The Zombie Outfielder

Maya stood in center field, glove loose, barely registering the baseball arcing toward her. Another pop fly, another out, another Friday night wasted while everyone else was at Tyler's party. She could already see the Instagram stories—her iphone would buzz any second with notifications she'd obsessively check despite knowing better. FOMO was real, and it was winning.

"Heads up, Maya!" someone yelled, but she was too busy thinking about how she didn't even like baseball. Her dad lived vicariously through her fastball, but she'd rather be home with Barnaby, her cat who didn't care about batting averages or college scouts. Barnaby got it. He spent sixteen hours a day sleeping and still managed to be more authentic than anyone at Hamilton High.

That's when she noticed it—the sudden stiffness in how everyone moved. The way her teammates shuffled between innings, eyes glazed, responding to Coach's pep talk with hollow "yeah coach"s like they were all running on autopilot. They looked like zombies, Maya realized. Not the cool kind from shows, but the actual walking dead, going through motions because that's what you did.

Her phone buzzed in her back pocket. A screenshot from Chloe's story: everyone at Tyler's, posing with red cups, making the same face, using the same filter. Zombie behavior.

Maya caught the next ball without thinking. And then she did something radical—she sat down in the outfield grass, pulled out her phone, and opened TikTok. Started recording herself doing absolutely nothing, just existing in the middle of a baseball game she hated.

"What are you doing?" Lily asked from shortstop.

"Joining the zombie apocalypse," Maya said. "But like, ironically."

By the seventh inning, three other players had joined her, sitting in the grass. By Monday, her TikTok had 40,000 views and the team had a new tradition: the Inning Seven Zombie Break, where they collectively stopped performing and started being actual humans.

Her dad wasn't thrilled about the batting average drop. But Barnaby? Barnaby finally approved of her life choices. And that mattered more.