“Shit, that hurt,” Maggie said. Her voice sounded as if she were underwater.
“Yeah.”
“Are you okay?”
“I think so,” Stride said. “How about you?”
“I have the mother of all headaches, but I don’t think I was hit.”
Twenty feet away, Finn groaned. Stride and Maggie held on to each other as they limped over and dropped to their knees on either side of him. He sat in a pool of water by the slab of driftwood. His fingers clawed over and over into fists, and his head swung rhythmically back and forth. His eyes were closed. Red blood trickled along his jawline from his ears.
“Finn!” Stride shouted.
He grabbed the man’s face with both hands, and Finn’s eyes sprang open. The whites were shot through with red, and his pupils were black and wide with panic.
“Can you hear me?” Stride yelled, but his own voice was distant.
Finn pummeled Stride with his hands. Stride fought to gain control of the man’s wrists and restrain him as he squirmed in confusion and fear. Finn’s chest heaved with frantic, openmouthed breaths. Stride found a pulse and felt no irregularities. His eyes flicked over Finn’s body and saw no burns, but the man’s eardrums had obviously burst when the thunder exploded over them, and Stride knew the torrent of pain had to be excruciating.
Maggie rose up on her knees beside him. “Where’s Clark?”
Stride studied the beach where he had last seen Clark standing in the water. The man was gone. He hunted in the shadows of rye grass and down the stretch of sand and didn’t see him anywhere.
Maggie stood up, swaying. “Clark!”
Stride let go of Finn, who twisted restlessly and crawled away, dragging himself with one arm. The effort overwhelmed Finn, and he stopped, panting and gulping down rain. Stride got to his feet and circled slowly. He didn’t think Clark could have gone far, but it was as if the man had been sucked into a cloud. The beach was empty.
“Where the hell is he?”
Maggie pointed. A violent wave drew back down toward the lake, and as the sheet of water slid off the sand, Stride saw a body prone in the surf, nearly thirty feet from where Clark had been standing. It was almost invisible, just a darker shadow against the black shoreline. The body didn’t move as another wave surged in and completely submerged him.
They stumbled over the driftwood and ran. Maggie spilled onto her face as her legs became tangled, and Stride stopped and helped her up. She waved him on as she waited for her head to clear. Stride splashed down to the edge of the lake and found Clark’s body, which was ashen white. Each wave buried the big man in almost eight inches of water and foam. Stride dug his hands under Clark’s shoulders and dragged him higher onto the beach, away from the reach of the waves.
Maggie arrived at his side. “Oh, my God.”
Clark’s clothes were shredded, as if they had exploded off his body. His chest was laced with a massive spiderweb of burns. His shoes appeared to be melted onto his feet, and when Stride checked the soles, he saw two circular black holes. Entry and exit wounds from the massive electricity of the lightning. They were still warm when he fingered them. He picked up Clark’s wrist, which was limp and cold, and felt no pulse. He checked again at the carotid and still found nothing. When he pushed open Clark’s eyelids, the man’s eyes stared back, dead and unmoving.
“There’s an AED in the back of my truck,” Stride said.
Maggie took off at a sprint. Stride mentally took stock of the time that had passed and concluded that Clark had been lying in the sand, his heart stopped, for at least five minutes. Way too long. Stride tilted the man’s head back and lifted his chin. He pried open Clark’s mouth, pinched the man’s nose shut, and covered Clark’s cold lips with his own. He exhaled two slow breaths and watched Clark’s chest rise and fall as the air filled his lungs.
Stride repositioned himself and placed the heel of his right hand in the middle of Clark’s chest and laced the fingers of both hands together. He rose up for more leverage and shoved down hard and fast, counting to thirty in his head. When he was done, he moved back and swelled the man’s chest with two more slow breaths and then frantically pumped against his rib cage thirty more times. He repeated the process again, his mind oblivious to anything around him except the time passing. Then again. And again. When he had completed the cycle five times, he pressed two fingers against Clark’s neck.
Nothing.
The clock in his head was at nearly eight minutes.
He continued applying CPR and was vaguely conscious of Maggie arriving next to him with the small AED box, which began to chirp instructions as she unpacked it. He alternated between breaths and chest massage as Maggie worked around him to dry Clark’s skin with a towel she had brought from the truck and then position the two electrodes of the defibrillator on his chest. She hovered over him, trying to block the rain.
“It’s too fucking wet,” she said.
“I know.”
Maggie turned on the machine. “Clear,” she told him.
Stride stopped and removed his hands from Clark’s body. Maggie pushed the analyze button on the defibrillator, which measured Clark’s heart activity and responded aloud with a discouraging message. “No charge.”
There was nothing to shock. No fibrillation.
“Goddamn it,” Stride said. He checked for a pulse and still found nothing. He bent over and continued several more cycles of CPR and then backed away as Maggie stabbed the button one more time.
“No charge.”
Ten minutes had passed.
Stride tried again. And again. And again. Two minutes later, there was still no pulse. No heart activity. Nothing for the defibrillator to regulate. He assaulted Clark’s chest with his fists, harder and faster, and then he heard Maggie’s soft voice at the end of the wind tunnel.
“Boss.”
He hammered and breathed, hammered and breathed, hammered and breathed. Clark’s body endured the punishment without moving. Two more minutes passed.
“Boss.”
He counted to thirty. Counted to two. Counted to thirty. Counted to two.
“Jonathan, it’s over.”
Maggie’s hand took hold of his shoulder in a grip that was gentle but unyielding. Midway through the final series of chest compressions, Stride finally stopped and sat back on his haunches. His arms dangled at his sides. He could hardly lift them now. He had known from the beginning that Clark was dead, that the electricity had savaged his heart, but it was only when he gave up, when there was nothing else to do, that the reality sank in. His head sank forward against his chest.
“Where’s the damn ambulance?”