CHAPTER NINE

Luke sleeps in the rain sewer without moving as the peaceful night passes into the early morning. From time to time, a nearby train rumbles by, shaking the concrete walls of the sewer and sending a gentle tremor through the ground, but the sound is never sharp enough to disturb Luke or make him change position.

But it’s enough to shudder a cluster of wooden beams that are shoring up some temporary cement work above his head. Each time a train passes, the slight back-and-forth movement of the beams pulls them a little farther away from the cement ledge against which they have been wedged.

Around five a.m., a long freight train thunders by at great speed. One of the four-by-eights dislodges fully and swings out over the sleeping man, knocking a second beam out with it. As the far ends of the beams rip from the ceiling, they pull long slabs of concrete out after them.

An instant before the debris strikes, Luke hears the loud cracking sounds. His eyes shoot open just in time to see what looks like the entire ceiling hurtling down onto him with its lethal weight.

He screams when the wood and cement hit him, first from fright and then from agony. From the neck down he feels his body flatten under the terrible weight and he hears his own howl far off in the cavernous sewer, hears it drifting away into an elongated echo. When that sound ends, a new scream starts. The pain tears through his brain. The heavy beams push down, suffocating him, pinning him so that he can’t move.

He feels a thick heaviness dragging him down, his body sinking slowly into numbness. The open space below him grows deeper and hazier and then softer and blacker until the pain dulls to pins and needles and Luke collapses down inside himself.

Like a dead man, is his penultimate thought. Then …

Help me … Please, I don’t want to die.