Citrus and the Walking Dead

Sarah peeled the orange at her desk, the citrus spray cutting through the recirculated air of the open-plan office. Around her, the zombie staff shuffled between meetings—eyes glazed, skin the color of fluorescent lights, moving with the jerky rhythm of people who'd forgotten how to be alive.

Her phone buzzed. Another reminder from her mother about vitamin D supplements. As if that could fix anything.

"Sarah, can we chat?" Mark from Accounting appeared in her doorway, looking particularly undead today. His wife had left him three months ago. The office pool had it at fifty-fifty whether he'd noticed.

She waved him in. "What's up?"

"I'm not coming back after the holidays." He said it matter-of-factly, staring at the orange segment she'd just lifted to her lips. "I'm going to Costa Rica. I have enough saved for six months. Maybe I'll just stay there and sell smoothies on the beach."

The absurdity of it made her laugh, sharp and loud. Heads turned throughout the office—actual zombie heads, sensing something that wasn't in the employee handbook.

"You're serious."

"Dead serious." He cracked something like a genuine smile. "I realized last week I couldn't remember the last time I tasted anything. Really tasted it. And there you were, eating that orange like it was the most important thing in the world."

She looked down at her hands. Sticky with juice. The most alive she'd felt in months.

"Costa Rica," she repeated.

"Yeah. They have these oranges there—limas, they call them. Sweet as candy. No one takes vitamins. They just live."

Sarah pushed her chair back. The wheels made a small sound against the carpet. "I have a meeting in five minutes."

"Right." Mark nodded, understanding. "Well. If you ever decide to stop being one of them."

He left, and Sarah watched him walk away—already moving differently, shoulders dropped, steps loose and purposeful. She looked at the remaining orange in her hand, then at the vitamin bottle in her drawer, then at the empty doorway where her future might have just walked out.

The meeting could wait. She bit into the orange and let the juice run down her chin, messy and vital and real, and thought about beaches and limas and the terrifying possibility of a life that actually tasted like something.