Barry kept his eyes on the road. “Okay, so you’re not the Husband of the Year, what else is new? Still, what she said about you being stubborn, that’s a good thing. I mean, if you weren’t so thickheaded you would have given up looking for Alice a long time go. You would have listened to me and handed off the job to somebody with a badge. Then you could sit around drinking coffee, waiting for the phone to ring.” He looked over at Wake. “You’re here. You’re in the game. We both are. That’s what matters.”
“You’re right.” Wake listened to the rain beating steadily against the roof of the car, the sound soothing. They were almost at the turnoff to the Anderson farm. “I’m just tired—”
“Whoa!” Barry slammed on the brakes, his hands white on the wheel, as a mass of boulders rolled down a steep slope and cascaded onto the road. “Hang on!”
Wake grabbed hold of the door as the car hydroplaned across the rain-slick road, tires squealing. The car sideswiped the safety railing, spitting sparks, then crashed through as the supports for the railing gave way.
“Al!”
Wake felt himself violently tossed around the front seat as the car rolled down the ravine. He made sure the manuscript pages were safely tucked away into his jacket, felt around to make sure he still had the revolver and flashlight. He cried out as the car slammed broadside into a tree, the windshield cracking, the flashlight slipping from his grasp. The car kept rolling down the slope.
“Ow!” yelped Barry as they smacked against each other.
Wake’s door flew open, branches scraping against him, clawing at him as the car seemed to pick up speed. He grabbed the flashlight as it rolled across the floor. “Barry, jump!”
“Jump… where?”
“Anywhere!” Wake felt the seat belt release, and the next instant he was tumbling out into the darkness, falling end over end through the bushes, finally coming to rest against the trunk of a tree. His face was in the mud. It felt like he had plowed his way down the ravine with his nose. He sat up, moved his fingers and toes. Rain trickled from his hair and down his neck. He could hear the car still falling, but the ringing in his head was louder still.
“Barry?”
No response.
Thunder rumbled across the valley.
Wake stood up slowly, winced. Everything hurt. “Barry?” He looked around as the storm beat against his face and soaked his clothes. “Barry? You here?”
Still no response.
Wake heard the sound of the car’s horn blaring. He walked to the edge of the ravine, pushed aside the branches. The trees were thick, but far below he could see the faint glow of the taillights. “Barry!”
The horn stopped beeping.
Toby knew the smell: it was the man, the nice man who always gave him treats and never got tired of playing with him. Toby wagged his tail, barking happily. Yip, yip, yip! Then there was another smell—a wrong smell—and it stopped Toby in his tracks. He growled deep in his throat. The wrong smell came from the nice man. Blind terror pierced the dog’s brain an instant before the axe crushed his skull.
CHAPTER 19
WAKE CAREFULLY WORKED his way down the slope to the red taillights of the wrecked car. He was making pretty good progress when he slipped on some wet leaves, tobogganed down the ravine on his ass, banging off rocks and bushes before finally coming to a stop at the edge of a cliff. He sat up, spitting blood. His boots oozed mud and rainwater, his hair was crusted with muck, his ears filthy. It would make a perfect photo for his next book jacket, the rugged outdoorsman at play. The storm had slacked off, the moon and stars just starting to peek out.
“Al?”
“Barry! You’re alive!”
“Thank God!” Barry stood next to the red glow of the taillights. “Barry was worried. I heard you crashing down the mountain and thought you were a Taken coming to get Barry.”
“You refer to yourself in the third person again I’m going to strangle you.” Wake could see him at the bottom of the ravine. The wrecked car was nearby, front end down, lights in the dirt, steam escaping from the burst radiator. Barry was probably fifty feet below, but the cliff walls were steep and sheer. There was no way to reach him without breaking his neck.
“Are you okay, Al?”
“I’m alive.”
“Another close call, huh?” said Barry, sounding giddy now. “I’m starting to think the two of us are invulnerable.”
“Famous last words,” said Wake. “Right along with ‘Hey, look at this!’”
“Can you get down here?”
“Not a chance.” Wake picked dirt out of his ears. “You need protection, Barry. Go into the trunk of the car and look around. Rental cars usually carry road flares. Maybe there’s a flashlight.” He waited while Barry searched the trunk. Lightning flashed, and he could see the stark outline of the farm’s barn and silo in the distance, surrounded by flat fields.
“Found the flashlight!” shouted Barry, playing the beam across the trunk. “Jackpot!” He held something up.
“What is it?”
“A flare gun! Now we’re talking! Five flares and one in the chamber. The rental agency must figure that city slickers get lost in the back country and need to shoot up a signal flare for help.”
“That’s great.” Wake watched Barry caper around the car, going into various action-star poses with the flare gun. “Why don’t you turn off the flashlight? Save the batteries.”
Barry turned off the flashlight. “Now what?”
“Same plan as before,” said Wake. “The Anderson farm is due east.”
“What are you, Magellan?”
Wake laughed. Barry’s good humor was infectious.
“I see it, Al! It doesn’t look that far, but how are you going to get there?”
Wake looked around. There was a trail nearby that gradually wound down the ravine. He didn’t know how far it went, but there was no other way to work his way down to Barry.
“Al?”
“I’ll get there, don’t worry.”
“Who’s worried? Do I look worried?” Barry beat his chest. “I’m the king of the world!”
“Barry… did you hit your head, or something?”
“I hit my head, my arms, my legs—”
“I’m surprised you’re not scared,” said Wake. “You may have a concussion.”
“I just decided to quit worrying and enjoy the adventure,” called Barry. “You’re writing the story, remember? It’s like being in a dream. We’re the heroes. We can’t die.”
“Barry? Barry, I want you to listen to me. It’s not a dream, not the way you think. The Dark Presence changes everything. Neither of us are safe—”
“Hey! Is that you, Al?”
“Barry… I’m still up here.”
“Damn. Al… I take b-b-back what I said about not being scared.” Barry turned on the flashlight. “Get back!”
Far below, Wake could see a Taken edging away from the light, a Taken in jeans and a red hunting vest brandishing a tire iron.
“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 w
hat 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.”
“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 wit
h 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.
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