What Survives the Night

Marcus had been working the hospice wing for three years when his mother stopped recognizing his face. She'd become a zombie in all but name - eyes still bright, body still moving, but the woman who'd taught him to love spinach by calling it 'soldier food' was gone. Just a hollowed-out shell going through the motions of living.

He met Lena at the hospital cafeteria one Tuesday at 3 AM. She was a fox in the most predatory sense - sharp eyes, calculated movements, married to the chief of surgery. Marcus knew he shouldn't, but grief makes you stupid.

'Your spinach is showing,' she said, gesturing to her own teeth.

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. 'Sorry. Long shift.'

'Aren't they all?' She sat down without asking. 'I've been watching you. You're like one of them - the walking dead.'

Marcus almost laughed. 'My mother's in room 302. She doesn't know who I am anymore.'

Lena's face softened. 'My father died of Alzheimer's last year. By the end, he thought I was his dead sister.' She reached across the table, fingers grazing his. 'We're all zombies here, Marcus. Some of us are just better at hiding it.'

They started meeting in the supply closet, then her car, then a motel off I-95. It wasn't love - it was two desperate people trying to feel something besides the slow march of death.

The night his mother finally died, Lena brought him a container of fresh spinach. 'Soldier food,' she said.

He ate it standing in the hospital parking lot, tears mixing with the metallic taste, and realized he wasn't a zombie anymore. Zombies don't feel this much. Zombies don't love this hard, even when they know it'll destroy them.

'Come home with me,' he said.

She hesitated. 'My husband -'

'Fuck your husband.' Marcus grabbed her hand. 'I'm done being dead.'

She didn't pull away.