The Last Zombie by the Pool

The corporate retreat had been David's idea—a bid to inject life into a team that had been running on fumes for three quarters. Elena sat by the pool at the Sundown Motel, watching the water ripple in the wind, nursing a whiskey she'd taken from the minibar without measuring. Somewhere in her room, a cable news channel played softly, the same cycle of outrage and despair she'd fallen asleep to for months.

She'd become something like a zombie herself—moving through meetings, sending emails she'd forget by dinner, maintaining the brittle performance of competence while her savings evaporated like the condensation on her glass. Her mother's death in February had hollowed her out, left her walking through days that felt like they belonged to someone else.

David emerged from the pool, shaking water from his hair like a dog, drunk on the cheap beer and his own optimism. He was thirty-five and still believed things could get better. Elena was forty-two and knew better.

"You joining?" he asked, dripping water on the concrete. "Temperature's perfect."

"I don't have a suit," she said, which was true. She'd packed in a blur, grabbing whatever was clean.

"So wear your underwear. Who cares?" He laughed. "We're all zombies here, El. Nobody's watching."

The word hit her like cold water. He knew—of course he knew. They were all walking dead, professional ghosts haunting offices that felt increasingly like tombstones to ambitions that had died years ago. The pool reflected the purple twilight, its surface smooth and indifferent.

Elena set down her drink. She kicked off her heels and stepped into the water, panties and bra, her work clothes folded neatly on the lounge chair beside her mother's hat—a wide-brimmed thing she'd stolen from the closet, desperate for something that felt like armor.

The water shocked her skin, cold enough to make her gasp. David whooped from the deep end. Elena lowered herself until the water covered her shoulders, until the weight of her body shifted from the wrongness of gravity to the strange suspension of buoyancy.

For a moment, she wasn't a zombie. She was just a body in water, held. The cable news played somewhere distant, unimportant. The hat watched from the chair. She thought about staying there forever.

Then she climbed out, dripping and alive, and walked toward her room to pack. She'd send her resignation email from the airport. Some zombies finally learned to stop walking in circles. Some finally found their way to the deep end and chose to sink or swim.