Badlands blog post

Driving through Montana, I read in the local news about a mysterious string of murders taking place recently. The authorities think they’ve been committed by the same two people, a couple, who are on the run after killing the woman’s father. Apparently they left town and things spiraled pretty fast – in the last few weeks, they’ve been fugitives across the Midwest, killing all witnesses as they go. It’s a lot of excitement in these little towns out here. I stopped for breakfast at a café this morning, and rumors were flying – one of the waitresses told me her brother had seen the fugitives last week, that they’d been right here in town. Someone else said they hadn’t even been in Montana. The newspapers don’t seem to know much more than the locals. Still, it’s interesting to be here right now – I get the impression that this part of the world doesn’t make national news very much. I wonder what would drive people to go on the run like this. It’s strange, driving out here, knowing that the other people out on the road could be anyone. I could be tracing the path of fugitives and never know it. The person I pass on the highway could be a famous author and I wouldn’t have any way of finding out. Any town I pass through could contain an old friend or a distant cousin or a grade school teacher I hadn’t talked to in years, and we’d just move in parallel.