The Zombie Who Couldn't Bear It

Elena had become a zombie of her own making. She shuffled through the corridors of Meridian Technologies at 7:42 AM each morning, her hair—a once-vibrant chestnut now streaked with silver—pulled back in the same utilitarian ponytail she'd worn for seven years. The fluorescent lights hummed their eternal song as she bore the weight of spreadsheets and quarterly projections she stopped caring about somewhere around 2019.

The cable modem in her apartment had died sometime during her fifth year of marriage, or maybe it was the sixth. David had promised to fix it, but David was currently asleep on their IKEA sofa, mouth slightly open, breath whistling through the mustache he'd grown to compensate for his thinning hair. Elena had learned to live without internet at home. She preferred it that way—fewer reminders of the life everyone else was living.

She bought a papaya from the street vendor near her office building every Tuesday. The routine had started accidentally during a particularly brutal month of audit preparations, when the fruit's vibrant orange flesh had seemed like the only honest thing in her world. Now, cutting into its pink-black seeds at her desk while reviewing profit margins was her act of quiet rebellion.

"You're going to miss it," said Marcus from IT, standing in her doorway with a replacement cable modem tucked under his arm like a secret weapon. He was thirty-two, with hair that refused to stay flat and eyes that actually looked at things.

"Miss what?" Elena set down her papaya.

"The quarterly review. Starting in ten minutes."

Elena stared at him. At the way his collar was unbuttoned, at the cable snaking from his hand to her desk. At the sudden, terrible understanding that this moment—this ordinary, terrible moment—was the rest of her life unless she did something.

"Marcus," she said, "what would happen if I didn't go?"

He smiled, and it wasn't the smile of someone who would make a good corporate zombie. "I don't know," he said. "But I'm free for lunch."

Outside, the city was alive. Elena took a bite of her papaya, and it tasted like possibility, or at least like something that wasn't nothing. Her hair came loose from its elastic band. She didn't fix it.