THREE DAYS AFTER HE WAS MURDERED, RICHARD PRATT BEGAN TO FEEL MUCH BETTER...
A seemingly random act of violence propels Professor Richard Pratt into The Hereafter. It is a strange, muted, netherworld of the dead-a world in which he is forced to bear...
Several hundred dead bodies lay in front of the City Creek Center. They were piled high, as if they had been fighting to get into the mall when they were gunned down. And there was no mistake that the wet bodies here died from gunfire. They had been mowed down with a methodical precision and inhuman fury. Hundreds or even thousands of brass shell casings littered the street. If the scene had been in black and white, rather than the vivid color of a summer day, Richard thought it could look like a photo of the Indian massacres of the old west. Or of the liberation of the concentration camps after World War II.
So, this is what happened to the crowds who had been trying to get into Temple Square...
It was all so clear. The mob had been driven away from the Temple Square gates with water cannons and gunfire. But as they fled down State Street, they came up against something far worse. This much damage could only have been inflicted by military grade automatic weapons. It had to be the work of the Army, or the National Guard units. Perhaps someone had panicked when they saw the crowd rushing toward them. Or perhaps it had been something more intentional, and more sinister. It was likely that no one would ever know. The tragedy would be lost in the history of what happened to this city on this day.
Richard felt sick knowing that this massacre had happened probably just minutes after he had abandoned Tuilla in Temple Square. Perhaps she had even been forced to stand as mute witness to these atrocities. And if that was the case, no wonder the old woman had fled, perhaps never to return.
Slowly and reverently Billy and Richard walked past the mound of corpses, instinctively stepping over the straggler bodies and the pools of blood that flowed from the heap like runoff from a slowly melting glacier. Richard found it impossible to turn his face from the dead, until Billy wordlessly touched his shoulder.
They turned their backs on the massacre and rushed forward up 1st South.
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Richard knew right away that they had a problem. Even though they were still two blocks away, they could see a plume of black smoke billowing into the blue sky. The thick column was rising quickly, but he knew instantly that a fire of that intensity would likely only come from a petrochemical burn. And that likely meant the Sinclair station was gone. So he wasn't surprised at all when they reached the corner where the 7-11 had stood, and found that both the gas island and the convenience store itself were engulfed in flames. So far, the fire was confined to the one building, but it would soon spread to the structures in the surrounding area. And indeed, there were small groups of people fleeing the apartments in the same block as the blaze. Those across the streets that had not yet fled stared from their windows in horror, wondering if they too would have to grab their possessions and get out.
Three cars had been consumed by the flames, and it appeared that they had been the ones nearest to the pumps when the fire broke out. In fact one car, which must have been especially close to the source of the blast, had been blown partially into 1st South, and was lying on its side. It was little more than a blackened hulk now, since most of the flames had burned themselves out.
