Moonlight slithered across the road like a lazy overfed jellyfish, its tentacle rays breaching through cracks in the thick layer of clouds. The night air was crispy fresh, shiny and transparent like glass. The branches of trees that surrounded the road did not dare move, and the whole scene seemed motionless and serene, like a still image from a dark, thoughtful movie.

Or it was motionless and serene at least, right until they ran out of gas.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” Amanda was smiling, but it was not a smile of happiness. It was a smile of someone who was ready to bite the universe itself, and kick the universe’s shin too for good measure.

“There’s a gas station!” Vogel yelped.

“Where?” Amanda asked.

“Don’t know.” He shrugged. “Somewhere. It’s a road, there’s a gas station at some point!”

“Thank you Vogel that was very. helpful!” Amanda produced another severely sarcastic smile. “I swear to Satan, if we don’t make it somewhere today, there will be Blood, and I don’t know whose blood it will be but there will be blood.”

Luckily for the blood of all inhabitants of the van, a neon sign lit up on the horizon five minutes later, prompting Amanda to let out a breath that she wasn’t aware she was holding. She rolled the van into the empty gas station, killed the engine, and jumped out onto the cold asphalt.

The 2am sky was shrouded in heavy silver clouds, moonlight brushing her skin with its cold touch. She allowed herself one brief and very slight grin, then shook it off. They were on the run. They were also out of gas. She needed to hurry.

Upon entering the tiny gas station shop, Amanda marched straight towards the checkout without even looking around, in spite of her active and very hungry subconscious begging her to pay attention to all the sugary abominations surrounding her.

“Fill up a full tank of diesel at the second please,” Amanda muttered through a yawn, speaking to the girl who worked the counter. “Also this,” she added, grabbing a handful of candy bars at random and slamming them on the checkout table.

“That will be 38.75,” the girl responded after scanning the candy bars and typing in some numbers.

“Ah.”

This is when Amanda remembered that she didn’t have 38.75 dollars. In fact, she did not have dollars.

Money ownership was not a subject of concern for the Rowdy 3. They rarely needed anything, and when they did, they could just as easily steal it directly instead of stealing money first to purchase it. Due to this fact, Amanda was tasked with keeping track of finances, mostly for supplying herself with food, meds, and hostel rooms whenever she needed a proper bath and a calm night. The source of the money was somewhat ambiguous; she was not quite sure herself where it came from, but she was usually at least able to keep track of it.

That was not the case in this particular moment.

This moment was characterized by Amanda realizing suddenly that she gave away her last five dollars of cash when buying a much needed coffee that afternoon. She had credit cards - seven of them - but each was either broken, invalid, or eaten by a feral raccoon.

“Hey so, uh, do you take Walmart coupons?” Amanda asked.

The girl hesitated, trying to pick an appropriate response for what she thought was a badly executing though mildly amusing joke, and eventually settled on a meek giggle.

“I also have like,” Amanda searched her pockets frantically, “I have 25 cents and half a pack of life savers,” she declared. “And that’s it.”

“Sorry we don’t take candy as payment.” The girl smiled, still not entirely convinced that this wasn’t some elaborate though rather sad attempt at a late night comedy monologue.

“Hey, listen,” Amanda said, channeling all of her normalcy and politeness which, admittedly, she didn’t have a lot of. “I really, really need that gas. I am in some serious trouble and I have people relying on me and we need to get away a.s.a.p. I swear I have money somewhere, on a bank account, whatever. I’ll find a way to get it back to you, but I need the gas. And the candy too actually, I haven’t eaten anything since morning.”

“Oh-kay.” The girl’s eyebrows were now firmly raised. “So I don’t know you, uh…”

“Amanda.”

“…Amanda, nice to meet you, I’m Tamika by the way,” she pointed at her badge with a short, sloppily painted fingernail, “I don’t know you and your life but for me, forty dollars is a lot of money. I work minimum wage. At a gas station. I have my budget down to a penny and forty bucks is more than five days worth of food for me. And that’s how much my boss will take out of my salary if I give you gas and candy for free cause that’s how much your gas and candy costs. Like almost a week worth of my food.”

Amanda took a very deep breath in. She glanced over her shoulder back at the van and felt viscerally the cortisol leaving her adrenal glands, escaping into her bloodstream, and being pumped directly into her brain like a midnight express off its rails.

“I know,” Amanda said. “It’s just that, and you won’t believe me so I’ve no idea why I’m telling you this, but when I am called to be somewhere, I absolutely have to start moving in the direction of that bloody somewhere, and quick. I can’t explain it but it’s true.”

“I do believe you, actually,” Tamika replied unexpectedly. “No idea why either. And, well, I’ve seen the people in your van. You outnumber me. You can rob this place, get your gas and leave, but…” And she smirked, leaving Amanda even more confused than before. “Something tells me you won’t do that.”

“What do you want?” Amanda guessed.

“I am bored,” Tamika told her. “Like, really bored. I also have half a bottle of tequila, so… stay for an hour and have a drink with me?” She asked. “Bonus points if you have interesting stories to tell and, again, judging by that van of yours, you do.”

“When I said I was in a hurry, I meant it, dude,” Amanda said.

“Yeah I know. But it’s either rob me and leave right now, or have a drink with me and I pay for your gas and your Twix bars too.”

Amanda closed her eyes for a second, considering her options. She imagined the aftermath of unleashing the Rowdy 3 at the place, and thought of the catastrophic though somewhat entertaining consequences of that. It wouldn’t be the girl’s fault if the place was reduced to the state of matter and gravity immediately after the big bang, but the probability that she’d keep her job after it was slim regardless.

Did they have an hour? She knew they were being followed, but her intuition was stubbornly assuring her that they had a long way towards catching up. And what would an hour do anyway? Perhaps the universe even wanted her to have this conversation… oh but did she have to decide? Why was she always the one to decide?!

“Fine,” Amanda gave up. “But I sure hope it’s good tequila.”

*

They sat in the dark staff room at the back of the shop, forced into physical closeness through the necessity of sharing a tiny, barely furnished space. The room was geometrically awkward and scarcely lit. The only objects here, apart from some lockers, were a round metal table that had seen better days, and a few plastic chairs that were more suitable for toddlers at daycare. Currently, Amanda was sited opposite Tamika on one such plastic chair, staring down her half-full glass. She didn’t realize how much she needed a drink before she drained her first portion in one big, almost painful gulp.

“Well you’re certainly drinking.” Tamika laughed, already pouring her a second glass and taking a sip from her own. “Anything in particular you want to talk about?”

“So recently I’ve been thinking a lot about which decision was my first in a very long path towards the shit I am in now,” Amanda replied, “I guess we can go with that.”

“Damn. Go on then.”

“Yeah so I think I’ve triangulated it to like, two, or maybe three events. Three, actually.”

“You can start with the first one then,” Tamika suggested.

“Sounds good,” Amanda agreed, and took another sip. “So I was 14, and…”

…sneaking out of her house without telling her parents for the first time in her life.

She remembered shivering at the backseat of Roy Seymour’s car, and Katie Lewis offering her a swig of some drink that belonged in a garage or a cleaner’s cupboard rather than a flask. They barely made it to the concert that day. Her own brother’s big show, and she almost missed it. In that moment, being on first row of the Mexican Funeral gig seemed like the most important thing in the world to her, even though…

“Your brother was in a band?” Tamika asked incredulously.

“Yeah.”

“Like a for real serious band?”

“Just google him.” Amanda sighed. “Todd Brotzman, Mexican Funeral.”

“Oh damn he got a wikipedia page,” Tamika announced, scrolling through her phone. “And he’s your brother?”

“Why the hell would I lie to you?!” Amanda snorted with laughter. “He’s not that cool. Also he’s an asshole. Kind of. He is trying not to be though.”

“Difficult relationship there, ey?” Tamika teased in what she hoped was a playful, i-am-sort-of-flirting-with-you-but-only-if-you-want-it-to-be-flirting way.

“You can say that.” Amanda shrugged with a smile.

“Did he steal your girlfriend?”

“He pretended to have a rare disease for years and took a shitton of money from our parents and then continued to lie to me about recovering from that disease after I got it for real and also lied about basically everything until he was forced to tell me the truth,” she said. “Though he also kind of saved me from being stuck in a magical kingdom a few months ago so he is redeemable I guess.”

“Excuse me what?”

“Stick a knife in that. No. Wait.” Amanda shook her head. “What am I saying… a pin! Stick a pin in that, that’s not important right now. The important point is…”

…that she saw them on that day, for the first time - punks. A bunch of young people, who seemed very grownup to a fourteen year old but were probably in their very early thirties, hanging out together outside the club. She fell in love with every single one of them on first sight. Fell in love with their leather jackets, torn jeans and heavy boots; with the spikes and pins sticking out of their ears, eyebrows, and lips; with their bright hair and shaved heads and countless badges on sleeves and lapels.

But most of all, she fell in love with their baseball bats.

She asked them what they had those bats for, and they said, “for beating up nazis, of course”, and she believed them, of course, because they had the air and vibe of evil-fighters and unbelievable bad-asses. Amanda had seen punks before - mostly her brother, and mostly on his posters - but this was the first time she got to stand near them and talk to them and realize just what they had, and it was freedom.

Freedom she craved more than anything else. Freedom she didn’t even dare to dream about, but decided in that moment to spend the rest of her life pursuing. Freedom she would never get, not ever, and especially after she was diagnosed with pararibulitis.

“Pararibulitis?” Tamika asked. “Isn’t that what that writer, whatshisface, Winchester something had?”

“Everyone mentions George bloody Winchester to me!” Amanda winced, as if an unsavory memory was brought to her mind. “And like, dude spent most of his life in his basement writing books. Not a very exciting life. Also I suck at writing.”

“It’s also a nasty disease,” Tamika added.

“It is.”

“My cousin has epilepsy, which, you know, not as painful I bet, but pretty similar mechanisms, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Well she doesn’t leave home much either.”

“I was stuck at home for years,” Amanda said. “It’s not even that I couldn’t leave, I just didn’t feel like I was allowed to. Every time I had an attack outside of my house, eugh. I’ve actually convinced myself that I was such an inconvenience to society, I deserved to be locked up and hidden from view.”

“Big yikes,” all that Tamika managed to say.

“Yep. Cheers.”

They drank again.

“You didn’t stay at home though.” Tamika smiled.

“No.” Amanda smiled back.

“So what happened?”

“Ah. Well. What happened is a walking human disaster called…”

…Dirk Gently, who only ever does as much as appear in other people’s lives without warning and transform them violently into something you wouldn’t hallucinate under magic mushrooms even if you tried. Dirk Gently, who got her out of her house for the first time in years. Then the Rowdy 3 that came after him, and reminded her that joy and happiness were indeed real things and not fictions invented by the pharmaceutical companies to sell you drugs.

These people, too improbable to be fake, arrived in her world and somehow persuaded her that freedom was not something that she had to earn - it was something she could just claim for herself. And she decided to do just that.

“So let me recap,” Tamika said through a laugh, “some guy broke into your brother’s apartment, got him involved in some mad scheme that involved soul swapping and time travel, and introduced you to a gang of punk psychic vampires in a van…”

“…the vampires introduced themselves,” Amanda corrected.

“…and then you were on the run from a secret agency and saved by a witch from a magical dimension where you were taught how to change reality with your mind.”

“I never actually learned how to change reality outside of Wendimoor,” Amanda confessed unexpectedly even for herself.

She felt high on emotions; this was the first time she dared share about her life with a total stranger, and it felt like scratching an itch on the inside of her brain that she didn’t know bothered her for months.

“Did you manage to control your visions?”

“Sort of, I guess.” Amanda shrugged. “I separated them from attacks. I don’t need the Rowdy to induce them. Now they sort of happen, as in sometimes I get in this zone and I can bring them on, with effort, and sometimes they just happen and don’t ask me. And I almost never get attacks anymore. At least much, much rarer than I used to.” She paused for a second. “I wonder how Todd is coping.”

“Right,” Tamika said. “Is that where you’re going? To see your brother?”

“Yes and no?” Amanda replied. “So what happened is…”

…she started having visions of the universe falling apart a while ago. She ignored them at first, assuming that she was misinterpreting some great big metaphor about how she was trying to exert too much control over her life and needed to let things progress of their own accord or some other such holistic nonsense. But gradually the visions because less flowery and metaphoric and more, as Dirk would put it, kill-y.

They began to feature an awful lot of blood puddles and empty skulls, as if the visions made a brand deal with the producer of halloween decorations and had to start including them in every edition.

This is when Amanda decided that she should start paying attention, and began to follow their lead, grabbing onto the tiniest of details she could identify. It forced the Rowdy to drive around all over the place for a while, and it was fun at first. That’s what Rowdys did before the met Amanda - just went whenever they felt like. Except now, with Amanda on board, things were starting to get less fun and more gravely dangerous, culminating in whatever what was happening to them now.

Now, all they could do was…

“…run.” Amanda swallowed a knot in her throat and immediately reached for tequila. “I just, I don’t fucking get it, right, but I just know I have to get to Dirk and ignore everything else and tell him this stuff! It’s so stupid!” She groaned in frustration. “Stupid and mad and infuriating. And you know what’s the worst thing? They think I know shit.”

She pointed vaguely in the direction of the van. “They think I’m now this wise witch connected to all of creation or whatever and I’m not. I’m terrified.” She laughed, almost through tears. “I am scared literally all the time and I have no clue what I am doing. You know I found that damned key?”

“You what?!” Tamika thought she couldn’t be surprised by anything by now, but clearly she was mistaken.

“Yeah, found it in the van almost immediately, and, hell.” Amanda waved around herslef. “Just didn’t tell anyone.”

“But you can just give it away to that Slavic mafia of yours and be fine!”

“I can’t. I feel like I can’t. I feel, you know, I feel like I need to hold on to it and bring it to Dirk. And I hate it but that’s what I’m doing. I’m bringing it to Dirk and that’s it.”

There was a pause, in which they drank, and sighed, and looked at each other in understanding.

“You’ll figure it out.” Tamika smiled.

“You couldn’t possibly know.” Amanda raised an eyebrow.

“Yeah I do. Somehow. Like you know what you’re supposed to do.”

“Do you even believe at least a word of what I’ve said?”

“Honestly,” Tamika smirked, “I can’t come up wit a reason for why you’d make this up. Trust me I’ve been bullshitted enough in my life and I know a daring lie from ridiculous truth. When you lie, see,” she said with a knowing look, “you try to make it believable.”

“Right.” Amanda laughed. “God… thank you for the drink. Seriously.”

She got up from the table, realizing she was somehow almost completely sober. Same couldn’t be said for Tamika, who had to struggle to weasel out of the tight spot in between the table and the wall.

“Hour’s up,” Amanda said, with just a pinch of sadness in her voice.

“I’ll fill up your gas.” Tamika nodded. “Also.” She reached into her pocket and extracted a crumpled piece of paper, on which she then scribbled some numbers with the help of a half-dry pen she found on the floor. “Hope you can read that.”

“Your number?” Amanda asked with a smile.

“You’ll have to repay me somehow, right?” Tamika reminded. “Can be over drinks, some time after you save the world again.”

“It can,” Amanda replied. “One more reason to make it out of this mess alive.”

Ten minutes later, the van was back on the road, Tamika was back to her counter, and one phone network signal was online again to the utter delight of one man named Dancho.

“And we’re back.” He beamed ear to ear, though no one shared his enthusiasm. “That’s right baby, I can build devices that work for more than a day.”

“Yeah you can,” Varya snorted, “you can make device that work for two whole days.”

“Shush,” he told her. “I am tracking. Yes, baby, yes…”

“Oh just marry your black box already.” Milena rolled her eyes.

“Got it!” Dancho ignored her. “Sweet. Very sweet.”

“What?” Grazyna demanded.

“We haven’t fallen behind too much,” Dancho explained. “In fact, by my calculations, I think we’ll catch up with them tomorrow evening…”