Ante Mortem by ed. Jodi Lee Page B

himself, slumping down. His ears were ringing and he couldn’t see a thing. Didn’t smell smoke, or gas… Jesus, am I blind?
    “ Pearce,” he croaked. There was no reply. He lay there, upside-down and bent, while his eyes adjusted to the blackness. No, he wasn’t blind. He could clearly see his thirty-year sparring partner hanging dead from his seat, arms draped over his cruelly dented head.
    Brautigan wormed his way toward the front of the vehicle. Now he could see that the shuttle was lying in the shadow of the overturned bus, and he could hear moans and cries and the tinkling of glass. He grabbed the front seats and pulled himself up beside the crumpled form of the driver. It looked as if his face had bounced off the windshield. Killed instantly, no doubt. The feeling was returning to Brautigan’s legs. He got on his elbows and knees and crawled through the shattered windshield, and then he was right up against the bus and its sideshow of broken faces within broken windows. He heard pleas for assistance. Couldn’t they see the state he was in?
    He thought of Lacey again. Of course those people saw him, but they didn’t care. They had daughters they needed to reach. He understood that. He hoped they would understand as he continued on.
    He moved out of the bus’ shadow and into the sunlight, facing four lanes of stalled traffic, a few bloodied passengers stumbling about, motorists rushing to their aid and screaming into phones. A chopper passed by and swung around; Brautigan felt that the camera inside was focused on him, staggering to the shoulder, ignoring the onlookers as he headed into the city.
    In a new haze, he wandered into concrete canyons. He stopped at the first intersection to get his bearings. It had to be around 10 AM and traffic was surprisingly light. As he stared at the street signs and waited for his eyes to focus, he heard the first sirens. An ambulance tore past, running the red light. It was followed by a Volkswagen Beetle. Why in the hell…? His question was answered as the Beetle rolled up the curb, inches from his leg, and smashed into the side of the building at his back. He watched numbly as a teenage girl hurtled through the windshield and rolled down the sidewalk.
    Another crash. Brautigan turned and saw a minivan folding around a traffic pole. Most cars had come to an abrupt stop. The minivan went over on its side and came to a stop in the middle of the intersection. And then, as if in some obscene dance, a brown sedan from the east and a blue sedan from the west wove around the van and met head-on.
    They’re all killing themselves. Everyone is killing themselves.
    The world is ending.
    Lacey!
    Brautigan broke into a run, and for the first time he felt pain. It radiated through his back, thighs and ankles with every footfall, but the sensation only spurred him forth. He’d seen the dead-eyed gaze of the young man in the blue sedan. They were all young, weren’t they? Kids. He ran faster.
    He knew where he was now, and knew how to get to the club where Lacey was scheduled to play that night. Neither she nor his band had known that they shared a double bill. Brautigan’s ensemble Hell Roof was supposed to make a surprise appearance alongside Lacey’s Sīth . In his mind he’d thought that maybe, at first, she’d be thrown. She’d stand silent, as she saw him for the first time in eleven years, as he walked onto the stage during her set with guitar in hand. And maybe, just maybe, instead of walking off, she’d play along for the audience and riff with him like it was a natural thing. And maybe somewhere in there, in that performance, they’d get past the awkward angry shit and then they could just talk like he always wanted. It was a mean trick, he knew, but it was the last trick he had up his sleeve.
    He probably looked like a relapsed junkie as he shambled into Cori’s. Lacey’s band played there most weekends, and there was a chance she might be around this early. And she