Free Spawn of Man by Terry Farricker

estimated five minutes to have elapsed since he first touched the chair.
    ‘Mr. Douglas? Mr. Robert Douglas?’
    ‘Yes. Yes, who is this?’ Robert asked, still looking at the menu suspended in the air.
    ‘My name is Detective Andrews sir, I’m afraid I have some bad news for you.’
     
     
     
     
     
     

Chapter Six
    2036. October, Saturday. Dusk
     
    Six miles from Babel, Alex stifled another yawn and looked at her wristwatch, 8.00 p.m. Only six miles left of their journey home. Jake was still drifting in and out of sleep and he broke his repose slightly with a long sigh. Alex felt fatigue applying heavy pressure on her eyelids and she gave another big, open-mouthed yawn. Jake responded with a less dramatic effort of his own and rolled his head to face Alex.
    Four miles. Alex hunched and lowered her shoulders. It was dark now and the road was clouded and blurred by October rain and surface spray. Alex blinked hard and tried to concentrate. Jake was breathing deeply, completely lost in slumber, half-smiling to himself. Alex wondered what he was dreaming of at that moment and she was suddenly washed over by an intense, searing feeling of love for her child. She turned her attention away from the road momentarily to hold her child’s hand and look at his calm, half-smiling face.
    A warm, consuming wave of emotion welled and spilled over Alex. The vision of Jake asleep in the car with his face slightly creased into a secret smile and his hair soft and velvety against the skin of the cheek was indelibly burned into her mind. Alex did not see the car driving towards her on the wrong side of the road, travelling too fast in an effort to overtake another car and hoping that Alex would slow to allow the maneuver.
    Alex was catapulted forward on impact, her safety belt snapping tight and breaking her shoulder. The breath left her body as she jarred backwards and slammed hard against her seat. Her eyes were filled with intense lights bursting into her field of vision, myriads of colors, reds, whites, blues, greens and all competing to overwhelm her senses. Metallic tasting blood seeped from somewhere into her mouth and her left leg was smashed, the bone protruding from the thigh and glistening wetly like porcelain dipped in glaze.
    She tried desperately to adjust her vision as panic bit at her brain and she fought for air. Crescendos of noise rose around her, twisting, grinding, and groaning metal violently collapsing in on itself. Glass imploding devastatingly. And the tumult   grew until it seemed it could not grow any more.
    A sharp, bitter smell filled her nostrils, as if oil was seeping into Alex’s nose, and she choked on the taste of it as it slid down her throat. The last thing she saw was a large, dark object approaching the windscreen. For a moment Alex thought it was a huge, clumsy bird flying straight at her, demonically intent on ripping her to pieces. Then the driver of the other vehicle exploded through Alex’s windscreen, severing his head and crushing her chest. He had been thrown clean through his windscreen at the point of collision, as he had not worn a seatbelt. He covered the distance between the two cars in seconds, even though they had bounced apart again.
    Alex managed a stifled cry as blood spurted from her mouth and splashed over the decapitated form now pinning her into the seat. Alex fought to stay awake, knowing it was the same fight as the one to stay alive. Shards of glass had sprayed over her face piercing her eyes. She didn’t know now if her eyes were open or shut but she knew she was blind. She could not feel her arms or legs but she could somehow feel the pressure of Jake’s hand in hers. Or did she only imagine that? She turned towards Jake and heard his breathing and she smiled. Her head felt crumpled and too low on her shoulders, like someone was trying to fold her into a suitcase. Through the rain-splattered window she thought she could see again and there was Robert lying in a