He takes a gulp of about two or three and chews. The look on his face says its better to swallow them whole, and he does, with whatever’s left in a salvaged beer bottle.

“Well?”

“They’re sour, but nothin’ wrong with’m.”

This makes the driver laugh. The hitchhiker is still gagging. Worse yet: he can’t wrangle another drop from the bottle.

“Here ya go.” The driver hands him a pint of rye whiskey that he had been hiding in his jacket pocket, presumably for emergencies such as this. The two types of sour make a painful combination in the hitchhiker’s mouth, but he’s grateful all the same.

“Save some fer me.” Grabbing the bottle from his passenger, the driver knocks back a few of the evil green goobers. He has an easier time with them, perhaps learning from the hitchhiker’s example to just swallow them like a couple of aspirins.

They rumble in the driver’s stomach, but otherwise don’t cause much of a disturbance. He nearly forgets about them entirely when he feels himself pitch forward and the road opens up with a halo of sun or hellfire. The pickup is suspended in motion and the fields break into thousands of shards all around them.