Chapter 18: Rest Stop
The miles had bled into one another, a hypnotic smear of grey highway, rhythmic thumps over expansion joints, and the monotonous sigh of the heater. Travis drove through the night and late into the next day, his eyes gritty, the coffee and adrenaline long since metabolized into a dull, stubborn ache behind his temples. The world outside the windows flattened into anonymous fields and skeletal trees.
A rest stop appeared like a mirage: a low, brown building flanked by rows of empty semi-trucks, their trailers hulking and silent. The sign promised clean facilities and vending machines. Travis’s bladder agreed vehemently.
He guided the loaded station wagon off the highway, the tires crunching over gravel and discarded cigarette butts. The parking lot was a graveyard of faded asphalt and wind-blown trash. He pulled up near the building, but didn’t shut the engine off. The silence when he did was always too loud, too final.
“Bathroom run,” Travis said, his voice raspy from disuse. He reached for the half-empty water bottle in the cup holder.
A small head poked out from his shirt pocket. Mavis looked wrung out, his hair matted, eyes squinting against the dull daylight. “The great outdoors,” he muttered, his voice thin. “Smells like diesel and despair.”
“Can you hold it? Or do you need…” Travis gestured vaguely.
Mavis shuddered. “A public human bathroom? I’d rather evaporate. I’ll wait. Just… be fast. This place feels like it’s watching.”
Travis nodded. He got out, the cold air a slap. He locking the doors with a soft click from the fob in his pocket. The walk to the men’s room was short. The interior was exactly as expected: fluorescent lights buzzing over cracked tiles, the sharp scent of industrial cleaner failing to mask a deeper, uric pungency. He used the urinal, washed his hands with liquid soap that smelled like fake cherries, and refilled the water bottle at the tepid tap. His reflection in the metal mirror above the sink was ghastly—pale skin, dark circles, hair a wild nest. A fugitive’s face.
He hurried back out, scanning the lot. Nothing moved except a plastic bag tumbling in the wind. He slid back into the driver’s seat, the relative warmth of the car a relief.
“All clear?” Mavis asked from the pocket.
“All clear.” Travis put the car in drive and navigated slowly to the very back corner of the lot, as far from the building and the highway’s sightline as possible. He parked sideways, the driver’s side facing a ragged line of leafless shrubs, the passenger side looking out over an empty expanse of cracked asphalt towards the silent trucks. It was as hidden as they could get.
He shut off the engine. The quiet rushed in, broken only by the distant whine of a semi accelerating onto the highway.
Exhaustion, held at bay by motion, now flooded him. It was a physical weight, pressing him into the worn cloth seat.
“We need to sleep,” he said. “A few hours. I can’t drive like this.”
Mavis didn’t argue. He just nodded, a tiny movement against Travis’s chest.
Travis leaned over, wrestled with the seat’s recline lever, and pushed the back all the way down until it was nearly horizontal. He reached into the back, his body twisting painfully, and dragged a duffel bag closer, unzipping it to pull out a thick, fleece blanket. It smelled faintly of his apartment, of lavender and dust. He spread it over himself, tucking it around his sides.
In the new semi-darkness, Mavis clambered out of the pocket. He moved up Travis’s chest, his tiny hands finding purchase in the fabric of the flannel shirt, and settled into the hollow of Travis’s throat, just inside the open collar. It was a spot he’d claimed on lazy weekend mornings, a warm nook for naps. Travis instinctively brought his right hand up, his fingers curling loosely over his own collarbone, his palm creating a protective dome over Mavis’s small form.
The car was cold away from the vents. Travis used his left hand to crank the driver’s window open a bare inch, then the passenger window opposite. Just enough for air, not enough for a hand to reach in. The cross-breeze was icy, but it stopped the windows from fogging completely. It made them less visible.
Beneath the blanket, in the cave of their making, Travis’s thumb began to move. Almost unconsciously, a slow, gentle stroke along the line of Mavis’s back. He could feel every minute ridge of his spine, the delicate structure of him through the thin cotton of his own shirt.
Mavis let out a soft sigh, a sound of profound weariness. He shifted, pressing closer. Then Travis felt it—the faintest, dry whisper of a touch on his skin, just above his sternum. A tiny, deliberate press of lips. It wasn’t playful or teasing. It was an anchor. A silent thank you, or a plea, or a simple affirmation of here, still here.
Travis’s breath hitched. His thumb stilled for a moment, then resumed its rhythm, a little softer, a little more deliberate.
They lay like that as the grey afternoon light began to bruise into evening. The wind hissed through the window cracks. A distant door slammed. Traffic was a perpetual, whispering river in the background.
“Travis?” Mavis’s voice was muffled by fabric and closeness.
“Yeah?”
“What if Portland is just another wall?”
The question hung in the air, too big for the cramped car. Travis thought of Eli’s breathless voice on the phone. I thought I was going crazy alone.
“Then at least there’ll be two of us listening at it,” Travis whispered back.
Mavis was quiet for a long time. Travis thought he’d fallen asleep. Then, so quietly Travis almost felt it more than heard it: “I’m scared of the van.”
Travis’s hand curled tighter, a gentle cage. “Me too.”
“But your thumb feels nice.”
Travis closed his eyes. The fear was a cold knot in his stomach, the uncertainty a void ahead of them. But here, under a fleece blanket in a darkening parking lot, with a five-inch-tall heart beating against his own, there was this. A point of contact. A shared rhythm. A thumb on a back. A kiss on the collarbone.
It wasn’t safety. But it was a reason to keep driving.
He let the rhythm of his own breathing, the rise and fall of his chest beneath Mavis, become a lullaby. The last thing he was aware of, before sleep dragged him under, was the tiny, steady weight in the hollow of his throat, and the absolute certainty that he would die before letting the white van take it away.
The last thing he was aware of, before sleep dragged him under, was the tiny, steady weight in the hollow of his throat, and the absolute certainty that he would die before letting the white van take it away.
Just before dusk, Mavis roused bleary eyed. It had been 4 hours since they parked; not nearly enough sleep. He glanced up at the underside of Travis’s jaw, watching the throat bob every so often. Good, he was still asleep.
The man’s hand still rested over him, a warm, weighted blanket that made him feel so much safer than the situation would warrant otherwise. The deep, slow breaths vibrated through Travis’s chest, a rhythm of utter exhaustion. Mavis didn’t move. He just watched the slight stubble shadow along the jawline, the relaxed set of the mouth that had been a tight line for days.
Outside, the world had shifted from grey to deep indigo. The lot’s single security light sputtered on with a sickly yellow buzz, casting long, distorted shadows from the grimy trash cans. A new sound infiltrated the cross-breeze from the cracked windows: not just highway whine, but the low, grumbling idle of a heavy engine.
It was close.
Mavis went rigid. He slowly, slowly pivoted his head within the cup of Travis’s hand, just enough to peer through the windshield towards the entrance lane.
A vehicle was rolling slowly past the main building. Its shape was blunt, boxy. Its color was impossible to determine in the failing light, but it wasn’t a semi.
“Travis,” Mavis whispered, too soft. He pushed his back against the restraining hand. “Travis.”
The grumble deepened as the vehicle turned, its headlights sweeping across the far row of trucks. The beams didn’t reach them, not yet. But it was cruising. Searching.
“Travis, wake up.” The whisper was a sharp scrape now. Mavis pinched the skin of Travis’s neck, a tiny, desperate tweak.
Travis snorted, a jarring inhalation. His body tensed beneath the blanket. His hand clenched instinctively around Mavis before his eyes even opened. “Wha—?”
“Car,” Mavis hissed, shrinking down. “Moving slow. By the trucks.”
All the exhausted softness evaporated from Travis’s face. It was like watching concrete set. His eyes, wide and dark in the gloom, flicked to the rearview mirror. He didn’t lift his head. He just shifted his gaze, his breath now shallow and silent.
The grumbling engine grew slightly louder. The headlights swung again, painting the side of a blue trailer twenty yards away. The vehicle came into view as it cleared the trailer’s bulk.
A panel van. A dirty white one.
A jolt, pure and electric, shot through Travis. Every muscle coiled. His hand was a vice over Mavis.
The van crept forward. It was two lanes over. The driver’s side window was tinted black, a void. It slowed almost to a stop opposite their shrub-line.
“Don’t move,” Travis breathed, the words barely audible. “Don’t. Move.”
They were statues under a fleece blanket. Travis’s heart was a frantic hammer against Mavis’s side. The van idled. A minute passed. It felt like a decade, measured in thunderous heartbeats.
Then, a cigarette butt, glowing red, arced out from the driver’s window. It hit the asphalt in a tiny shower of sparks.
The van’s engine revved, a bored, impatient sound. It pulled forward, rolling past their hideout without its lights ever touching the station wagon. It continued to the far end of the lot, turned around, and crunched back towards the highway entrance ramp. The sound of its engine faded, swallowed by the larger river of traffic.
The tension didn’t break. It crystallized.
“Was it them?” Mavis’s voice was paper-thin.
“Could have been anybody,” Travis said, but the statement was hollow. He remembered Eli’s message: They use a white van. No markings. His own breath was coming too fast. “Could have been.”
He finally lifted his head an inch, scanning the now-empty lane. The sky was almost full dark. The rest stop felt exponentially more exposed, a lit stage.
“We have to go. Now.” He swung the seat back upright with a ragged jerk. The blanket pooled in his lap. He stuffed it aside, key already in the ignition.
“We need a plan, Travis. We can’t just drive forever.” Mavis scrambled back into the shirt pocket, holding onto the edge as the car came to life.
“The plan is not here.” The engine turned over. He didn’t turn on the headlights. He let the van’s taillights disappear into the traffic stream before he put the car in gear and rolled forward, using the dim parking lights to navigate toward the exit.
“We need to contact Eli. Properly.” Mavis was trying to sound firm, but it wavered. “We need an actual destination, not just a city.”
“I know.” Travis’s knuckles were white on the wheel. He merged onto the highway, joining the flow. The vast, anonymous darkness was somehow less terrifying than that lit patch of cracked asphalt had become. “Next town with a library. First thing when it opens. We find a computer, we message him, we get an address.”
“And until then?”
“Until then we drive.” Travis reached down, not taking his eyes off the road, and fumbled for the bag of peanuts. He poured a few into his cupped hand and held it steady near the pocket. “Eat. Try to sleep more.”
Mavis took a nut, holding it between his hands. He didn’t eat it. He just looked at it, then out at the speeding darkness. “I’m not sure I can.”
“Yeah,” Travis said. The word was a full sentence. He put the peanuts in the console, his hand returning to the wheel. The heat from the vents was suddenly stifling. He turned it off.
The silence between them now was different. It was charged with the phantom image of a white shape moving through the dusk. It was filled with the unspoken question of whether that cigarette toss was casual or a signal. The simple, profound safety of the sleeping hand was gone, replaced by a vigilance that hummed in the very air of the car.
Mavis finally took a small bite. The crunch was absurdly loud. “Your heart’s still going bananas.”
“It’ll do that,” Travis said. He focused on the dotted lines rushing under the hood, each one a tiny measure of distance from the van, from Don, from the hole in the wall that was no longer home. The road was the only plan they had.
The road was the only plan they had.
It stretched ahead, a black tape dissolving into nothing, and the station wagon ate it one monotonous, vibrating mile at a time. Travis’s eyes burned. The adrenaline spike from the white van had degraded into a gritty, sustained anxiety that made his back teeth ache. Every set of headlights in the rearview was a potential threat, every slowdown in traffic a possible trap.
“My legs are cramping,” Mavis murmured from the pocket after an hour of silence. He shifted uncomfortably. “And it’s drafty. This shirt fabric is too thin.”
Travis blinked, forcing focus. He glanced down. Mavis was a small, hunched silhouette. The car interior was indeed cooling rapidly without the heater, a metal box hurtling through the Pacific Northwest night. The familiar, close warmth of the wall was a universe away.
“I can turn the heat back on,” Travis said, his voice rough.
“It dries my eyes out. Makes my skin itch.” Mavis squirmed again, a tiny, restless motion. “It’s just… all this open space. I feel exposed, even in here.”
Travis understood. The pocket was a flap of cloth, open to the vastness of the car, which was itself a speck in the swallowing dark. There was no pressure, no embrace. Just air and fear.
Mavis was quiet for another few minutes. Then, his voice was hesitant, barely above the road noise. “Travis?”
“Yeah.”
“Can I… would it be okay if I rested in your boxers for a while?” The words came out in a rush. “Not to do anything. I don’t mean it like that. It’s just… closer. Warmer. It smells like you. It smells like home. Somewhere familiar.”
Travis’s grip on the wheel tightened briefly, then relaxed. The request wasn’t sexual. It was elemental. It was a creature made for dark, enclosed spaces, seeking the most basic comfort available: shelter, warmth, the scent of its ally. The last scraps of familiar.
“Yeah,” Travis said, his throat tight. “Of course. Just… hang on.”
He waited for a stretch of relatively straight, empty highway. He loosened his seatbelt just enough to create some slack, then carefully unbuttoned the top button of his jeans and tugged the waistband of his boxer-briefs out. The cold air hit his stomach.
“Okay. Go slow.”
Mavis didn’t need telling twice. He clambered out of the shirt pocket, a tiny dark shape in the dashboard glow. He moved with deliberate care, navigating the terrain of worn flannel and the belt buckle, then slipped silently over the elastic band and down into the enclosed space. He settled gently against Travis’s lower abdomen, curling into the warmth and the soft cotton.
Travis let the waistband snap back, sealing him in. He re-adjusted his seatbelt, his movements slow and precise.
The difference was immediate. Mavis let out a long, shuddering sigh Travis felt in his very core. The tiny, tense body unclenched, melting against him. It was a profound relief, transmitted directly through skin.
“Okay?” Travis asked, his voice softer now.
“Yeah,” came the muffled reply, already drowsy. “Thanks. This is… better.”
Travis drove. The heat of Mavis’s body was a focused point of live warmth, a small sun burning against him. It was an intimacy that bypassed everything else—the fear, the chase, the vast, uncaring night. It was simple animal comfort. It was trust made physical.
His left hand dropped from the wheel, just for a moment, and rested flat against the denim over where Mavis lay. A layer of fabric between his palm and the small life within. He could feel the slight rise and fall of Mavis’s breathing, a rhythm syncing slowly with his own.
The highway unspooled. The car felt less like a freezing metal shell and more like a moving sanctuary. For the first time since they’d fled, the silence between them wasn’t strained or watchful. It was thick with a shared, exhausted peace.
Travis kept his hand there, a grounded weight, as he guided them through the dark. The road was still the only plan. But now, it felt less like a flail into the void and more like a path they were carrying together, one warm, secret breath at a time.
But now, it felt less like a flail into the void and more like a path they were carrying together, one warm, secret breath at a time.
Travis drove until the sky began to lighten from black to bruised purple, his eyes sandpaper-dry, the coffee long gone. He exited the highway at random, following signs for a town called Silver Creek, its name promising a quiet normalcy he desperately needed. The streets were empty, lined with closed antique stores and a single diner with a glowing pink sign. He circled, aimless and weary, until he found it: a low, brick building with ‘Public Library’ carved in concrete above the doors. Its parking lot was empty, swept clean.
As promised, the morning found them in the library parking lot of a quiet town. A pale, watery sun was just clearing the roof of the building, doing little to melt the frost on the grass. Travis killed the engine in a far corner, the silence a physical relief after hours of road noise. He sat for a moment, listening to the tick of the cooling metal, feeling the profound, warm weight asleep against his skin.
He moved with extreme care. Unbuckling the seatbelt was a slow, silent ritual. He glanced around the lot—still empty—then looked down at his jeans. “Mavis,” he whispered, his voice husky. “We’re stopped. You need to stay put, okay? I’m going to get us ready.”
A soft, muffled grumble was his only reply. Travis kept Mavis in his boxers. He just did his jeans and belt back up, and made sure his friend wasn’t going to fall out. He tugged the hem of his t-shirt down over the waistband, then pulled his flannel shirt closed over that, buttoning it. He moved deliberately, checking the lay of the fabric with his palms. It created a gentle, secure pouch. It felt bizarre, incredibly intimate, and utterly necessary.
He caught his own reflection in the rearview mirror—a man straightening his clothes with ceremonial slowness in a cold car. He looked exhausted, secretive, and protective all at once.
“Alright,” he said, to himself more than anyone. He grabbed the nearly empty water bottle and took a long swallow, the liquid shockingly cold. He then reached into the back for his backpack, pulling out a cleanish grey hoodie and a beanie. He pulled the hat on, taming his wild hair, and shrugged into the hoodie over the flannel. The layers added bulk, obscuring the careful architecture beneath.
A tiny shift occurred against his stomach. “Are we a library now?” Mavis’s voice was thick with sleep, a fuzzy vibration against Travis’s skin.
“We are. Gotta find a computer. Contact Eli.”
“Is it safe?”
“Safer than a rest stop,” Travis said, but the memory of the white van idled in his mind like a ghost. He scanned the lot again. A green sedan pulled in and parked near the door. An older woman got out, carrying a tote bag full of books. The mundane nature of it was comforting. “We’ll be quick. You just… be still.”
“I’m a fossil in sedimentary rock,” Mavis mumbled, settling again. “A very warm, sleepy fossil.”
Travis allowed himself a faint, breathless chuckle. He shouldered his backpack, took one more assessing look around, and opened the car door.
The cold morning air sliced through his layers, but the pocket of warmth at his core held firm. He walked across the asphalt, his gait slightly stiff, unconsciously protective. His left hand stayed pressed against his lower abdomen, a casual-looking pose that kept the layers snug. He could feel every minute shift, every breath Mavis took.
He pushed through the library’s heavy doors into a blast of overly warm, book-scented air. The lobby was quiet, the only sounds the hum of fluorescent lights and the gentle thwap-thwap of a librarian stamping due dates at a distant desk. A bank of public computer terminals sat against a side wall, two of them occupied by teenagers clicking rapidly.
Travis nodded at the librarian, who gave him a disinterested smile, and made his way to an open terminal in the corner. He slid into the hard plastic chair, his back to the room. He set his backpack on the floor between his feet, a barrier.
He woke the monitor and logged into the guest session. His fingers hovered over the keyboard. The forum. He hadn’t visited it since his initial post, the one that started the noise. Taking a steadying breath, he navigated there, the process feeling unbearably loud. He clicked the message icon. Wallflower23. Eli.
He typed, his movements efficient. In Silver Creek. At the library. Need a place. Today.
He hit send. The message vanished into the ether. Now, the wait. He stared at the screen, the public browser feeling like a spotlight on his back. He opened a new tab and pulled up a map of the area, clicking aimlessly, trying to look like any other patron killing time.
“My leg’s asleep,” came a tiny, petulant voice from beneath his hoodie.
Travis dropped his right hand into his lap, pressing gently against the fabric. “Shhh. Five minutes.”
“It tingles. It’s like angry bees.”
“Imagine quiet bees.”
He felt Mavis stretch, a minute disturbance against his nerves. He kept his eyes on the map, zooming in and out on unfamiliar streets. Two minutes passed. Five. The librarian’s stamp continued its rhythmic work.
A soft ping from the computer. A reply notification appeared in the corner of the forum screen. Travis’s heart stuttered. He clicked it.
Silver Creek? You made good time. There’s an old motor lodge on the east edge of town, called the Pine Bough. Rooms open to the parking lot. Get room 14. I’ve pre-paid for three nights under the name “Fisher.” Key will be in the lockbox, code 0913. Do not call the office. Go straight there. I’ll come tonight after dark.
Relief, sharp and giddy, washed through Travis so violently he felt light-headed. An address. A plan. A bed that wasn’t a car seat. He quickly typed Thank you, signed out of the forum, and cleared the browser history.
He stood up, his legs unsteady. The warmth at his core shifted again.
“Well?” Mavis whispered.
“We have a room,” Travis breathed, hefting his backpack. He walked out of the library with more purpose than he’d had in days, the morning sun feeling less watery, more like actual light. The car awaited, a filthy, packed relic in the clean lot. For the first time, it looked less like a prison and more like a conveyance. It had a destination.
He drove east, following the map on his phone. The Pine Bough Motor Lodge was a long, single-story L of beige stucco and dark green doors, the parking lot potholed but empty. Room 14 was around back, door painted the same peeling green as the others. A small, black lockbox was bolted to the wall beside it.
Travis punched in the code. The box clicked open. Inside, a single brass key lay on a bed of dust.
He unlocked the door and pushed it open. The room was dim, smelling of bleach and old carpet. Two double beds with brown spreads, a dark wood table, a cathode-ray tube television on a squat dresser. It was bleak, anonymous, and perfect.
He locked the door behind him, engaged the chain, and leaned against the cool wood. Safe. For now.
“Okay,” he said, his voice echoing slightly in the empty room. “Coast is clear.”
He unbuttoned his jeans with trembling fingers, opened the waistband, and created an opening. A moment later, Mavis climbed carefully out, gripping Travis’s shirt for support. He dropped onto the nearest bedspread, landing in a puff of dust motes caught in a sunbeam from the window.
Mavis stretched his arms over his head, his back arching, tiny joints popping. He blinked up at the water-stained ceiling, then at Travis, who was staring at the closed door, listening to the silence of a space that was, for three nights, theirs.
“Well,” Mavis said, brushing dust from his sleeves. “It’s no Ambassador Hotel.”
Travis finally looked at him, at his small, rumpled friend standing knee-deep in coarse brown fabric. A laugh bubbled up from somewhere deep, ragged and real. It filled the sterile room.
“No,” Travis agreed, sliding down the door to sit on the floor, the weight of the journey crashing over him. “It’s better.”