The Pool Where We Drowned

The corporate cafeteria buzzed with that particular lunch-rush electricity—twenty versions of the same conversation about quarterly targets and whose team was meeting their numbers. I sat alone, nursing lukewarm coffee, watching the betting pool on the whiteboard. Someone had written ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE in all caps at the top, odds at 3:1.

"You're not eating," Marcus said, sliding into the chair opposite me. His tie was loose, eyes rimmed with red. "Rough night?"

"Every night's rough now." I pushed my tray away. "Since the restructuring."

We were all walking dead anyway. Three rounds of layoffs in six months, and the survivors moved through the hallways like ghosts of our former selves. I'd stopped feeling anything around week two—the fear, the anger, the guilt of still having a paycheck while friends packed boxes.

Marcus leaned in closer. "You hear about Jenkins?"

"The bull of floor nine?"

"Found him at his pool this morning."

The words hung between us like smoke. "Dead?"

"Dead drunk, maybe. Neighbors called the cops. Said he was screaming at the water." Marcus's voice dropped. "He kept saying they all drowned. All of them."

I remembered Jenkins—stubborn as hell, refused to take the buyout, fought for his team until security escorted him out. Last I heard, he was living off savings and fury.

"They said he was fully clothed," Marcus continued, "just walking into the pool over and over. Rising and falling like he was testing the waters. Waiting for something."

I thought about the betting pool on the board. Who'd be next. Who'd break first. We'd turned our own survival into a game, numbing ourselves with spreadsheets and probability, anything to avoid feeling the water rising around us.

"You think he's right?" I asked. "That we all drowned?"

Marcus looked at his hands. "I don't know what's worse. Being dead and not knowing it, or knowing it and not being able to stop moving anyway."

The announcement buzzer rang—another all-hands meeting, another shuffle of the deck. We stood up together, two zombies answering the next bell, while somewhere across the city, a man continued to walk into his pool, searching for survivors in the deep end.