Hitched with a driver hauling a load of diapers to Memphis. He smelled like bubblegum and coffee. I met him at a truck stop outside Baltimore. He asked me if I was headed somewhere in particular. I said, Anywhere you can name.

He set me up in the passenger seat and we headed out. The city flickered and died. I picked my fingernails with my knife. He listened to the Spanish radio station until it hissed out.

After an hour he asked, How long you been doing this for.

I said, I was about to ask you the same.

Too long, he said.

Not for much longer, I said.

Here’s hoping, he said. He opened the center console and pulled out a pre-wrapped baloney sandwich and tipped it at me.

I killed him just past Charlestown.

I ate his baloney sandwich and watched him bleed out over the console. He was still trying to talk but no words were coming. He spoke in little wisps. I pinched his nose and held it shut until he stopped talking.

When I was done eating I unlatched the keyring from his belt and unlocked the trailer. I slashed open a crate of diapers and took a couple packs to the front and mopped up the blood. Tossed them as I was driving. I dropped him in a pine grove off the highway where only the deer watched me. You could see headlights passing in the distance and hear the needles shake.

Ditched the truck at a loading dock in Knoxville. The city smelled like coal smoke and river water. Crossed town and got in with a produce-hauler hopped up on crank when I spotted him for a pack of jerky. He told me he was destined for three different cities. I told him any of them were fine.

I stabbed him in the lung. I watched him die. It took a long time. Put his body in a dumpster beside a construction site. He stained the broken drywall black. From the top of the dumpster he looked like a tarp.

I killed another in Cheyenne and another in Pittsburgh and another in Fort Collins and another in El Paso and another and another and another.

The last one I killed asked me, Who are you.

I thought about that as he twitched and cried. He said something about his mother. I finished a cherry soda he had been drinking.

I said, I guess I could be just about anyone.