Page 222 of The End of the World As We Know It

“—We have been forgotten!” The one named Peter cries, full of bitter rage. “We have been abandoned! And we cannot stay in this place!” His arrow hand pulls back farther.

“Please!” Dennis urges. “Tell us. Are you withhimor not?”

Ezra begins to stammer. “I—I don’t know who, or what you’re—”

“Did you say ‘door’ earlier?” Susie asks abruptly. All eyes whip to her. “You’re looking for a door? What kind of door?”

The archer relaxes his arrow the tiniest bit. Reads something in Susie’s expression. “You know of them? The doors between?”

Susie swallows. “I think… Maybe?”

“Have you one of those damnable pink tablets, as well?” Dennis asks, voice low. “The ones holding all the stories—”

“Hush,” Peter snaps, then turns his glare back to Susie. “The door. Tell me. We haven’t much time. This world is unstable. Its beams are—”

As if to prove his point, before he can finish the earth begins to shake again. Supplies tumble off shelves. The fluorescent lights stutter and spark.

Everyone cries out in surprise.

Peter rushes for Susie. Grabs her. Begins to shake her. “Quickly! Where was it?! Tell me what you know! Tell me before it’s too—”

Ezra swings his heavy duffel full of cans at the lunatic’s head. The man goes down, hard. His companion rushes to his side. “My prince!”

His prince is moaning nonsense words—beam, quake, door, tower, and with especial adamance, flag, flag, flag—all while the store spits its inventory onto the floor.

Ezra can’t stand to hear any more of it.

He runs out the gas station door, across the undulating asphalt, past the swaying, shaking gas pumps.

Susie catches up with him down the road. Panting. “Wait! Wait up!”

He doesn’t. But she’s young and he can’t outpace her for long.

His head throbs. With the sun, the stress, the strange litany of words that crazy vagrant was spouting. Also, with that noise in the distance. Is it louder now? He wants to ask Susie if she hears it, too, but decides he’d rather not know. This is all starting to feel too…

Irrational.

Tiny threads, sprouting up across the surface of reality, begging to be pulled.

Nothing good can come from pulling threads like those. Better to leave them alone. Better to stay in as close to silence as they can.

Susie doesn’t let that happen for long, though.

“We could’ve talked some sense into them. Or maybe I could’ve.”

“So go back and join them if you want to,” he snaps. “You didn’t have to follow me.”

Back to silence. Then she stops walking.

“It’s just… they kept talking about a door.”

“Susie,” he groans, and stops, too. “I don’t know where you’re going with this but—”

“I’vebeen dreaming about a door,” she says. “I might have even seen—”

“I don’t wanna hear this!” He turns and continues on without her. She calls after him.

“Where is everybody, Ezra? Where are all the bodies? Why is it so empty here?”