The Last Bar

The zombie apocalypse didn't come with brains or gore. It came in a suit and tie, with spreadsheets and quarterly projections. Sarah had been walking dead for three years—since the promotion that promised everything and delivered nothing but exhaustion and a corner office with a view of nothing important.

Her iPhone buzzed against the mahogany table, a tiny heartbeat in her pocket. Mark again. They hadn't spoken since his wedding two years ago, where she'd given a toast she couldn't remember writing and left before the cake was cut. Work had called. Work always called.

"You look like you need this," the bartender said, sliding a whiskey toward her. He was young, maybe twenty-five, with the kind of idealism she'd lost somewhere between performance reviews and pretend-friendly emails.

"You have no idea," she murmured. Her charging cable stretched across the bar like a lifeline, keeping her phone alive even as she felt herself dying inside. Five percent battery. Ten percent soul. The math didn't work in her favor anymore.

Mark's message glowed on the screen: *I'm getting a divorce. I need my friend.*

Sarah stared at the words until they blurred. *Friend.* The word felt foreign, like a language she'd once spoken but had mostly forgotten. In the zombie apocalypse of corporate ambition, friendship was collateral damage—nice to have, but ultimately expendable.

She typed and deleted three responses. *Congratulations?* No. *I'm sorry.* Too small. *I've missed you.* Too honest.

The bartender returned. "Everything okay?"

"No," she said, surprised by her own candor. "But it might be."

Sarah unplugged her phone from the cable, watching the battery percentage creep downward. For the first time in three years, she didn't care if it died. She tapped Mark's name and pressed call, thinking maybe the real apocalypse wasn't the end of the world at all—maybe it was finally waking up from the nightmare of being someone you never meant to become.