Rick Burroughs - Alan Wake

“I wouldn’t have missed it,” said Wake.

The aerial flares drifted slowly lower.

Taken shambled from the shadows, grunting.

“Here we go,” said Wake.

Lightning crackled across the sky

“Al?” Barry held up the flare gun, tossed it aside. “I’m… I’m out of flares, buddy.”

Wake watched the Taken start up the stairs at either end of the stage, six, seven… eight of them, Taken wearing hard hats and dirty denim jumpsuits with HAYES LOGGING stitched on the front. All of them carried double-bladed axes except the biggest one, who hefted a chainsaw.

“I’ve seen this movie before,” said Barry, looking for a way out. “I don’t like the way it ends.”

Wake thought of the hunter snatched by the darkness as he changed a tire, and Stucky, and Rusty, wishing he had told Rose how he felt about her. He thought about Alice alone in the dark.

The flare died and there was only the moonlight illuminating the stage.

The big Taken fired up the chainsaw as it reached the top of the stairs.

“Al? What do we do?” said Barry.

Wake tossed Barry the flashlight, then racked the slide of the shotgun, the sound more comforting than a lullaby. “We fight.”

The big Taken revved the chainsaw as it advanced on them.

Barry caught the Taken with the flashlight beam and Wake shot it with the shotgun. The Taken dodged out of the light, swung the chainsaw, the teeth chewing up the wooden deck at Wake’s feet. Wake shot it again and again as Barry tried to keep the light on it.

Shadows slid off the Taken and Wake stepped closer, close enough to feel the wind from the spinning chainsaw as he shot it in the face. The Taken dissolved in a flash of light.

The other Taken moved at them from both sides of the stage as Wake reloaded the shotgun. Barry kept close to Wake, right at his side.

Lightning crashed on a nearby barn and blew the weather vane to pieces.

In the moonlight, Wake saw more Taken approaching from across the fields, staggering closer in twos and threes, carrying pickaxes and shovels and sledgehammers, dozens of Taken, thick with shadows.

“Oh, shit,” said Barry.

“Just stay cool,” said Wake.

“Sure, sure, stay cool, no problem,” said Barry, teeth chattering.

“On your left,” said Wake.

Barry turned right.

“Left!” said Wake. Barry shined the flashlight on the Taken as it scooted up the steps on the left side of the stage.

Wake moved closer, shot it to moonbeams.

“Yes!” shouted Barry.

Wake hurried back to Barry as three Taken rushed the stage from the right. One of them hurled an ax, and it spun lazily, end over end, spun past Wake’s head, close enough that he could have kissed it. He blew the Taken apart as Barry pinned him with the flashlight beam.

Wake and Barry were doing better than anyone could have expected, a killing two-step on the Andersons’ stage. The real gods of Asgard couldn’t have done any better, but the real gods had lost their final battle. Tor and Odin and the rest of them, heroic as they had been, had died where they made their last stand, and the Frost Giants, their mortal enemies, had overrun Asgard at the end of days, slaughtering the gods, every one of them. Wake and Barry were surviving for now, but they weren’t going to make it either. Wake would finally run out of shotgun shells. Barry’s flashlight batteries would fade, and the Taken would overwhelm them, a dark wave of axes and mallets and all the sharp, cutting things they carried.

Here,” said Barry, giving the flashlight back to Wake. “I’ve got an idea.”

“Where are you going?” shouted Wake as Barry ran off the back of the stage. “Barry!”

The Taken rushed the stage, coming up the stairs on both sides, clawing their way over the front apron.

Wake fed fresh shells into the shotgun, wondering if Barry’s idea involved running away as fast as he could. Wake wouldn’t blame him.

A lumberjack Taken wielding a crosscut saw scrambled onto the stage, and Wake caught it in the beam of the flashlight, then blasted it apart.

“Almost got it!” shouted Barry from the side of the stage.

“Almost got what?” yelled Wake, spotlighting two other Taken, destroying both of them with one round from the shotgun.

More Taken swarmed the stage, too many of them, way too many.

Black diesel smoke poured from the exhaust of the generator as the power came on. The stage lights flared, and the Taken onstage disintegrated around Wake.

“Let there be light!” said Barry, scooting back onstage.

Taped music blared from the speakers lining the stage, the Andersons’ heavy metal anthem booming out across the farm.

“You did that?” said Wake.

“Barry Wheeler, total service agent at your service!” bellowed Barry above the din. He ran to the mixing board at the back of the stage, started playing with the switches. Skyrockets shot off the top of the stage. Spotlights popped on, shone across the field, disintegrating the approaching Taken. “Rock and roll!”

The power died. The lights went out. The music stopped.

“That was a short concert,” Wake said quietly.

Barry tore into the mixing board, pulling out the cables. “Looks like mice have been chewing at these things.” He started twisting bare wires together. “I never told you I managed a punk band in college. Kind of the roadie, too. We did a U.S. tour in a Dodge van with no spare tire.” He reconnected the cables. “Let me see… see if I still remember how to patch an amp.”

More Taken charged across the open field.

Wake took back the flashlight from Barry, then picked up a roll of gaffer’s tape lying on the mixing board. He taped the flashlight to the barrel of the shotgun, winding the metallic tape round and round. “That’s it, take your time, Barry.” Wake turned on the flashlight, racked the slide of the shotgun as the Taken got closer, moonlight glinting on their axes. “No need to hurry.”

“Quit pushing me!” said Barry, plugging more wires into the board. Sparks erupted and he jumped back.

Lightning forked across the field, making the shadows of the Taken enormous, like gigantic scarecrows in motion.

“Any luck there, Edison?” Wake said to Barry, trying to keep his voice steady.

Barry bent over the mixing board, ignoring him.

Wake shot the first Taken that made it onto the stage, the combination of the flashlight and shotgun devastating, the light slaking off their protective shadows as the shotgun blasted them to atoms. Wake moved quickly across the stage, firing constantly, blowing the Taken apart. He scampered back to Barry, reloading, got there just in time to disintegrate a Taken in a silvery hard hat about to drive a pickax into Barry’s skull.

Barry looked up as the Taken sparkled into dust, the pickax the last to disappear. He nodded at Wake, and then went back to work.

The Taken swarmed up the far side of the stage, but Wake didn’t have time to stop them; he was too busy keeping the immediate area cleared. An ax whizzed past his head, buried itself in the wooden framework at the back of the stage. He kept firing, always in motion, trying to draw the Taken away from Barry, giving him time.

The front stage lights came on, disintegrating the nearest Taken.

“Way to go, Barry !” cheered Barry. “A few more minutes and I’ll get the rest of them on, Al.”

Wake moved into the light, using it as protection while he reloaded. Heat radiated from the barrel of the shotgun as he slipped shells into the port on the side.

The lights went out. Then came back on again.

“Damn circuit-breakers have been out in the weather for years,” complained Barry, bent back over the mixing board, working frantically.