The Dead Walk Among Us

She swallowed the vitamin D supplement with cold office coffee, the pill clicking against her teeth like a tiny rebuke. Another day, another attempt to manufacture something her body refused to produce on its own.

At her desk, Maya watched her colleagues shuffle past the glass walls—each one moving with that same flat-footed gait, eyes glazed with the peculiar vacancy of people who'd forgotten how to want things. We were all zombies now, she realized. Not the pop-creature variety, but something worse: people who'd been hollowed out by years of fluorescent lights and quarterly goals.

Her iPhone vibrated. Another text from David: 'Still coming to dinner?'

She stared at the message. Three years ago, she would have felt something—anticipation, tenderness, maybe even love. Now, she just felt tired. Their relationship had become a series of scheduled interactions, meals consumed while scrolling through feeds, bodies moving through motions that used to mean something.

'Yes,' she typed. '7pm.'

That afternoon, she found herself in the breakroom watching a nature documentary on her phone. A grizzly bear stood in a river, snatching salmon from the water. The animal's focus was absolute, its hunger pure and unmediated. It knew exactly what it needed, and it took it.

Maya started crying, tears streaming down her face in the empty room. She couldn't remember the last time she'd wanted anything that deeply.

That evening, David found her sitting on their balcony, watching the sunset. 'Rough day?' he asked, his voice full of the concern that used to undo her.

'No,' she said, and for the first time in years, it was the truth. 'I'm just done being dead.'

She stood up and went inside, leaving her phone on the railing. Behind her, David watched the screen flash with incoming notifications—a series of tiny lights winking out in the gathering dark.