The Gospel of Z

by Stephen Graham Jones

  “Found what?”

  “Maybe some suicide walked in with it in his pocket,” the dead man went on, his gone eyes looking deep into the past. “Left it on the altar. In the collection plate.”

  “Left what?”

  “What really happened,” the dead man whispered, reverently, “the truth, the gospel. It changed everything. Gave them power, made them grow up all at once. Tend their flock more carefully—one a month, instead of everybody at once. And”—more coughing, worse coughing—“and they called in their saints from across the sea, who walked on water the whole way here, set up shop in the old garrison, just to be close to, close to where it—”

  “The Hill, you mean?”

  The dead man kind of chuckled. “Historical site,” he said. “Big church back before, before cars, then”—more coughing, and from deeper—“underground, underground—” but he lost it in coughing.

  “Underground railroad,” Jory completed. “The tunnel.”

  The dead man nodded, collected himself, his head lolling around on his shoulders like it was going to Pez back. When he spoke now, it was more into his chest, “But then, during the war, the army used it for a, for a munitions depot. Armory. After we won, the army had their engineers improve the tunnel, so they could, so they could”—bad coughing—“could move all their hush-hush ordinance out of the heart of the downtown.”

  “To here.”

  “And now you’re that ordinance.” The dead man laughed. “Their agent of mass destruction. Of infection. Like the pipe got clogged, is backing up.”

  “I told you,” Jory said. “I got away before they could do it. I’m not infected.”

  “Not with the virus,” the dead man ceded.

  “The—the tic-tac-toe?” Jory filled in, not buying it.

  “Monthly reminder,” the dead man said, coughing at the end of it. “Round fired across the”—cough, cough—“across the bow. Monthly reminder that they know.”

  Messenger, Jory heard again. From Hillford.

  “A message about Scanlon,” he said. “What he did.”

  “About Genesis. That they know it. That they have it. It keeps the brass in line.”

  Jory stared at this dead man, then stared some more.

  “So the army’s afraid of the Church?”

  “Long as there’s dead people walking, there’s somebody to blame,” the dead man said. “But it’d be suicide for them to let that document leak. That’s the stupid part. It’d be a disaster. For both damn houses.”

  “A pox, you mean,” Jory said.

  The dead man looked up at him, the question written on his face.

  “A pox,” Jory explained. “I subbed for English once.”

  The dead man got it, nodded. “‘On this the world depends’,” he recited.

  “‘This’?” Jory asked.

  “The truth,” the dead man said, looking to the sound of important boots coming down the passageway at them. “The gospel truth.”

  This time it was just the tech-loving guard and Scanlon.

  Before coming to Jory’s cell, Scanlon stood at the dead man’s, studying him. Goats braying all around.

  “Hear that?” the guard said to Jory, about the goats. “Know what they’re saying? They think he’s their dad. Listen. ‘Da-addy, Da-addy’.”

  The guard still had the Hot Shot, of course. Patting it with his other hand, like he was crowd control here. Just waiting.

  “So you’re this month’s special delivery,” Scanlon said.

  Jory closed his eyes, swallowed. When he came back, the guard was smelling the tip of his Hot Shot.

  “I know why you keep them down here,” Jory said, his eyes glancing off Scanlon’s.

  “Know what happens we keep them in open air?” Scanlon said right back. “Ever seen dogs lining the butcher’s fence? A desiccate’ll come for miles, he smells a stash like this. All of them will. And to get here, they’ll have to cross downtown. Have to cross base.”

  Jory studied the bars of his cell again—solid—said it, “Meaning you’re the butcher, here?”

  “Don’t start,” Scanlon said. “Save it for your new spiritual guide.”

  “Hillford’s the one who put me here,” Jory said.

  “Gave you back, more like,” Scanlon said. “Turn around.”

  “You know what you’ve done.”

  “Saved the world, you mean?”

  “It’s my move.”

  “Good, good, yes. I could have made something of you, you know? Used all that pissed-offness. That mouth.”

  “Just get it over with already.”

  “What?”

  “Whatever you did to him”—the dead man across the way—“I don’t know. I’m not walking out of here, am I?”

  “A suicide to the end.”

  “I died ten years ago.”

  “Ten years ago today.”

  “Anybody ever finish one of those games?” the dead man said from his cell then, his chin still on his chest.

  Jory and Scanlon and the guard all turned to study him.

  “Xs, Os?” the dead man said, speaking loud enough that it was going to cost him some lung, Jory knew. And then he looked up, his dead eyes right on Scanlon. “Or were they all”—cough, cough, two fingers dragged through a cross again—“were they all—all”—but he lost the rest, had to bend over to try to breathe, the ridge of his vertebrae stark, reptilian.

  “Xs,” Jory finished.

  Scanlon came back to him.

  “This is all underground because if one of these short-fingers gets loose, everybody’ll know it’s true,” Jory said. “Not the goats. The kids. No, your kids.”

  “You’re not standing here otherwise.”

  “I’m just the messenger.”

  The guard shook his head in something like pity.

  “No,” Scanlon said. “You’re more than that now, son. To those fairies up on the Hill.”

  The dead man laughed at this, somehow.

  Scanlon pretended not to notice.

  “But guess what?” Scanlon went on. “Because you’re more than that to them, you’re more than that to me now too. Last time you went in the field? Your buddy, he showed up too.”

  “Hillford?”

  “Brother Hillford the saint maker. Exactly. I send you out again, I’d put money down he’ll be there waiting. See what holy bullshit you pull next.”

  “He offered me an apple,” Jory said. “I didn’t take it.”

  “Well, there’s all kinds of apples,” Scanlon said. “But that’s not why I’m here. Why I’m here is that I think it’s time for a regime change.” With that, he squatted down to Jory’s level. “Know what I’m talking about here, son? Because, know what we think? The plague’s over. All that’s left’s cleanup. But your buddy up the Hill, he knows that if the scary shit’s all done with, then people will stop going to Church. So they’ve been bringing them back somehow, cooking up a new brew—”

  “Airborne,” Jory said, half on accident.

  “Or in the dirt, or some other way, we don’t know. But they can do it, we’ve seen them do it right where you’re standing, and, what’s worse, they’ve got their finger on the button. And I think they’re just bat shit enough to do it.”

  “Do what?”

  “Start the bad old days up all over again. Kick-start another swarm.”

  “They wouldn’t.”

  “They already are, son. They’re just refining the formula, the method of dispersal. Don’t you doubt it for one minute. They’re waiting for a certain anniversary, think? Gonna make us all into angels, whether we like it or not. Except we got to be devils first, right?”

  Scanlon shook his head, studied the far wall.

  “Sometimes you’ve got to be the devil, though, to do good,” he said. “That’s the part they never understood.”

  Jory blinked, the cell becoming real around him. The world shifting, somehow. It was the scent of cooked goat all around him. It was the same as the pe
ach smuggler had smelled. The same as Glasses and the cheerleader.

  Jory dry-heaved, held it down.

  The guard nodded yes, yes. That this was just the beginning.

  Scanlon was waiting for Jory now.

  Jory looked past him, to the dead man across the way.

  “So you want me to go another call,” he said. “Draw him out—Hillford.”

  “Cut the head off the snake,” Scanlon said, “the body, it dies. Every fucking time.”

  Jory was just staring at the goat now.

  “No,” he said.

  “I’m not asking,” Scanlon told him.

  Jory’s face was hot now.

  “Why me?” he asked.

  “Because you’re special to them. Because if you do it, if it happens while you’re there, then it’ll be holy to them, that’s why. No retaliation. No harm, no foul. And it’ll mean something, being on the anniversary.”

  The guard standing beside him nodded.

  “You want me to kill Hillford,” Jory said, just to be clear.

  “He should have died in the old pens seven years ago,” Scanlon said, reaching in to the goat with his own baton.

  “You want me to be your next ten-year-old kid,” Jory added, quieter. More level. “Your last kid.”

  Scanlon didn’t even stop what he was doing with his baton—pulling the goat closer to the bars—just said, “Thought she was more like eleven?”

  Jory had to turn his face away. Lick his lips hard.

  Scanlon chuckled his old-man chuckle. “And, if you’re asking if I know what’s in these?” he said, the goat to him now, the skin on its flank splitting, spitting up smoke. Scanlon dug into that rip with the first two fingers of his right hand, balanced a dollop of meat there, still trailing its sheath of fat. “I know exactly what’s in here,” he said, and set it into his mouth, chewed it down, never flinched once. Even half of once.

  Jory’s lower lip trembled.

  “You know why I know, Gray?” Scanlon said around the dry swallow. “I’ll tell you, since you’re so special. On this of all days. It’s because I’m not going to let humanity fall down, son. Not under my watch, so help me.”

  “Even if it costs us our humanity,” Jory said.

  The guard grunted something about this.

  Scanlon stood, staring at Jory the whole while.

  “If that’s the way you want it,” he said, drawing his antique revolver, pointing it down to Jory, Jory just looking up to it, waiting.

  “Still a suicide?” Scanlon said.

  “I’m already dead,” Jory said back, and closed his eyes, didn’t want to see it coming.

  The shot filled the cell.

  And Jory had time to think that he’d heard it.

  That he was hearing it echo away now.

  He looked up, cringing.

  Beside Scanlon, the guard wavered, blood crying from his eyes, slipping from his ears. A hole in each temple. Or, in one. The other side of his head, it was gone, a red mouth yawning open.

  “Way I see it,” Scanlon said then, pushing the dead guard away, “you owe me one soldier now,” blowing the smoke from the end of his barrel. “Gotta love the tech, though, don’t you?”

  Jory watched the guard drop to his knees hard enough to jar his hat off, then tump forward, his face cracking into the bars, his top lip dragging on the dry steel, exposing a mouthful of perfect white teeth.

  “Why?” Jory said.

  “Because the Church has a mole in here somewhere. And I can’t take any chances.”

  “I don’t live through this, do I?” Jory said. “Through killing Hillford.”

  “You live forever is what happens,” Scanlon said, amused with himself. “You’ll be a hero. But, if it’s your life you’re suddenly worried about, aren’t you already dead? Inside? Melodramatically? Metaphorically?”

  “And this,” Jory went on, “the cell, the pens, the goats—it’ll all stop if Hillford dies?”

  “That’s all I want, son. Long night’s over. Time for the sun to show its big red ass to the world again.”

  Jory hauled himself up. Hated himself.

  “He survived,” he said.

  Scanlon, wiping his fingers clean on his lower pant leg, stopped, looked up. “‘He’?” he asked.

  “Hillford,” Jory said. “His face is—from fire. He was coded. Like that other guard.”

  “That what he told you?” Scanlon said, curling his now-clean fingers to somebody waiting in the dark, up the passage, telling them to come on. “I told you, son. Other day with you, that was his first call, ever. And his next, thanks to you, it’s going to be his last. I know why they didn’t like him though.”

  “‘They’ who?”

  Scanlon studied Jory again, like he was mishearing. “They, the dead, son. The desiccates. Why he was able to walk through them like he did. What did you call it?”

  “Parting the Dead Sea.”

  “Yeah. I like that. Kind of what I do, too.”

  “Why didn’t they attack him?”

  “Because he’s just like them,” Scanlon said, then nodded once to the handler, just suddenly there, hulking in place. His short-fingered zombie pulling at its leash. Neither of them with enough brain to be the Church’s mole.

  Jory fell back, splatted into the straw floor of his cell.

  Scanlon shrugged, said, “You understand, of course, that I can’t take your word here.”

  “My what?”

  “About not being infected. Maybe they’ve found a way to delay re-an, think? Sent you over here like a time bomb? Solar activated, or elevation, air pressure.”

  “They didn’t—”

  “Yeah, well,” Scanlon said, unlocking the cell, “some things you take on faith, and some things you find out yourself.” He swung the door in, directed the handler in. And the zombie.

  Jory pushed back into the corner, the zombie straining, pulling against the ground, standing up from it.

  “No, no!” Jory was saying.

  “I’d recommend playing it cool here,” Scanlon said. “Don’t want any accidents now, do we?”

  Jory tried, but his chest was heaving, his feet still trying to cram him deeper into the corner, and then the zombie was there, its rancid breath blasting into his face, the handler letting it stay, smell, taste.

  And then the dog pulled harder.

  “It wants me, it wants me, I’m clean!” Jory yelled up to Scanlon.

  “Turn around,” Scanlon said back, through the din, and Jory did, flattening himself against the wall, hearing the last sound he wanted to hear—the zombie’s mouth grate, clacking open.

  Jory’s tic-tac-toe was crawling on his back now, alive, the blood trying to get back inside, the zombie’s mouth right there, inches away, its breath hot and fast, its forelegs pulling at the concrete, spraying straw all up into the handler.

  And, finally, though he didn’t have any left, Jory peed himself, felt it coat his right leg with warmth, maybe the last warmth. He had his mouth open to the wall now, his teeth to the stone like he could chew through, get flatter.

  “Guess you are alive,” Scanlon said, and called it off.

  The handler yanked the zombie back, let it feed on the cooked goat instead.

  “Waste not, want not,” Scanlon said, holding his arm out for Jory to cross the cell, step through the door. Jory’s legs were hardly even his own anymore. “You still know how to use a torch, right?” Scanlon said when Jory was finally out, trying to get his lungs back under his own control.

  Scanlon clanged the door shut, but didn’t lock it.

  “I want, I want, I want the same driver,” Jory told him, the tears coming now. Too much oxygen in his blood. Adrenaline sloshing around in his throat.

  “Same driver, check,” Scanlon said, turning for Jory to follow, Jory falling in, then flinching back, the dead man in the opposite cell at the bars now. His forever fingers wrapped around the bars three times, it looked like. Because—because he was six-nine, six-te
n, it looked like. His chest was caved in, his nipples just craters of burn, his ankles festering in an ancient set of shackles not connected to anything anymore.

  But he could still speak.

  “I am become Shiva, destroyer of worlds,” he hissed, his voice grand and broken, saved up for years, it sounded like, and Jory, directly behind Scanlon, saw Scanlon stiffen, palm his neck, like a rotten fleck of spit had landed there, and in that moment, Scanlon’s skin shifted for Jory. It went smooth, plastic, generic.

  Shiva, Jory repeated in his head, trying to place it. Shiva Shiva Shiva, and then—

  Oppenheimer.

  J. Robert Oppenheimer.

  I am become death, destroyer of worlds.

  Scanlon.

  Jory turned to the walking dead man, looked all the way up to him, and then knew him, recognized him, had read about him. God. Had read what he wrote, had read his fucking blog. He was the Kitten Man. It was why he was here, having to listen to these new zombies get birthed into the world. Because he’d helped birth the first. Because this world, it was his, he’d made it.

  The opposite of a priest, he’d said.

  And all because he’d loved his brother. Because he’d loved his son.

  “You,” Jory said up to him, but the dead man was trying to track Scanlon, was just clutching the bars now, sliding down from the effort of having crossed the cell, and Jory broke away from Scanlon, pulled himself up onto those same bars, his face right to the Kitten Man’s, so the Kitten Man would have to hear when Jory said it over and over, as fast as he could, “Bingo! Bingo brain baste, bingo brain baste, bingo brain”—the Kitten Man angling his dead stare over to Jory now. To those five redacted letters of his brother’s name.

  “No, Brian,” he said simply, pulling his lips away from his broken teeth, a smile maybe, his shattered fingers rolling over to cover Jory’s, in thanks, which is when Jory felt it in his back—forty thousand volts.

  Because he was just the middle of the circuit, the current hit the Kitten Man as well, arced him across his cell, left him openmouthed against the wall, grey wisps trailing up from his throat, a grimy arm cast there beside him, tied together with string, or hair, or spit.

  Jory nodded, remembered that too, and then, the end of the circuit gone, felt the rest of the jolt himself.