What Remains

The radiator hissed. Mark hadn't moved from the couch in three days except to walk Buster. The golden retriever rested his head on Mark's knee — the only thing that still felt real in a world gone static. Mark's iPhone lay face-down on the coffee table, its screen lighting up with notifications he couldn't bring himself to answer. Work wanted to know when he'd be back. Sarah wanted to know why she hadn't heard from him.

Maybe he was already gone. That's how it felt — walking through the office on autopilot, saying the right things, smiling when people asked about his mother while the grief hollowed him out from the inside.

A zombie, he'd thought, standing in the kitchen last week, watching himself spread peanut butter on bread, mechanical and numb.

Now he scrolled through old photos on his iPhone — Mom at Christmas, Mom holding Buster as a puppy, Mom's last voicemail still saved because he couldn't bear to delete her voice. The dog thumped his tail against the floor, rhythmic and steady, like a second heartbeat.

He read the headlines between photos. Infected roam city streets. Families boarding up windows. Real zombies, the kind from movies, but his phone battery was dying and he couldn't care less about the apocalypse when his own world had already ended. Buster shifted, sighed against his leg. The golden retriever had been Mom's dog, really. She'd rescued him six years ago, after the divorce, when Mark was still living in that studio apartment with nothing but a futon and a broken espresso maker.

"He needs someone," she'd said, pressing the leash into his hand at the hospice. "You need someone."

Buster whined and nudged Mark's hand. The iPhone buzzed again — Sarah, probably, or maybe work, or maybe the emergency alert system telling everyone to stay inside, lock their doors, wait for instructions.

Right. The dog needed to go out.

He stood, bones creaking, and found Buster's leash by the door. The world might be ending somewhere else, but here, in this apartment, he was still alive enough to take care of the creature who loved him.

That would have to be enough.