’s get this party started,” she said. She plucked away the wire guard, hovered her hand over the Purge button and glanced at Marty. He said nothing. She hit the button.

From outside the shooting ceased, and they heard the gentle hum of elevator doors opening.

Dana darted to the window and Marty crouched beside her. The five guards were no longer looking or aiming their way. Instead, they were crouched in the lobby pointing their guns toward the elevators and whatever might emerge from them.

She moved to the viewing panel, and waved to Marty to join her. There was a pause during which she had time to see the hundreds of spent bullets and casings scattered across the floor, and to think, They really make this glass to last .

And then she saw movement at one of the elevator openings.

A blue tentacle probed out, a hundred tiny toothed mouths opening and closing along its length, and the guards opened fire.

In a flash the elevators disgorged their inhabitants. A werewolf, a strange alien creature with a dozen sharpened limbs, mutants, a robot with flaming hands, and others that moved too quickly for her to see… they streamed through the hail of bullets and struck the guards, taking them apart in sprays of blood and flesh, burning them, melting them with acid jetting from mouths or other body parts. In seconds the lobby became a bloody mess, and the bullet scars on their viewing window were splashed with blood and scraps of meat.

“Holy shit,” Marty said, ducking down and pulling Dana with him. She tugged back, wanting to see— sick fascination, wonder, perhaps a need to feed her nightmares—but relented soon enough. Moments later they heard limbs slapping and scrabbling across metal, and then silence fell.

“Do you think…?” she whispered. Marty shrugged, so Dana rose again until she could just peer over the top of the sill. She was just in time to hear the elevators ping again in unison and seen the doors slip open. The things that came out this time were slower, more lumbering than the first wave, and they soon settled down to a warm meal.

Sitting back down beside Marty, she closed her eyes and concentrated to hold down the vomit.

“Dana?” he whispered.

“Zombies. And other things. Eating what’s left.”

“Well, at least they clean up after themselves.”

“What are we gonna do?”

“Get out of here,” he said, leaning close to her. “Somehow. Sometime. But not while those elevators are opening every few seconds to let out… ”

“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.