Ante Mortem

by Jodi Lee, ed.

  “We have to cross 35th to reach the expressway,” Lacey told him. “Then it’s not far to the suburbs. I know people there.”

  People my age, Brautigan hoped, and wondered why this epidemic of suicides was confined to that particular age group. Couldn’t be a virus, could it? Some neurological agent targeting the brain chemistry of developing youths, maybe? But how could something like that strike simultaneously worldwide? He wouldn’t even consider the metaphysical. Besides, there wasn’t any scripture on Earth that laid out the end in this manner.

  Father and daughter stepped out onto 35th Street. A utility worker’s blackened corpse swung nearby, hands fused to a severed power line. The street itself was a maze of compacted wreckage. That thumping noise was close. Any one of these twisted and bleeding vehicles could explode at any moment. “We’ve gotta move fast,” he said to Lacey. “Now.”

  They ran into the street, weaving around columns of hot metal, ignoring the sounds of scratching and what could have been moaning from within the steel. Brautigan wanted to clap his hands over Lacey’s eyes and ears, if only he could still wrap her up in his arms.

  A muffled thump came from the right. Brautigan threw himself at Lacey, driving her to the sidewalk on the other side of the street. “What is it?” she screamed.

  “I don’t know.” It definitely hadn’t been any sort of explosion. He looked to his right then, and saw what it had been, what all those noises had been.

  A boy of about fifteen lay crumpled in the center of a cratered Mazda. He’d jumped. Most of the cars along the curb, Brautigan now saw, were littered with bodies shattered by freefall.

  A wail sounded overhead. He looked up and saw an open window several stories up. The boy’s mother was there. Her hands clutched at the air.

  Brautigan turned Lacey’s face away from the sight and ushered her toward the expressway ramp. She winced as he urged her along, and he saw that his fingers were digging into the flesh of her arms. Pulling his hands away, he saw there the mother’s mad, grasping claws.

  “I know where we should go,” Lacey said, and pointed east toward a horizon of sloping hills.

  The sky had turned gray and the air cloyingly damp. It would rain soon, and wash the blood from the expressway. Brautigan forced his focus from the ruddy asphalt to the hills and said, “Where?”

  “It’s the hospital where I was. Last year.”

  “No, I said hospitals are no good.”

  “It’s not that kind of hospital.” Lacey lowered her eyes . “I had a breakdown. I spent two months there.”

  “Months… why? Drugs?” He immediately regretted saying it.

  She glared at him. “No, not fucking drugs. I just lost it. I was fucking miserable.”

  “I never knew. Your mother never told me.”

  “I didn’t want her to.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s not any of your business.” She stopped there on the roadside and shouted over the crackling of flames. “I’m not your business. You shouldn’t have come here! You unloaded me eleven years ago, remember? What brought you back? Ditching the wife and kid didn’t turn you into a rock star?” She spat at his feet and started off at a brisk pace. “You know what, Dad? Fuck you! Just go save yourself like you always do!”

  “I know I can’t fix anything!” Brautigan yelled after her. “I can’t go back, I know…”

  She turned and stared icily at him. “You were going to get up on stage with me, weren’t you? In front of everyone. Fucking coward.”

  He stood there and watched her walk away; gave her a generous berth before starting after her. She glanced back a few times, but didn’t say anything else. Kept up her pace, arms swinging. Pulled off her boots and hurled them skyward and then went off-road into the grass. He followed suit. The rain began to come down.

  She pulled away when his jacket fell over her shoulders, but didn’t shrug it off entirely, and said nothing as he adjusted it. “Where are we going?” he asked quietly.

  Her hair was dark red now, plastered to her face like blood. Despite that, he thought he probably looked worse. “Gallows Hill,” she said. “Doctor Lundgren.”

  “She took care of you?”

  “He – and he did. I still see him from time to time. He might even know what’s going on.”

  Brautigan doubted that, but said nothing.

  Gallows Hill was a Victorian manse rising from a wooded summit. Rain ran down the barred windows and cobbled walkways to the gate, where a guard stood with shoulders slumped. Brautigan offered a wave. “We’re here to see Doctor Lundgren.”

  “I know him,” Lacey said, and called, “Marc?”

  The guard didn’t move. As they drew closer, they saw why. He had wrapped an extension cord around his neck and tied it off at the top of the gate. His face was blue and bloated. Brautigan placed a hand of Lacey’s shoulder, but she only said, “That’s not Marc.”

  The gate swung open without resistance. They walked to the entrance and pushed open the double doors.

  The interior had a more modern feel, despite the fact that the lights were out, and everything was cloistered in shadow. Brautigan’s socked feet slapped against the tile floor of the lobby. “Anyone here?”

  “Lacey?” A haggard-looking man in a white coat emerged from the darkness. He was about Brautigan’s age, and kneaded his hands as he slowly crossed the room. “What brought you here?”

  “I didn’t know where else to go,” Lacey said.

  Doctor Lundgren nodded. “We went into lockdown two days ago. Patients were throwing themselves at the windows, beating their heads against the walls… then the staff as well.” He mopped sweat from his brow with a kerchief. “Those who are still alive are under restraint. But they won’t eat.”

  He glanced past them, through the open doors and the storm, and frowned at the dead guard. “He was thirty.”

  “What?” Brautigan’s heart leapt into his throat.

  “It’s happening to older people now,” Lundgren muttered.

  “Why?” Lacey asked. And Lundgren actually had an answer.

  “The only thing I can think of—although it doesn’t entirely bear out under scrutiny—is a dormant gene. Activated first in pubescent youths, which has somehow triggered a systemic response in older generations. I’m still trying to work out the mechanics of it.” He wiped his forehead again. “But I can almost certainly tell you why it’s happening now.”

  This time it was Brautigan who pressed him .”Why?”

  “I’ve studied the human condition my entire adult life,” Lundgren said. His hands went back to kneading one another. “We’re the most evolved, the most aware—and the most irrational, the most self-destructive. I’m hardly the first to point that out, but few have advanced the theory that we’ve hit an evolutionary wall—that Nature, of which we are part, will not only turn in on and consume us, but cause us to consume ourselves.” He looked hard at Brautigan. “Do you understand? I don’t mean that the external, Mother Earth, is attacking us. Our own genes are rebelling against the mind, the ego, some might even call it the soul.

  “Come with me,” the doctor said then, and led them through a door into a long hallway. It was lined with doors containing caged portholes, and Lundgren glanced through each as he led Lacey and Brautigan deeper into darkness.

  “Oh, God! Mister Gray!” Lundgren fumbled through a collection of keys and unlocked one of the doors. Brautigan stepped into the room after him and saw that it was padded floor to ceiling—and that the straitjacketed patient within had crammed his head into the corner and suffocated himself.

  “How old was he?” Brautigan cried. “How old?”

  “Fifty-two,” Lundgren breathed. “I don’t know, he might have done it on his own. I don’t know…” He stared oddly at Lacey. “Doctor Wolfe.”

  The girl gasped. Brautigan whirled and saw her in the grip of a female doctor, who had planted a hypo in the base of Lacey’s neck.

  The world fell into slow mot
ion. Brautigan started forward, throwing his hands out. Lundgren caught one. The other closed into a fist, and Brautigan spun to throw all his weight into Lundgren’s jaw; but then the needle struck his neck and warmth radiated through his head. He stumbled sideways, hit the padded wall, rebounded and collapsed at Mister Gray’s feet. “Lacey!” he groaned. Her name echoed through his head, then receded into darkness.

  “Do you want to see her?”

  He was vaguely aware of having been conscious, and in conversation—then Lundgren’s face came into focus. Brautigan tried to say something, but it only came out as a low growl.

  “You’re in a straitjacket right now,” the doctor told him calmly. “In a bed next door to your daughter. I’ve taken the same precautions for her. We’re going to get an IV line going to keep each of you nourished. I don’t want to fail Lacey, you understand. I’m taking these measures to keep you both alive.”

  Lundgren rummaged through a sheaf of papers lying on Brautigan’s stomach. “You might go through the change at any moment. We’ll observe you both closely—having subjects of your disparate ages, related at that, might lead to a breakthrough.”

  He glanced toward a window at the foot of the bed. The sky outside was still a murky gray. “We won’t be observing you, I will be. Doctor Wolfe drowned herself in the shower. I’ve tried to contact the local authorities, but there’s no answer. I don’t know that they could do much better than I, anyway. All I can do is keep you safe while I look for answers.”

  Brautigan worked his tongue around his mouth, trying to moisten it so he could speak. Once again he was lost in a haze. All he could manage to grumble was, “Lacey.”

  “Yes, I’ll take you to her,” Lundgren said. “Of course.” He got up and walked out of the room.

  “LUNDGREN!” Brautigan screamed. No reply.

  Tears rolled down the sides of Brautigan’s face. He tried to thrash his limbs, to toss his head, but he could do nothing but weep. He cried Lacey’s name. There was no response from her, either. Maybe the doctor had lied. Maybe he was alone in here.

  But was Lundgren right? Would, eventually, inevitably, the suicidal urge take hold of him? And would being strapped down in this bed drive him madder still?

  Lundgren came back in. He had a pair of syringes in his hand, a small bottle tucked into the crook of his arm.

  He sat on the edge of the bed and looked down at the needles. Slowly, methodically, he stabbed one into one of the tiny bottles and began to fill it with a urine-colored fluid.

  “What…” Brautigan pleaded.

  “It’s not for you,” Lundgren said. He lifted the hypo to his eyes and studied the poison inside. Then he looked at Brautigan. “It’s not bad. I’m not afraid. I almost don’t remember what it was like before… it’s like waking up.”

  The doctor and Brautigan both glanced down. Lundgren had begun sawing at his wrist with the needle. He watched idly as crimson spread along the hem of his coat. “Hmm.” Then he inserted the needle into his forearm.

  “Where is my daughter?” Brautigan sobbed.

  Lundgren sat erect, and for a second Brautigan thought, hoped, prayed that the man was lucid—but he was dead, and he slipped off the bed and onto the floor.

  The room was quiet. The world was quiet.

  Brautigan didn’t want to cry any more.

  He only wanted to die.

  * * * *

  From the Bowels

  Benjamin Kane Ethridge

  His scream was an outflow of bubbles.

  He sat in an underwater silo, glowing blue fish swimming in cycles high above, radioactive halos in a murky universe. Something took the oxygen from the water and delivered it into his lungs, helping him breathe without reassurance or explanation. An aquatic plant with purple fronds clutched his arms and stroked his body with gentle kisses. His buttocks hung down inside the prickly oval cup of the plant’s flower.

  He tried to speak but a hand reached through the ambling silt and placed something cool on his tongue, halting his words. It felt like a pile of broken straight razors. Their flavor made him hungry, so he rolled them around his mouth, ignoring the way they cut into his flesh. The blood made them taste even better.

  A voice squeezed through the pressure of the deep: “They are the seeds. They are the brood.”

  His esophagus felt like a split bamboo shaft and his stomach divided in wobbling partitions. The digestive acid cooked his lower organs.

  Yes! The hand in the watery dark that grazed his cheek had slender, female fingers. He swallowed more razors and had his fill. He squirmed inside the flower as the strain built at his sides. Bubbles poured from his mouth as he screamed at the possibility of the pressure never stopping.

  Sam woke up to a fading pain in his gut. Barbara was pounding the bathroom door with her puny wrist. Slowly, he realized he was on the toilet, just like every other day this week.

  Barbara’d been talking, but he only noticed her just now. “Hold your horses,” he said. “I’ll be with you in a minute.”

  Disgust touched her voice. “Yeah? You gonna go all the way this time?”

  “Shut up.”

  “I’m leaving, Sam.” Her voice held no conviction.

  “You’ll just come back like they all do. Stop pulling my dick.”

  “Creep!”

  “Yeah, maybe I am.” Sam grabbed some toilet paper, wiped himself and pulled up his boxers. When he turned to flush, he saw something that alarmed him more than the dream. Past the toilet seat, he saw a scarlet stew of shit and blood.

  He flushed. The sludge coiled into a gory cyclone and burped up clear—thankfully clear—water. It might not mean a thing. Sitting on his ass and writing nine hours a day could have baked up a nice batch of hemorrhoids, but that didn’t make him feel any better.

  He went back and turned Barbara on her stomach. She didn’t look happy at all, but she also didn’t object.

  Ten minutes later, he’d sweated away his frustration, but, just like earlier, there’d been no climax. He hadn’t had one since he’d written that damned story.

  Barbara soon drifted off and he lay beside her, not daring to shut his eyes. An hour later he heard something outside. The noise had made his teeth click. A hollow, booming sound, loud and heavy.

  Like something massive striking down on the ocean floor.

  The B-porn on cable had too much plot and Sam’s legs started twitching. He thought about writing but gave up the notion for fear of more delusions. Constance hadn’t called in two weeks now. But calling her, or calling Barbara, that was showing weakness.

  His hardness eventually got the better of him, so he punched in Constance’s number. She was the freakiest of his steadies: nipple-biting, hair-pulling, and an occasional finger up his asshole. He never felt right with her, never felt right without her. It was an old feeling.

  He was twelve. Driving to the theater. Upholstery smelled of sex and malt liquor. Pat Benatar sang on the radio. The greatest moment of his life had been a blink before the Cadillac wrapped around the telephone pole and everything tore away. But as his mother sucked on her boyfriend, Sam saw something vital in her eyes; she was content, at ease with her pains. Had her mouth not been occupied, it may have worked up a smile.

  Later, watching the sheeted bodies roll away on their gurneys and listening to a stammering, although well-meaning, police officer, Sam Ruthers decided to find that happiness his mother had. Maybe he’d have it longer than the single moment she’d be given.

  Call him sick, but remembering his mother blowing a guy was a fond memory, the greatest memory.

  The phone rang for a fifth time.

  Another ring, but this one cut short as a watery recording played. He slammed down the phone.

  Constance called around lunch time the next day. Hearing her voice almost made him choke on his cheeseburger. He was too tired to deal with freaks this early. Hot freak, but freak nonetheless.

  “You called yesterday?”

  “Your voice’s ech
oing.”

  She hesitated. “Parking structure outside the library.”

  “You haven’t called in like two weeks.”

  “Sorry.” It was a small sounding word. “Want some company this weekend?”

  Weekend? He couldn’t sound desperate and ask why she didn’t come over sooner. Weak.

  “Maybe I will, but I have to finish some editing. I’ll give you a call later. I gotta run.”

  “I do love you. You love me, right?”

  The words tickled his lips. “Yes, of course I do.”

  And an hour later he told Barbara: “Are you nuts? I love you more than television. Take some time off and come over tonight.”

  “It’s been a shitty day,” Barbara answered, too languidly to expect an explanation. “So what about all your other little tramps? They on the disabled list?”

  “There’s only one tramp for me. Hey, I gotta run. See you tonight. There’s some kid at my door.”

  “Don’t be mean. Love ya.”

  “Love ya more.”

  A frail kid stood outside, holding a cardboard box full of candy bars. Obviously none of the candy had been filched. “Good afternoon, Sir. I’m selling these delicious treats. They were donated to the South Malden Middle School fundraiser, which helps the—”

  “Save it, partner.” Sam took out a loose twenty from his back pocket. “Give them to your friends or something. Better yet, eat ‘em yourself.”

  The kid walked off, swinging his box. Sam’s eyes darted out to the street. Something moved. The manhole cover had lowered.