“‘Out of Dodge’?” Vaughn asked. “What does that mean? I thought you lived in Omaha?”
“You know: out of your present situation, away from something bad? I think it’s from Gunsmoke. You never saw that show?”
Vaughn shrugged his shoulders. “Guess I missed that one too,” he said. “Anyway, I’m glad you needed a ride. I’m always looking for an excuse to get out of the house and back on the road. I was a truck driver for almost thirty years. Semiretired a few years back. I’d fill in on the shorter routes if one of our drivers couldn’t make it, but for the most part I stayed home to take care of my wife. She was pretty sick.”
“How’s she doing?”
“She passed last year.” He took off his sunglasses and wiped his eyes. “Point is the app’s been a lifesaver for me too.”
“Sorry.”
“Thanks.” Vaughn put his sunglasses back on.
Erik changed the subject. “Almost thirty years, huh? How many states did you hit?”
Vaughn puffed his chest. “Forty-seven of the fifty-three, according to the company logs. But a couple off-the-book side trips got me up to forty-nine. That was before they started chip-tracking us, of course.” He patted the dash. “Couldn’t get away with that kind of thing these days.”
“Don’t you mean fifty?”
“What? Oh yeah, fifty. Duh.” Vaughn twirled his finger next to his ear. “Old age, I guess. Anyway, I missed being behind the wheel. And I gotta admit, this car’s a lot easier to drive than my rig ever was. Cargo’s usually nicer too.”
Erik smiled. “Thanks.”
“One thing I’ve learned driving folks around is that most people have no idea how big and empty this country of ours really is,” Vaughn said. “Especially now that every phone has a WayFinder in it. They just look at the little area displayed on their screens and think that’s it. But pull out an actual map sometime and look at how much empty space there is between towns. It’s easy to get lost out there in all that space. The space between . . .” His voice trailed off. “Shoot, listen to me prattle on,” he said, shaking his head. “Probably keeping you from updating your MyFace or something. Just tell me to shut up if you want.”
“I don’t mind,” said Erik, and he meant it. Pining over pictures of his ex was the last thing he wanted to do right now. “Bet you saw some weird stuff out there, huh?”
“Stuff you wouldn’t believe,” Vaughn said.
“Try me.”
Vaughn cocked his head, then nodded. “Ok. You know those empty spaces on the map?”
“The space between?”
Vaughn chuckled. “Yeah, those. Here’s the thing, Erik. They’re not always empty. In fact, sometimes they are chock full of some real crazy stuff. I’ve seen creatures out there you’ll never see on the Animal Channel, skulking in the ditches beside the road, gliding through the trees . . .”
“Pics or it didn’t happen.”
Vaughn snickered. “Like I’d get out and selfie myself.”
Erik laughed. Listening to Vaughn talk was like listening to his dad trying to sound hip, bless his heart.
Vaughn fiddled with the radio some more, finally stopping on a frequency where faint voices popped and crackled through the static.
“I hear people whispering to me on the radio sometimes,” he said. “In the static between stations. One night I heard my mother talking to me. She’d been dead twenty years at that point. Another time I heard my own voice begging me not to leave my wife by herself. I laughed it off—couldn’t be real, right?— but when I got home late that night, I found her unconscious on the couch. EMTs took her straight to the hospital, but she never woke up.” He sighed. “Guess I should’ve taken my own advice, huh?”
Erik’s eyes widened. Vaughn couldn’t really believe that, could he? Before he could ask, Vaughn changed the subject.
“You know anything about quantum physics, Erik? The multiverse? Schrödinger’s rat?”
Erik nodded, glad to be talking about something else. “A little, although I thought it was Schrödinger’s cat.”
“Tomato, tomahto,” Vaughn said.
“It’s been a while since college, but if I remember right, scientists think there are an infinite number of universes, right?”
“That’s right. All sitting right next to each other.” Vaughn pinched his forefinger and thumb as close as he could without touching.
“But scientists also say it’s impossible for anything to cross from one to the other, right?”
Vaughn snorted. “Those scientists need to come down out of their ivory towers and get out here with us regular folks, Erik. I’d tell ’em the same thing I’m about to tell you.” He paused for effect. “The bigger the open space, the smaller the space between. There are spots along these roads where the space between worlds is so thin it’s practically nonexistent. It’s easy to cross through there.”
A meteor shot across the sky up ahead. They watched it disappear over the mountains.
“When I first started driving, there were only a few thin spots like that, and only on the backest of the back roads. Truckers knew which ones to avoid. There are lots more now, though. And they’re spreading out to places beyond the open spaces.”
Vaughn had to be messing with him now, right? But since they still had a few hundred miles ahead of them, Erik decided to play along. “Okay, let’s say I crossed through one of those thin spots. How would I know?” he asked.
“Just pay attention,” Vaughn said. “You’ll know.”
“Pay attention to what?”
He shrugged. “Big things, little things. Anything, everything.” He pointed to Erik’s window. “I saw you looking up at the stars earlier,” he said. “One night I pulled off the side of the road to take a leak. Sky that night was filled with so many stars it hurt to look at them. But they weren’t my stars, the ones I learned in Scout Pack. The constellations I grew up with were gone. My sky was gone.”
Erik waved his hand. “That happens to everyone,” he said. “City lights are so bright these days you can’t see anything but the constellations, so when you get out in the open, it can be a little overwhelming. It’s even worse if the moon’s not out.”
“Yeah, like I didn’t think of that?” Vaughn snapped. “Sorry. But those weren’t my stars.” He gripped the wheel as he spoke. “They were all jumbled up. Different colors too. Red, blue, green . . . I swear some of them were even black, darker than the sky itself. There were two moons too. How do you explain that?”
“Reflection off the clouds? Trick of the atmosphere . . . ?” Erik’s voice trailed off.
“That’s what I thought too. Until I felt it.”
“Felt what?”
“Something out there behind those stars. Something looking for me. I got so scared standing out there my bladder froze. Ran back to my rig and got the heck out of Dodge, as you say, before whatever it was found me.”
Erik didn’t know what to say, so he leaned against the passenger window and looked outside. The Big Dipper was gone. He leaned forward over the dash and looked up through the front windshield. He couldn’t find the Little Dipper or Cassiopeia, either.
“I’ve seen pale white figures running alongside the road, keeping pace with my rig,” Vaughn said, ignoring Erik’s agitated state. “Their skin shimmered in the moonlight as they ran.” His voice grew quieter. “Once something so huge walked across the highway ahead of me all I could see were its legs. The rest of it just disappeared up in the clouds. Ground shook like an earthquake every time it took a step.”