The Last Living Man

Elena smoothed the stray hairs of her updo, staring at her reflection in the restroom mirror. Thirty-seven years old and already becoming invisible. The gala was filled with people like her—corporate zombies in expensive formal wear, shuffling from canapé to canapé, their eyes glazed with the same practiced enthusiasm she'd been performing for hours.

Her marriage had died three years ago. She and Mark still lived in the same house, slept in the same bed, but something fundamental had rotted between them. They were both walking corpses now, too tired to fight, too cowardly to leave.

The man appeared beside her at the sink. Thomas. The new VP from the London office, with hair the color of autumn leaves—ginger threaded with copper, falling across his forehead in waves that made her fingers ache with the urge to touch it.

"They're like cattle, aren't they?" he said, washing his hands. "The ones out there. Feed them enough free alcohol and they'll confess their sins."

Elena laughed, startled. "I was thinking zombies."

"Same difference." He dried his hands, turned to face her. "What's your sin, Elena?"

The way he said her name—like he was testing its weight on his tongue. She should walk away. She was married, however hollow that marriage had become.

"I don't feel guilty," she said. "That's the problem."

"Ah." He stepped closer. His eyes were the color of storms. "The sphinx asked simpler questions than that. What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, three in the evening? The answer's just humankind. But you're asking something else—what's the difference between being alive and simply knowing you should be."

She couldn't breathe. He'd named the thing she'd been carrying for years, the weight that dragged at her limbs every morning.

"I don't know the answer," she whispered.

"Neither do I." His fingers brushed her wrist, feather-light. "But maybe we stop being zombies when we finally admit we're hungry."

The door swung open. Mark stood there, his face blank as stone.

Elena looked at her husband, then back at Thomas and his copper-ginger hair and storm-gray eyes. For the first time in three years, she felt something beyond exhaustion. Fear, yes. But also something terrifying and sweet.

"I'm starving," she said.

Outside, the party continued. The dead kept walking. But somewhere beneath the fluorescent lights, something was beginning to wake.