Max sprawled across the back seat of the Escort, head on an old blanket, feet propped against the driver’s side window like he owned the place. The car rattled down the highway, suspension groaning with every bump.

"You know the best thing about being dead?" he asked. "No seatbelts."

Dave said nothing as the car thumped violently over a dead raccoon.

"On second thought," Max muttered, "maybe seatbelts aren’t such a bad idea. Nobody should have to die twice."

Eyes forward, Dave still refused to reply, keeping his hands tight on the wheel, all the while gritting his teeth.

Without warning Max moved to the passenger seat, buckled in. "Should’ve taken Mom’s car. Or rented something. This thing’s a rolling landfill."

Dave glanced at the fast food bags, soda bottles, and candy wrappers that littered the floor. "I don’t like Mom’s car," he said. "Rentals are a hassle. This one’s fine."

It was fine. The engine had been rebuilt. Tires were fresh. The odometer was dead, but the car still ran. Consistently flawed, was still consistent.

Max jumped with excitement and pointed ahead.

"Hey! Check it out!"

Dave jerked the wheel, swerving into the empty oncoming lane.

"Jesus, what?"

Max grinned and clapped his hands.

"Hitchhiker!" he said. "Can we pick him up? Please? I’ll feed him and pet him and love him and name him! Can we George!? Can we!?"

"No," Dave said. "I’m not in the mood to be murdered today."

Max slumped back into his seat.

"Ya know, statistically, truckers are more likely to be serial killers than hitchhikers."

"There are more truckers in general," replied Dave. "So naturally-why am I arguing with you?"

"Because you’re lonely and guilt-ridden, my dear brother," Max said in a faux professors voice. "So can we pick him up?"

"No."

"C’mon. Either he fills the silence or I do."

Dave slammed the brakes. The hitchhiker, once ahead, was now behind. Instead of turning around, Dave threw the car in reverse and backed half a mile down the empty road and stopped.

Max leaned forward, watching the man approach in the rear view mirror.

"Looks like a real killer," he said, eyeing the guy’s suit jacket and wheeled luggage.

The passenger side window rolled down with arthritic resistance and stopped crookedly half way down.

"Your car has character," Max said. "I’ll give it that."

"Hello," said the hitchhiker, bright and chipper, with a crisp English accent. "Mind if I tag along?"

Without looking, Dave popped the trunk.

"Wouldn’t have stopped if I did," he said. "If there’s room back there… whatever."

Leo jogged to his bag to the trunk and stood there for a few seconds. He closed it and returned to the front, where he sat with it awkwardly in his lap.

Dave wasn’t surprised. His trunk was full of random junk. Boxes of silverware, empty containers of motor oil, and an old Super Nintendo that he bought from a pawn shop only to find it was as dead as the lost nostalgia that fueled the purchase.

Max moved to the middle seat in back. The hitchhiker climbed in front.

"I’m Leo," he said, shifting his luggage and offering a handshake.

"Dave," said Dave, shaking it without enthusiasm.

This guy might have been a mistake. He seemed to be all sunshine and charm.

"So, where to?" Leo asked.

Dave put the car in drive. It lurched forward when he hit the gas.

"Nebraska," he said.

"What a coincidence!" Leo beamed. "I’m headed that way too. What do you think the chances are we’re going to the same place?"

"I wouldn’t count on it," Dave said. "Nobody in their right mind goes to Minden. Willingly."

Leo pulled out a neatly folded paper from the interior pocket of his jacket and looked it over. "Axtell is where I’m headed. Ever heard of it?"

"Yeah. It’s about ten minutes away from Minden," Dave said. "Not on the way."

Leo folded the paper back up neatly and placed it in his pocket.

"Well, beggars can’t be choosers," he said. "I’m sure I’ll figure out the last stretch."

"C’mon," Max said. "Take him to Axtell. It’s ten minutes. You wasted more time arguing with me and a bucket of ice cream."

"No," Dave snapped, forgetting again. He glanced at Leo, recalibrating. "I mean-no problem. I’ll take you."

"Brilliant!" Leo said. "The last guy who picked me up wasn’t nearly as friendly. Kept talking about trying on my pretty English face."

"That got dark," Max said.

Dave stared at Leo.

"I won’t be trying-"

"I’m messing with you!" Leo laughed. "He was nice. Just didn’t appreciate my murder jokes."

The next two hours were a consistent wave of silence and awkward conversations. An ebb and flow of mundane topics and miscommunications that Leo, and only Leo, found humorous.

Mostly, Dave ignored his passengers, real and unreal, as they each attempted to pry words out of him.

"Ask him where he’s going," Max said. "Sounds Australian."

"British," Dave replied, glancing at Leo. "You’re British, aren’t you?"

"Somalian, actually."

Dave shook his head a little.

"You’re Somalian?"

"Surprised?"

"A little. You don’t sound like a Somalian."

"Well, have you ever met one?"

Dave thought for a moment before begrudgingly shaking his head.

"No…" he said. "But I’ve seen Captain Phillips, and you don’t match the description."

Leo grinned.

"Well, you got me there. British. Born in Shrewsbury."

Dave hated this. The only thing more annoying than his dead brother was this living passenger and his dry sense of humor.

"What about you?" Leo asked. "Where are you from? I’m guessing Puerto Rico."

Dave couldn’t tell if he was serious.

"Manchester."

"No kidding?" Leo’s face lit up. "How’d you drop the accent?"

"What? No. Iowa. Manchester, Iowa."

"Oh!" Leo laughed. "Yeah, that makes more sense."

Dave let his hands loosen on the wheel and relaxed, letting his shoulders untense. Sharing was nice. Conversation was nice. If he’d learned anything from Lacey this morning, it was that maybe closeness wasn’t the curse he always thought it was.

He looked at the clock on the car stereo. The stereo had stopped working long ago, but the clock still kept time like a champ. Not even a Rolex was as dependable as that digital timepiece.

Two forty-eight.

Dave pulled the car into the small dirt parking lot of Gladice’s Ranch, a rundown diner in the rundown town of Tekamah Nebraska.

"We still have about four hours left before we get to Minden," he said. "I haven’t eaten all day, and this place is as good a place as any. My treat."

The parking lot was half empty, and the neon Open sign in the front window was half on, flickering pen erratically.

"Treating your new friend to fine American cuisine, I see," Max said, trailing behind Dave and Leo.

Dave ignored Max’s comment. He was supposed to he the pessimist, not his dead brother.

The outside smelled like the inside and Dave took a small amount of comfort in that. He couldn’t explain why.

"The thing about places like this," Dave began, "is that they look like crap on the outside, but they have great food on the-"

They stepped inside. A group of retirees sat in the corner playing cards. Half the lights were burnt out. The woman behind the counter looked like a walking cigarette; frazzled gray hair, wiry and wild.

"-inside," Dave finished.

Leo’s eyes widened.

"This place," he said slowly, "is AMAZING!"

"Not so sure that’s the word I’d use," said Max.

The woman stepped out from behind the counter and approached. Up close, she had the figure of a sixty-year-old, the wrinkles of a seventy-year-old, and the voice of a fifty-year-old Brooklyn man fresh off his fifth Cuban cigar of the day.

"Table or booth?" she rasped, handing them two menus.

Dave almost asked for a third.

Before he could answer, Leo was already seated in a booth, looking around in awe at the failing Americana atmosphere.

"I guess booth," he said, taking the menus.

Dave slid into the booth across from Leo and started scanning the menu. The waitress appeared almost out of nowhere, like a haunting vision of what the future held if you weren’t careful.

"What’ll it be?" she rasped, her voice sounded like it was struggling through a throat full of gravel.

Leo perked up and took notice.

"What’s good?" he asked, his charm ineffective against this charmless server.

She moved her jaw in response, slowly, mechanically, like a cow chewing cud.

"Lunch specials," she said. "Meatloaf or a club sandwich. Both come with potato soup."

Leo looked down at the menu and pointed.

"What about this? I’ll go with the double half-pound cheeseburger and a Coke."

"What do ya want on it, sweetheart?" the waitress asked.

Leo squinted at her coffee-stained name tag.

"Well, I’m glad you asked, Gladice," he turned back to the menu. "It says I can add bacon, ham, lettuce, tomato… and a side of fries or onion rings."

"Yeah," Gladice said flatly, her voice dragging.

"That’s what I’ll have then."

She stared at him like she was caught in some sort of practical joke before turning to Dave, as if she expected him to rein in his friend.

Dave shrugged and said nothing.

Max, seated beside him, gave Leo a once-over.

"There’s no way this guy can handle that."

Gladice, still looking at Dave raised an eyebrow.

"And for you?"

Dave handed her the menu he didn’t bother opening.

"I’ll have a Coke… and whatever passes for meatloaf these days. Skip the soup."

She nodded once, making notes in her little pad of paper.

"Your heart attack," she said to Leo. "Your funeral," she added to Dave.

They waited in silence, watching out the window as a small monster truck roared into the parking lot. Big. Black. Loud. It spewed smoke from the exhaust thick enough to seep through the diner’s poorly sealed windows.

A young woman in an oversized hoodie and baggy shorts climbed out of the passenger side. A scruffy man in black cargo shorts and a stained wife-beater jumped from the driver’s seat.

Dave and Leo watched as the couple began shouting at each other. Their words were muffled by the glass and the buzz of dying fluorescent lights. The man grabbed the woman’s arm, yanking her back as she tried to head toward the diner.

"You should probably do something," Max said.

Dave didn’t respond. His dead brother was right. But he wasn’t going to move.

"I think we should do something," Leo said. His voice was calm, but the concern was real.

"Like what?" Dave asked. "I’m not a fighter."

He pulled out his phone and dialed 9-1, thumb hovering over the last digit waiting for the moment he would need to finish dialing.

By the time he looked up, Leo was already sliding out of the booth.

"I guess he’s got his own ideas," said Max.

Outside, Leo approached the man calmly, confidently. The man let go of the young woman and the conversation seemed peaceful. For a moment, it looked like Leo might actually deescalate the situation.

That moment didn’t last.

The man swung, catching Leo across the jaw and knocking him to the ground. He shouted something unintelligible before climbing back into the truck. They watched as the diesel fueled beast peeled out of the lot, louder and angrier than when it arrived.

The young woman helped Leo to his feet, all the while the patrons of the diner remained still. Outside, the dust and exhaust lingered.

Dave flinched as Gladice appeared. Again. Seemingly out of nowhere.

"You should really wear a bell or something," he said.

She ignored the comment and dropped the plates onto the half-empty booth.

"Tell Prince Charming out there his meal’s on the house," she said, glancing out the window at Leo, who was rubbing his jaw and talking to the young woman. Freshly abandoned on the cusp of civilization. "You can leave me a tip and thank me for it."

"Gladice, you’re earning every dollar today," Dave replied.

After she left, Dave stared at his meatloaf. A small patty of pressed meat with brown gravy drizzled over it. He poked at it lightly, half expecting it to sprout legs and run off.

Leo slid back into the booth, and the young woman took a seat beside him. Max sat next to Dave.

"Maggie here’s been left behind," Leo said, eyeing the ridiculous pile of food in front of him. He turned to her. "Help yourself to whatever looks good."

She smiled timidly and plucked a French fry from Leo’s plate.

"Thanks," she said softly, then looked across the table. "You must be Dave."

"Yep," Dave replied. "I’m Dave."

He might have been surprised by this, but so far today, he’d eaten ice cream for breakfast, been trailed by his dead brother, fired, and befriended a hitchhiker.

A survivor of domestic abuse being abandoned at a rundown diner seemed like the most realistic thing that could have happened today. Or at the very least, it wasn’t out of his new ordinary.

"I’m Maggie," the young woman said.

"I gathered that," replied Dave. He returned to his plate for more gentle prodding of what he hoped, but doubted, was a freshly cooked meal.

"I told Maggie she could join us on our adventure," Leo added.

Dave looked at her.

"I don’t really have anywhere to go," said Maggie. "Or any way to get wherever I’d be going."

Despite the timid tone and the fact that she’d just been left in the middle of nowhere, there was a bubbly air about her. Her bright orange fingernail polish would have been instantly endearing if not for her chipped and uneven nails. Dave wondered if she was okay, or just putting on a front.

He might have asked if she was okay, but his concern for people today was already record breaking. Any more and he might run the risk of becoming a good person.

He watched as she took another fry from Leo and dragged it through the gravy on Dave’s untouched meatloaf.

"And just like that," Max said, upbeat and impossibly enthusiastic, "there were three."

Next Chapter: Six