Palms in the Ash

The Zombie in the Mirror

Marcus had become a zombie somewhere between his third divorce and the collapse of the mortgage-backed securities market. Not the walking dead kind—worse. The corporate kind. He shuffled through Manhattan at 6 AM, espresso in one hand, Bloomberg terminal in the other, shambling toward another twelve hours of moving money that meant nothing.

He should have felt something when Elena left. Instead, he'd just kept shuffling.

"You're not living," she'd said, packing her suitcase with the methodical precision of a bomb technician. "You're just not dying yet."

Now he stood on the balcony of their—that is, his—condo in Miami, watching palm trees sway in the hurricane-season wind. Their silhouettes bent like interrogators, demanding answers he didn't have.

The woman beside him stirred. "You're thinking about her."

Sarah. Twenty-six, whip-smart, a corporate spy who'd somehow penetrated his defenses without him noticing until it was too late. She worked for the competitors now, or maybe the feds—Marcus had stopped caring who was buying his secrets. He'd stopped caring about much of anything.

"I'm not thinking," he said. "I'm not doing anything."

She pressed something into his palm. Keys. A safe deposit box. Coordinates. "Last chance to make this mean something."

The zombie in the mirror raised its head.

"What if I don't want to?" he asked, and the question surprised him more than her answer.

"Then you really are dead," she said, and walked out.

Marcus watched the palms twist in the wind, their fronds like fingers beckoning him toward something—what, he couldn't say. Redemption. Disaster. The opposite of whatever this half-life had become.

His phone buzzed. Sarah's coordinates.

The zombie in the mirror made its first real decision in years.

He pressed the palm of his hand against the glass, feeling the warmth of his own pulse, and called her back.