The Cabin in the Woods

She might have been beautiful if she wasn’t so tense, and she mightn’t have been so tense if she didn’t choose to tie her hair back so tightly. Sometimes Sitterson thought that Lin must employ the aid of some arcane preening device to pull her hair back so far each morning. And just to make him more firmly convinced of his generalizations, she was quite patently mad.

“Stockholm went south,” Lin said. No greeting, no preamble. And with news like that, it was hardly a surprise.

“Seriously?” Sitterson gasped. “I thought they were looking good.”

“What cracked?” Hadley asked. “I haven’t seen the footage,” she replied. “Word’s just going around.” Sitterson felt a chill at the news, but it was mostly one of excitement. With Stockholm gone, it made them that much more important.

“That scenario’s never been stable,” Hadley said. “You can’t trust… what do you call people from Stockholm?”

“Stockerholders?” Sitterson grinned at Lin, knowing how she hated flippancy. She was as serious as her hairdo, and probably twice as tight.

“Ha!” Hadley coughed, making a gun with his fingers and shooting Sitterson for such a bad, sharp, quick joke.

“That means there’s just Japan,” Lin said, pointedly ignoring them both. “Japan and us.”

“Not the first time it’s come down to that,” Hadley said. He chewed on a Snickers to cover his nervousness, but Sitterson could see the way his friend’s eyes were shifting.

He’s thinking about his kid that’s not yet conceived, he thought. And who can blame him?

“Japan has a perfect record,” Sitterson said, stating what they all knew anyway. And he admitted to himself that, yeah, okay, he felt a little nervous at the news as well. Even well-oiled machines fell victim to gremlins on occasion.

“And we’re number two, so we try harder,” Hadley said. He hated being beaten by anyone, but especially the Japs. If Sitterson was sexist-something he was aware of, and comfortable with-then Hadley’s main fault was his casual racism. Sitterson had never brought him up on it, because it was just too uncomfortable. Too damn serious. And the only way he got by was by ignoring anything serious unless he had no choice but to confront it.

“It’s cutting it close,” Lin said.

The three of them started walking, passing beneath steadily glaring fluorescents and moving along the featureless corridor. The floor was power-floated concrete sealed against dust, the walls were unadorned and unbroken, and the ceiling hid a network of pipes and wires above its suspended panels. There wasn’t a single nod to aesthetics. Identical doors were spaced at equal distances along one side, and behind the other wall was something else. Something that didn’t have doors.

Their footsteps echoed dully, and around the corner sat three golf carts, their “charged” lights blinking green. The wider corridor before them was just as bare and featureless, its far end swallowed by perspective. Sitterson had walked it a few times. But why walk when there were wheels?

As usual, Hadley took control of the cart, with Lin and Sitterson sitting in the back.

“Yeah, cutting it close,” Hadley said, dropping his vending machine haul onto the seat beside him. “And that’s why it’s in the hands of professionals.”

“They hired professionals?” Sitterson asked, grinning at Lin’s sour face. “What happens to us?”

“You guys better not be messing around in there,” Lin said. “Does this mean you’re not in the betting pool this year?” he asked, raising an eyebrow and smiling. He liked to think that was his finest feature, a mischievous look that women found irresistible.

Statistics had yet to prove him right.

“I’m just saying that it’s a key scenario.” Damn, she really was the Ice Queen. Sitterson wondered idly whether her face would slide off her skull if he were to surreptitiously sever her hair band and relieve the pressure.

“I know what you’re saying,” Hadley said, pushing the electronic ignition. The cart started to purr beneath them. “But remember ’98? That was the Chem department’s fault. And where do you work again, Lin? Wait, it’s coming back to me…” He accelerated away, and Sitterson half-stood to avoid spilling his coffee.

“Gonna be a long weekend if everybody’s that puckered up,” Hadley continued, quietly. Then he seemed to liven up, weaving the cart back and forth across the corridor, narrowly avoiding striking both walls several times.

“Damn it!” Sitterson said as he lost the battle and spilled coffee on his sharp-creased trousers. Wiping it with a napkin, he rolled his eyes at Lin, who regarded him coolly. He glanced down at the front of her lab coat. She always wore it large and loose, and he always wondered…

But when he glanced up again, her expression forbore any wondering. He rolled his eyes again. She blinked slowly and looked away. Later, he thought. When all this is over and the celebrations are starting, maybe-