Neal Shusterman - Everwild

"I got him, Mrs. Rozelli!" With one hand he hurled Danny out of the pool, and climbed out after him."I can do this! I know CPR!" Chainsaw began chest compressions on the boy as Allie, still within Mrs. Rozelli, climbed out of the water. Chainsaw valiantly fought to resuscitate the little boy, but it was no use. Danny was dead. His soul was long gone.

Or was it?

Allie peeled out of Mrs. Rozelli, and back into Everlost, where she could see Milos and Moose still standing there, observing everything.

"Welcome back to Everlost!" Milos said cheerfully. "I knew it would work!"

Allie could not believe he could be so casual about the terrible thing he had just done. Somehow Mary had changed him. Like everything else she touched, Mary had turned him rancid.

In the living world, Mrs. Rozelli fell to her knees, dazed and terrified. She wailed so loudly, it rang out as clearly in Everlost as in the living world.

"C'mon, kid!" cried Chainsaw, struggling to revive the boy, knowing he was dead, but not willing to stop, for he couldn't face the woman's anguish. And behind him the other poolman dug his nails into his scalp and tore himself apart, his mind shattered from the awful thing Milos had made him do.

But in Everlost, there was a sight that none of the living could see.

Allie turned to the pool, and saw Danny's spirit! He was floating in midair just above the surface of the water. He was staring in wonder at something that Allie couldn't see, and a bright, unearthly light painted his face. He reached out toward the source of that light.

"No, Danny!" screamed Allie.

"It's so bright…"

"Don't go down the tunnel!" Allie shouted to him. "Don't go to the light!"

"But it wants me to," Danny said, confused. "I think I'm supposed to…"

"No! You're not! None of this is supposed to happen!"

Finally Chainsaw gave up trying to resuscitate the boy, and buried his face in his hands, sobbing. "I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry…"

Allie summoned her most commanding voice.

"Danny, look at me!" she demanded. "Look at me NOW!"

Finally Danny's spirit turned to her. "Allie?" And the moment he saw her, the light on his face vanished and he dropped into the pool. Allie was close enough to grab him. She pulled him out, and into her arms. He looked at her with lazy eyes. "So that's what you look like," he said and yawned.

Behind them, above the cries of the living, came a voice far more pleased with this heart-rending moment than he should be.

"Well done!" said Milos, practically beaming. "Very well done, Allie!"

"Yeah, yeah," said Squirrel, "I'll bet she did that even better than Jackin' Jill."

"Congratulations," Milos said. "You have just brought a new soul into Everlost. Whatever you did to Mary in the past, she will forgive you now."

"I don't want her forgiveness."

"You may not want it, but you will need it," Milos said, very seriously. "Otherwise she will destroy you, and I do not wish to see that."

Danny's eyes rolled as he looked at Allie. "I'm so tired," Danny said.

Allie realized what would happen next. "Stay awake, Danny!"

"But I'm so sleepy. Just let me rest."

"Whatever you do, don't fall asleep!" Because she knew the moment he did, he would lapse into nine months of hibernation. If he fell asleep, he would become an Afterlight. But he wasn't one yet-he had no afterglow-which meant he was not entirely gone from the living world…

Allie knew what she had to do. Without wasting an instant, she took Danny's soul and thrust him forward, plunging him back into his own lifeless body. The effect was instantaneous. The moment Danny was plunged back into himself, his body heaved, and he coughed up an explosion of water. The dead boy came back to life.

Allie's scream of joy and relief could only be matched by his mother's. She tried to grab him, but Chainsaw held her back with a strong arm. "Give him time."

Chainsaw rolled him over on his side, and Danny coughed up more water, as if he had the entire pool in his lungs. He coughed, coughed some more, then his eyes opened. His mother took him into her arms against Chainsaw's warnings.

"I'm tired, Mom."

But that was okay. It was all right for him to be tired now. Chainsaw went over to Curtis, shaking him, screaming at him in fury for what he had done, but Curtis's mind was entirely gone. He would be the victim of all this, but Allie could not save him. She had saved Danny; she couldn't save everyone.

She turned to Milos, who was surprised, and maybe a little impressed, by what she had done for Danny.

"Always the good Somalian," he said.

"That's 'good Samaritan.'"

"Why does it matter?" Then he held out his hand to her. "Now we go."

Allie didn't move. "Do you think I would ever come with you after what you just did?"

"You gave me your word."

"Then call me a liar."

Milos signaled to Squirrel who began to circle behind her. "I do not wish to take you by force," Milos said, "but if I have to, I will."

"You'll have to catch me first."

Allie ran, while behind her Mrs. Rozelli said a quiet, thankful prayer as she carried her little boy into their home, and the deadspot at the bottom of the pool faded away into nothing.

The Union Avenue Bridge was narrow, always crowded, and nowhere near as efficient as the two interstate bridges that carried the bulk of the city's traffic over the Mississippi into Arkansas. It was the oldest bridge in Memphis, first built for the transcontinental railroad, but it had been modified years ago to add lanes for automobile traffic on either side of the train trestle.

Reports of its crumbling structure were occasionally seen on the inner pages of the Memphis Daily News, but there were always more immediate things for the living to worry about-like who killed the beauty queen, and who fathered the rock diva's baby.

Still, the Union Avenue Bridge was an accident waiting to happen. Of course some accidents need to be helped along.

While Milos was "freeing" Allie from Danny Rozelli's body, Jackin' Jill waited with Moose on the bridge-an impossible feat for most other Afterlights, who would be blown into the river by the Everlost wind-but Jill and Moose were safely packed into two fleshies. They might have looked suspicious just standing around on the bridge, but their fleshies were road workers, and road workers have been known to just stand around on a regular basis.

"What if Milos and Squirrel don't come?" Moose asked.

"We can do this without them," Jill told him, annoyed by Milos's absence, and further irritated by her own fleshie's bad teeth and chewing tobacco breath.

A freight train blared its horn, and rattled down the bridge's central trestle between the east- and westbound lanes of snarled traffic. It startled Jill, and she gagged on her fleshie's chew. She had half a mind just to hurl him off the bridge, and find another fleshie-but that would definitely draw unwanted attention.

A police car stopped on the bridge beside them, and the officer lowered his window. Moose looked panicked, and Jill told him to go fiddle with some traffic cones.

"Everything okay here?" the officer asked. "Need us to divert traffic?"

Jill adjusted her hard hat. "Naah, just filling in a pothole. We'll be done soon enough."

Once he was gone, Jill glanced down at the gym bag at her feet. Moose, idiot that he was, had left the zipper open. It was just luck that the cop hadn't seen the explosives. All that effort to skinjack a demolition engineer just to get them- how stupid would it be if their fleshies got busted here on the bridge? They couldn't afford a slipup, and every minute they waited made it more likely they'd get caught.

"Forget about Milos and Squirrel," Jill finally said. "We'll do this without them." Jill would take care of the bridge, and Mary would know that Milos was a no-show. Maybe then Jill could squirm her way out from underneath Milos's thumb.