“Name’s Derek,” the driver said after they had introduced themselves. “Where you headed?”

“We’re trying to get out to New York,” Athena supplied. She held the front of her cardigan closed to keep the rips and blood hidden.

“Oh, yeah? Freak Show Central?” Derek checked his mirrors and pulled back onto the highway.

“No, just upstate,” said Athena. “We have friends there.” Derek made an affirmative sound with his nose and roof of his mouth, and said nothing. Behind her, Odysseus shifted clothes around in his bag, getting comfortable.

“I can take you quite a way,” Derek said. He rubbed at his face quickly with the back of his hand. “I’m headed to Erie, Pennsylvania. Driving straight through.”

“That’s just fine.” Athena yawned. Part of her didn’t want to sleep. She knew the fresh, stiff hell she was going to be in for when she woke up. All of her muscles and tendons would have clenched down and shrunk three sizes. But it wasn’t a matter of choice. It took a lot to weary a god, but it happened eventually.

“Thank you for picking us up,” she said. “We might’ve stood out there all morning, with the fog as thick as it is. I’m surprised you even saw us.” Her lids slipped shut. She was asleep before the driver could answer, and when he did, her eyes were closed, so she couldn’t see the look on his face.

* * *

Had Athena been more alert when she had gotten into the car, she would have noticed a few strange things about their driver. His clothes didn’t fit right, for a start. His pants were too tight to even button, and they were too long. Inches of fabric collected around the tops of his Velcro tennis shoes. The clothes didn’t match, either. He was wearing a combination of green and red that would have looked wrong even around Christmas. And then there was the smell, sour and medicinal, hiding just underneath a camouflage of Brut 57.

But Athena hadn’t been more alert. She had fallen asleep, slumped against the passenger-side window. She and Odysseus slept together, oblivious to the car’s increasing speed. The Taurus’ engine was surprisingly quiet, even at a hundred miles an hour, and the freeway was wide open ahead, except for a large tanker semitruck, shining silver as it plodded along in the right lane. Neither one of them stirred as they passed it. The truck driver watched with annoyance and told another driver over the CB that some idiot in a silver Taurus was out to get them all killed. He didn’t really take the thought seriously until the car moved over the center line, and the passenger door opened and a young woman flew toward the speeding pavement.

The move was quick and well done. He pushed Athena’s door open and shoved her out toward the ground, with the intent of sending her rolling across the asphalt, directly under the sixteen tires of the semi just behind.

It wouldn’t have been fatal. She was dying, that was true, but she still couldn’t be killed, not by any conventional means, anyway. It would, however, have ruined her eye, and left bloody red scales of road rash across her cheek, shoulder, and arm. The impact of the semi would have cracked her bones like dry branches.

She thought all of this in the fraction of a second it took to catch hold of the swung-open car door in the reflexive instant she felt her neck tense just enough to keep her skull from bouncing off of the pavement passing by below.

She hung suspended between the open door and the front seat, her knee wedged underneath the dashboard, and flexed. Her hands wrapped around the interior door handle, trying to pull it shut while the driver swerved. Something struck her hip and she yelped. Looking back she saw the end of some kind of steel or lead pipe, just before it raised and came down again, this time closer to her rib cage. The impact had the opposite effect of what was hoped for; it made Athena’s muscles contract sharply, and she managed to pull the door most of the way shut.

In the backseat, Odysseus woke. After a few startled seconds of coming to, he plunged forward and began to fight with the driver for control of the steel pipe. The Taurus careened sharply to the right. Athena winced. If they turned too far, or went off the shoulder, they would flip like a coin.

“The wheel!” she shouted at Odysseus, who stretched out and grabbed it. With the door mostly shut, she had just enough leverage to draw her leg up and piston her boot-clad foot into the driver’s ribs, snapping at least two. The impact drove him into Odysseus, and the car swerved again.

“If you want me to drive, you have to give me some room.” Odysseus tried to hang on to the wheel as the car accelerated in mad spurts. It revved and shot forward as the driver’s foot pushed the gas pedal unintentionally down to the floor.