Blaze

Don’t Make Him Mad

GLEN WAS GRINNING. “State kid,” he said. He hit Blaze in the middle of Blaze’s dented forehead and his grin faltered as pain exploded up his arm. Blaze’s forehead was very hard, dented or not.

For a moment he forgot to back up and Blaze shot his fist out. He didn’t use his body; he just used his arm like a piston. His knuckles connected with Glen’s mouth. Glen screamed as his lips burst against his teeth and began to bleed. The yelling intensified.

Glen tasted his own blood and forgot about backing up. He forgot about taunting the ugly kid with the busted forehead. He just waded in, swinging roundhouse punches from port and starboard.

Blaze set his feet and met him.

Also by Richard Bachman

The Long Walk

Roadwork

The Running Man

Thinner

The Regulators

Blaze

A Novel

Richard Bachman

Foreword by Stephen King

SCRIBNER

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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright (c) 2007 by Stephen King

Foreword copyright (c) 2007 by Stephen King

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Scribner Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

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DESIGNED BY ERICH HOBBING

Library of Congress Control Number: 2007015354

ISBN: 1-4165-5991-4

ISBN: 978-1-4165-5991-7

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For Tommy and Lori Spruce

And thinking of James T. Farrell

These are the slums of the heart.

JOHN D. MAC DONALD

Blaze

Full Disclosure

DEAR CONSTANT READER,

This is a trunk novel, okay? I want you to know that while you’ve still got your sales slip and before you drip something like gravy or ice cream on it, and thus make it difficult or impossible to return.^1. It’s a revised and updated trunk novel, but that doesn’t change the basic fact. The Bachman name is on it because it’s the last novel from 1966-1973, which was that gentleman’s period of greatest productivity.

During those years I was actually two men. It was Stephen King who wrote (and sold) horror stories to raunchy skin mags like Cavalier and Adam,^2. but it was Bachman who wrote a series of novels that didn’t sell to anybody. These included Rage,^3.The Long Walk, Roadwork, and The Running Man.^4. All four were published as paperback originals.

Blaze was the last of those early novels…the fifth quarter, if you like. Or just another well-known writer’s trunk novel, if you insist. It was written in late 1972 and early 1973. I thought it was great while I was writing it, and crap when I read it over. My recollection is that I never showed it to a single publisher — not even Doubleday, where I had made a friend named William G. Thompson. Bill was the guy who would later discover John Grisham, and it was Bill who contracted for the book following Blaze, a twisted but fairly entertaining tale of prom-night in central Maine.^5.

I forgot about Blaze for a few years. Then, after the other early Bachmans had been