And so they fled

The trade war had dragged on for years, a slow, grinding conflict of tariffs, sanctions, and retaliations that neither side could afford but neither was willing to end. What had begun as a battle of economic policies and nationalist rhetoric had spiraled into something far worse—starvation, desperation, and the slow decay of civilization itself.

Canada had been the first to fall. Its industries crumbled under the weight of economic isolation, its resources drained by a government too proud to back down and too inept to find a solution. Supply chains snapped like brittle twigs, and the once-thriving cities dimmed as power grids faltered and stores ran empty. The cold winters, once merely an inconvenience, became a death sentence for those without shelter or fuel. The government clung to power with rationing, emergency measures, and hollow promises, but the people knew the truth—there was no salvation coming.

And so they fled.

At first, they came in trickles—families seeking warmth, farmers abandoning barren fields, truckers who could no longer afford to drive. Then the trickle became a flood, a relentless human tide surging southward, pouring across the border in search of food, shelter, anything to keep them from dying in the streets. But the U.S. was no land of salvation. It, too, had suffered under the weight of the trade war. Jobs had vanished, towns had withered, and law and order had become mere suggestions rather than realities. The border, once a formality, now stood as a contested battleground, where armed patrols and desperate migrants clashed in the shadows of abandoned checkpoints.

For those who made it through, survival was far from assured. The American heartland, once a land of prosperity, had turned hostile. Food was scarce, resources stretched thin, and resentment festered like an open wound. The newcomers were met not with open arms but with suspicion and violence. Shantytowns sprouted along highways, makeshift settlements where the desperate huddled together, scavenging what they could from a world that had long since stopped caring.

The governments on both sides had no answers, only blame. Leaders delivered speeches filled with hollow rhetoric, promising solutions that never came. The trade war had begun as a political game, a contest of wills between men in suits who had never known hunger, but it had ended with a continent on its knees, its people abandoned to the cruel reality of a world that no longer had room for them.