The Dead Zone

Sarah watched the notification light on her iPhone blink—another email from the pharmaceutical company at 11:47 PM. She didn't need to look. They wanted her back in the office. The 'zombie' clause in her contract, they called it: mandatory overtime during the final phase of clinical trials.

Her golden retriever, Cooper, nosed her hand, reminding her that living creatures needed things corporations didn't. She put on her coat.

The streets were empty. Most of the city had given up on being alive after 9 PM. Sarah felt it too—the slow hollowing out that happened when you spent fourteen hours a day reviewing data that could save or destroy lives, while your own life remained suspended in amber.

She'd played padel with Marcus last Thursday. Their first match in two months. They used to play every Tuesday until the trials started. He'd looked at her across the net, really looked at her, and said, "You're not here, Sarah. You're somewhere else."

She was. She was in the data, in the possibilities, in the weight of decisions that kept insomnia company.

Cooper pulled toward the park, the same park where she'd played baseball in college outfield, where she'd felt certain about things like wind direction and trajectory. Now she couldn't remember what certainty felt like.

Her iPhone buzzed. Sarah threw it as hard as she could toward the abandoned baseball diamond. It landed in soft dirt near home plate.

Cooper stared at her, then trotted over and claimed the device gently between his teeth, returning it like a proper retrieve.

"Good boy," she whispered, taking the phone and turning it off for the first time in three years.

The zombie clause could wait until morning. Sarah had seven hours to remember how to be human again.