He didn’t have the kind of money it took to get to Alaska, but that didn’t mean anything because he had been throwing up artificial barriers for so long that he knew life owed him something when a real problem came along.  He wasn’t about to walk the three thousand miles because for once in his life he cared about getting where he was going to, but he wouldn’t hitch-hike, either.  He wouldn’t sit in a car like that.

But maybe he would, because if he didn’t he would be back in a car again soon anyways and maybe a bit worse off and with a new realization to ignore and a needle to draw blood at every point his life could have been better.  The road would be nothing to that, and it was the highway.  The highway was different, because it wasn’t the city and it wasn’t crowded streets and rolled up windows and empty seats that never got anywhere.  You were never stopped, as long as you avoided going through heavily populated areas, and it wasn’t being in a car that he disliked so much as it was being stopped, and not knowing what to look at and finally settling on looking at an old keepsake from your childhood.

He walked out to I-22, which passed not far from where he lived, and stuck his thumb out the way you do when you want to be picked up, and waited a while and didn’t expect to be picked up very soon, because people always thought hitch-hikers were serial-killers.  It took about an hour and a half for a big semi to pull over and open its door, and Zeb climbed in.

“Yeah?”

Zeb pointed forwards.

“Me too.”

“Thanks.”  Zeb tried to smile at the man, but he had never been very good at smiling at the right times.

“No worries, man.  I go that way for a while.  When I don’t anymore, you’re back on the road.”  He shrugged.  “It gets kind of – I don’t know, lonely – this thing, I mean.”

“Yeah.”

“I mean, not lonely, just kind of –”

“Yeah.”

The man jerked his thumb over his shoulder.  “You know what this thing’s carrying?”

“No.”

“Plutonium.”  The man gave Zeb a significant look.  “Two kilograms.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“Doesn’t the radiation –”

“Nope. Well, at least they tell me it’s not a problem.  I mean, if I get cancer in twenty years –”  He shrugged.  A careless shrug might have broken Zeb’s heart, or whatever less vital organ it was more acceptable to have broken by a stranger, but it wasn’t one of those.

“Right.”