Upon A Pale Horse Read Online Free PDF Page B

sledgehammer. He and Keith had been close growing up; his older sibling had been his best friend throughout their school years, when he’d guided Jeffrey and acted as a father figure when theirs had died when Jeffrey was nine, the victim of a massive coronary. Over the years they’d grown apart, a casualty of living on different sides of the country as well as both their schedules growing increasingly hectic, with Jeffrey in law school and then pulling long hours paying his dues as a freshly-minted attorney, and Keith busy building a career with the State Department. The trip to D.C. where Jeffrey had met Becky had been the first time he’d seen his brother in three years, since their mother’s funeral. Long years of closeted problem drinking had finally caught up to her in the form of massive hemorrhaging, and she’d died alone, too weak and drunk in her home in Santa Cruz to get to the phone to call for help.
    And now Keith was gone. Forever.
    He watched as they rolled up Lombard on the way to Van Ness, groups of homeless junkies loitering on the sidewalks only steps from some of the most impressive edifices in the Bay Area, and he shook his head, hoping to clear it. In his mind’s eye the same scene kept replaying over and over – his brother’s silent scream as he plummeted thousands of feet to his death in the shattered fuselage of the plane, the end of his life a foregone conclusion, but taking endless seconds to drop to the frothing surface of the cold ocean below. It was a hellish image of his own devising, the very worst-case scenario. For all he knew everyone had been killed instantly, no awareness at all that their existences had just reached an abrupt conclusion, one moment alive and fiddling with laptops and pillows, the next simply…no longer of this world.
    But the certainty that the lingering horror his imagination had created for his personal viewing enjoyment was the truth wouldn’t be banished to the recesses of his mind. The vision of Keith’s mouth, forever frozen in a panicked O as he freefell to certain death in the towering waves below, skittered through his consciousness like an errant pinball. He closed his eyes and moaned, then opened them with a start as the driver, a turbaned immigrant who’d seen everything, by the look on his face, glanced at him in the rearview mirror.
    “Hey, buddy, you okay?” he called out. The heavy Plexiglas barrier between the front seat and the rear muffled his voice, but his accent still made the second word sound like “body” to Jeffrey.
    Jeffrey wondered what film the driver had picked up the seemingly obligatory cabbie phrasing from, but quickly lost interest.
    “Yeah, sure. Just a bad day, is all,” he said with a look that ended further inquiry.
    When they reached his building, he paid the fare and told the driver that he’d want a ride to the airport in ten minutes – with his mind somewhere else, the last thing he needed was to get into an accident on the way, which was a possibility given how his morning had gone. They agreed the taxi would wait for him off the clock, and Jeffrey thanked him as he hopped out of the car and trotted to the front door, keys in hand.
    Packing was easy, if morbid – a black suit, an overcoat and some underwear, along with a change of casual clothes. He still had the somber outfit from his mother’s funeral, and after a quick trial of the pants to confirm that they fit, he quickly folded the garments and put them into his bag. His loafers clicked on the dull hardwood floor as he moved to the bathroom and retrieved a shaving kit, and when he stepped into the living room, ready to leave, the clock on the coffee machine confirmed he’d only been there for eight minutes.
    Traffic to the airport was light, most of the cars headed the opposite direction, and Jeffrey busied himself with answering his email on his phone – mainly expressions of sympathy from his colleagues, with a few instructions from clients