Vitamin Supplements for the Walking Dead

The elevator cable hummed its familiar Monday morning complaint as Marcus ascended to Floor 42, his thumb reflexively scrolling through his iPhone like a rosary for the digital damned. Forty-seven unread emails. Three calendar invites. One ghost notification from Sarah—sent three weeks ago, delivered three seconds ago, because apparently his phone had decided to haunt him today.

The office floor was already alive with the familiar shambling rhythm of corporate existence. Marcus watched his colleagues move through their morning routines: coffee machine pilgrimages, vacant elevator stares, the thousand-yard gaze of people who'd forgotten what they were running toward sometime around 2019. He'd started calling them the zombie squad—not the flesh-eating pop-cultural variety, but something closer to the truth: animated bodies performing the same motions endlessly, consciousness optional.

His vitamin routine waited on his desk like a small judgment: D3 for the windowless existence, B-complex for stress that no supplement could touch, magnesium because the internet said it helped with "that vague sense of impending doom." He dry-swallowed them all without water, a familiar defiance.

"Marcus, we need that Q3 projection by noon," called out Cheryl from across the aisle, her phone pressed to her ear like an external organ. She didn't look up. She never looked up anymore.

He opened the spreadsheet, numbers blurring into meaninglessness, and found himself remembering the night Sarah left. She'd stood in their apartment doorway, her own phone vibrating in her hand like some kind of malignant force. "You're not even here anymore," she'd said. "Even when you're here."

He'd been running then—running toward promotions, running toward some hypothetical future where enough money would finally feel like enough. Now he understood she hadn't been talking about absence. She'd been talking about the particular way a person could disappear while sitting right beside you.

The elevator cable hummed again, someone else ascending to join the walking dead. Marcus glanced at his phone. No new messages. Just the screen glowing back at him like a small, hungry mouth.

He closed the spreadsheet. He stood up. And for the first time in three years, he walked toward the elevator without checking his email.

The descent felt like falling toward something real.