Doomsday Supermarket

Chapter 3

Chapter 3 · 2,080 words

# Chapter 03 — The First Night

Night didn't fall. It arrived.

One moment the wrong sky beyond the storefront glass held its sickly pale glow, that sourceless colourless shimmer he had no name for, nothing like sunlight or moonlight, nothing from twenty-six years under open skies. The next moment it was gone. The darkness fell. One moment the pale glow; the next, nothing.

The shop's blue light contracted.

The cold blue glow that filled the transformed interior, the light that came from everywhere and nowhere, pulled inward. The edges dimmed. The light that reached the storefront glass retreated a foot, then two, then stopped at the threshold. Beyond the glass: absolute black. A darkness with no memory of light.

Shen stood behind the counter and watched the shop's glow stop at the door.

Then the sounds started.

The first one came from beyond the parking lot. A low, grinding resonance. Stone on stone, or something harder than stone dragging across something heavier. It vibrated in his chest. The sound rolled across the ruins and arrived at the shop as a pressure wave he felt in his sternum.

He gripped the counter edge. His knuckles went white. He let go.

The second sound was different. A high, keening whistle that climbed a register and stayed there. It made his teeth ache. He clamped his jaw shut and felt the vibration travel up through his molars into his sinuses. It sounded like something trying to sing with a throat that wasn't built for singing.

A third sound. Footsteps. Heavy. Each one separated by a pause that suggested something massive deciding where to put its weight next. The impacts traveled through the ground and up through the shop's seamless floor. Faint, but real. Something enormous was moving through the rubble beyond the parking lot.

Shen's hands were shaking.

He looked down at them. Both hands. A fine tremor. The same one from yesterday afternoon. The one that had steadied hours ago and now come back. The kind that showed up when the body had nowhere to put the adrenaline. He wiped them on his apron. The grey polyester absorbed the sweat. His name tag (SHEN, blue stitching, fraying edges) sat crooked on his chest. He straightened it without thinking.

The cold arrived next.

It came through the floor first. The shop's heating was tied to the defense grid. He could feel that now, the way the warmth in the seamless walls was thinning. At eight percent the grid had been barely functional. Now it was lower. He could see the faintest trace of his own breath. A wisp. A ghost of condensation that appeared when he exhaled and vanished.

He reached under the counter and pulled out a can of condensed soup. Tomato. He cupped it in both hands. The metal was cold. It didn't help. He held it anyway.

The status panel floated behind the register, unchanged in its indifference. The percentage bar had dropped. He didn't need to look at the number to know. The blue light was dimmer than it had been five minutes ago. The hum was lower. The shop was conserving.

He looked at the panel.

Six percent.

It had been seven when he last checked. One percent gone. He didn't know how long he'd been standing here watching the sky go wrong. Long enough for the grid to lose another point. Long enough for the cold to start biting through his shoes.

He set the soup can down. He picked up the scanner.

Click. The trigger button stuck, then released. Click. The plastic creaked. He held it in his right hand and let his thumb work the trigger. Open. Shut. Open. Shut. The rhythm was something his hands remembered from two years of price checks and inventory counts. Click. Click. Click.

Outside, the grinding sound came again. Closer this time. Or maybe it was the same sound from a different direction. He couldn't tell. The darkness beyond the glass was total. The shop's blue light touched the threshold and stopped. Whatever was out there was past the light's reach.

He counted the inventory.

Not because he needed to. The shop had memorized its stock. The recesses held what they held. But counting was something he could do. It was a task with an answer. Twelve cans of soup. He picked one up and set it down. Four cans of beans. He touched each one. One dented corned beef. He ran his thumb over the dent. Seventeen items total.

Click. The scanner. Click.

The keening whistle came again. Higher this time. Closer. His teeth ached and he pressed his tongue against them. A faint chemical smell seeped through the door seals. Acidic, sharp. Something corrosive moving close to the building. He breathed through his mouth. The taste was metallic.

He counted again. Same numbers. Click.

The footsteps stopped.

That was worse. The footsteps he could track. The grinding he could locate. The silence meant something had decided to be still. Something was out there in the dark, past the threshold of the shop's light, and it wasn't moving anymore. It was listening.

He set the scanner on the counter. He put both hands flat on the warm laminate. The warmth was fading. The shop's walls were still warm. That faint yield when he pressed into them. But the heat was thinner now. The building was pulling its energy inward, away from the surfaces, away from him.

He stood there. He waited.

---

A shape appeared at the edge of the blue light.

Shen's breath caught. His hands came off the counter. He stepped forward. One step, then stopped. His body had moved before his brain caught up.

The shape was human. Or human-shaped. Wrapped in something dark and layered. Rags, maybe, or strips of fabric tied over a frame too thin for the cold. It stood at the very edge of where the shop's light reached the threshold. Half in blue. Half in nothing.

It didn't move.

Shen didn't move.

The figure's head turned. It looked at the shop. At the light. At the door. Slow. Cautious. A stray cat testing an extended hand.

Shen's heart was beating so hard he could hear it. A pulse in his ears. A pulse in his wrists. He could feel it in his fingertips.

The figure took a step forward.

One foot. A shoe, or what was left of one. Wrapped in something. The foot came down on the debris beyond the parking lot and the crunch carried through the glass. The figure shifted its weight. Another step. Then another. It was moving toward the shop.

Shen's hand was on the door handle.

He hadn't decided to put it there. His arm had moved. His palm was flat against the metal bar. The handle was cold. Cold enough to sting. His fingers curled around it and the knuckles went white again.

The figure paused. It was close enough now that Shen could see details. A hood pulled low. A face in shadow. The lower half visible, chapped lips, a cut on the chin that had scabbed over dark. Hands visible. Empty. No materials. No weapons. Just hands, held slightly forward, the universal gesture of *I don't have anything but I'm not a threat.*

The figure looked at the shop. At the door. At the light.

Then it looked past the shop. Into the darkness behind it. Over its shoulder. The way something checks for pursuit.

The figure spoke.

A muttered curse. Low and rough. He was talking to himself. The words swallowed by the distance and the glass and whatever passed for vocal cords in a throat that had been screaming or silent for three days. The voice was male. Young. Maybe younger than Shen.

The figure turned.

It stepped back. One step. Then another. The hands dropped. The shoulders hunched. The figure turned away from the shop's light and walked back into the darkness. The crunch of footsteps on debris. Fading. The rhythm slowing as the figure moved away from the threshold, away from the blue glow, back into the absolute black.

Shen's hand was still on the door handle.

He hadn't opened it.

His fingers were locked around the cold metal. His arm was extended. His body was leaning forward, weight on his toes. Arm extended toward a door he hadn't opened.

He let go. His hand fell to his side.

"Store policy," he said. His voice cracked on the second word. He cleared his throat. "Can't make exceptions."

The empty shop didn't respond. The panel hummed. The blue light held its diminished reach. The door stood closed.

He looked at the glass. The figure was gone. The darkness beyond the threshold was total again. Whoever had been standing there, close enough to see the cut on his chin, close enough to hear his voice, was gone. Turned away. Walked back into the ruins because the shop looked dark. Silent. Unwelcoming. A place that didn't open its doors.

Shen understood. The kid out there had seen the blue light, seen the walls that weren't walls, and his brain had done the math that every survivor's brain was doing by now. *System Zone.* The words would have reached him through whatever scraps of rumor still circulated among the living. Every instinct that had kept him alive for three days would have been screaming at him to run.

Shen pressed his forehead against the cold glass.

He closed his eyes. The cold seeped in. He stood there for a long time.

---

The status panel flickered.

Shen turned from the glass. He walked back to the counter. His legs felt heavy. The cold was worse now. He could see his breath clearly, each exhale a small cloud that hung in the blue light for a second before dissipating. The shop's thermal regulation was tied to the grid. At four percent the building was barely holding.

Four percent.

He looked at the number. The bar had dropped again while he stood at the door. The green portion was a sliver. The dark portion was everything else. The percentage bar was a countdown and the numbers were the ticks.

He sat down on the stool behind the counter. The one he'd used for two years of graveyard shifts. The same stool. The System had kept it. The vinyl was cracked in the same place, the same worn patch where his weight had ground the cushion down over a thousand nights. He sat and pulled his arms around himself.

The cold had teeth now. It wasn't just the floor or the walls. It was the air. The shop was losing its heat to the outside, bleeding warmth through surfaces that used to be insulated. The defense grid powered the thermal regulation. Four percent wasn't enough.

He did the math.

At the current rate of decay, the grid would hit zero in. He didn't know. A day? Two? The panel didn't offer an estimate. It didn't offer a projection or a timeline or a helpful suggestion. Just the number. Four percent. Dropping.

No customers had come.

The first night. His first night alone in the transformed shop, alone with the rules and the counter and the bar and the sounds outside and the wrong sky and the cold. The door had stayed closed. No materials. No trades. The transaction counter still read zero.

He looked at the door.

The door. The handle still cold. The young voice, the chapped lips, the empty hands. All right there.

His misbelief had held. Keep the door closed. Nothing gets in. Nothing goes wrong.

The shop was at four percent.

Safe.

He clicked the scanner. Once. The sound was loud in the quiet shop. The plastic creaked. He set it down.

Outside, the sounds continued. Closer.

The shop's blue light dimmed again. A perceptible shift. The status panel's glow was the brightest thing in the room, and it was getting dimmer. The hum dropped another fraction. The building groaned. A structural sound, deep in the walls. The frame itself was tired.

Shen sat behind the counter with his arms around himself and his breath fogging in the cold. His watch was still stopped at 4:14. The cracked glass caught the fading blue light. Time had stopped meaning anything.

Four percent on the panel. Zero transactions. The door: closed.

The door. Still closed.

He closed his eyes. The cold pressed in. The sounds outside pressed in. The numbers didn't change.