Afternoon lasts a long time in flat place. And this was…flat. Amal wouldn't have described the landscape as "featureless" - it HAD a feature. Dirt and rocks. And the occasional stunted grove of trees. At least it was a switch from the soybeans they'd been driving through for the last million miles. Then they passed the sign that said "NOW ENTERING GIRASOL COUNTY DRIVE SAFE."

"SafeLY," he muttered, automatically. He'd been raised with a certain respect for the language. "Y'all."

"Man. This is…yeah. One banjo short of a major motion picture," TJ said, flicking a butt out the window.

"Unggh." Amal was trying to stay awake. And it was only four-twenty-eight p.m. Soybeans would do that to you …like the damn poppies in the land of Oz.

"I don't want to make you nervous, but I’m pretty sure this is alien abduction country, Bubba. Any minute now, the radio's gonna quit…there'll be a bright light…and then it's anal probes and next thing you know you're an Unsolved Mysteries rerun."

Amal had to exercise Jedi Mind Control to repel the images this conjured up. "You first, Leroy."

"Dude. I'll take one for the team."

"My hero."

And then the radio, which actually had been fading in and out disconcertingly, came back to life with "Como La Flor" and TJ was turning it up to eleven and singing along with Selena, managing to get another cigarette lit without missing a word. Amal hung on to the steering wheel a little more tightly and started looking for somewhere to pull in. The Honda needed gas and he needed a mental health moment.

He might have missed the place if it hadn't had one of those windmill-things poking up above its flat roof; a low brown building that looked as if it had been slammed into place by the kind of freak tornado that drove straws through concrete and transported cows unharmed into the next county. The word CHACHAS had been painted on one wall by someone with a roller, a pan of sky-blue exterior latex, and the DTs. It lacked sophistication, but it did have a couple of gas-pumps in what passed for the parking-lot, and it was open for whatever kind of business it did; a spastic neon sign said so. It took a little more Jedi Mind Control, but Amal forced himself to make the left into the lot and pull up beside the pumps.

"Bienvenidos al Bates Motel," TJ said, opening the door and unfolding himself. "I'm just going to check out the taxidermy in the lobby…" He was off before Amal could argue about it.

As it turned out, they'd've had to go inside anyway - someone had duct-taped over the credit-card slot in the pump and there was a notice saying "PAY CASHIER." Well, you had to admire the marketing strategy. They probably sold a lot of armadillo roadkill chili that way. He locked everything that could possibly be locked and followed TJ.

And there was taxidermy, but only what you'd find in any raggedy-assed roadhouse, along with the chandelier that looked like a wagon-wheel, signs on the bathroom doors that said "STUDS" and "FILLIES," a clump of guys in trucker-caps, a pool table, and a jukebox full of cheatin' woman songs.

Eight different kinds of alarm went off in Amal's head. Ever since the Waffle House Incident, he'd been a little jumpy around people who looked like they might be extras from Smokey and the Bandit, but it seemed pretty quiet…and TJ was already at the bar, making friends. The girl behind the counter pushed a draft across to him and smiled, leaning over, saying something that was making TJ grin and spread his hands out.

Amal thought he'd be used to it by now, but it still felt…freaky. The TJ Effect - a twilightzone shift of the world into some other field of reality that made alien abduction look not only feasible but imminent - he could handle it when they were alone - fuck, he LIKED it when they were alone - but… he got across the room and balanced his ass on the barstool next to TJ's.

"Dude. This is Windee Lee."

Or that's what it sounded like to Amal.

"Hi, uhhh…Windee."

She eyed him and shored up a bright pink bra strap. She had a tattoo of Rocky the Flying Squirrel on her right arm; Amal would have bet money there was some redneck in the neighborhood with Bullwinkle on his ass. It wasn't a happy thought.

"Getchou somethin'?"

"Just water."

"We don' serve that. Unless you're havin' the chili and yer a pussy."

Or allergic to armadillo. Suddenly cheap beer was starting to look good. "OK. Whatever he's having."

"Good choice." Another anonymous draft appeared. Amal took a sip and tried not to make a face.

The girl turned back to TJ and rested her scrawny upper body comfortably on her crossed arms. "So, yeah. California, huh? I hear they got a lotta freaks an' stuff out there. An' drugs. An' movies stars. You ever see any movie stars?"

TJ thought about it. "Yup. All the time. Ramon Novarro pulled up next to me at a stoplight once."

"Who?"

"Kinda like…mmm…Antonio Banderas. Only older."

Her small nose wrinkled up a little. "Ohhhh…one of those Meskin boys…so where you goin' from here?"

Amal tuned out. The conversation at the table behind him was worse. The one guy wearing his trucker cap backwards in what must have been a daring fashion statement was saying something in a foreign language.

"So, my old man give me this brand-fuckin' new Remington - I dutch-loaded that sucker with customs: double-ought and slugs and damn…WINDEE."

"'Scuse me, TJ." The girl strolled over to the table, taking two pitchers and a plate of nachos with her, which was more than Amal would have imagined she could hoist at one time. The flying squirrel bulged alarmingly, and some of the beer slopped over onto the table.

"Jeezis, Windee- watch what you're doin', you dumb -"

Then the fight broke out.

All right, not so much a fight as some screeching and aggravated furniture-rearrangement, but it was enough to make Amal sigh and take off his watch. Just in case.

"Awww, fuck you, Kyle, wipe it up yerself if you're so damn particular. I don't care if yer daddy does own this shithole, you just TRY gettin' me fired… " Windee was saying to the guy in the backwards cap, which somehow managed to descalate things - or maybe it was just part of some established ritual. "No, don't you hey, whatever me - I'm outta here."

"You got another three hours on the shift, babe." His hand closed around her wrist but she slid away from him with a cat's hiss, back to the bar, and he tilted his chair and laughed, stretching. Judging from the way he watched her ass as she went, he was probably the one sitting on Bullwinkle.

Windee untied her apron, bangles rattling. "He think's I'm jokin' or something. Stupid cowtard. You guys 'bout ready to cash out?"

He still had nearly half a glass, but yeah, Amal was ready to cash out. TJ pushed a couple of bills across the bar and Windee folded them into her rear pocket. She ducked down below the level of the bar for a moment and resurfaced with a jacket and a purse about the size of a saddlebag, only with fringe hanging off it.

"That's that, then. Let's hit the road."

"Let's?" Amal said.

"Yup."

"You're…"

"Goin' with y'all." She'd herded them efficiently out the door and onto the cracked asphalt of the parking lot. "Or you're takin' me. Either one. But we'd better make it fast, cos dumb as Kyle is, he's bound to notice I’m gone, soon's he needs a refill."

"But…" Amal looked at TJ. This probably made sense in the TJ-verse and could be easily explained as the result of an alien-implanted mind-chip. "Did you tell her we would…" The aliens seemed to have abducted the ends of his sentences, too.

"Sorta. Can't leave her with a cowtard, can we?" TJ gave his zen shrug.

Windee blew upwards through her wispy bangs, making them flutter. "Look. You don' wanna, and TJ said it'd be OK. How 'bout we flip a coin?" She dug a quarter out of her pocket.

"Oh, man. This is nuts…"

The coin flicked into the air, a little spin of silver in the dimming light. "Call it, Kumar."

This is what he got for not paying attention. "Heads."

She caught the coin and slapped it on the back of her hand. The three of them looked at it.

"I get shotgun!" Windee said, heaving her bag towards the Honda.

::

After ten or fifteen miles, the dirt and rock gave way to trees again, and some kind of field that at least wasn't soybean. Hard to make out what it was now that it was nearly dark, but there was a lot of it- dense, head-high green starred here and there with yellow. Windee straightened up out of the slouch she'd been in, taking her boots off the dash and leaning out the window. She hadn't said anything since taking over the front seat, just sang along with TJ and the radio and smoked evil, thin brown cigarettes. Every now and then Amal could hear her stomach rumble. This was bad. He was starting to feel kind of sorry for her. Fuck knew what was going to happen when they stopped for the night.

"Awww, hey," she said, starting to bounce a little. "I think I know…"

The malformed stump of a church steeple appeared in the distance, floundering around above the green, and a billboard that looked like it had been the target of a couple of Kyle's dutch-loads announced the presence of the Girasol County Church of Gathering in Christ, Founding Minister Romard Lee.

"…where we are. Pull over, pull over!"

Amal pulled over fast before she could wrench the wheel out of his hands. Before he'd even come to a complete stop, she'd got the door open and was sliding out into the weeds at the side of the road. The fields pressed close here, and he could see what they were, acre on acre of sunflowers, just coming into bloom.

"Oh man, can you smell that? Isn't that the best?" Windee stood for a second, bright in the Honda's headlights. "Can you hear it, the wind blowing through them? I reckon that's what the ocean sounds like, right, TJ?"

"Pretty much just like that," TJ said. Amal wondered how he knew, because you couldn't hear a damn thing over the sound of the engine.

"Well, damn. Guess I'll recognize it if I ever get out to the coast or somethin'…hey Kumar, toss my bag out, wouldja?"

"My name's not fucking Kumar, Ellie Mae," Amal muttered, and tossed the bag with a little more force than he probably needed to use.

She caught it with only a small stagger backwards. "Oof. You got some muscles there, doncha? So, looks like this is adios, dudes. Thanks for the ride."

It was the middle of fucking nowhere. Amal had to say something - annoying as she was, she couldn't have been a whole lot older than Radhi, and he was picturing someone dumping his little sister off in alien abduction territory...actually, he'd feel sorry for any aliens that abducted Radhi, but the principle was the same. Theoretically.

"Uh…you sure you want to be here? I mean, we could drop you at a gas station or something…it's kinda dark and…"

"Nah, it's cool. I grew up around here. That's my daddy's church." She pointed over at the steeple, now illuminated by a couple of yellowish K-Mart spots. "We had a lil' fight a year or so back. Guess since I'm in the neighbourhood I'll stop into Bible Class and see if the bastard's ready to say sorry yet." A pick-up truck with a "Don't Mess with Jesus" bumpersticker passed them, making the sunflowers sway in its slipstream. "Looks like I better hurry if I wanna get a good seat. Y'all take care, OK?"

Then she was gone, a trail of agitated stalks marking her progress through the darkening forest of flowers.

Amal sat for a minute, his fingers curved around the wheel. "That was…completely and totally fucking random."

TJ got a cigarette lit. "Mmmm. Kinda, yeah. Not exactly Unsolved Mysteries material, I gotta say. Not enough anal probes. Wish we'd had the chili, though."

Amal swallowed what he was going to say because it would only have made things even weirder, and he didn't think he could cope with a whole lot more right then. He just took a long breath and pulled back out onto the deserted highway.

The little gaspump-shaped light on the dash flickered to life, glowing a cheerful red.