“Are you all right?” Jude asked, searching Al’s face. “Are we not supposed to touch? I didn’t really think about that. I hope I didn’t like, poison you or something.”
Poison, Al thought, would be a lot less overwhelming than this.
“I am fine, Jude, thank you very much please for asking,” he lied, voice cracking.
Jude narrowed his eyes like he wasn’t convinced. “I don’t know if I believe you,” he said, “but I don’t have time to unpack what’s going on right now, because if I’m going to help you, we have to get the hell out of here.”
It took Al a moment to process this. He shook his head, confused, and asked, “What? Why?”
“Because you blasted a giant crater into the earth with a flaming ball of metal, and there is no way that went unnoticed. Any minute now someone with way more authority than me is gonna show up, and I can’t promise that they won’t abduct you and keep you locked away to perform experiments on you so they can see what makes you tick.”
“Why would they do this?” Al asked, alarmed.
“Because you’re something they’ve never seen before, and humans are curious creatures. Sometimes that curiosity can get a bit unethical, especially when it’s something we’ve never dealt with before.”
“I do not like that.”
“Me either.”
“What do you propose we do?”
Jude shrugged, and a lovely, yet somewhat incredulous, smile dimpled his cheeks. “Come with me,” he said. “I’ll be your getaway driver.”
3
Jude
Jude had lost his entire goddamn mind.
That was the only conclusion. He was having some sort of psychotic break, and eventually he was going to come to in a hospital, strapped down to a bed in an assless, unflattering hospital gown with a shrink standing over him saying they found him wandering the desert ranting and raving about UFO crashes, aliens with fire extinguishers, and space Ubers. It was unfortunate, but the other explanation was that this was all really happening to him—like, in real life, right then, no joke really happening to him—and that simply could not be.
Except, as far as he could tell, it reallywashappening. It had been less than an hour and his life had suddenly become anX-Filesepisode, and you know what? Whatever. Sure, Judecouldfreak out if he wanted to. He was perfectly within his rights to scream and cry and call the cops, but first of all, he wasn’t a narc, and second of all, in his experience, just accepting that things were happening wassomuch easier than trying to fight them. Path of least resistance was Jude’s motto. Had he just offered to give asylum to an alien who was likely going to be pursued by Homeland Security the moment his totaled spacecraft was discovered? Yup, he sure had, because that was the sharp turn his night had taken, and he was simply along for the ride.
Distantly, he was aware that his choices could prove complicated down the line, but Jude preferred to live in the moment, because thinking about the consequences of his actions was too stressful, and he did not have the mental wherewithal for any of that.
“Getaway driver?” Al asked.
“Yeah, we have to get as far away from the crash site as possible,” Jude explained. “And soon. We gotta haul ass if we want to avoid getting caught.”
“Haul ass?” Al cocked his head. He looked so earnest with his big, inquisitive eyes that Jude couldn’t help but chuckle. Al was kind of cute. Like, in an alien way.
“It means we need to move fast,” he explained. “My car is close. I’ll take you to my place to hide out for a while.”
“Okay, I think I agree with this plan…” Al scrunched his forehead in thought. “But what occurs after you have me hide? I cannot hide forever.”
Jude waved a dismissive hand. “That’s a problem for later us. Now, are you coming or not?”
Al hesitated. He glanced over his shoulder at his ship, frowning. “What will the humans with more authority than you do to my flying movement box?”
“Spaceship,” Jude corrected automatically.
“Ah, yes, spaceship. What will they do to my spaceship?”
“Well, I guess that depends on which conspiracy theories are true. My bet, though, is that they’ll take it somewhere secret, strip it bare, and steal your weird alien technology while lying to the public about the existence of extraterrestrials. But also I once got super drunk and spent like, five straight hours on the UFO subreddit, so that probably affects my opinion.” Al stared blankly at Jude. Jude cleared his throat and said, “Never mind. The point is, if you have anything in there that you don’t want stolen and experimented on, I’d grab it now, ’cause I can’t guarantee what’ll happen to it once we bounce.”
“Oh.” Al’s shoulders slumped as he cast his gaze at his ship once more, and a wave of guilt washed over Jude, as if he could do anything about it. But what could he do? It wasn’t like he could stand in front of the ship like some hippie environmentalist chaining themselves to a tree that was about to get bulldozed. The Men in Black would show up, he’d tell them, “No, you can’t take this. It’s my new alien friend’s car,” and they’d shrug and make him disappear.
His guilt was powerful, though it wasn’t powerful enough to override common sense—he wasnotgoing tolet himself become a missing persons case—but still, Jude couldn’t help feeling bad for Al. His own car was more likely to wrap him around a light pole than get him from point A to point B, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t attached to it. It was a piece of shit, but it washispiece of shit, and by the looks of it, Al felt the same way about his ship.
