Rick Burroughs - Alan Wake

“Isn’t he with you?” said Breaker.

Wake heard rustling sounds in the dark store. “Barry?”

“I’m coming, I’m coming.” Barry came over from the next aisle, his neck draped with something… it looked like a dozen Hawaiian leis.

An enormous Taken stepped through the front door, charged at them, a pickax raised over his head.

Wake fumbled for his flashlight.

Breaker shot the Taken, once, twice, three times, racking the shotgun to reload after each shot. It had no effect. “Alan?” she said softly.

Wake’s flashlight flickered, died. “Give me your flashlight,” he said to Breaker. “I need the flashlight.”

Breaker shot the Taken again as it rushed them, but the shadows swallowed up the blast and left it unharmed.

Wake grabbed the flashlight from Breaker as she raised the shotgun, but before he could turn it on, the area around the door turned bright, red and green and yellow and white lights flaring.

Nailed in the light, the Taken started to retreat when Breaker fired again, and again, the Taken blasted apart.

“Ho-ho-ho! Merry Christmas!” shouted Barry, dancing around. As he twirled, the lights blazed around the store, all the pretty colors bouncing off the security mirrors, holding the other Taken at bay in the doorway. “Merry Christmas , one and all!”

Wake stared at Barry. He wasn’t wearing strands of leis around his neck; he was wearing layers and layers of Christmas lights.

“Battery powered, baby!” preened Barry, holding up the battery pack in his hand. He jabbed a finger at the Taken. “Come on! Come here and sit on Santa’s knee!”

Wake hustled him out the back door.

The helicopter sat on the raised concrete pad across the street.

Breaker got to the chopper first, slid into the cockpit while Wake and Barry took up positions around it.

“Christmas tree lights?” said Wake.

“I was feeling… festive,” said Barry.

“Yeah, me too,” said Wake, watching as Taken approached from the surrounding buildings. “Any minute now I’m going to break out the confetti and party balloons.” He shined his flashlight on the nearest Taken, but the beam was weak. He shot it anyway. No effect. “Hey, Sarah, anytime you want to start the engine would be fine with us.”

“Working on it!” yelled Breaker.

The engine turned over. Died.

“Of course,” said Barry, wreathed in flashing red and green lights. “The man with the hook approaches the couple parked in lover’s lane, the car won’t start. The monster shambles toward the girl trying to open the front door, and she can’t find the right key. It’s a hallowed tradition.”

An ax whistled past his head.

“Dammit, I hate tradition.”

He looked back at the helicopter, saw Breaker bent over the controls. “You want to put us out of our misery here, Sheriff?”

The shadows roared over the town, tearing branches off the trees with the raw power of its passing.

The Taken were closer, their guttural voices incoherent and menacing. A Taken in a yellow hard hat beat a sledgehammer against the street, a mindless drumming that tore up chunks of asphalt as he lumbered forward.

The engine turned over, started… died.

“ Sarah! ”

The engine caught, the blades of the helicopter turning slowly, then faster and faster as Breaker throttled the engine.

“Get in,” Wake said to Barry, keeping the flashlight on the Taken, slowing them down.

“You get in,” said Barry, then thought better of it as a thrown lug wrench grazed his shoulder and shattered one of the bulbs. He ran under the whirling blades and dived into the cockpit of the helicopter.

Breaker turned on the searchlights of the helicopter, the intensity of the beam alone disintegrating the sledgehammer Taken.

Wake climbed into the chopper, holding on tight as Breaker rapidly lifted off, the helicopter banking for a moment, narrowly missing a power line before Breaker righted it.

Barry’s flashing lights reflected off the plastic canopy of the cockpit.

Wake reached over and switched them off.

“Hey,” said Barry.

Breaker flew over the town, lights on, saw glass glittering in the streets from a hundred broken windows. Crashed cars burned at the intersections, oily black smoke joining with the darkness. “You need to do something about this, Alan. You need to do whatever you can.”

Wake turned away from the wreckage below, kept his eyes on abandoned power plant in the distance. It seemed to glow in the night, light pouring from every window. “Just get me to Weaver. I’ll take it from there.”

Mott had checked all of Stucky’s rental cabins. There had been no sign of the Wakes. It was dark when he’d found their car parked at the end of the road by Cauldron Lake. It made no sense. They must have taken a wrong turn, but there was no sign of them, and the car had been there for hours already. Frustrated, Mott stood on the rotten ruin of the footbridge that had once led to Diver’s Isle, before it sank beneath the waves years ago. Hartman wouldn’t be happy.

BREAKER TRIED TO hold the chopper steady through the turbulence that rocked it back and forth as it soared over the treetops. Barry squatted on the tiny jump seat in back of the cramped cockpit, strands of Christmas lights wrapped around his neck, while Wake sat beside Breaker, close enough that none of them had to raise their voices to be heard over the engine noise. They were so relieved to be away from the town, away from the Taken, that they were giddy, eager to banter and pretend that they were out of danger. Even Breaker broke her mask of professionalism and spoke of her fear and frustration when her shotgun blasts alone didn’t bring down the Taken.

“I knew I was hitting them, but… they just kept coming at us,” Breaker kept repeating.

Wake just sat back and enjoyed the moment with the two of them high above the horrors on the ground. The Taken came in all sizes, they carried double-bladed axes and lengths of rebar, they threw hammers and sickles… but none of them flew. If he wasn’t so excited, he’d have dozed off.

“You want to know my favorite part?” said Barry.

“Do we have a choice?” said Wake.

“It was when we were creeping past the hardware store,” said Barry, “and the sparks from the downed power line showered over us, but we had to go through it anyway, to get to the other side. It was like we were walking through a blast furnace.”

“A blast furnace with zombies,” said Breaker.

“ Zombies ,” said Barry, plucking at the Christmas lights around his neck. He made his face go blank, stretched out his arms. “Must kill… must eat brains…”

Breaker went silent, gave her attention to the controls of the chopper.

“Too close to home?” said Barry. “I get it.”

“We’re here, that’s all that matters,” said Wake.

Isolated pockets of light littered the dark landscape below: barns with overhead lights, homes with the occupants safe behind closed doors, families tucked in for the night with no idea what was happening in the rest of the town. Ignorance, that was one way to have pleasant dreams. Wake almost envied them. The chopper tracked a car that hurtled down the highway, high beams cutting through the night, before Breaker veered off, steering toward the power plant and Cynthia Weaver.

Barry pulled a half-eaten jelly donut out of his parka, offered it to Breaker first, then Wake. When they laughed at him, he shrugged and started eating it himself. “Got to keep your strength up,” he said, licking his fingers.