"The Road Virus Heads North" is a 25-page short story originally published in the anthology 999, and later included in King's own 2002 collection Everything's Eventual. The story concerns horror author Richard Kinnell, who stops at a yardsale on the way home from a writers conference and buys a disturbing painting titled the Road Virus Heads North. As he heads north himself, he discovers that the painting itself is changing, and something else is headed north in his wake.