Chapter 1: Mile Marker 112

The Arizona sun beat down mercilessly on the prefab retirement community, its rays bouncing off white stucco walls and perfectly manicured desert landscaping. Jack Riley sat on his small patio, a lukewarm beer sweating in his weathered hand, watching the heat shimmer rise from the asphalt like ghosts. At sixty-eight, he should have been content. Hell, most men his age would kill for this—a modest but comfortable place in the sun, no more early morning calls, no more patching potholes or scraping roadkill off blacktop.

But Jack's mind wasn't in Arizona. It never was.

His eyes were fixed on the distant mountains, but what he saw was a different landscape entirely: rolling Virginia hills thick with oak and pine, a narrow ribbon of asphalt cutting through the green darkness like a wound. Route 340. Twelve miles of two-lane highway that had been his responsibility for nearly three decades. Twelve miles that had driven him clear across the country, running from memories that followed him like shadows.

The phone buzzed on the plastic table beside him. Another automated reminder about the community's Tuesday bingo night. Jack deleted it without reading and took another sip of warm beer. Around him, his neighbors went about their retirement rituals—watering drought-resistant plants, walking small dogs, complaining about their grandchildren's social media habits. Normal people living normal lives, unburdened by the weight of impossible truths.

He closed his eyes and was immediately back there, seven years ago, when everything started to unravel.

---

The call had come in at 6:23 AM on a Tuesday in late September. Jack remembered the exact time because he'd been staring at his coffee, wondering if he had the energy for another day of fixing what drunk drivers and deer had broken the night before.

"Jack, we got a messy one at marker 112," Tracy's voice crackled through the radio. His supervisor always sounded like she was talking through a mouthful of gravel, twenty years of cigarettes having taken their toll. "Deer collision. Big mess, apparently. Better bring the hose."

Jack had sighed, finished his coffee in one bitter gulp, and loaded his truck. Mile marker 112 sat right in the middle of his route, where the road curved through a particularly dense section of woods. It was a popular spot for deer, especially during rutting season. He'd cleaned up probably fifty collisions there over the years—blood, fur, sometimes pieces he preferred not to think about too hard.

But when he'd arrived that morning, something was wrong.

The asphalt was stained, all right. A dark, wet patch maybe eight feet across, still glistening in the early morning light. But there was no deer. No mangled carcass, no scattered fur, no blood trail leading into the woods. Just that stain, like someone had dumped a bucket of dark water on the road and walked away.

Jack had parked his truck and walked the area twice, his heavy work boots crunching on fallen leaves. The woods pressed close here, oak and maple and hickory creating a canopy so thick that even at midday, the forest floor stayed dim. He'd checked the ditches on both sides, looked for drag marks, anything that might explain where a deer had gone.

Nothing.

He'd called Tracy back. "You sure this was a deer collision?"

"That's what the caller said. Lady driving through around midnight, saw the mess, figured someone hit a deer and drove off." Tracy had paused, the sound of papers shuffling on her end. "Why? What's the problem?"

"There's no deer."

"What do you mean, no deer?"

Jack had stared at the stain, which seemed somehow darker now, more extensive. "I mean there's a mess here, but no animal. Nothing."

Tracy had been quiet for a moment. "Well, hell, Jack. Somebody probably came by and took it. Free meat, you know? People do that."

It was a logical explanation. Rural Virginia was full of folks who wouldn't let a fresh deer carcass go to waste, even if it meant stopping on a dark highway in the middle of the night. Jack had wanted to believe it. He'd tried to believe it as he hosed down the stain, watching the dark water run off into the tall grass.

But something had bothered him. Something about the way the stain looked—too uniform, too perfectly circular. And the smell. Not the metallic tang of blood or the earthy musk of deer, but something else. Something that reminded him of wet leaves and deep places where the sun never reached.

---

Jack opened his eyes, blinking away the memory. The Arizona heat pressed down on him like a weight, but he felt cold anyway. Seven years, and he could still smell that wrong scent, still see that perfect circle of darkness on the asphalt.

That should have been the end of it. One weird call, one missing deer. In thirty years of road maintenance, he'd seen stranger things. Or thought he had.

But it wasn't the end. It was just the beginning.

Jack finished his beer and stood, his joints protesting after sitting too long in the heat. Through his sliding glass door, he could see the TV flickering in his small living room, some cooking show playing to an empty chair. The retirement community brochure on his kitchen counter promised "Active Living in Paradise," but paradise felt more like purgatory when your mind kept drifting back to a dark stretch of Virginia highway.

He should go inside, maybe call his sister in Delaware, or try to nap away the afternoon heat. Normal retirement activities for a normal man. But Jack Riley hadn't been normal for seven years now. Not since that morning at mile marker 112, when the first piece of his orderly world had simply vanished, leaving behind only questions and the growing certainty that some explanations were worse than no explanation at all.

The mountains shimmered in the distance, purple and hazy with heat. But in Jack's mind, he was already driving east, back toward the green darkness of Virginia woods and the twelve miles of highway that had cost him everything.

Back toward Route 340, where the impossible things waited in silence.

The sun climbed higher, and Jack went inside, closing the door on the desert heat. But he couldn't close the door on his memories. They followed him everywhere, patient and persistent as shadows, reminding him that some roads, once traveled, could never really be left behind.

Outside, a lizard skittered across the patio where he'd been sitting, its tiny claws clicking against the concrete. The sound was sharp and quick, then gone.

Just like the deer at mile marker 112.

Just like everything that had disappeared on his watch, while he stood by and let it happen.