Running Zombies at Sunrise

Maya stood on the padel court at 6 AM, the neon lights humming overhead like dying insects. Her ex-husband's voice still echoed in her head - "You're running away, Maya, just like you always do." She wasn't running. She was standing her ground in divorce court, in therapy sessions, in this ridiculous 6 AM padel league that cost more than her first car. The vitamin supplements rattled in her gym bag - B12 for energy, D for seasonal depression, magnesium for the anxiety that woke her at 3 AM. Wellness culture was just capitalism's way of monetizing the holes in your soul.

Her partner for the morning match appeared from the shadows - Elias, the architect she'd been playing with for three weeks. His face had that familiar zombie look, the one she saw in the mirror every morning. The look of someone sleepwalking through their life, surprised to still be breathing.

"Ready?" he asked, swinging his racket like a weapon.

"I've been ready since the marriage dissolved," she said, then immediately regretted it. Why did she always overshare with near-strangers?

Elias paused. "My wife died two years ago," he said. "Brain tumor. Sometimes I still set the table for two."

The ball sailed between them, a yellow comet in the artificial dawn. They played in silence, the thwack of rubber against glass the only conversation they needed. Maya's vitamin regimen couldn't fix this - the sudden recognition of shared grief, the way trauma made you run toward connection while everything in you screamed to retreat.

"My husband left me for his assistant," she said after they lost the match, sitting on the bench as the sun finally breached the horizon. "Twenty years together, and I never saw it coming. I feel like I've been living next to a stranger."

Elias opened his water bottle, the plastic crinkling in the morning chill. "The dead don't lie to you," he said. "They just leave. It's cleaner."

Maya swallowed the handful of vitamins dry, knowing they wouldn't help. But standing there, walking dead together in the predawn light, she didn't feel quite so alone.

"I'll see you next week?" she asked.

He smiled, something flickering behind his eyes that might have been hope. "Same time. Same court. Same zombies."

Maya walked to her car, not running anymore. The vitamins rattled in her bag - small, useless promises of renewal. But for the first time in months, she thought she might actually be ready to start living again.