Static

 Despite what Aje and Brandon had said, there wasn't that much of the  stinking or dirty about his dung studies, either. Each specimen was in a covered container, and he discarded the source material as soon as he'd isolated its fungi.
 It's just the whole idea behind it, he reasoned, grinning. But if it really grossed them out, they wouldn't drop by so damn often...
 His first year at his hobby he'd had a standing order at the zoo, for samples of dung from different animals. A lot of the results had been standard stuff - nothing to rattle the systematics texts. But there had been that one new species, and it was enough to get him hooked. A few months later, when the zoo had started contracting all their dung out to a fertiliser company, Nate had been forced to go further afield. So he'd started taking these hikes up into the mountains. It was something he'd done as a teenager, years before, and he'd forgotten how good it felt to visit all that fresh air. Now, he got away at least once a month if he could. He'd already decided that some day, when the labs turned fully computerised, he'd go from specialist, to generalist - opt for being a field biologist, and turn the analysis over to someone else.
 Today he'd found a path he'd never taken before - and he' d already promised himself he'd never take it again. Nature had been communing with him big time. He'd been tramping for less than two hours when the skies suddenly opened. Rain and hail - and they were coming down so hard it hurt. Nate was soaked before he could drag his rain gear out of his bag.
 Good thing Aje isn't here, Nate thought. I'd never hear the end of this...
 I probably won't, anyway. Aje, despite his protestations, would have half an ear tuned on the weather report.
 Nate had never expected him or Brandon to come along. It was just a way of covering his ass, without sacrificing his pride. Brandon always insisted he needed to tell someone when he was going hiking on his own, and Aje had been adamant about it since that ledge goof-up. So, he'd tell them, they'd give him a hard time, and that was that. Except he'd always get a call on Sunday - just in case. In Aje's words, If I have to save your stupid hide, I want to know before I make other plans.
 Nate's thoughts were interrupted by a loud rumble, and a flash of brilliant white, that lit up half the sky. Lightning!
 No! It was the thing that terrified him more than anything else. The thing that sometimes invaded his dreams. There was probably some name for it - for this kind of irrational terror, but right now, he didn't know - or care. The lightning was coming - heading his way.
 A burst of adrenaline shot through him and he started to run, slipping and sliding in the muck and leaves. Panicked, he ran off the trail, heading toward an overhanging knob of rock.
 Solid. Safe. It can't get me there.
 It's okay, Leighton. You'll make it...
 Only, he wouldn't. It was at his back, watching him ominously from the skies, and it was going to get him.
 There was a tingling in his shoulder blades.
 It was going to stab him, right in the back.
 He'd never told anyone. How, when a lightning storm came, he'd hide behind the door, or in a closet. Deep in his house, or burrowed beneath the desk in his office.
 His mother had said he'd been struck once, when he was little. A baby.