“Are you comfortable Christopher? Your ear looks terribly hurt.”
“Oh? Er… yes it’s fine.”
“Are you sure? How on earth did you do that?”
McConnell glanced in the mirror. His ear did look terrible; the the flesh was torn on both the top and bottom of the join, making the whole thing lean out further than the other. It would look absurd, if not for the mass of dried blood caked around it.
“I fell down,” he lied. Or had he? The head wound he’d sustained was not a careful cut, but a deep scrape as if he’d fallen amongst gravel. Was this all a delusion, conjured as he lay in the dirt, waiting for someone to treat his broken skull?
“We need to cross the Charles Bridge. Take a right here.”
They turned towards a large stone arch, the bridge behind clearly seen rising up over the river below, proud and stern. On either side, decorating the crossing, were statues of saints, silently offering prayers. McConnell hoped they would pray for him, though only in that desperate half-hearted way atheists did when stuck in a jam.
“How things change,” Gregory mused as they began rolling over the bridge, looking out over the water to the rest of the city, the Church of Our Lady boldly rising above the rest.
McConnell, who also took the opportunity to gaze at his surroundings, noticed a small crowd gathered on the other end, walking in their direction. “Finally, some locals!”
“I hope you’ve got your papers in order,” his father warned. “They could be communists.”
“All in order,” he said, humouring his father. Unbeknownst to Gregory, the Iron Curtain had fallen long ago.
They rumbled forward, and in return the figures ahead began to jog, closing the gap between. “It’s all right,” he muttered to no one, shaking his head. “I’m on my way to you, just wait there.”
But the locals didn’t wait. Instead the jog turned into a run.
“What’s wrong with them?” Gregory sat up in alarm, and McConnell saw why. The people running towards them looked more like looters than locals. Each was bellowing with rage, screaming at the vehicle. Most stretched out their hands, ready to swipe with fists, but the one in front held a golf club, iron head aloft.
McConnell recognised the looks on their faces.
He reached down and wrenched the still moving car into reverse, the gear box screaming in protest. It resorted to its final defence, stalling and going silent as the vehicle jolted to a halt.
“Oh shit!”
“Christopher,” Gregory warned. “What do they want with us? Christopher!”
McConnell got the car back to life, just as the golf-club shattered a side window. Gregory ducked down, hiding from the flying glass, whilst his son tried to withdraw them from the onslaught. The car rumbled back, groaning loudly, but by then the rest of the gang were upon them, kicking and screaming at the fragile protective shell. The club came down a second time, failing to break the windscreen, but sending a multitude of small cracks spiralling away from the point of impact.
“Go! Go! Go!” he screamed as the car picked up speed, reversing down the bridge, leaving the saints to the sinners. “Faster you fuck! Faster!” he yelled at the car as the engine gave a miserable wail.
And then they were away, breaking free from the mindless locals who bellowed in rage, maintaining their pursuit until out of sight.
Backtracking out of town, McConnell didn’t risk slowing to turn around. He reversed the whole way.
After the disaster of Prague, the two men lapsed into silent contemplation. McConnell continued to drive east, or at least the best guess of east he could make. They stuck to rural roads, whenever they saw a built up area ahead, they would about-face and find an alternative route. Sometimes they would see figures wandering in the distance, but chose to keep a wide berth.
It was becoming increasingly impossible to deny, to both man and father, that something was inherently amiss.
“Christopher?” his father spoke in a weak voice.
“Yes?”
“Are you a religious man?”
His heart sank. Not this. Not now. Of all the conversations he’d had with his father over the years, this was one he didn’t want to repeat.
“Not really no.”
“I see,” his father nodded, understanding. Perhaps this time, with him thinking that they were strangers rather than blood relations, it would be easier? “I believe in Jesus Christ. I remember, when I was a boy, being as sceptical as you, but as you get on in years you see things you can’t explain.”
“Like this?”
“Yes,” he nodded solemnly. “Like this. Jesus Christ… or is it Jesus H Christ? I don’t quite remember. Christ was born on a cross. No, no, that’s not right. Oh dear me, the scare back there had got me all in a muddle.”
“Dad,” he said, forgetting and allowing the lie to lapse, “Jesus Christ wasn’t born on a cross, he was—”
McConnell realised he didn’t remember either. He was sure it was obvious, but there was just a big dark hole in his mind where the information once lay. Shaking his head, he put the query aside. There was something uncomfortable about confronting lost memories. Something dangerous about trying to retrieve them.
“Well, wherever he was born, what’s he got to do with our current problem? No offence, but Jesus ain’t here to help us find home is he?”
“No he’s not, because we’re being punished. That’s what’s going on.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Look around you, Christopher! The land is broken, bits missing. Prague never looked like that! People don’t act like wild beasts! It’s the End of Days.”
“Sure.” McConnell wanted the old man to stop talking. These were thoughts best avoided.
“The world has been shattered, Christopher, and that’s all there is to it.”
The Shattering. Naming the process they were living through, would prove to be the final act Gregory McConnell knowingly made on earth. After giving his prognosis the elderly man dropped into quiet contemplation, seemingly resolved to their fate. And not long after that, he began to growl.
McConnell, straining to keep his concentration on the road, knew he should look behind, but couldn’t bring himself to muster the will. Instead he leaned forward in his seat, putting at much space as possible between him and his father.
He had no proof, but he could swear he could feel corrosive hate on the back of his neck.
And suddenly the car was once more consumed in screams of fury as his father threw himself forward against the restraints, spitting and clawing at the front seats, tearing the material in his eagerness to harm his son.
McConnell didn’t look.
“You’ll be okay soon Dad,” he whispered, trying to blot out the awful sound. “Just you wait. You’ll be okay”
But time slipped past, and although the snarls rose and fell in volume and energy, they did not cease. Eventually, just as the fuel dial begun to sneak into the red, McConnell saw a sign beside the road.
Sighisoara 7
He pulled over, and as slowly and delicately as he could, turned around.
Gregory McConnell’s face was bloody. How he’d managed to hurt himself so viciously, McConnell couldn’t tell, but his guess was that in his attempts to escape from bondage he’d ended up clawing at his own skin. The buckle, with its big red release button, remained at his side, ignored and forgotten.
A slight tap and he’d have been free, a part of him morbidly imagined, though another part cruelly added, it could still happen.