Dangerous Days of Daniel X

Chapter 8

I LEFT PORTLAND, heading south on a Greyhound bus. Truthfully, I prefer the train, but Amtrak clerks usually ask questions if you look like you’re a minor, which I do, which I am.

I tend to try to stay as paranoid as I can, and that’s because I’m always being followed. I don’t like the idea of my name, or even an alias, floating around in somebody’s database. In fact, right now I’m afraid I’m being followed. But I try not to think about it too much. Too depressing and disturbing.

On the positive side, the bus was only half full-believe me, few things in life are worse than a lengthy ride on a crowded bus, except maybe confronting an alien with an appetite-but even so, I only took the Greyhound as far south as Grants Pass, a town thirty miles north of the California border.

I could have gone all the way to LA, my next destination-Number 6’s home base-but fourteen hours riding the dog is my personal limit.

I laid out my Rand McNally in the back of a McDonald’s across from the bus station. I wanted to see if there was a way to Southern California besides Interstate 5 so that I could be a little more off the beaten path. Right away I spotted another, skinnier road, 199, heading for the California coast. The fact that I’d never seen the Pacific before settled it for me.

Oregon ’s rain seemed to instantly turn to Northern California fog as I put the McDonald’s behind me and stuck out my thumb.

I don’t recommend hitching, by the way. Do not. There are some pretty sick wack-a-doos out there. If I hadn’t had the means to protect myself and the urgent need to cover my tracks, I would have stayed on the bus.

But you come across some good people on the road too. I actually caught my first lift from a couple of them, two nuns heading for a retreat house in Kerby. They were wearing habits, and I thought they would give me a sermon or something, but all we did was talk about the Mariners baseball team and its slim-to-none chances of making the AL wild card. Even better, they didn’t ask me where I was going, so I didn’t have to lie to them.

“God bless you,” they said as they let me off. How nice was that? Maybe they had a sixth sense that I was about to need some extra blessings.