Dead Man Walking

Marcus caught his reflection in the lobby glass—pale eyes, hollowed cheeks, the unmistakable shuffle of a man who'd forgotten how to want anything. Three years at Meridian Technologies had turned him into something that moved through offices attended meetings and sent emails without ever truly waking up. The startup had died eighteen months ago, but like some **zombie** enterprise, it kept shambling forward on venture-capital life support, its engineers too tired to notice they were coding features nobody would ever use.

He pushed through the glass doors into the humid Atlanta evening, his dress shirt already clinging to his back. This was the only time he felt anything anymore—**running**. Not from anything specific, not anymore. Just the rhythmic slap of his soles against pavement, the burn in his lungs that reminded him he was still biological, still required oxygen, still existed in three dimensions.

His phone buzzed. The Slack channel. Someone had updated the **pool**.

*New entry: Sarah from Product, gives it two weeks before she burns out. Odds are 3:1.*

They were betting on when everyone would quit. That's what it had come to—wagering on each other's breaking points like some twisted office fantasy league. Marcus had five hundred dollars riding on the engineering manager lasting until Q4. He'd taken the long odds. The poor bastard had three kids and a mortgage he couldn't afford.

Marcus started his run, legs pumping automatically along the familiar route through Piedmont Park. His thoughts drifted to Elena, the woman he'd met at a conference last month. She'd asked him what he loved about his work, and he'd stood there unable to answer, the silence stretching until she'd politely excused herself for another drink. He hadn't been able to blame her.

The zombie metaphor wasn't far off. He was eating brains, consuming time and potential, but nothing nourished him anymore.

His phone buzzed again. A notification: *Your entry in the departure pool has been updated. You are now listed as a candidate. Odds: 2:1 you're gone by month's end.*

They were betting on him now.

Marcus stopped running, bent double, hands on his knees. The humid air pressed down on him like a physical weight. He could feel it—that moment in every horror movie where the victim realizes they've already been bitten, already infected, already dead but still moving.

Then he pulled out his phone and opened Slack.

*I'm out,* he typed. *Effective immediately. The pool is closed. Keep the money.*

He hit send. For the first time in three years, his heart began to beat for an entirely different reason.