The Road Repeats

Mile marker 174. I remember it because the post was crooked, leaning about fifteen degrees to the right, and because there was a dead deer on the shoulder just past it. Big doe, freshly hit, blood still bright on the asphalt. I said something under my breath — sorry, probably, or Jesus — and kept driving.

I was hauling a load of refrigerated produce from Reno to Salt Lake. I-80 east, middle of Nevada, 2 AM. The kind of drive where the world shrinks to your headlight cone and the white noise of tires on pavement. I had a podcast playing, something about deep-sea creatures, but I'd stopped listening an hour ago. The desert was black and flat in every direction.

Mile marker 175. 176. 177.

I reached for my coffee. It was cold. I'd finished the hot stuff around Lovelock and hadn't stopped to refuel. The next truck stop was Battle Mountain, maybe forty minutes out.

Mile marker 178. 179.

Then 174 again.

The crooked post. Fifteen degrees to the right. And the deer — the same deer, same position, same bright blood. I felt a cold little click in my chest, the feeling you get when you miss a step on the stairs.

I checked my odometer. It had been climbing steadily. I checked my GPS. It showed me on I-80, east of Imlay, exactly where I should be. The blue dot was moving. The ETA was updating. Everything was normal except the mile marker I'd already passed.

I kept driving. What else do you do? You drive.

175. 176. 177. 178. 179.

174.

Same deer. Same blood. This time I slowed down, really looked at it. The doe's eye was open, glassy, reflecting my headlights. One of her legs was bent wrong. A tuft of fur lifted in the wind from my truck.

Three times now. I pulled over. Got out. The air was cold and thin and smelled like sage and something else, something metallic. The road stretched behind me and ahead of me in two perfectly straight lines that vanished into darkness.

I walked to the mile marker. 174. The metal was cold under my fingers. Real. I walked to the deer. Also real. Also cold. I touched her side, felt the stiffness of fresh death.

I got back in the cab. I drove.

---

The fourth time I passed mile marker 174, there was a hitchhiker.

She was standing just past the deer, on the shoulder, thumb out, wearing a red jacket and jeans. Early thirties, maybe. Dark hair pulled back. She looked cold.

I don't pick up hitchhikers. Company policy, personal policy, common sense policy. I drove past. Watched her shrink in my side mirror until the darkness swallowed her.

175. 176. 177. 178. 179.

174. Deer. Hitchhiker. Same woman, same red jacket, same position. She wasn't looking at me this time. She was looking at the deer.

I drove past again. Checked my mirrors. She didn't shrink this time. She stayed the same size, the same distance behind me, as if the mirror had frozen. Then she was gone.

The fifth loop, she was closer to the road. Sixth loop, she was standing in the right lane. I had to swerve into the left to avoid her. She didn't flinch. Didn't move. Her face was blank and patient.

Seventh loop. She was in the left lane.

I stopped the truck. Sat there, engine idling, staring through the windshield at the woman standing in my headlights. She stared back. Her eyes were dark, and her expression held nothing I could read — not menace, not desperation, not madness. Just patience. The patience of something that has been waiting a very long time.

"What do you want?" I said it out loud, inside the cab, knowing she couldn't hear me.

She raised her hand and pointed. Not at me. Past me. Behind me.

I looked in the side mirror. The road behind me was gone. Not dark — gone. The asphalt ended maybe fifty feet behind my trailer, and beyond it was nothing. Not desert, not sky. An absence. The kind of black that isn't a color but a condition, the black of a room that has never contained light.

I turned back to the windshield. The woman was gone. The deer was gone. Mile marker 174 was gone. The road ahead stretched into the distance, perfectly straight, perfectly normal.

I drove.

Mile marker 180. 181. 182. I counted each one like a prayer. They climbed normally. The GPS showed me approaching Battle Mountain. The road behind me, in my mirrors, was dark but present. Asphalt, shoulder, desert.

I pulled into the Battle Mountain truck stop at 3:47 AM. Parked. Sat in the cab with the engine running and my hands shaking on the wheel.

After ten minutes, I got out. The truck stop was bright and ordinary. Two other rigs in the lot. A minivan at the gas pumps. Inside, a clerk behind the counter, a coffee machine, a hot dog roller with two shriveled hot dogs rotating under a heat lamp.

I poured coffee. Paid for it. The clerk was young, maybe nineteen, with acne and headphones around his neck.

"Quiet night?" I said.

"Always is."

I almost left it there. Almost. But something made me ask: "You ever hear about anything weird on the highway? Out past Imlay?"

He looked at me for a moment. Then he reached under the counter and pulled out a spiral notebook, the kind you'd buy at a dollar store. It was thick with use, the cover soft and curled.

"Drivers leave notes sometimes," he said. "When they've had a bad stretch."

He opened it. The pages were filled with handwriting — dozens of hands, dozens of entries, spanning years. I read the first few.

*March 2019 — Mile markers repeating between 174 and 179. Six loops before it stopped. Saw a deer. Same deer each time.*

*November 2020 — Drove the same stretch nine times. There was a woman in a red jacket. She pointed behind me and the road was gone.*

*July 2022 — I counted fourteen loops. On the last one, the woman was sitting in my passenger seat. I didn't pick her up. I don't know how she got in. She smelled like sage and copper.*

*February 2024 — Sixteen loops. She was in the cab. She said one word: "Almost." Then the road went back to normal. I don't know what she meant.*

I turned the page. The last entry was from three weeks ago.

*July 2026 — Twenty-two loops. She sat in the passenger seat for the last four. She didn't say anything. She just looked at the road like she was waiting for something. On loop twenty-two, I looked in the rearview mirror and the nothing was closer. Maybe twenty feet behind the trailer. It was moving forward. She pointed at it and smiled. First time I've seen her smile. I drove and it went back to normal, but I don't think I was supposed to leave. I think she was disappointed.*

I closed the notebook.

The clerk was watching me. "How many loops did you get?"

"Seven," I said.

He nodded slowly. "It's getting more. Used to be three, four. Now it's double digits." He paused. "The woman in the red jacket. You see her?"

"Yes."

"She's getting closer, too." He took the notebook back. "Everyone sees the deer first. Then the woman. Then the nothing behind you. Nobody knows what comes after that."

I finished my coffee. I got back in my truck. I drove the rest of the way to Salt Lake without incident.

But I check my mirrors more often now. And last Tuesday, on I-15 south of Pocatello, I saw mile marker 212 twice.

The deer was there.

So was the red jacket.