4 - Questions

The dogs stayed just outside the glow of the streetlamp—what little of it filtered through the soot-streaked glass. Eli kept still behind the counter, his ears straining for any shift in sound. The occasional snuffle. A faint scratch of claws on tile. They weren't trying to get in. Not yet. Just waiting. Just watching.

Eventually, he moved.

Not fast. Just enough to get circulation back in his legs. He pushed to his feet, stretching slow, quiet, like even the air might betray him. The building creaked again—another gust of wind dragging a low groan from the roof. He eyed the beams overhead, but nothing fell.

Yet.

With the dogs holding their post outside, he figured he wouldn't be going anywhere for a while. No sense sitting in the dark doing nothing. He slipped the flashlight from his belt and started a slow sweep of the store.

Behind the register: more wrappers, old receipts, a dead spider curled like punctuation. In the office: a rusted filing cabinet tipped on its side, drawer wedged shut. He pried it open with the toe of his boot and found only paperwork—tax forms, invoices, old advertisements. One laminated flyer showed a smiling couple posing next to a freshly stocked shelf. Underneath: "New Management—Locally Owned, Locally Run."

He moved deeper.

Past the last row of shelves was a storeroom, barely lit by a fractured pane up high. Most of the boxes had already been broken open. But he sifted through them anyway—cans, mostly beans and vegetables, bloated and rust-specked. A few unopened. He tested the weight. Shook one. Set it aside.

In the corner, someone had left a radio—battery-powered. Dust coated the dial. He gave it a try.

Static.

He tried another frequency.

More static, a brief flicker of garbled speech—then nothing.

He let it go.

Back in the main room, he opened one of the cans with his knife, scraping the lid back slow to avoid slicing his fingers. It didn't smell great. But it didn't smell bad, either. He ate standing up, one eye on the barricade at the window. The dogs were still there. Still silent. One stood now, sniffing the glass again, tongue lolling in the dim light.

Eli finished the can. Set it aside. Drank more of the warm, boiled water from his canteen. The sour tang of metal lingered longer than he wanted.

Then he noticed it again.

The roof. Groaning, faint but rhythmic. Not with the wind this time. Just… settling. Or not settling. Something in the beams above had shifted. It didn't sound immediate. But it didn't sound good, either.

He pushed that worry aside and turned to the counter again. A few town pamphlets lay half-soaked and curling beneath the cash drawer. He peeled one up—thick with grime but legible. Tourist crap. Hikes. Craft fairs. An outdated map of the White Mountains with a faded circle drawn around Berlin and a caption beneath: "Gateway to the North."

He flipped through more. Found a wrinkled newspaper, browned with age but newer than the rest. Most of the front page was soaked through, the ink bloomed and feathered like mold. But some of the text had held.

He squinted and tilted it toward the light.

"TRADE ROUTES DISRUPTED AFTER STRIKE—FACTORIES HALTED, SHELVES GO EMPTY"

A smaller headline, barely legible:

"Unrest at Border Escalates—'Incursion' Still Unconfirmed"

He read it under his breath, the words dry in his mouth. A few lines were still readable:

"…supply bottlenecks… manufacturing centers forced to shutter…"

"…government denies mobilization efforts…"

"…citizens urged to remain patient…"

"…white house has not issued comment."

Near the fold, someone had underlined a word in thick black pen, twice:

"Conscription"

The letters bled through the page.

Eli stared at it for a long moment. He ran a thumb over the edge of the paper, careful not to tear it, though it probably wouldn't have mattered. Most of it was unreadable now—fused to itself from moisture, or blackened at the edges like it had been close to fire.

He folded it slowly, not out of reverence, but because it felt like the kind of thing you shouldn't leave crumpled on the floor.

Then the wind hit the building hard—rattling glass, drawing a low groan from the roof that was starting to sound more like a warning than a complaint. Dust trickled down through the ceiling cracks like dry rain.

He looked up.

The groan came again—longer this time, deeper. A warped, strained kind of sound, like something heavy shifting in its sleep. A few ceiling tiles quivered. One dropped loose in the back corner with a soft thump, scattering plaster dust into the air.

Eli stood slowly, paper still in hand, and backed away from the shelves. He tucked the clipping into his jacket pocket—out of instinct more than purpose. Whatever it meant, whatever was coming, there was no understanding it now. Not from half-legible headlines and mold-soft paper.

He crept toward the front of the store, boots quiet on tile now half-buried in debris. The dogs were still out there—he could see one, hunched and lean, pacing past the window. Another sat a little ways back in the street, ears perked, head tilted like it could hear him breathe.

The barricade he'd made looked worse now. The shelf had shifted under its own weight, one end starting to slide. Wouldn't take much for a determined dog to push through.

He glanced at the ceiling again. The whole thing felt like it was slouching, tired and sore. Something in the roofline had let go—the kind of failure that didn't stop once it started. Another groan rippled through the building. Louder. Closer. Wood creaked in protest.

He turned a slow circle in the aisle, scanning for the safest corner—but there wasn't one. Every wall leaned a little. Every shadow carried dust. A long crack ran from the front door to the back of the store, straight as a vein.

Stay, and the roof might come down. Run, and he'd walk straight into a waiting pack.

He weighed it, heart ticking a little too fast. Took a step toward the back storage room, then stopped.

Even breathing felt loud.

The dogs scratched once at the door. Just a test.

The roof answered with a groan.

Eli stared at the celling. Then the exit. Then back.

Eli moved toward the back room, slower now, watching the ceiling more than his own steps. Dust hung thick in the air, catching the last of the light. A slant of sun spilled in through the cracked front window, painting long shadows across the floor.

He ducked through the storage door again. The smell of mildew was worse here. A soft drip echoed from somewhere behind the shelves—water, maybe, or something worse. A wet patch had formed in one corner, blooming dark along the drywall.

"Great place to die," he muttered, barely above a whisper. His voice felt rough. Unused.

He pressed his back to the wall and slid down until he was crouched beside a sagging stack of paper towels and crumpled snack boxes. The floor was cold through his jeans. The kind of cold that reminded you how long the heat had been off. How long everything had.

Another soft scrape at the door. Then silence.

He leaned his head back. Closed his eyes for a second. Then opened them again.

"Could've stayed in the tower," he said. "Could've sat there 'til the food ran out. Waited for someone else to find the end of the world."

It sounded dumb out loud. But it made the silence feel less thick.

He pulled the newspaper back out of his pocket. Smoothed it flat against his knee and tried to read it again, this time slower.

TENSIONS MOUNT ALONG BORDER — PM CALLS INCIDENT A "POINT OF NO RETURN"

Factory Shutdown Sparks Panic Buying — Grocers Limiting Quantities

National Guard Deploys to Assist Civil Authorities in Major Cities

—President To—[line torn]—Concerning—[blurred]—Mobilization

There was a grainy photo, too. Soldiers unloading crates. Faces turned away. One had a hand raised to block the camera. Or maybe wave.

"Draft," Eli muttered, staring at the underlined word. "Didn't think we'd do that again."

He ran a thumb over the print. The ink smudged. The page was starting to flake apart. Whatever had happened—whatever this was—it wasn't clean. It hadn't been announced all at once with fanfare or alarms. It had just… happened. A few bad weeks. A few worse decisions. A few people in charge who couldn't back down.

"Chain reaction," he said to the wall. "Strike a match, watch the fuse burn down."

He leaned against the shelving unit, exhaling through his nose. For a second, he just stared at the yellowed paper in his hands like it might change if he looked long enough. Like maybe the dates would shift, or the headlines would blur into something sane.

But they didn't.

He let the paper drop into his lap and ran both hands down his face.

"Man…" he muttered, voice barely more than a sigh, "the one time I try to get my life together…"

He shook his head, lips pressed tight.

"Fix things. Save up. Get off the grid for a while. Just breathe."

He looked down at the floor, at the faint, grimy imprint of a shoe that wasn't his, long faded.

"Didn't even get to use the damn money," he said. "All that work, all that time—skipping out on birthdays, saying no to every dumb thing that looked fun… for what? To come back and find the world on fire?"

He picked up the newspaper again, squinting at the torn edge.

"I don't even know who started it. Don't even know what it is."

His voice cracked on the last part, not from fear but from frustration. From the kind of bitterness that crept up when you realized no one was going to explain what happened, and there was no one left to ask anyway.

He looked at the door again. The outline of the pack still silhouetted faintly in the dirty light filtering through the front.

"Just wanted a reset," he said, quieter now. "Just wanted to disappear for a while, not… end up the last guy left."

He tucked the paper away again, slower this time. Sat in silence.

Above him, the roof gave another low groan.

He glanced up.

"Yeah, yeah. I hear you."

And then he stood.

He stood slow, joints stiff from the cold tile and the stillness. His back ached the way it always did after too much time sitting still—just another reminder that he wasn't twenty anymore, no matter how often he tried to move like it.

He stretched once, arms overhead, fingers brushing the dust that hung in the air like fog. "Alright," he muttered, "guess I should see what's left before the damn roof comes down."

The dogs outside had settled into a rhythm—quiet, almost meditative in their waiting. He could hear them padding back and forth now and then, claws tapping soft against concrete. Not restless, exactly. Just… patient.

They weren't going anywhere. Neither was he.

He moved through the store's back section again, weaving through fallen signs and scattered cartons. Most of the supplies had been ransacked ages ago—drawers hanging loose, packaging torn, shelves bare. But there were still scraps tucked away in corners, stuff that might've been missed in a rush.

Behind the counter, wedged under an old register, he found a stack of printed receipts. Dusty. The ink half-faded. But the dates stood out.

March. April.

Then nothing.

One last ring-up for cigarettes and jerky—both priced higher than they should've been.

"Prices started jumping," he murmured, flipping the paper between his fingers. "Or maybe folks just didn't care anymore."

In a drawer near the back office, he found a calendar. A thick one, the kind you tear off day by day. Most of the pages were missing, ripped out clean. The last one left was marked April 3rd. The corner had been circled in red pen. Written in the margin: "shipment?"

He stared at it for a long moment.

"Guess it never came."

His voice didn't sound like it used to. Not quite. A little rougher. Like he was getting used to being the only person he heard.

The roof groaned again, louder this time. Wind pushed through the loose seams of the old building, bringing a draft that rattled the door to the stockroom.

He turned toward it, jaw tight.

One last room.

If there were answers anywhere in here, they'd be in there—or buried under what used to be.

He squared his shoulders and reached for the handle. "Let's see what the rest of the world forgot."

The door gave a reluctant creak, metal hinges grinding as Eli pulled it open. Inside: shadow. Thicker than the rest of the store. Cold, too. The kind of cold that didn't come from temperature—it came from disuse. From being left shut too long.

He stepped in, flashlight beam cutting a narrow path across the clutter. There were boxes—flattened, torn, some still sealed in shrinkwrap. A rack of expired snack cakes sat slumped in the corner like it had given up long before the rest of the town. Dust lay over everything, thick as frost.

He moved toward the desk against the back wall. Papers were scattered across it, some water-damaged, others curled from heat or age. The top page was a printout—part of a shipment manifest. The logo on the corner read Granville Distribution Co. in bold blue letters.

He skimmed it. Supplies. Deliveries. But half the sheet was crossed out in red marker. Scribbled in the margin: "Postponed indefinitely. No ETA."

Below that, a hand-scrawled note:

"Tell Denny not to bother next week. Word is the southern corridor's shut down. All routes being pulled east. If it goes hot, we won't be the first to know."

Another note, smaller, almost hidden in the margin beneath a coffee ring:

"Heard on the CB someone saw tanks on 93. Could be bullshit. Hope it's bullshit."