“I’m fine, thanks.” He manages to summon the beginnings of a smile from somewhere. It doesn’t hold for long.

“Wait!”

The two, to their bewilderment, actually stop in their tracks. The call sounded like an animal’s, except with the human ability to speak. Only a few feet from ‘their’ vehicle, the Indian’s voice has become someone, or something, else’s entirely. It is a warning, and it is hardly of this world.

The two face him. They are met with unresponsive eyes, set in a creaseless face that has gone slack. It is the checked-out look of someone waiting for or listening to a lengthy set of instructions. They wait a few pauses that drag on too long. Finally fed up, the driver cuts into the Indian’s silent, one-way exchange.

“Hey look buddy”, not ‘friend’. “We gotta go…”

“You two are on a journey…”

The hitchhiker checks with the driver before cracking into a yeah-tell-us-something-we-don’t-know smile.

“There is a woman…,” the voice trails off into a mournful pause. “Was..”

“This is nonsense,” the driver tacks on. At the same time, his thoughts flash to Paula, in the same prostrate position as before. The hitchhiker too, sees her face: same blood-drained pallor, same smirk of surprised relief, only a few hours earlier. The images are too vivid for either to notice that the other has sunk to a look of the utterly forlorn.