The Dead Pool

The office betting pool had started as a joke. "Who's next?" someone had scrawled on the whiteboard in the breakroom, and beneath it, names appeared like dark magic. Marcus knew he shouldn't look, but he did anyway.

His friend Elena sat beside him at the bar, her zombie-like stare fixed on the television above the bottles. She'd been like this for weeks—since the first round of layoffs. Not technically undead, but something had left her eyes when security escorted her team out. Now she haunted the hallways, a ghost in her own career.

"They're saying it's a bear market," Elena murmured, not looking at him. "But bears hibernate. They wake up hungry. This feels permanent."

Marcus signaled the bartender for another round. The company retreat had been held at a resort with an actual pool—a glittering blue tomb where executives had floated on inflatables, discussing synergy while the water lapped at their expensive loafers. He'd watched from a lounge chair, nursing lukewarm rosé, thinking how strange it was to see his bosses half-submerged, their power stripped away by physics and buoyancy.

"Remember Greg?" Elena asked suddenly. "From accounting?"

"Greg with the bear tattoos?"

"He took the package. Started that wilderness survival school in Alaska. Living among actual grizzlies." She finally turned to face him. "Sometimes I think he was the smart one. Just walked away from the whole bull." She made a vague gesture that encompassed the corporate world, the markets, the relentless forward momentum of profit and loss.

Marcus thought about the betting pool again. His own name was on there now—third from the bottom, beneath two vice presidents who hadn't been seen since Thursday. The odds were generous. Someone believed in him.

"What if we just left?" he said. The words hung between them, fragile and dangerous. "No packages, no references, no forwarding addresses. Just... gone."

Elena's zombie posture softened. For the first time in months, something alive sparked behind her eyes. "Where would we go?"

"Anywhere that doesn't have a breakroom whiteboard."

She finished her drink in one swallow, then stood up. The movement was so sudden that other patrons turned. "My car's outside," she said. "We can figure out the rest when we hit the highway."

Marcus looked at his phone—three missed calls, two urgent emails, a calendar notification for tomorrow's all-hands. Then he looked at Elena, really looked at her, and saw not a workplace casualty but a person deciding to survive.

He left the phone on the bar, face down. A small reverse betting pool: one less ghost for the office haunting roster.

Outside, the night air tasted like gasoline and possibility. They drove north, toward mountains that probably contained bears, away from a city full of predators of a different sort. The dawn found them at a roadside diner, drinking coffee from thick ceramic mugs, watching the sun rise over a landscape that had never heard of their company or its careful accounting of human worth.

"So," Elena said, and for the first time in months, she smiled. "What now, friend?"

Marcus watched the waitress pour more coffee, steam rising like something finally, properly alive. "Now," he said, "we figure out what we actually want to be when we grow up. Again."