The Hitchhiker, Part 1: On the Run

Barry couldn’t resist one final nudge. “Stevie, come with me. I can take care of you.”

I bit my lip. I liked him, but not enough to risk jumping from one trap to another. Besides, we didn’t really know each other outside of a Biblical sense. The Biblical stuff was pretty epic, at least as far as I could tell given my limited experience, but nothing was worth going back west.

I’d just barely managed to bust out. I didn’t want to be within a thousand miles of my hometown. Barry was practically the only trucker to stop in town more than once, and my friendliness toward him had not gone unnoticed. I tried not to shiver. Maybe if I’d been more subtle, I’d have left with more than a backpack and two weeks of pay.

Well, maybe no one had seen me leave. It didn’t do any good worrying now anyway.

“I can’t. I just…I just can’t.”

“It ain’t safe out here for a girl alone.”

“I’m not a girl.”

“Couldn’t prove it by me.” He reached over and tweaked my nipple through my T-shirt. I squealed and we both laughed.

“I mean I’m a grown woman. I’ll be okay.”

“You’re scared shitless.”

“What?”

“He coming after you?”

I bolted upright. “Who the hell is ‘he’?”

“Whoever. You weren’t watching the road behind us for the Easter Bunny.”

The spring wind picked up a little and whistled over the crack in the window. I didn’t answer, and he didn’t keep pushing.

Instead, I heard the soft lip smacking and tongue clicks that meant he was having another conversation with himself. I shook my head and lay back down beside him, this time on my stomach. He patted my ass, almost absently. His internal monologue seemed to have more of his attention.

That was fine. I had a feeling we’d used his one and only condom, and together we’d used up my whole box meant to see me to the end of the summer, or maybe even the year. My nipples tightened and I felt a little thrill in my groin. I hadn’t had regular sex in, well, ever, let alone with someone as nice as Barry.

“Stevie, if you won’t come with me, I got something I want to give you.”

I put my hand up. “You don’t need to give me anything, Barry. You’ve been feeding me, even getting me coffee, and taking me down the road. I can’t take anything else from you without feeling like a…like feeling really bad.”

“Hey, now.” He pulled me into an embrace. “I don’t want you thinking that way. We been keeping each other company, that’s all. I think we’d be something if we stayed together, but if you got to keep going, I understand. At least, I think I do.”

I tried to thank him, but the words wouldn’t come. I put my arms around his neck and kissed him with all the tenderness he’d shown me.

Thanking Barry with a kiss never stayed tender for long. I’d figured that out on our third night on the road. The way his tongue moved against mine got me going every time. I brought my hands down and shoved them under his shirt. I loved the bumps of his hard abs, the smooth expanse of his chest. He didn’t have much chest hair, and my hands slipped and slid all over his skin.

“You better stop that if you’re gonna insist on condoms,” he managed to gasp.

Ugh. “Wish I’d saved one so we could say goodbye in style,” I said.

“Yeah? Which one of our…uh.”

“Encounters?”

“Right, encounters, which one would you go back and skip?”

We were both quiet for a minute, lost in thought. Then our eyes met and we dissolved into a fit of laughter.

“Okay, you’ve got me there,” I said. I kissed him on the cheek. “I would like a condom, though. Okay, actually, what I’d like is to not need one, but I don’t even have a cell phone, let alone health insurance. I’ve got to play it safe.”

“Right. That’s what I was trying to tell you before you got me all distracted. I got something to give you that could keep you safe. Safe in all kinds of ways you ain’t even thought of yet. Uh, but I got a question first. Do you believe in angels?”

I relaxed a little. I could accept a Saint Christopher medal, or an angel pin, or some other kind of good luck charm. “I’m open-minded.”

“Shoot. This’d be easier if you believed in angels.”

“What? Why?”

He rolled over and got his flashlight from the bedside table. As soon as he handed it to me, he reached down to the floor. Clipped to his belt with a carabiner was a metal cylinder. It was silver, and a little thicker than a pen though only half as long.

Barry twisted a little loop, and the thing sort of…melted longer. I can’t explain. It didn’t extend like an umbrella rod, nothing came out of the barrel like an ink pen, or anything familiar. I only know I saw him turn something and it got longer with a liquidy motion. I must have wiggled the flashlight. I rubbed my eyes and sat up. I must have seen it wrong, because it wasn’t liquid. It was just a long silver rod.

“Do it again,” I said.

“It ain’t gonna look right the second time, neither,” he said, but he twisted the loop again. I pointed the flashlight straight at it. It flowed back down into itself, and once again it was a short piece of metal lying on his palm. He closed his fingers around it, gave it a squeeze, and handed it to me. It was warm, warmer than it should have been from Barry’s fingers.

“This is for you. I’m gonna miss having it, but you need it more than me.”

“It’s beautiful, but what is it? What’s it made from?”

“I don’t know. Grath couldn’t explain it to me, but I wasn’t too good in school. Maybe you’ll understand.”

“Grath?”

“The one who makes it work.”

I shook my head. “You’re not making any sense.”

“It don’t make much sense. All I know is now you won’t get sick, you won’t stay hurt, and if you tell him you don’t want babies, you won’t make ‘em. And you’ll have someone watching your back.”

“Who the hell is watching my back? What are you talking about?”

He closed his eyes, and moved his lips in silent speech. The narrow cylinder in my hand buzzed. I yelped and nearly threw it across the room, but a voice stopped me cold.

[You are not Stevie. You are Stephanie. Why…oh, yes. A nickname.]

I threw the flashlight beam around the room looking for the speaker, but Barry and I were alone. “Yes, it is. Who, what—” I stammered.

[I am Grath, which is itself a nickname. In my case it is because you simply cannot pronounce my true name. By the way, you may stop searching. I am not in the room. Are you acquainted with the concept of telepathy?]

I stared at Barry. He nodded with a certain amount of sympathy. “I know. Weird, ain’t it. But you ain’t crazy. He’s real. At least you got me here to tell you about it. When I picked him up, I thought I was hearing voices like my grandma did.”

A ripple of laughter tickled my brain. At least, I remembered it as laughter. What I actually heard was a cross between a running creek and a big church bell.

[Indeed. I finally told him I was an angel to get him to stop trying to drink me away.]

“Ah. Now the angel comment makes sense.”

“Grath’s not really an angel. Not a demon, neither. Just a person like us.”

Another ripple of amusement. [Just like you. Assuming a person from another star system can develop in the same psychosocial ways, which is quite an assumption given the variance between the populations of simple land masses on this planet.]

“Barry, are you hearing this?”

“No.”

[No.]

I put my right hand over my face. “One person at once, and no smartass comments about what a person is, either.”

“I can’t hear him in words now that you got the wand,” Barry said. “But even if I could hear him, he better do the talking.”

[What do you want to know first? You are my nineteenth host, and by now I know this is disconcerting for your species. Please pardon my rudeness.]