Those Who Wander II

by Benji The Vampire Confuser

This story is sort of a crossover with American Gods. No characters from that story appear in this one, but an original character from an American Gods RPG does.

There was something familiar about the young man Jarod picked up. He had shoulder length, unwashed brown hair, a full beard and mustache, and was wearing wire rim spectacles. The boy put his backpack in the trunk, then settled into the passenger seat.

"Thanks for the ride man." the boy said, coughing the road dust out of his throat.

"My pleasure." Jarod nodded. "You know," he added, pulling the car back onto the road, "It can be dangerous to hitchhike."

The hitchhiker smirked. "Yeah. It can be dangerous to pick up hitchhikers too."

And that was when it hit him. The tone of voice, the twinkle in the eyes. Jarod had ridden with this boy before. Though he'd been clean, and shaven before, with shorter hair and no glasses. And with their situations reversed. Jarod had been the hitchhiker, and this young man had picked him up.

He looked at the boy sharply.

"Relax. I'm not that kind of hitchhiker. Not this time. And I'm not one of the people looking for you. Okay I was kind of looking for you. But not for anything bad."

Jarod looked at him. To his confusion, he was taking one of his shoes off.

"Well Christopher, you found me."

"That I did." He rolled down the window and tossed the removed shoe out the window. "But call me Chris. It fits more than the formal name does."

"Okay Chris." Jarod nodded. He kept one eye on the road, but found a lot of his attention focused on the mysterious hitchhiker. Several questions battled for priority in his head. "Why did you throw your shoe out the window?"

"To make people wonder why there were lone shoes lying on the side of the road." Chris said, grinning.

"I've wondered that." Jarod admitted. "It's because of you?"

"Yep. All part of the mystery."

Huh. "Okay. Is Chris your real name?"

"As real as any name I've had. I honestly don't remember if I've ever had another. I've been Chris for so long."

"Why were you looking for me?"

"Well, for two reasons. One, you're one of mine, and two, you're becoming a legend in your own right."

"One of yours? Who are you?"

Chris grinned again. "I'm the open road Jarod. I'm the urge people have to just get in their cars, or hop a train, or stick out their thumb, and see what's over the next hill. I leave shoes by the side of the road, leave mysterious messages. I've been a hitchhiker, a trucker, a student, a hobo, and a mountain man. And sometimes I'm the reason people say you shouldn't hitchhike, or pick up hitchhikers. I'm an abstract ideal."

It was possible, Jarod supposed, that the boy was insane. But he didn't come across that way. "Sometimes you're.."

"The cautionary tale. The crazy hitch hiker or trucker or what have you. Not very often but if there were no risk then the adventure would be less appealing. Nightmares are just as important as good dreams. There has to be some kind of balance."

"Are you the one that left the boyfriend swinging over the car, scraping against the roof?" Jarod asked him. He was already working on a way of finding out if Chris had indeed hurt people, and what to do about it.

"Oh, no. That's the Hookman. I think he's my cousin. Or possibly little brother. He's a folk hero. Or villain rather. An urban Legend. Sort of like me."

"You're an anthropomorphic personification of an abstract ideal." Jarod said aloud, trying out the concept. "Who's Scarlett?"

Chris laughed. "Very good! That was my journal you found. Scarlett is...I guess the closest I could think of is my daughter. She came from the wanderlust of me, and the search for identity and/or love in a woman I traveled with for a long time."

Jarod mused over all this for a few miles. "Are there other personifications?"

"Hundreds. Thousands really. Some of them do better than others. The younger ones are doing well of course. Internet Meme and Blackberry for instance. Blackberry tried to take over once, but that's been resolved. Us older ones are having a bit of an identity crisis. Uncle Sam in particular. But he, like me, is a Dream. Dreams tend to last longer than Gods because we're more adaptable. We can change with the changing times, and yet still remain true to ourselves. People stop believing Gods, but they never stop believing in freedom. And there's always gonna be restless souls out there who just need to keep moving, see what they can find."

"Gods?" Jarod raised one eyebrow.

"Odin, Eostre, Bast, Kali, the whole gang. They're all still around. You've probably met some of them. No wait, I know you did. You did a stint as a coroner in Illinois not too long ago didn't you."

Jarod nodded. He'd discovered that someone had been robbing graves. He'd taken on the role of a mortician's apprentice in Cairo in order to stop them. "Ibis and Jaquell."

"Ibis and Jackal, yep. Egyptian Gods."

Jarod, true to form, was catching on quick. "And the cat was Bast?"

"That's her. Ibis was the one who tipped me off to you."

"What about me?"

"They're telling tales of you Jarod. That's why I came looking for you. The people you've helped have told others. You're fast on the way to becoming a folk hero."

"What does that mean? Will I stop being human?"

"Nah. What it means is that even after you're gone, as long as the stories get told, there'll be a version of you, helping people out. The mortal Johnny Appleseed died a long time ago, but there's still people who tell his story. So he's still out there. Not a lot of people, so he doesn't do much, but he's there."

After another few miles Chris broke the silence. "I have to say, you're taking this awfully well."

"My half brother can talk to ghosts."

"Oh."

The End?