“I got it!” Curt shouted, running at the window. “You guys get in your rooms!” He shouldered into a bookcase and it started sliding toward the window, screaming across the floor, books tumbling, while the zombie’s arm thrashed to clear more broken glass and framing.
“Wait…” Marty said, but his voice was lost amid the chaos.
Dana and Holden shared a glance, a nod, and then Dana said, “Let’s go!” They headed for their separate rooms on the left, parting without even a hug, and for a moment Marty couldn’t move.
This isn’t right, he thought. He looked back at Curt, who was now shoving against the bookcase while big-zombie leaned in the window and pushed back, seeking entrance even while Curt strove to prevent it.
“Go!” Curt screamed at Marty, angry at his indecisiveness. So Marty went, because there was little else he could do. Maybe Curt was right. Maybe they should all check their windows and doors individually, then go back and help him fight that big fucker.
But even as he entered his room and dashed to the window, it was almost as if he could foresee what would happen next. We’ll be locked in, he thought. And he turned back to his door.
“Told you,” Sitterson said, perhaps a little too smug.
“Yeah, okay,” Hadley said. On the big monitors they saw the three kids dashing into their rooms as the fourth tried to hold back Matthew. Sitterson, humming, tapped a couple of keys and the views changed without a flicker, shifting to inside each room.
Dana entered her own room and dashed to the window, Holden stood in the center of his and took a few deep breaths, and Marty was the last, frowning, head shaking.
Curt was still battling Matthew the zombie.
Well, let him. Sitterson wasn’t concerned. His placing right now didn’t matter too much, and if things went too far at that end of the cabin, he could still be lured across to the other.
“Peas in separate pods,” Sitterson said, raising his hands in triumph.
“Lock ’em in,” Hadley said, and he was smiling as well. For now. He’d find something else to stress about soon.
Sitterson tapped a key and—
—Marty’s door slammed shut behind him. After the slam came the slide and thunk! of locks ramming home—not just in his door but in the others, as well.
He gasped and held his breath, listening for more. Weak light from the single light reflected from one half of the window, making the darkness outside even more complete. The other half stood wide open. He’d unlatched and opened it earlier when he was laid back on his bed smoking pot, having some vague idea that the fumes could spread through the air outside and chill the forest. It had been a little too looming for his liking, a little too forceful. Trees should be just trees, and shouldn’t wear the shadows of guardians.
Locked in, he thought. We’re all suddenly locked in. And glancing down at his door handle he couldn’t even see a keyhole. There was a handle, that was all. So the locks must be.
“On the outside,” he muttered. But that felt wrong, too. He tried to recall what the doors looked like from out there, and he was pretty sure they were the same— just a handle, nothing else.
No keyhole.
No lock.
In which case…
The cabin shook again with another terrible impact. Curt cried out from somewhere and more glass broke, and Marty’s window suddenly seemed larger than ever. He moved then, slowly to begin with, two small, quiet steps, and then in his mind’s eye he saw zombie-girl’s face intruding through the window. He leapt the last few steps, grabbed the handle and pulled it close, flicking the latch to secure it shut. Something shattered behind him and he shouted, turning around and hardly prepared for what he might see.
He must have knocked the table with his leg as he rushed by, and the lamp on top had wobbled and smashed after he’d turned the latch.
Not that glass and thin wood will do much good against—
He looked down.
What the fuck is that?
It was a moment that punched him in the gut. Amongst all the chaos, thumping, shouting from outside, and his own terrified panting, it was the sight of the smallest thing that finally succeeded in knocking Marty’s breath out of him.
The remains of the china lamp were splayed across the floor, and from its plastic heart a white cable led to the plug socket in the wall. The bulb had survived— shielded from impact by the bent-out-of-shape shade— and in its glare he saw a second wire.
It was thin and black, and there was something about it that seemed all wrong.
The wire snaked through the remains of the broken lamp, its end pointing directly at him. An end? Shouldn’t it be plugged in somewhere? Shouldn’t there be a fixture? But Marty’s bullshit detector was on full, and he knew this was something that shouldn’t be there.
He bent and picked up the wire, squinting at its end, and thought, fiber optic. The sense of being watched was suddenly very real. His place in things shrank to an almost infinitesimally small point. And he stood and looked around the room, thinking of the one-way mirror.
Curt’s weird behavior.
Jules’s brutal death.
“Oh, man,” he muttered.
“That’s deep,” Hadley said. “‘Oh, man.’”
“He’s not there for his philosophical insightfulness.” The guy’s face filled the screen now as he stared into the hi-tech camera, distorted by the closeness to the domed end of the cable, and for the first time ever Sitterson experienced a glimmer of fear.
It’s almost like he’s watching us.
He shoved it quickly down. He wasn’t here to empathize.
But he couldn’t ignore the obvious.
“Uh-oh,” he said, “that’s not good.”
Hadley flipped down the microphone on his headphones and flicked a switch. “Chem, I need five hundred cc’s of Thorazine pumped into room three, now—”
“No no no,” Sitterson said, because he’d seen movement elsewhere. Oh we’re just too fucking good, he thought, pointing at the large screen to the left. “Hang on.” And yes, the movement was manifesting into a shambling, pale thing in the darkness, passing between the silent statues of trees and seeming to emerge from the very darkness itself as it approached the cabin.
Sitterson checked a few settings and smiled.
“Judah Buckner to the rescue,” he said. And the brief pity he’d had for the kid was eaten away by the sight of Buckner’s zombified face.
He could have mouthed obscenities or flipped them the finger, but that wouldn’t do anything to help him right now.
Now, he needed answers, and perhaps some clue as to how the hell they could get the fuck out of Dodge. But…
As he pulled the wire taut and started following it around the room—across the floor, along the skirting to the corner, then up to where a small hole was drilled in the ceiling’s corner—the realization dawned that he’d been made to look like a complete dick.
He stared up at the ceiling and smiled.
Of course things had been out of kilter. The cabin was fake, maybe even the woods all around them were unreal, and everything they did and said was being monitored.
“Oh my God, I’m on a reality TV show.” Every breath they took, the booze they’d drunk, the almost biblical amount of pot he’d already smoked, the kissing couple on the sofa, everything was for public consumption. The stuff in the cellar really was a set-up, planted there by scene designers who must’ve had multiple orgasms when they saw what was required of them in the shooting script.