The Zombie Run

Marcus pulled his hat down lower, praying the earth would swallow him whole before Coach Miller noticed him slinking away from baseball practice again. Third time this week. His dad was gonna kill him, probably literally, with a baseball bat if he found out Marcus had quit the team without telling him.

'Hey! Martinez! Where you going?' yelled Benny, the team captain who looked like he'd been chugging protein shakes since birth.

'Just... gotta go. Family thing,' Marcus mumbled, already jogging toward the parking lot where his beat-up Honda waited.

He felt like a zombie most days anyway—trudging through AP Chemistry, fake-laughing at lunch, pretending to care about batting averages and stolen bases. Maybe that's why he'd signed up for the charity Zombie Run tonight. At least there, everyone was supposed to look dead.

The registration table was chaos. Some girl with purple hair was wrestling with a tangled cable connecting the PA system, muttering 'this is SO jank' under her breath. Marcus caught her eye and they both cracked up.

'I'm Luna,' she said, finally getting the music working. 'You running or hiding?'

'Both?' Marcus shrugged. 'Mostly hiding from my dad. He thinks I'm at baseball practice.'

Her eyes widened. 'Oof. That's intense. My parents think I'm at SAT prep.' She grinned. 'Wanna hide together?'

And that was how Marcus found himself in the middle of a field at dusk, getting splattered with fake blood while running from actual zombies (okay, theater kids in impressive makeup) alongside a girl with purple hair who somehow made him feel more alive than he'd felt in months.

When his phone buzzed with a text from his dad—'Practice done? Pick you up in 10'—Marcus didn't feel the usual dread. Instead, he laughed as Luna dragged him behind a hay bale to avoid a zombie cheerleader.

'This is way better than baseball,' he said, and meant it.

'Maybe,' Luna whispered, 'you could tell him that. Your truth, not his expectations.'

The Zombies closed in. Marcus grabbed Luna's hand, and they started running—not away from something anymore, but toward whatever came next.