Orange Lightning at Dawn

The worst thing about becoming a zombie wasn't the rotting flesh or the endless hunger for brains—it was the monotony. Elena shuffled through the corporate corridors of Apex Solutions, her titanium leg clicking rhythmically on the polished concrete floor. A padel accident at thirty-nine had taken her lower leg, but the job had taken everything else.

Her golden retriever, Buster, waited at home. The only living thing that still looked at her like she mattered. He'd been her lifeline through the divorce, through the amputation, through this slow hollowing-out of self.

"You look like shit," Marcus said, leaning against her cubicle wall. "Seriously, Elena. You've been walking dead for months."

She blinked. Marcus was twenty-six, perpetually optimistic, the kind of person who actually used the word 'synergy' without irony. "I'm fine."

"No, you're not." He held out an orange—something about Vitamin C, stress, the usual concerned coworker spiel. "Your ex-wife called. Asked if you were still alive."

The orange sat on her desk like a tiny sun.

That evening, lightning cracked the sky open as she walked Buster through the park. The storm had turned everything electric blue and vicious. The dog pressed against her leg, sensing something shift in her.

She thought about Sarah, gone two years now. About the corporate ladder she'd climbed until it became a cage. About how she'd wake at forty-five and realize she was exactly the kind of person she'd swore never to become.

A man in a hoodie stumbled past, eyes vacant, phone in hand, scrolling endlessly through nothing.

Elena stopped. The revelation hit her like lightning: the zombies weren't the undead shuffling in horror movies. They were everywhere. They were people who'd stopped asking themselves what they actually wanted.

She peeled the orange in the dark. The scent cut through the rain, sharp and alive. Buster looked up at her, tail wagging slowly.

"I'm done," she said to the empty park. "I am so fucking done."

The next morning, she didn't go into Apex Solutions. She booked a court for padel—first time since the accident. She called Sarah. She peeled another orange and watched the lightning strike somewhere far away, feeling—for the first time in years—like she was actually, finally, awake.