The Dead Don't Have Policies

The dead don't have policies. The dead don't have quarterly reviews. The dead don't have to pretend that this project is going to revolutionize the industry when we both know it's just going to sit on a server somewhere until the next restructuring.

I looked down at my hands. Calloused from typing. From shaking hands. From holding myself together.

I remember when I was thirty-two and convinced that I'd die a corporate zombie, maintaining systems I didn't understand for people who didn't care. The real zombies weren't the ones eating brains on Netflix. They were us. Walking dead. Maintaining. Not living.

Then the outbreak happened.

Now I'm something else.

The street below is chaos. I can see them from here—hundreds of zombies, moving in that terrible jerky way, like broken puppets. Some of them are still wearing their work clothes. I recognize one from Security. He was always so particular about following protocol. Now he's ripping apart someone who was probably just trying to get to the subway.

My office is on the 44th floor. I've been here three days. The water stopped running yesterday.

The cat showed up on day two. How it got here, I don't know. Maybe it was someone's emotional support animal. Maybe it wandered up from the streets during the initial panic. It's a calico, thin but fierce, with one ear that's been torn in half. It spent the first day hiding under my desk, hissing every time I moved.

Now it sleeps on my keyboard.

"You and me both," I tell it.

The cat opens one yellow eye, then closes it again. It doesn't care about my existential crisis. It cares that I still have half a bag of beef jerky and a bottle of lukewarm water.

Outside, the palm trees sway in the wind. They're the only things that still move naturally. Everything else is that jerky, broken motion of the dead. Sometimes I wonder if the plants are the lucky ones. No consciousness. No fear. Just swaying in the breeze while the world ends.

The television in the corner is still playing somehow. Cable news has been cycling through the same emergency broadcast for three days: STAY IN YOUR HOMES. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO TRAVEL. HELP IS COMING.

Help isn't coming. I checked the cable connection on day two, traced it to the roof. The whole infrastructure is shot. This is just a loop playing on a dead server, promising rescue that will never arrive.

The cat yawns, stretches, looks at me with something like judgment.

"What?" I say. "You're so much better off? You're going to die in here too."

The cat doesn't argue. It just walks across my desk and butts its head against my hand.

I should be terrified. I should be planning, strategizing, doing something. But instead I just keep tracing the lines on my palm. The lifeline. The heart line. The headline. I remember what my grandmother told me before she died: Palm reading is for people who can't accept that the future is chaos.

She was right. The future is chaos. The present is chaos. I am 44 floors up in a dead building with a cat and a bag of beef jerky while the world ends outside my window.

The cat purrs against my hand, and the vibration is the only thing that feels real.

I could jump. I've thought about it. 44 floors, quick and certain. Better than waiting for the thirst or the zombies or whatever comes first.

But then the cat would die alone.

And that's the stupidest thing I've ever thought, because the cat is a cat and it doesn't care about dying with dignity or company or meaning. It just wants warmth and food and the comfort of another living thing.

The simplest animal in the room is the only one who understands what matters.

I pick up the cat and it doesn't fight me. It settles into the crook of my arm, purring like a small engine. I walk to the window and look out at the burning city, at the hundreds of thousands of dead walking around in their broken bodies.

I could die here. I will die here, probably. But not yet.

I have beef jerky. I have water. I have a cat.

And for now, that's enough.

The sun sets over the city, painting the sky in oranges and reds that would be beautiful if they weren't reflected in blood and fire. The palm trees keep swaying. The cable news keeps playing its dead loop. The cat keeps purring.

And I keep breathing, which is something that the dead outside can never do again.