John Mandel

A group of people are trapped in a deserted mall during a flood along with an escaped prisoner.

A mean, loud-mouthed town bully is talking on the phone one night during a lightning storm when, in a freak occurrence, a bolt of lightning strikes a telephone pole, travels down the phone wires and hits him. He is declared clinically dead, but miraculously recovers shortly thereafter--with a completely new personality and, he claims, the ability to communicate with the dead.