"Yes," Wexler replied, his voice strangely clear amid the roar of the blizzard. "It's Gavin. And not just … "
Keenan had whipped off his glove and slipped out his radio. As soon as he hit the button a burst of static filled the air. A squeal came from the radio, loud enough to blot out anything else Wexler might have said.
"Coventry Central, this is Car Four," he said. "Come in."
He started down the hill, listening to the radio hiss and pop, but he'd taken only five steps when he realized that Wexler had stopped in midsentence and hadn't said more. Worried that the guy might be collapsing in shock, Keenan turned to check on him, but saw no sign of the man.
"Mr. Wexler?" the officer called as he struggled back to the gate.
He peered into the storm and shouted the man's name again, scanning the frozen baseball field-or as much of it as the storm allowed him to see. A fresh burst of static came from his radio and Keenan jumped, startled. He lifted the radio and hailed Dispatch again, even as he stared into the driving snow. There was nowhere for Wexler to have gone. Nowhere he could have gone, at least not fast enough that Keenan wouldn't have spotted him.
"Wexler!" he shouted.
No answer.
Until one came, but this was not the voice of a grown man. A younger voice, frantic and plaintive, cried out from the bottom of the viaduct, calling for help. Keenan swore, glanced once more at the void in the storm where Wexler had just vanished, and turned to stumble, march, and slide down the steep slope of Meatball Hill.
The radio kept crackling. He tried calling in again and heard a snippet of words among the static but nothing he could make out clearly. The storm was interfering with everything.
Twenty feet from the fence, snow frosting his coat and sticking to his face, Keenan barely made out a pair of figures on the ground.
"Hello?" he called.
"Here!" a voice came back. "Right here!"
Exhausted from fighting against the brutal wind, Keenan staggered toward the two boys, one of whom knelt in the snow, cradling the other in his lap. The upright boy was a skinny little guy whose eyebrows were rimed with snow. He wore a wool pea coat and a scarf pulled up to cover the bottom of his chin and he gazed at Keenan with pleading eyes.
"Help him!"
Keenan stood over them, studying the unconscious boy, whose head lolled alarmingly to one side.
"What happened?"
"He tried to help Gavin," the skinny kid said, his voice cracking with emotion.
Keenan frowned. "Neither of you is Gavin Wexler?"
"I'm Marc Stern. This is Charlie Newell," the kid said. "Gavin's … " His face crumpled into grief and horror. "Gavin's over there." He nodded toward the gate, only another ten feet away.
Keenan stumbled over and nearly tripped on a small figure in a gray-and-blue winter coat that lay mostly covered beneath at least an inch of snow. Even as he bent to brush some of the snow away, he smelled the stink of burnt flesh and he froze.
"No!" skinny Marc Stern cried. "Don't touch him! It might not be safe!"
Keenan backed away, glancing around to take in the scene, and then he heard a spark and a pop and he understood it all. He craned his head back to look up at the power lines that ran perpendicular to the viaduct, crossing the path just on the other side of the fence at the bottom of Meatball Hill. A long black line hung from one of the towers, and about fifteen feet to his left it draped across the top of the fence.
A sizzle and hiss reached him and he saw a little shower of sparks come off the fence where the power line had fallen on it.
He didn't want a better look at Gavin Wexler's burnt corpse, and he didn't have time for one. He hurried back to the other boys and dropped to the snow beside Charlie. He felt the boy's wrist for a pulse but it was weak if there at all, so he checked Charlie's neck and found his heart still beating.
Keenan glanced up at Marc. "So, Gavin hit the fence. Did he grab it, use it to help himself up?"
Marc nodded vigorously. "He couldn't even scream. We saw him standing there and we didn't know what was happening because he was so quiet and then his gloves caught fire and we could smell, like, burning hair, and Charlie went to try to pull him off the fence and I screamed for him not to and … and … "
"It's okay," Keenan lied, glancing at the skinny kid. "It's gonna be okay."
The kid didn't bother to argue. It had been a stupid thing to say and they both knew it. Gavin had been electrocuted to death. His flesh had been smoking. His gloves and probably other things had caught fire. Now they were out here in the blizzard at two in the morning and Charlie had a slow, flickering heartbeat. He'd been electrocuted, too, trying to save his buddy. There wasn't a damn thing okay about it.
"Charlie," Keenan said, leaning in. "Charlie, can you hear me?"
He hit the call button on the radio again and static squealed, echoing off the trees and the storm.
"Coventry Central, come in!" he called. "Coventry Central, please respond!"
Nothing but static.
Charlie started to twitch and jerk. Marc cried out, pulling his hands away as if afraid he was somehow responsible. The unconscious kid seized and spasmed and began to groan and all Keenan could think about was the boy's heart. He'd felt a flutter when he'd checked Charlie's pulse and Keenan figured he'd had a heart attack, and maybe this was another one.
"Back up!" Keenan said, shuffling over beside Charlie on his knees as Marc retreated.
Should've covered him with my coat, he thought, as if that would've prevented whatever this was.
Keenan grabbed Charlie's flailing arm, then put weight on his collarbone, trying to hold him down to keep the kid from hurting himself. He twitched once and then lay still; the seizure had stopped. It took Keenan only a second to realize that the seizure was not the only thing that had ceased-the rise and fall of Charlie's chest had gone still.
Cursing, Keenan checked the kid's pulse again, but couldn't find one. A calm not unlike the numbness the blizzard caused began to spread through him. Keenan wished for EMTs. He wished for a portable defibrillator. All he had was a terrified, skinny little frostbitten teenage boy and his own two big, fumbling hands. He made sure Charlie's airway was clear and then started chest compressions, damning himself for every second he'd delayed, talking to Mr. Wexler and checking on Gavin's corpse.
"Come on, come on," Keenan said, talking as much to himself as to the quieted heart of Charlie Newell.
Wexler, he thought, remembering the man's fumbling, shocked attempts at communication. Somehow he'd run off so fast that he'd vanished into the blizzard, but had he gone far?
"Mr. Wexler!" Officer Keenan screamed. "Can you hear me up there? Are you still here?"
No reply. He wondered if Wexler had gotten his act together enough to fetch EMTs or just call 911. Surely that was what he'd intended to do before Keenan had run into him.
"Come on, Charlie," skinny Marc pleaded.
But despite the rests between repetitions of chest compressions, Keenan's arms were getting tired fast. The storm worked against him, as if the wind did not want this boy's heart to beat again.
"Wexler!" Keenan cried.
He caught Marc staring at him and they locked eyes a moment. Keenan paused in his compressions, pulled out his cell phone, and tossed it to the kid, who fumbled it with his frozen hands and let it fall to the snow.
"Call 911!" Keenan said.
"I tried. Me and Mr. Wexler both did. Our phones-"
"Try mine!"
Nodding, Marc worked off one snowy glove and tried to use Keenan's phone to call 911.
"A couple of bars!" Marc cried.
"Make the call!" Keenan said, between compressions.
In moments, he heard Marc announcing their location and then repeating it several times, trying to communicate, tears of frustration springing to his eyes as he desperately tried to tell the dispatcher where they were and what they needed.
More than a minute passed and Keenan's arms were growing tired. Charlie had not so much as twitched. His pulse had not fluttered. His skin had begun to grow even colder than before. A long sigh escaped Joe Keenan's lips and he shuddered as he sat back on his haunches, gazing at the frostbitten, frozen features of Charlie Newell, who had died right in front of him. Charlie Newell, whose life he had failed to save.
"Do something," skinny Marc said, but without much fire. It was a hollow plea. The boy knew there was nothing to be done.
Marc began to sob, hugging himself. Keenan could only watch him. The wind shifted for a moment and he smelled the aroma of Gavin Wexler's burnt flesh still in the air.
The snow kept falling.
Keenan knew he had to leave the dead boys behind. He had to take skinny Marc with him, go back up the hill, over the fence, and make it to his car. He hoped the car radio would be working better than his handheld. Marc had gotten through to 911 but Keenan felt pretty dubious that the dispatcher had been able to hear half of what the kid had told her before the call had been cut off.
He just wanted to take a minute, in the cold and the storm, as the snow began to accumulate on his clothes and the still form of Charlie Newell. Keenan fought back tears as the icy wind assaulted him.
Charlie Newell, he thought, and knew he'd never forget the name.
The kid who'd died at his feet. The kid he hadn't been able to save.