Bill pointed to bright red lines on a GPS device mounted on the dashboard. “Looks like there’s an accident ahead. And look at the traffic. Miles of the shit. We’ll be here all day.”

The stranger shifted in his seat to get a better look at the GPS. “An accident? Traffic?”

And that’s when it came to him.

The stranger looked out the window at the clear blue vacation-billboard Northern California sky. It was quite beautiful, but no, it wouldn’t do. Not at all.

They were still a few miles from the accident, still speeding along at close to seventy, surrounded by other cars and trucks doing the same, when the fog started rolling in. Just a fine mist at first, but it quickly grew thicker and darker. Bill turned on his windshield wipers.

“And now this shit.”

“Are you going to slow down?”

“Not yet,” said Bill. “And don’t tell me my job or you can get out and walk.”

“Sorry. I was just asking.”

The stranger looked out the window. They were still surrounded by an armada of vehicles, visible through the fog by their headlights. He looked at the driver’s GPS device. It blinked once and went out.

“Oh dear,” he said.

Bill looked at it in frustration. “Now what the hell? I swear this thing is brand new.”

“Maybe if you hit it.”

Bill did, taking his eyes off the road for a few seconds with each whack. While Bill abused his device, the stranger’s feet touched something in the corner of the floor on his side of the cab.

“What’s that?”

“That’s my lunch. There’s sandwiches in there.”

“Can I have one?”

“What? No,” said Bill between slaps on the GPS. “I’m giving you a damned ride. Isn’t that enough?”

The stranger reached down and opened the cooler as Bill squinted like a mole through the windshield. He turned when he heard the stranger open the cooler.

“Goddammit. I said those are mine.”

“I don’t think you’ll need them.”

“What? Why?”

They heard the first cars plowing into the stalled traffic a few seconds before the big rig rear-ended a VW Bug that loomed out of the fog directly in front of them. Bill hit the brakes. The freight container behind them swung around, knocking cars and motorcycles off the road. But it was too late for the truck to stop. Too late for any of them, the stranger thought. He took a sandwich from the cooler and closed his eyes.

When they hit the back of the pileup, the stranger was jettisoned like a chicken from a cannon through the windshield and into the back of another big rig that had turned over directly in front of them. He hit hard enough that it should have killed him. But it didn’t.

And best of all, he never dropped his sandwich.