Note: "Albert Jethro" is a name I borrowed from 'JAG' specificially and uber-producer Donald Bellisario generally; DB uses the name (his father's) in just about all of his shows. And the origin of the dog's name... should be obvious. :)
The red-haired girl had faded from Larry's memory as fast as the car he rode in had blown past her, but she herself kept thinking about the dark sedan long after the red tailights had vanished.
She'd had the bad luck to become marooned on a stretch of highway that, apparently, saw little to no traffic. The sedan had been the only car to pass since the first glimmers of twilight had appeared on the horizon, and the only vehicle all day to go in the same direction as she. Now she was absolutely alone once again.
It was cold in the desert night, and her jacket was not made to counteract the pervading chill. She walked down the road in an effort to stay warm, arms crossed over her chest and hands tucked away. Her hair was short, brutally so, and it offered little protection either; her ears were freezing and so was her nose. At least the boots on her feet were warm, if not exactly in good condition.
She wondered how she'd gotten to this place in the middle of nowhere. It seemed that something momentous had happened - obviously, something had - but she couldn't remember what. The farthest back her memories stretched was afternoon, when she had suddenly found herself standing in the middle of the faded asphalt, facing west into the mountains. How she'd gotten there, why she'd come to that particular spot, where she'd been before, who she was, even - it was all a great gray sea of nebulous fog in her mind.
It was as though she had never existed until she blinked and saw the desert vista. She felt like a dreamer rudely awakened.
"At least a dreamer could get some sleep," she said aloud, shivering and tucking her arms against her more tightly still. Her voice was rusty and strange to her ears, her tongue thickened by half a day in the desert sun and no water. She was hungry, thirsty, and exhausted by hours of frantic worry and speculation - far too uncomfortable to consider sleeping.
She thought crossly of the sedan again. Would it have killed them to pull over and talk to her, at least? Hand her some water? She hadn't expected them to give her a ride, not exactly. She knew she didn't look innocent and harmless. Her olive-green jacket and pants were stained with a wide variety of substances, torn in places, patched in places. Her pale orange boots were badly scuffed. Everything she had on was filthy besides. And she was hitchhiking in the desert, miles from any semblance of civilization. She could not have looked more suspicious if she had tried.
"But I didn't try," she muttered. She kicked at the thin, rocky sand at her feet in frustration and hopelessness. "I don't even know who I am!"
Any sensible person would have found a place to curl up for the night, she thought, but she kept trudging towards her nameless destination, her unknown goal. West. That's where she'd been facing when she came to herself, and lacking better options, that's where she'd decided to go. She'd gone at least ten miles, all of it slow and painful - first sweating, now shivering. Was she always so tenacious? Had this persistence come to her through experience or innate nature? She had no way of knowing, and the uncertainty ate at her soul as she walked.
Lost in the desert in more ways than one, she thought morosely, shivering again.
She heard a noise behind her, low and far-off, and turned to see what else was stirring in the night desert. Two tiny flickers of light, hardly larger than the stars overhead but more steady, were slowly approaching.
She felt a surge of elation at her luck; another car!
It took forever for the distant car to reach her, but when it did, it slowed down to an idling stop in front of her - another piece of good luck. Her potential salvation was a truck, an ancient one, rusting and lacking important hardware like door handles and windshields. The engine coughed and sputtered, but it was running, and she decided not to worry about that yet. Inside was a driver and a large, panting hound dog that took up most of the seat.
The driver was as ancient as the truck; in place of rust he had a thinning fringe of yellow-white hair dusting his wrinkled sun-browned skull. He looked stringy and dried out, as though he too had wandered in the desert for endless times, but his eyes twinkled with compassion, and his expression was friendly as he called out, "Need a lift, miss?"
The dog belied the offer by growling loudly and showing the hint of fang below his lip.
She ignored the growling, although the dog made her nervous for some reason, and gave the driver the largest, most grateful smile she could manage. "Yes, thank you!"
"Have ta get in the back," the man said, jerking a thumb towards the truck bed. The back was full of junk - bits and pieces of furniture and machinery, empty gallon cans, plastic bags - but she nodded and jogged around to the gaping hole where the tailgate should have been. She scrambled up with alacrity and found a perch on one of the empty cans.
The driver put the truck into gear and it lurched forward, nearly unseating her. Over the rattle and bump of the truck, he called back, "Where you headin', honey?"
"West," she answered, deliberately vague, coughing to clear her throat.
"Here," the driver said, tossing her a half-empty clear plastic water bottle through the missing rear windshield. "You look like you need it more'n Thor."
Thor the hound dog lifted his head and growled at her anew. She stuck her tongue out at him before eagerly tipping the bottle to her mouth. The water was cool and wonderful, and if it was flavored with dog saliva, she couldn't tell.
"Albert Jethro," the driver said, introducing himself.
She expected to be at a loss, to be rude to this generous old man by having to refuse to tell him who she was. But her name popped onto her tongue as if summoned by the water: "I'm Rachel."
"Miss Rachel," Albert Jethro said, nodding formally. He did not seem nearly as astonished by the miracle of her name as she did. Rachel, she repeated in her mind. She was Rachel. It wasn't a guess, it wasn't a random selection - it was her name. She was almost dizzy with relief and delight at having snatched a part of her past from the nebulous gray.
"I am Rachel," she whispered to the stars. Only Thor noticed. He growled.