The dead deer in the road wasn't about anything. It wasn't a metaphor or foreshadowing, it was really, really just dead. Really dead. Its neck twisted about like he'd been trying to laugh at someone behind him, even his snouted lips raised up over teeth in a half begun grin. Cracked antlers like gravel around his head, one leg raised in casual pursuit of a friend, a thought, a shadow.

The road was barren except for the dead deer and Royston. Royston was barren except for the feeling of the dead deer watching him, accusing him. Hey, guy, a little privacy please? Trying to look dead with dignity wasn't easy for anyone. Royston had seen it with his father and his grandfather before that. Had seen it before it happened and then exactly nine days later in perfect detail and reality. Now Royston just saw the dead deer. It didn't see him.

What did see him was the big rocky hills, their desolate gray-green-brown, their bent and tossed trees, old and hunched with frost and the weight of the sky. The sky saw him too, looking down with angry, overboiled clouds frowning in earnest at his patched leather jacket, his ghosting breath, his hands that shook in his pockets without being cold. Royston saw the dead deer. His whole world had become still hooves, red sticky fur, black empty eyes.

The truck rumbled behind him, coughing impatiently, the exhaust dumping into the night like it was from a much loftier machine. A truck that wished it were a jet. Royston wished he were a jet too, to speed away without thinking, to do whatever he was told, go wherever commanded without the luxurious pain of thinking for himself, of seeing those he loved most die and doing nothing to stop it when he could. Of course he could. He had nine solid days to do anything. To change a life, save it. But Royston did nothing, just as he'd done nothing to stop himself hitting this animal. It had been dark but that didn't matter when you knew to expect it, when you saw the sweep of the road, the jump of the headlights, the frozen alarm on the animal's face ten seconds before thud thud thud. When you knew to expect it nine days ago.

Royston sat on the empty road, the ruts and divots and ill-tempered pavement uncomfortable beneath his thighs. He took his shaking hand and put it on the not-shaking deer. The still deer. The dead deer. Royston saw the dead deer, and when he looked and kept looking, he saw his father and his grandfather too, all there on the road, lined up in a macabre monument. They were everywhere now, keeping him company on the bus, at the office, in the woods when he tried to hide. Reminding him of what he hadn't done. Reminding him that four days ago, Royston had seen himself beside them. Reminding him that five more days was a short time to live his whole life and a long, long time to regret.

The ring of his phone broke the mountainside silence, shattered it with an audible hammer. Crashing noise that skittered the dirt pebbles at Royston's knees, that washed rudely over the dead deer trying to be peaceful in pieces, that made the marrow of his tailbone cold and hostile to movement. Royston moved, just an inch, just enough to lift his backside off the pavement and scoot his phone from his pocket. Scratches and pocks customized the screen with apocalyptic ruggedness. Looking at the name flashing there, the face vibrating in his hand, Royston's heart was apocalyptic too.

He took the call without a word, putting the phone to his ear. Nothing had to be said. She did all the talking for him.

"What the hell, Royston? I don't care if you're dying tomorrow. You gave me this ring, so what am I supposed to do with it now? Swallow it? Sell it like some drug dealer? Or am I supposed to be sad and lonely and wear it as a heartwrenching reminder around my neck?" His fiancée snorted and then laughed, and then concluded with another snort, cynical and resolved sounding. "I'll wrench your heart right out of your body if you don't come back from wherever you went. I will, I swear, I'll find you myself and kill you before it happens." Soft quiet tickled Royston's ear as he let her soak in her unshed tears. She didn't cry, she wasn't like that. She yelled and flayed with words, then got real silent, just like this, just enough to let him know that she knew. That he missed her. That she missed him. That there was a lot they'd miss together because they'd be apart.

"How many days?" his fiancée asked, with the stiffness that came from forcing her chin not to wobble. She didn't cry, she wasn't like that, but there was always an upset wobble that came before the word-flaying, starting in her lips and going down to her chin until she went real still and angry.

Royston breathed invisibly into the phone. Invisible to her, that is. His breath fogged and curled against the night, a living ghost in and of itself. The dead deer watched him knowingly. Women, those flat black eyes seemed to say, am I right? No, thought Royston, you're dead, and women always seem to know what I'm feeling without me feeling myself feel it. It was nice not to need words when you needed more than anything to say too much.

He needed more than anything to—

They were here. All around now, all the ones he'd ever seen, circling like a wake was happening right here on the empty road. Royston dropped the phone, not with any intention, but it slipped, hand suddenly tractionless with sweat. The sky was too huge, the road was too small. Royston skittered back until his shoulders hit the idling truck. The dead followed him, solemn and pale and translucent as discarded moonlight, things cast down with the same sharp white glow, the same pearly shapelessness with glass edges, but without the splendor or the gentleness. Royston read intent in their eyes, in his eyes there among them, all dead eyes, and it terrified him, terrified his heart to galloping and his legs to jumping into the truck and jamming the gas.

The truck wheezed, coughed, and jetted away, swerving around the broad backbone of the mountain to the right, where it loomed disapprovingly dark at his speed. With each turn, the stern rock grew higher and higher, crashing away the stars with its massive fist. Royston's adrenaline crashed away his thoughts. His eyes were more in the rearview than they were on the road. The pale assembly of dead people there behind him didn't move, didn't march, didn't encroach, but they didn't have to. They stayed with him no matter how far the speedometer  cranked up, no matter what insults or spittle or fear Royston cursed at them. Like they were glued to his back windshield, always peering in and waiting. Patient as time.

Something big rolled under his right front wheel. Royston's chair hiccupped, slamming his head into the truck's roof and twisting the steering from his hands. The truck moaned and spiraled, the bed scraping gravel off the mountain, two wheels jerking up off the road. Royston hit the driver's side door and it winged open onto the spinning night. Scents of cool grass, wet air, damp earth and the iron aftertaste of blood. He'd bit his tongue. The truck coasted to the other side of the yellow line and fell off the mountain road.

For a while, Royston still gripped the door, scared witless, but also numb and oddly observant of the strata racing by in front of him, moon-illuminated layers of dirt rising up like floors beyond a glass elevator. The dead fell with him, still staring, not scared, just knowing, and he saw himself there just to the left, knowing and falling as well. His dead self smiled.

Then Royston lost his handle on the door and his back hit rock and his vision turned over and dirt was in his mouth, his teeth felt a jumble in his head like they were all shingles falling out of a roof. His brain rattled, his spine cracked, blood filled his mouth and silence hit his ears and chest like a brick.

Thump, went his heart.

Hello, went the moon.

I'm not dead, went Royston.

He lay at the bottom of the crash, blinked, breathed, and then wept. Long and hard with lungs that still pumped, and scrapes that still hurt. But no broken bones, no severed spine, no impaled organs. He'd imagined the pain he'd imagined. The dead gathered around him in a circle but let him be. They watched him knowing what he knew now.

Royston had lost his phone and smashed his truck and he would die within the week. But for five days, Royston was immortal and he was going home.