“Anybody see him?”
“Head him off!”
Another flare shot up into the night, but they were looking in the wrong place now, the light not reaching him. Wake moved easily through the shadows, started to sprint when the roaring started, the ground shaking underfoot.
“What was that?” yelled Nightingale.
Wake heard someone screaming into a radio, the voice metallic, broken by static. “What the hell! Help, I need… help, I need backup.”
The roaring sound shook the trees, rolled like thunder across the woods.
“No!” screamed the deputy over the radio. “Get off, get off, get off!”
The deputy’s desperate pleading reminded Wake of Rusty’s cries for help as he lay wounded in the lodge, his guts flopping into his lap.
“Help me! Help me, somebody, please!”
Wake heard a series of gunshots, somebody running through a whole magazine as fast as they could pull the trigger, but what was odd, what Wake couldn’t understand was that the gunshots seemed to be coming from almost directly
Suddenly, a huge shadow passed overhead, blocking out the moon and stars, the forest dark now.
Wake cried out as a wrecked police car dropped from the sky, hitting a highway lookout point in front of him. The tires of the car exploded, the windshield blew out, glass sparking like razor-sharp rain as it fell through the trees.
Wake ran to help, ears ringing.
The police car lay broken where it had landed, the roof collapsed, doors sprung. No sign of the officer, but the lightbar on top still weakly flashed blue and red lights.
Wake tried to imagine the power of whatever it was that had lifted the squad car high into the air, then tossed it down almost on top of him.
He remembered one of the manuscript pages he had read, hints of a dark force that animated cars and tractors, flung fifty-gallon drums like marshmallows. Wake listened to the car’s radiator hiss, steam trickling out of the crushed hood, bubble, bubble, toil and trouble.
The manuscript page was supposed to be fiction, a horror story for late night chills, but it was coming true in Bright Falls, every page of it.
The radio crackled to life and Wake jerked back.
“This is Nightingale. What just happened?”
Wake held the handset, but didn’t answer.
“Unit Twelve, respond,” ordered Nightingale.
Wake quietly replaced the handset. He could hear Nightingale talking to someone, then he came back on the air. “All units, Wake was last sighted running along the gorge from the trailer park. Be advised that the suspect may be armed. Approach with caution.”
“Come in, Agent Nightingale. This is Sheriff Breaker.”
“Nightingale here.”
“What on Earth is going on, Nightingale? My deputies tell me you fired at Wake, and there’s no report of him having a gun.”
“I’ll decide that,” said Nightingale.
“You almost hit a civilian—”
“Look, Sheriff, Wake’s running, I’m giving chase. I don’t have time for this.”
“Well, make the time! You can’t just go shooting at people in my town!”
“I’m a federal agent pursuing a fugitive. You want to discuss my methods, Sheriff, make an appointment. Out.” Nightingale broke the connection.
The radio crackled again. “Sheriff? This is Thornton. We got Wheeler and Rose in protective custody. They didn’t put up a fight or anything. They both seemed to be out of it, and they’re not the only ones. You ask me, Sheriff, this Agent Nightingale’s been hitting the scotch bottle like a gong—”
The deputy’s report was drowned out by a roaring that shook the trees. Wake took off running through the darkness, but whether that thing, that dark force was searching for him, or just shaking the forest to its core, he didn’t know. All he could do was keep moving.
Wake kept to the high ground whenever he could, not wanting to be trapped in the gorge again, where Nightingale and the deputies, or something worse, could trap him. He tried to take animal trails that ran alongside wider hiking paths, hoping to reach the forest road on the other side of town.
There was a ranger tower visible above the trees, the tip of it blinking steadily to warn off low-flying aircraft. Once he reached the tower, Wake could orient himself and find a way to get to the coal mine by noon tomorrow. After that, he could straighten things out with the sheriff. Let
He touched the kidnapper’s 9mm in his pocket. He’d get Alice back from the man tomorrow, then call the sheriff.
A helicopter circled above the area, its searchlight combing the forest. Nearby several flashlight cones bounced along the trails in the darkness, searching for him. He angled off, went deeper into the woods, always keeping one hand on the flashlight.
A raven screamed, not in pain, but in some kind of awful triumph.
A moment later, the screaming and the gunshots started, the sound echoing through the night.
“Shoot it! Shoot!”
“It’s not stopping!”
“Run!”
The Dark Presence slammed through the forest, knocking over large trees, splintering them into matchsticks.
Wake could see the lights of the deputies swaying wildly as they ran. He saw the muzzle flashes from their pistols. They didn’t have a chance and there was nothing he could do.
“Oh, God, help me! Help me!”
“No,
“Get away!”
The Dark Presence howled and all the lights in the forest went out, every spotlight and flashlight flickered and died, every flare and headlight. There was only silence now. Wake lay flat on the ground, his cheek pressed into the dirt, trying to hide.
He kept thinking about what the kidnapper had said last night, that the Taken seemed to be drawn to Wake. Wake lay there trembling, hoping the man was wrong.
He waited until the flashlights were switched on again, the lights far away, drifting back toward the trailer park and the road. Nightingale and the deputies might have no idea what had happened in the forest, but they knew they didn’t belong there. Wake didn’t have a choice. There was safety in the light, just like the Diver had told him, but Wake would be arrested if he retreated to safety, and there would be no one to meet the kidnapper tomorrow. He headed off in the darkness, moving carefully, alert to the sound of raven’s wings. Twice the ground trembled under him, but he waited it out, kept moving.
It was almost dawn by the time Wake reached the base of the ranger station, orange light tingeing the horizon. He looked around before he slowly climbed the wooden steps to the station itself. He didn’t move slowly out of caution. He was too exhausted to climb any faster. There were no flashlights in the woods and the helicopter was long since gone. Either Nightingale had called off the chase, or more likely, Sheriff Breaker had called it off for him. The station was dark, the tiny red warning light on top flashing every ten seconds.
“Hello?” called Wake.
No response. He couldn’t tell if that was good or bad.
Wake walked through the open door. The station was empty. He started to turn on the lights, then thought better of it. No sense advertising his presence here.
