Alan Wake

night.” It even sounded like Wake’s style.

Wake looked around. He was alone except for the wind and the surrounding trees swaying in the darkness, branches rattling against each other like fingerbones in a graveyard. Turn off your imagination, Wake. Nothing and nobody here but you. Definitely no man with an ax lurking in the brush, no maniac escaped from the local asylum seeking payback. That was another dream, another nightmare, another book someday maybe, but nothing more.

Wake started walking again. He glanced behind him, moving faster now. He promised himself that he would keep up a steady pace, that he wouldn’t give in to panic, but he had broken so many promises to himself. Wake ran, ran faster now, legs pumping as he listened for footsteps behind him.

Worst vacation ever. Two weeks off a year and Blaine had to spend it driving around in an RV with his in- laws from Tokyo. People acted like they had never seen a redwood tree, and his mother-in-law found every jerkwater town “cute.” Nothing cute about Bright Falls, just redneck dopes asking him what kind of mileage he got in the Winnebago. Didn’t help that his wife Asako’s spastic colon was kicking up with all the fast food, making her totally useless. It all fell on Blaine.

He wanted to barrel on to Reno or Ashland, someplace with a Sizzler or some nightlife, but his in-laws had seen the mountain turnout and wanted to watch the sunset. Like the sun never set in Japan. Fine, Blaine stayed in the RV while the three of them stood against the railing taking pictures.

Geez, it got dark fast up here in Nowheresville. One minute it was twilight, and the next—

CHAPTER 5

WAKE CROUCHED OVER, hands resting on his knees, his chest on fire as he tried to catch his breath. Got to hit the gym, Wake. Do some cardio. Maybe take a spinning class. He started to smile, then remembered why he was here in the middle of the woods. Alone. He thought of Alice and her terror of the darkness, hoped that wherever she was there was light.

He started walking in the direction of the gas station. Walking fast was smarter than running, allowing him to keep a steady pace. Keep moving, a mantra to get him through the long night until he was reunited with Alice. No doubts, no fears, just the certainty that he would find her. Anything else, any other thought was a whirlpool of madness that threatened to pull him under.

The sound of crickets rose around him, a tidal wave of sound, rising and falling, male crickets sawing away, looking for a mate. Pick me… me… me! Just as suddenly the sound changed, shifted, and Wake thought he heard someone typing away in the distance, someone just as insistent as the crickets, tappity tap tapping away. He patted the pages he had found, the pages of a manuscript he didn’t remember writing, pages tucked into a pocket of his jacket.

The wind rose, blowing across him, turning his sweat cold. He looked around in the darkness, the trees so close, blotting out the stars, hiding a deeper darkness. There was not even a question of stepping off the path that wound through them. No shortcuts. Don’t stray from the path, Wake, the awareness of that truth as sudden and definite as if someone had spoken the words.

Something scurried in the underbrush and Wake had to remind himself to breathe. His head throbbed where he had hit the steering wheel in the crash. He didn’t remember driving… he touched his forehead, winced. That much was real. Keep moving.

A damp mist hung over the ground, thickening as he walked. Wake staggered as pain shot through his head, his eyes unfocused for a moment, his vision speckled with tiny flares of light. There was a buzzing in his ears, like being caught inside a hornet’s nest. He tried walking but the ground shook, a tremor that sent him to his knees. The buzzing in his head became a roar as the ground rolled under him. Alice had talked about a volcano under Cauldron Lake, but it was supposed to be dormant. Wake got to his feet. Keep going. No matter what, keep going.

He glimpsed a man up ahead, then he was gone, lost in the mist.

“Hey!” shouted Wake. “I need help!” He ran forward, the mist swirling around him. “Anybody there? Please, I’ve been in an accident!”

The mist thinned out. Wake was still alone. Up ahead though, there were lights. A good sign, he thought, moving faster now, half stumbling in his haste. Maybe he wouldn’t have to hike all the way to the gas station to find a phone.

The trail opened up, leaving the thick forest behind, the trees spread out now. In the distance Wake could see a logging camp, surrounded by a high chain-link fence. He was running now, eager. There had to be people there, a phone. Huge machines stood between stacks of cut logs, battered loaders and claw-armed backhoes and gigantic bulldozers, their treads crusted with rust and dirt. A crane towered above them all, a sentinel in the darkness. The camp office was off to the side, a converted trailer at the edge of a deep ravine.

Wake was closer now, close enough to see that the massive stacks of logs were at least twelve feet high, flanked by neat piles of cut lumber. Fifty-gallon drums lay scattered across the yard, as though tossed aside by an angry giant. The yard was dark, but the modular office was lit. The door was only open a crack, but the light was a relief after traveling through the dark for hours.

Now he knew how Alice felt when the lights went out.

There was such a sense of relief in the light’s glow, of normality, of… safety, which was ridiculous and primitive, but it was true. Seeing the lights on inside the trailer made it even better. Wake could hear the trailer door squeaking as the wind moved it back and forth.

He put his hands on the fence. “Anybody there?”

No answer.

Wake scooted along the chain-link fence, looking for a gate, slipping on the rocks in his haste. Halfway down he saw where a fallen tree had landed on the fence line, crushing it halfway down. He hopped onto the tree trunk and carefully started up the incline. He’d been too eager and his momentum nudged him off.

He landed on his feet and tried it again, taking his time, wobbling at the very peak, then jumping down on the other side. He stuck the dismount, almost wanting to throw his hands over his head in Olympic triumph, anything to break the tension that had increased since he hit the ground, worse even than when he woke in the car.

The mist hung over the camp in layers. A wood smell hung there too. It should have been pleasant, fresh- cut, alive, but instead the air felt dead, a toadstool stink. Logs lay jumbled everywhere, slippery with moisture, the footing treacherous. Sawdust covered the ground, stained with grease. He started toward the office, guiding himself by the glow that shone over the top of one of the piles of stacked logs.

He kept getting lost in the maze of stacks, wandering into cul-de-sacs of logs and lumber that he couldn’t squeeze through, forcing him to retreat and retrace his steps. On his third attempt to thread his way to the light he heard a sound, a human voice crying out in fear and pain. Wake couldn’t make out the words, but he knew the emotion behind them.

He ran toward the sound, but found himself blocked again by a mountain of logs. He tried to scramble up them, desperate now, but the bracings holding the stack in place gave way, the logs rolling toward him. He barely had time to jump aside, banging his elbow on a rusting iron girder lying on the ground.

He watched as the logs rolled down the incline, gathering speed, then hurtled through the safety fence and into the ravine below. It sounded like thunder, and he hoped there was nothing and no one down there, because anything alive would be reduced to a smear of flesh.

Another cry, closer this time.

“I’m coming!” shouted Wake, his left arm numb where he had banged it. He ran through the stacks of lumber, round and round, until he finally saw a man lying at the end of one long corridor of logs, a hunter in a red plaid shirt, wearing jeans and suspenders, one of his legs twisted under him. A rifle lay on the ground beside