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I'm walking north from Scipio. It's about 2-ish, 2:15? I don't have a watch, but I think that's about right. The sun shines light on me and the land around me. There are a couple suggestions of clouds near the horizon. I-15 pushes its way in a long drawn-out curve to the right, the service road panting alongside it.

I'm going north, but I'm on the southbound side. Makes things easier for me. Lets me see 'em coming.

It's not so bad. High traffic season, Christmas or Thanksgiving, or the weekend before spring break, and this'd be a lot more difficult for me. As it stands right now, I've gotta stay on my toes, but it's rare that I have to exert myself more than once every couple minutes--a blessing.

The dirt here is grayish, though its redder on some of the nearby hills. Those hills are to my right--the land to my left stretches out flat for miles until it folds itself upward into the Tushar Mountains.

The sun glints off of a car heading towards me--I've got time; it's still a couple of miles away. Maybe a mile beyond that, another car, and beyond that, another. Sagebrush stipples the plain to my left, along with a couple junipers. I've been hoping to see pronghorn, but that's a pipe dream. Only animal life I've seen is cattle, when I passed by a ranch a little bit ago.

The builders flattened out an area wider than I-15 itself--there's about a foot of pale, unvegetated dirt extending to either side of the road. Bits of glass throw their light at me from it. We'll get acquainted soon enough.

The car's nearing, I can't tell what kind. My vision's bad, and anyway, I was never that good with cars. I don't get to see their expressions change when they catch sight of me--they're too far off, and like I said my eyesight isn't that good. It's a funny look--hard eyes, upper lip pulled back into a snarl, leaning forward, like they're gonna pounce, tear me limb from limb. They're in cars, though, so they try to kill me with those.

This first one's here, by the way. Speeding up, switching lanes, careening right at me. The trick is to wait until the last second--they'll keep driving once they pass me. Whatever gets ahold of them when they see me leaves when they break eye contact.

The driver has on a polo shirt and a patchy beard. His windows are down, blasting Lil Wayne. I hear it from the strip of dirt to the right of the I-15, pebbles and glass digging into my forearms.

....crazy sorta kinda / Woman of my dreams, I don't sleep so I can't find her....

I hear him swerve back into the center of the road, slow down to a more reasonable speed.

A barbed wire fence divides me from the service road, crossing itself into a grid. It's short, maybe five feet tall. It's not for me. I could jump it if I wanted to.

The pronghorn can't jump it. Usually, they'll pace for miles along the fences, looking for a place the barbed wire is high enough they can risk squeezing themselves under. They die of frostbite and infection.

The second car--an SUV--passes me, children's faces pressed up against the windows, canines bared.

There's nothing unnatural going on here, by the way. I'm just so ugly that people decide to take matters into their own hands.

I scrape my soles against the rumble strip. It's a nice feeling, chunkchunkchunkchunk. I heard they have musical rumble strips--like they play a song when you drive over them--in Japan. The hell are they doing over there?

Third car's almost here. It's low-slung, beat up. A cloud of vape smoke pushes its way out of the driver's side window, losing cohesion almost immediately. It's well past noon, but the headlights are still on. Embarrassing. I don't get a good look at the driver, but I do notice a coexist bumper sticker when I look back.

Fifty yards or so on, when I reach the place the car used to be, I can smell the smoke, but couldn't for the life of me tell you what it smells like.




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