Rick Burroughs - Alan Wake

“Al?” quavered Barry as the Taken circled in. “What do I do?”

“You kill it,” said Wake.

“I… I don’t like this, Al.”

“We’re the heroes, remember?” said Wake. “Use the flare gun!”

The Taken charged, moving quickly, the tire iron raised.

Barry fumbled with the flare gun and it fell to the ground. He shrieked and scrambled to retrieve it.

The Taken rushed in, swinging the tire iron at Barry’s head.

Barry shot the Taken in the chest with the flare gun and it immediately burst into a thousand dying sparks.

“ Yes! ” cheered Barry, doing a jig on the forest floor. “Did you see that, Al? Did you see that?”

“I saw it,” said Wake.

“I’m not scared of them ; they should be scared of me, Barry Wheeler, the Taken Killer.”

Wake smiled.

“One shot, one Taken,” said Barry, waving the flare gun. “That’s the way we do it. That’s what happens when you piss off a guy from New York City!”

“Don’t get cocky,” said Wake. “I don’t want to have to pull an ax out of your forehead.”

“I don’t appreciate that mental image, Al.”

“Just get moving before more of them show up,” said Wake. “I’ll meet you at the farm.”

Barry stopped dancing. “ More of them?”

“They never seem to show up solo,” said Wake.

Barry started running. Due east.

Wake started down the path. He limped at first, but in a few minutes he had settled into a steady trot, his eyes straining to follow the trail in the moonlight. After about fifteen minutes, he slowed, walking now, his side aching. His boots squished with every step, and mud crackled off his jacket as though he were a reptile shedding its skin. He was almost to the forest floor. Still no sign of any Taken.

Suddenly, a bright light bloomed just ahead of Wake. The light dimmed, and a creature floated above the path, a man in a space suit… no, a man in a deep-sea-diving suit with a round copper bell and faceplate. He dropped a manuscript page on the path. It glowed as it fluttered.

Wake stared at the page.

“I’m trying to deliver each page to the right time and place,” said the Diver, his voice crackling.

“Why?” said Wake.

“I’m trying to show you how the story goes,” said the Diver.

“You owned the cabin Alice and I were in… the one on Diver’s Isle,” said Wake. “You’re… you’re a writer too. You’re Thomas—”

The Diver disappeared in a blink of light.

“…Zane.” Wake stood over the page on the ground. He had seen the Diver in his dreams before. Seen him in the first dream, when Wake had run over the hitchhiker. It had been the Diver who had saved him from the hitchhiker Taken. The Diver who had been placing the pages on his path. Thomas Zane. Wake bent down and picked up the page. Turned on the flashlight so he could read it.

Thomas Zane knew he had to remove all that had made this horror possible, including himself. That was the only way to banish the dark presence he had unleashed and now looked at him through the eyes of his dead love. But he also knew that despite his best efforts, it might someday return, so even as he wrote himself and his work out of existence, he added a loophole as insurance, an exception to the rule: anything of his stored in a shoebox would remain .

Wake read the page twice before putting it into his jacket with the rest of the manuscript. He turned off the flashlight, then looked around, hoping the Diver would return and explain to him what it meant. Zane must have written a manuscript for the Dark Presence, but how did he write himself out of it? And what was this loophole? This insurance that fit into a shoebox? Wake shook his head and started toward the farm. He had figured out a long time ago that the most dangerous thing in Bright Falls was standing around in the dark, thinking.

Another half hour and Wake was on flat ground, the outskirts of the farm. A gravel road led directly to the main buildings and he made good time. Just ahead Wake saw a blue pickup truck off to the side of the road. He hurried toward it. “Anybody there?” He slowed as he saw the front end jacked up, a flat tire next to the spare on the grass. The driver wasn’t coming back. The darkness had seen to that. Wake looked inside the truck and saw a picture, taped to the dash, of a man standing beside a small boy, the man wearing a bright orange hunting hat, the skinny kid wearing a Seahawks football jersey.

Wake rested his head against the window, his thoughts too heavy to hold. Barry hadn’t killed the man, he had killed the Taken that the driver had become. Wake had told himself the same thing about Stucky. It didn’t make it any easier. He started to walk away, stopped, and came back to the truck. He found the shotgun behind the front seat, a pump shotgun and four boxes of shells. Wake took them without hesitation, grateful for the firepower. One more glance at the photo on the dash, and he headed toward the farm, the shotgun over one shoulder.

Lightning flashed around the silo, a writhing blue light twisting down the sides. The storm had blown away the clouds, but the air seemed filled with static electricity, lightning crackling across the dry fields. In the moonlight, a solitary scarecrow stood in the midst of an expanse of stubbly cornstalks, and Wake felt queasy looking at it. Barry might joke about taking up residence in a tanning bed, but Wake was probably going to sleep with a nightlight on for the rest of his life.

The gravel road ended at a locked gate leading onto the Anderson property. A gigantic, rusting harvester stood in the shadows nearby, its treads deep in the mud. Wake scrambled nimbly up the gate. Just as he jumped to the other side, the harvester roared into life.

Wake backed up against the gate. He had gotten sloppy and stupid. The harvester wasn’t in the shadows, it was shadows.

The harvester snorted diesel smoke from its top pipes, grinding gears, lurching forward. The treads groaned, trying to move in the thick mud.

Wake turned on the flashlight, played it across the surface of the harvester. It glowed faintly, shadows sliding off.

The harvester revved its engine, oily black smoke filling the air. The treads grabbed for purchase, spinning up chunks of mud, almost free now.

Wake held his ground, keeping the flashlight on the harvester until it flared up and dissolved without a trace. In the sudden silence, Wake heard Barry’s voice. Barry was shouting.

An aerial flare burst with a pop over the field, then another and another. In the searing light, Barry stood on a stage in the middle of the field waving a flare gun. As the flares slowly drifted down, Wake saw a dozen Taken climbing onto the stage, caught in the light, huge ones holding rakes and axes and shovels. The Taken dissolved into embers. The flares drifted lower, getting dimmer, the darkness returning.

Wake ran to Barry.

Barry popped a highway flare, held it up in his hand like the Statue of Liberty.

“This way, Al!”

As he got closer, Wake could see the stage had been decorated with Viking-themed heavy-metal motifs, old guitars and shields and swords and battleaxes stuck along the edges, left to the mercy of the elements. The top of the stage was carved with an OLD GODS OF ASGARD logo. A rusted heavy-duty generator stood near the side of the stage, power cables running to the lights and the mixing board. The Andersons must have had regular concerts out here when they were in their heyday, before the Dark Presence drained their minds. Wake ran to the stage, taking the rickety wooden stairs two and three at a time. He got to the top just as Barry tossed aside the spent highway flare.

“Al!” called Barry, clapping him on the back. “Glad you could make it.”