To Fight For by Phillip Hunter

engine jump sharply in pitch. I looked back and saw his car racing towards me, an animal rushing in for the kill. I hesitated, and that was dumb. My reactions were sluggish. I wasn’t going to get out of the way of this now. I thought I was dead.
    He was ten yards away, doing fifty, when I snapped to and jumped onto the boot of my car. Everything went sideways. I saw the street, the sky, the buildings in snapshots. I didn’t hear the sound of the impact. Or, maybe I did, but it was blurred with everything else and became part of the chaos. I felt myself fly into the air. For a split second, everything was quiet. I might’ve blacked out again. I can’t say. What I remember is that, for that instant, which went on forever, I thought, Well, I tried. I thought, Fuck it. I thought, I don’t care any more.
    It was over. I was dead. I knew it.
    It didn’t matter.
    I think I was happy. I understood what Browne was talking about; the need for nothingness, the need to not exist. Only he did it slowly, piecemeal, falling nightly, drifting into the warm blanket of oblivion that he craved and out of the cold real world. He let himself slip into the darkness.
    Me, I could never go that way. This was always going to be my end, or something like it – this brutal, thuggish thing. Mine would not be a slow death. It would be this; smashed into pulp between machines. And that was fine. That was what I wanted.
    But not yet.
    I saw the sky, grey and lifeless, and I wondered if that was what death was, just the same greyness. Forever.
    Then the tarmac was scraping my body and every bone jarred with impact. The sound of crunching metal tore through my head, and seemed like some great beast tearing the cars apart in its teeth. I felt my spine bend sideways, felt my legs flail as I rolled over and over.
    Then I stopped rolling. There was silence.
    Something was pressing against my shoulder. There was pain in my side. I felt cold. I felt hot.
    I heard a voice.
    â€˜Are you alright? God.’
    I opened my eyes and saw concrete. It took me a while to remember where I was, what had happened. The voice was there still.
    â€˜I’ve called an ambulance,’ the voice said. ‘I saw him. He must be drunk.’
    I turned my head. It felt light, numb. That was bad. She came into focus. She wore a baggy jumper. I’d seen her before, hadn’t I?
    I was lucky. If I hadn’t blacked out, I probably would’ve been dead. As it was, my body was relaxed when I crashed into the ground. Now I lay in a crumpled heap, my head up against the curb.
    I tried to stand. I remembered the pain in my side.
    â€˜Oh, God,’ the woman said. ‘You’re hurt.’
    Hadn’t she said she’d called an ambulance? Fuck. That meant law.
    I let the pain push its way through my body. That was good, the pain. It was something I could hold onto.
    I felt her hand on my arm. I pushed her away. When I stood, I had to wait a while, just long enough for the world to settle back again.
    He was a jug-eared bloke, with dark skin and deep-set eyes. He was trying to crawl away when I caught up with him. I grabbed the back of his shirt and lifted him up.
    He was a small boy, half my size. All I had to do was give him a right cross to the jaw and he’d go down and stay down. But he knew something. He must’ve done to come at me like that.
    He tried to hit me and missed by a mile. I wasn’t a hard target to hit. I let go and he crumpled to the ground. He must’ve been as bashed up as me. He looked alright, except for his blood-covered face and the blue shirt turned purple by all that claret that pumped from a gash three inches long on his forehead.
    I heard sirens. I looked at the cars. His was mashed up, the front gone. Mine was bad at the back, but the boot was big and had taken the force. I dragged him over.
    â€˜No,’ he said. ‘NO.’
    I clipped him and his head snapped back then fell forward. I