Electric Current

Three months after Sarah's funeral, Elena found herself swimming laps at 2 AM in the apartment complex pool. The water was impossibly still, black mirror reflecting the single security light that flickered overhead. She'd become something of a zombie herself—moving through work meetings and grocery runs and awkward condolences with the hollow efficiency of the walking dead.

Her therapist suggested exercise. Her mother suggested church. Sarah would have suggested tequila and terrible television. Instead, Elena swam.

She'd been a competitive swimmer in college before life and love and law school pulled her toward shore. Now, at forty-two, she was reclaiming the one thing that made her feel like herself rather than half of a missing whole.

The water held her weightless, suspended between breaths. Between strokes, she could almost convince herself that the absence beside her was a choice rather than a tragedy.

Then came the lightning.

It struck somewhere nearby, a crack of thunder that shook the pool deck. The security light died instantly, plunging her into darkness. Elena trod water, heart hammering, suddenly aware of how alone she was—how entirely, terrifyingly solitary she'd become.

That's when she noticed him at the pool's edge: pale, gaunt, watching her with eyes that seemed to hold their own storms. Max, from 4B. He'd introduced himself the week she moved in, back when Sarah was still making jokes about his vampire complexion and his penchant for hooded sweatshirts.

"You swim like you're trying to escape something," he said, his voice rough with sleep or sorrow.

Elena laughed, a sharp sound that broke the surface tension. "Maybe I'm trying to catch something."

"Everything worth catching finds you," Max said. "My wife used to say that. She's been gone eight months tomorrow."

He didn't say how. She didn't ask. They simply existed there in the darkness, two survivors circling each other in the water, and for the first time since the world ended, Elena felt something beyond the numb, automated motions of the living dead.

She felt the stirrings of something dangerous: hope.