In the Dark (41 page)

 

“Just do it,” Finn shouted.

 

Clark wrapped his fingers around the wet grip of the bat. His eyes found a misshapen mole on the back of Finn’s head and focused on it. His target. His sweet spot. He wound up and prepared to swing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

44
___________

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Wisconsin Point was a twin sister to the Minnesota Point, separating Lake Superior from Allouez Bay with a needle of land that suffered the pummeling of waves and gales. Only an inlet of open water not even a thousand feet across separated the two splinters of beach. Unlike its Minnesota sibling, where Stride and Serena lived, the Wisconsin Point was largely undeveloped parkland, so narrow in most places that there was no room to sink a foundation. The only road leading out to the Point was a country lane called Moccasin Mike at the southeastern edge of Superior.

 

Stride shot through the storm on Moccasin Mike at seventy miles an hour. His windshield wipers sluiced aside the hammering rain. The road was arrow straight, but it was a roller coaster of shallow hills and dips. He didn’t see the worst of the water-filled depressions in the road until the truck was airborne and he and Maggie rose out of their seats. His breath expelled as he landed back down in moving water with a sharp jolt in his back. The truck groaned through the flooded valley and threatened to stall and float, but then the tires chewed back onto solid ground and roared up the opposite slope, cascading spray behind them.

 

At high speed, the truck gobbled up the two-mile stretch of highway, and Stride nearly missed the left turn to the Point. He braked hard and overcorrected, sending the rear of the Expedition into a fishtail, and then he accelerated again onto the broken asphalt. The truck lurched through a moonscape of potholes. Evergreens leaned in from the shoulders of the road, and he sheared off branches as he drove. His high beams stabbed the darkness, but all he could see was silver rain and black forest, until suddenly the truck burst free from the wilderness onto the slim peninsula and the bay opened up on his left. A roar of wind rattled the truck and threatened to spill it onto its side.

 

He slowed down. The thunder was a tin can banging in their ears.

 

“I don’t like this storm,” Stride said. “The lightning is right on top of us.”

 

They rocked along the uneven road for half a mile, and then Stride caught a reflection of metal in his headlights. A 1990s-era pickup truck was parked in the long grass on the right-hand shoulder by the slope that led to the lakeside beach. Clark’s truck.

 

He stopped the Expedition askew on the Point road. He and Maggie piled out of both sides. Maggie ran to Clark’s truck and pressed her face against the window.

 

“It’s empty,” she called. “They must be on the beach.”

 

“Call for backup.”

 

Stride unholstered his Glock. Maggie grabbed her phone and shouted instructions.

 

A muddy path only a foot wide wound between the long grass and sagging birch trees to the top of the slope. The wet ground sucked at Stride’s boots, and he slipped as he climbed, falling to his knees and nearly losing his gun. He had to sink his free hand in the dirt to push himself up. Maggie followed behind him, swearing as her heels got trapped. She kicked them off, leaving herself in bare feet.

 

They reached the crown of the hill, where the expanse of beach and lake opened up below them. Superior was a living thing, violent and huge, invading the puny finger of sand. Around them, the trees yawned and spun. Lightning popped in their eyes, and the circling beam of the Superior lighthouse flashed through the darkness out on the water.

 

At first, the beach looked empty.

 

“Where are they?” Maggie screamed, cupping her hand beside her mouth.

 

“I don’t see them!” The lightning broke again, and Stride pointed. “Wait, there they are!”

 

Fifty yards away, looking no larger than dolls, Clark Biggs and Finn Mathisen were on opposite sides of a giant trunk of driftwood. Finn lay sprawled on the ground, half his torso propped against the tree. Clark stood behind him. When the next flash of lightning illuminated the beach, they realized that Clark held a baseball bat in his hands and was preparing to swing with deadly intent at the back of Finn’s head.

 

“Stop!” Maggie shouted.

 

She might as well have been mute. Clark couldn’t hear a thing.

 

“Clark! Stop!”

 

Stride aimed his Glock into the sky and squeezed off a round. To him, with the gun by his ear, the report sounded loud, but he wasn’t sure the shot could be heard over the wind, rain, thunder, and surf. For a few long seconds, the beach was dark, and they were blind. When they could see through the next streak of light, they saw Clark, stopped, the bat poised high above his head, as he stared directly at them on top of the hill. Stride half expected him to swing, but Clark froze, hesitating at the brink.

 

Finn’s face was turned toward them. He was alive.

 

Stride stumbled down the slope to the flat stretch of wet sand and rye grass. He splashed through pooled water with Maggie on his heels and stopped ten feet from the slab of driftwood. Stride pointed his Glock at the ground, but he held it out from his body where Clark could see it. He studied Finn and saw that the man was badly hurt, his shoulder broken, his left hand pressed frantically on his disjointed knee, his face twisted in agony. He had bitten his lip so hard that it was bleeding.

 

“Son of a bitch,” Maggie murmured. Then she said loudly, “Clark! Don’t do this! Put the bat down!”

 

Clark’s face was hard as stone. His eyes were black. He shook his head.

 

“This is your
life
,” Maggie told him. “Don’t destroy it. Mary wouldn’t want you to do that.”

 

“Mary’s dead,” Clark said.

 

“Listen to me, Clark. I know the kind of man you are. You’re not a murderer.”

 

Finn grimaced and pushed himself higher off the ground. He shouted at Clark behind him. “Be a man and swing the fucking bat!”

 

Stride watched Clark tighten his grip. The big man’s elbows bent as he twisted the bat back behind his shoulders. Stride stood up and stretched out his arms, steadying his Glock with both hands and aiming straight at Clark’s head. The wind buffeted him. Rain poured over his face and body.

 

“Put the bat down, Clark,” Stride said.

 

“You won’t kill me,” Clark said. “Not to protect a piece of shit like this.”

 

They played a game of chicken, staring each other down.

 

“Please, Clark,” Maggie pleaded with him.

 

Clark’s eyes flicked to Maggie. “You know what this man did to Mary. He deserves to die.”

 

“That’s not up to you or me.”

 

The storm swooped down off the hills like the invasion of an army. Wind shrieked and drove their bodies backward. Over the furious lake, veins of lightning tore across the entire sky. The world snapped from black to white to black. Stride felt the pressure and temperature dropping. An explosion was coming.

 

“We have to go right now,” Stride told Clark. “It’s not safe here.”

 

“So go. Leave me alone.”

 

“Put down the bat.”

 

“I can’t do that.”

 

“Clark, Donna called me,” Maggie told him. “She doesn’t want to lose you. She’s scared to death.”

 

Clark hesitated.

 

“She still loves you,” Maggie said.

 

“Do it!” Finn screamed.

 

Clark’s eyes burned into the back of Finn’s skull, as if he could see the bat landing there. Hear the awful crack. Watch the blood and brain fly. Stride knew what was going through the man’s head. Clark wanted to feel something again. Anything.

 

“This won’t give you what you want,” Stride said.

 

“Look at me, Clark!” Maggie implored him. “Listen! There’s something Donna didn’t tell you. She’s pregnant. The two of you are having another baby.”

 

Clark’s eyes wrenched away from Finn. “You’re lying to me.”

 

“I’m not.”

 

“She can’t be pregnant,” Clark said.

 

“It’s true. I swear. This is your second chance, Clark. Don’t give it up.”

 

Stride thought Clark was crying, but in the rain, he couldn’t be sure.

 

“Mary’s dead!” Clark shouted. “Someone should pay!”

 

“Yes, someone should,” Maggie agreed. “But not you. Not now.”

 

Clark took a step backward. The fight had fled from the man. His head sank, and his chin disappeared into his neck. One hand dropped away from the bat and fell to his side. The fingers on his other hand spread open, and the bat tumbled end over end to the sand. Clark backed away and raised his hands in the air in surrender.

 

“Thank God,” Stride murmured. His own gun hand sagged. Beside him, Maggie holstered her gun and crouched down in front of Finn.

 

Clark stumbled toward the surf. He was twenty feet away, ankle deep in lake water, his hands still high in the air.

 

“Make sure there’s an ambulance—” Stride began, but he never finished.

 

The ground under his feet suddenly felt strange, as if every particle of sand clinging to his wet skin were alive.

 

The hairs on his head and arms defied gravity and stood at attention like soldiers. His flesh tingled. He tasted hot metal in his mouth. Stride knew what was coming. Death was hurtling through the ground.

 

Lightning.

 

Billions of ions searching for a bridge to the sky. Like a body.

 

He shouted a warning at Maggie, threw his gun down, and fell into a crouch, propping himself up on the balls of his feet. He squeezed his eyes shut and clapped his hands over his ears so tightly that the storm was sucked into a vacuum of silence. It didn’t last. Less than a second later, a concussion bomb cracked inside his brain, as if tacks were blowing outward into bone and tissue. His feet left the ground as he was jolted backward, lofted like a javelin. He saw a white flash through his closed eyes, felt the cold air melt into heat, and smelled the char of flesh burning.

 

He wondered if it was his own.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

45
___________

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The tingling in Stride’s flesh disappeared as quickly as it had come.

 

He lay on his back, eyes open, tasting the rain that spilled out of the sky into his mouth. The world was oddly quiet. No wind. No thunder. No slap of waves and surf. He heard himself call Maggie’s name, but the sound was muffled, as if it came from someone else at the end of a long tunnel. He heard the roar a child hears in a seashell.

 

His head throbbed. His limbs felt like jelly. He patted his face, chest, and legs and felt no tenderness and no burns. The soles of his shoes were intact, without any signs of melting or scorched entry and exit holes from the electricity. His clothes were wet but untorn. When he felt his neck for his pulse, he found that the beating of his heart was fast but even. However close the lightning bolt had been, and whatever path it had taken up to the cloud, it hadn’t gone through his body.

 

He pushed himself up on his elbows, and the beach spun like a carousel. The sound wave had scrambled his sense of balance. He closed his eyes, letting his brain right itself. When he tried to stand, his legs bent like rubber, and he fell onto all fours in a slurry of sand. The disorientation made him nauseous, and he swallowed down bile at the back of his mouth.

 

He tried standing again, and the dizziness made him stagger, but he was able to stay on his feet. The air around him smelled burned. Lightning continued to flicker like a loose bulb over the lake. Each flash made his eyes tighten. Somewhere in his head, he sensed that the rain that had drilled into his body was gentler now. The wind was dying.

 

When he took a step, his knee buckled. He felt a hand on his arm, steadying him.

 

“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