The Zombie by the Infinity Pool

Maya stood on her balcony in Kona, the corporate retreat's pamphlet promised paradise. What she found was a poorly compressed jpeg of it, rendered in mediocre reality.

"They cut the cable," she muttered into her phone, staring at the router's blinking amber lights. "Three thousand-dollar resort and the internet is dead."

"So you're unreachable for 48 hours," Ben said, his voice tinny. "Sounds like a feature, not a bug. Enjoy the forced mindfulness."

"I have a Q3 deck due, Ben. I can't be unreachable."

"You're at a team building retreat. That's literally the point." A pause. "How's Marcus?"

Maya looked through the glass doors to where Marcus lay by the pool, face up, arms splayed, a brown papaya half-eaten on the table beside his sunglasses. He looked like a victim of something.

"He's fine," she said.

"The team dynamics seem... intense," Ben had texted earlier, when she'd mentioned Marcus, her newly promoted counterpart who kept finding reasons to sit next to her at dinner, who looked at her like she was a life raft in the open ocean.

She walked down to the pool deck. Palm fronds rustled in the wind, making shadows dance across Marcus's bare chest. He didn't move when she approached.

"You okay?" she asked.

He opened one eye. "I've decided to embrace it. The zombification."

"Excuse me?"

"We're all zombies, Maya. The job, the commute, the quarterly forecasts. We're dead inside but we keep walking. This retreat? It's just zombie team building. Learn to collaborate better while your soul rots." He laughed, but it was sharp, edged with something real. "At least the papaya's fresh."

Maya sat in the adjacent lounge chair. She thought about the Q3 deck, about Ben's patience wearing thin, about Marcus and his timing and the way he looked at her like she was still alive in a way he wasn't anymore.

"The cable's out," she said.

"Good."

"I mean, really out. Something about a storm on the mainland. They're saying maybe days."

Marcus sat up. His eyes were intent. "Days. Huh."

"Yeah."

"So you're stuck here. With me. And no email."

The papaya sat between them, bright orange against the beige table, seeds like small black stones. Maya thought about the word zombie—about what it meant to feel dead and still move, about what it might mean to feel something again.

"I guess," she said.

Marcus picked up a piece of papaya. He held it out to her. His fingers brushed hers.

"Try it," he said. "Before you decide whether being dead is really so bad."