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...
But then Pil saw something that at first confused him, but suddenly clicked into focus.
At the edge of the playground was a white concrete structure. One exactly like it was on the other side of South Temple, and Pil remembered they were the entrance and exit to an underground passage, which students from the elementary school used to avoid having to cross the busy street on their way to the playground. It was small and dark now, with all the lights dead, but already the crowd was surging toward it.
"Billy! There!" Pil screamed, pointing with the tire iron.
Billy was still close, but already he had been battered by the crowd that was running so madly around him. He looked stunned, terrified, and disoriented. Even as Pil watched, a fat man ran right into Billy, knocking him to the pavement. Pil recognized the man named Gordon as his great bulk and momentum blew past, leaving Billy stunned on the ground.
He's going to be reset! Pil thought in terror. One boot heel in the center of Billy's chest, and we'll be on our own.
He reached his free hand toward the boy, knowing that if he could get a hand around his wrist, he could pull him above the crowd.
"Get up!" Pil screamed, and Billy shook his head and rolled to the left just in time to avoid being trampled. Pil felt himself being pulled toward the underpass by the crowd as the gunfire drew even closer. A woman directly in front of Pil went down with a bullet in her chest, and a string of slugs traced themselves across the white concrete of the underground passageway that was now just two feet away.
"This way," Keith was screaming, and pulling Pil toward the dark opening. But now the crowd had recognized the relative safety of the passageway, and the movement of those around the pair had shifted like water drawn to a drain. Before he could even resist, Pil realized they were being carried toward that dark concrete entrance. He turned back just in time to see Billy make a bounding and almost superhuman leap into the air, and the boy came down on the heads of the crowd that was surging under him. For a strange moment, the boy with the straw hat stood on the heads and shoulders of the crowd that was surging under him, looking like a surfer trying to keep himself up on a violent wave.
Pil felt the sun blocked out as the crowd pulled them into the underground passageway.
"Billy!" he cried, and he saw the boy for one last second, reaching out, as if he could grasp Pil's wrist and pull himself to safety. Then he felt the floor drop out from under them, and they were falling in a tangle of bodies, down the concrete stairs, and into the tomb-like depths below.
The last thing Pil saw before darkness closed around him, and he and Keith tumbled in a waterfall of screaming bodies into the dark, was Billy losing his footing. The boy disappeared head first into the trampling feet and crashing bodies, and then he was gone.
Even as Pil fell, he kept one hand wedged tightly into Keith's belt, and the other around his tire iron.
They hit hard, on top of a pair of wailing teenagers who wriggled away. But more bodies were surging in, and in seconds they were buried under their weight. The way out of the tunnel was now blocked by the bodies that choked the entrance, and only a meager light penetrated. Pil wrenched his head around to try to see the other end of the tunnel, but that too was blocked. He was now covered with writhing bodies and overwhelmed by the stench of their sweat and fear.
From both ends of the tunnel the gunfire began again, and Pil did his best to wrench his body and cover Keith, who was moaning and writhing under him. Pil felt more bodies falling down upon them, and hot blood poured down into his eyes and mouth. He realized with horror that at least one of the women with the machine guns was now standing at the entrance to the tunnel, and firing into the wedged-in bodies below in long and steady bursts. Only the fact that he and Keith were too far into the tunnel for the bullets to reach saved them. An occasional round snapped against the concrete above them, and Pil heard, rather than felt, the shower of plaster.
Pil covered Keith with his body, waiting for the gunfire to end, trying to bear the weight of those above him with his arms, so as to prevent Keith from being crushed. He squeezed his eyes shut and waited for a bullet to end their lives.
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