The Gospel of Z

by Stephen Graham Jones

  The wrong wall.

  He’d stood from the pelvis, found the wrong wall.

  Jory folded over on himself, stayed that way until his back was stiff, the scratches or whatever there dried into the fabric of the robe.

  Three hours. It had been three hours, no more than four. Maybe less.

  And he’d gone exactly nowhere.

  He stood again, his hand to the door, and pushed off, pressing his whole palm hard into the wall, and started to move along it for the second time, more cinder block crumbling off behind him now.

  This time he wouldn’t run, wouldn’t break contact, no matter what. He couldn’t circle back again, not if he wanted to live. And he did want to live. He laughed, realizing it—he didn’t just want out, he wanted to go back. To the world. To the stupid-ass postapocalypse. He wanted more of those stale cigarettes, he wanted more apple sauce in the top left corner of his scarred-up cafeteria tray, he wanted a shovel in his hand, a job to do, a part to play, a radio to tune in late at night, a fence to look through.

  But mostly it was the cigarettes.

  Some X amount of time and footsteps later, Jory found himself mumbling. About the curve of the roof of this tunnel he was walking through. How it was exactly the curve of an armadillo’s shell. One from the Miocene period, when size mattered.

  Jory stumbled deeper, deeper, his throat dry, the palm of his hand blistering already, probably leaving a bloody smear.

  Some amount of time and footsteps ago, he’d kicked through what he was pretty sure was the pelvis that had tripped him before, and had stepped down into the flat part of the hall or tunnel or never-ending long room. The flat part that felt like it was never going to end. And then he walked right into an open metal door. It creaked away from him, its hinges mostly seized. The porthole window built into it was barred, crusted with rust.

  Keeping his hand to the right wall, Jory broke a dirt clod off the ceiling, tossed it through the door.

  If it hit a wall, he couldn’t hear it.

  Was this a branch, a fork, or a cell, a guard booth?

  Jory shut his eyes, tried to imagine a lighter in his hand, the flame telling him which way the wind was sucking.

  Straight, he decided. This was a cell, a guard booth. A way station, a distraction, trouble for sailors, or whatever they said. The main tunnel was the one he was in. If this door was shut, it would become part of that right hand wall, making it a tributary, a feeder, not the main course. Not the right way.

  It was the only thing to think.

  Jory slid his hand over the top of the door, never breaking contact with the wall he’d come to love, and kept going, shying around the slow curves, stopping once to pee one-handed. Wondering what would be sniffing that damp earth later.

  And then, coming around a gentle turn, he caught a glint ahead.

  “Hello?” he called, his voice a boom, after so long silent.

  Nothing.

  A trick of darkness, he told himself. A twitch in his eye, a shard of mica in the wall—he could never find it again.

  But ten, twenty minutes later, a thousand steps deeper into this darkness, there it was again.

  The glint, flashing. Catching the glow of his robe.

  “What?” Jory said, and stepped closer, stopped again.

  It was a hair clip thing, a barrette. The metal kind, like a paper clip for the hair.

  That’s what he used to call it, what he used to tell his daughter it was.

  A paper clip for the hair. For her hair.

  No.

  But, unable not to, he stepped closer, and the glint of clip had a head of hair to hold it. The dim outline of a girl’s body below it. His worst nightmare. His best dream.

  Jory fell to his knees, lost the wall.

  He promised not to tell anybody, if this could just be real, please.

  Except.

  He’d—he’d aimed for that barrette, hadn’t he? Used it to guide the head of his hammer. Driven it down, in, through. And then lost it.

  Until now. It was surfacing. After ten years, it was coming back.

  He pulled his right hand to him, saw how bloody it was and fell down some more though he was already on his knees.

  His daughter still standing there. Waiting. The glint of her barrette anyway.

  “Come on, Daddy,” she said from the darkness then, obviously, that tone she had like he was being silly, and Jory rose, had forgotten the wall altogether.

  “I’m here,” he said, and stepped closer, only to have her step back.

  And then he ran, her small, shadowy form flitting before him, hardly even touching the ground.

  For miles, hours? Minutes, feet?

  X. For X hours, X feet. Because that’s two letters before Z. It’s somewhere you can stay, somewhere you can hide.

  Jory stumbled on faster, more headlong, his shoulder flashing brighter each time he brushed the wall, only stopping when she did.

  She wasn’t looking at him, but to the tunnel behind him.

  Jory turned without thinking, looked too. Listened.

  A zombie.

  Hillford had made another, from his own flock probably. He’d made another then lifted the great bar of that great door, set the zombie loose after him, to clean up, finish the ritual, close the circle. Make the blood sacrifice Z Day was going to need.

  The zombie wasn’t close yet, but was close enough. Such a distinct sound—snuffling, the pads of its feet and hands hardly even touching the ground—and Jory nodded, knew then that he should have stayed in that halfway cell, screeched that door shut, but it was too late, and it didn’t matter anyway.

  His daughter, he was with her again.

  It was best this way.

  But when he turned, her face, either the one he was seeing or the one he was remembering, it was so urgent, so pleading, and he almost said her name again, was about to, except she was already turning, running, her middle and ring fingers pressed into her palms like she did when concentrating.

  Jory followed, his legs stiff now, uncoordinated, using the wall for balance when he had to. Pushing off to go faster. The snuffling closer and closer yet.

  Jory smiled, was ready, was going to turn this time, stand between the plague and his family, like he should have, like he’d give anything to have gotten the chance to do, but, coming around a sharper corner than there’d been so far, his daughter was just standing there.

  Another door.

  No, half a door. A door that was just her height.

  Jory smiled, understood.

  Everybody died differently, right?

  For him, it was a game with his daughter. One leading finally to where she lived now. To a playhouse with a short door, low windows, so that, walking through it, he was going to get to feel like a giant. Or a dad.

  “Okay,” he said out loud, the snuffling closer behind him now, too close, if that mattered anymore, and he followed her, ducked down, stepped through, was blinded by the light that was over on this side, dim as it probably was, and, because his daughter was already in this perfect afterlife with him, he pulled the door shut behind them.

  An instant later, the zombie slammed into it, hard enough to sift dirt down all around the frame.

  “Hunh,” Jory said.

  If that way was death, if the dead were on the other side of that door, then this, here, it must be life, right? Or, anywhere with his daughter, that was life.

  And then there was a breathing behind him. More raspy than an eleven-year-old girl in her forever playhouse.

  Something licked his raw palm.

  Jory closed his eyes, didn’t take his hand back, and finally looked down.

  A goat. One of Scanlon’s goats, its child eyes looking up, and up, waiting.

  Jory looped his arm over this goat’s neck, pulled it to him, and looked over its thick coat to the bars that walled this room. This cell. Twin lines of white reflective tape telling you where to walk.

  The pens.

  Base.

&nbs
p; He was in the snake’s belly.

  Day Six

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Jory woke to screaming. Right in his ear, against the side of his head.

  It was the goat.

  The guard who loved technology had his Hot Shot pushed through the bars, was cooking her.

  “Careful now,” he said to Jory, when Jory reached over to pull the goat away.

  One of the goat’s eyeballs leaked down its face, leaving a very human socket, wisps of smoke trailing up from it.

  The guard couldn’t stop laughing.

  Jory pushed away, up against the wall, his chest spasming.

  “You’re right,” the burn-faced guard said, stepping up from the darkness. “He does have one of them.”

  One of them, one of them, Jory repeated in his head, looking both ways, for a way out, please.

  On either side, though, and on either side of that, and probably across too, it was all goats. This deep, it was livestock only. Scanlon’s private tribe of perfect victims.

  One of them cooking in its own skin now.

  “Doesn’t just have one, he is one,” the tech-loving guard said.

  The burn-faced guard was shaking his head no, though. Stepping closer, guiding the guard’s Hot Shot away like it was nothing.

  “Know how long the army’s been wanting to get its hands on one of those?” he said through the bars to Jory.

  “Your vestments, brother,” the tech-loving guard said, when Jory wasn’t following.

  Jory pulled it over his head, tearing it loose from his back like a scab. He threw it at the bars.

  The burn-faced guard pulled it through, rubbed a bright spot in it. He smiled in his melted way.

  “Lab boys’ll like this,” he said, handing it across to the other guard. “Blast-resistant silk?” He laughed, took some in his hand again. “You know it’s supposed to kind of all melt together when the air pressure changes, like from a shock wave? Make a shield or cocoon or some bullshit. What do you think?”—modeling the profile of his face—“It could have saved me?”

  “You were a torch?” Jory said.

  The burn-faced guard didn’t dignify the question.

  “They like chocolate,” Jory said then, about the dying goat.

  “More like they’re like chocolate,” the burn-faced guard said. “Their sweet scent brings all the kids to the door”—nodding to the half door Jory’d come through.

  Jory looked to the door, stared at the ground, and understood—the goats were what brought the zombies down the tunnel. What kept them from just scratching at the big wooden door at the Church.

  This was a delivery chute. A system. The Church was feeding the dead across to the military. For Preburial. Which the Church was insisting upon.

  The tech-loving guard snapped, the sound loud, close, bringing Jory back.

  “What’d you see down there?” he asked.

  Jory framed his lips to answer, but threw up instead.

  Both the guards stepped back.

  “He is infected,” one of them said, hardly concerned. “Late bloomer, that’s all.”

  Jory shook his head no, threw up some more, trying to cup it in his hands, like maybe he was going to need it later.

  “Better get this topside,” the burn-faced guard said, about the robe.

  “Messenger’s here,” the tech-loving guard recited in a singsong voice, impressed. “Don’t go to sleep now, think you can handle that? Be back in two shakes of a…”

  Instead of finishing, he reached through with his Hot Shot, wagged the goat’s tail a couple of times.

  Jory gagged again.

  When their footsteps were all the way gone, Jory breathed in, the air grainy, particulate. Like he was tasting the light. It didn’t taste good.

  His neck was in poor control of his head, and his eyes, they were lying to him. They had to be. If not, then there really was a zombie watching him from the black recesses of the cell directly across from him. A zombie rotted half away, sores on its face, hair gone in clumps, eyes scooped out then sewed over with crude thread. So, not watching him at all. But seeing him all the same, its broken-fingered hands hanging in front of it, forearms on its knees.

  It was breathing in and out, in and out. Not crashing into the bars like it should be, to get to Jory.

  But still.

  Jory felt behind him for the door he’d come through, that there was for sure another zombie behind. A hungry one.

  The door had caught, was locked. For now.

  It was just him and this calm zombie then. And the terrible, delicious smell of cooked goat. And the soft brays of the rest of the goats, mourning this one. And there was also the promise of Scanlon getting roused a half mile above, giving him about a thousand steps to work up a proper head of steam. It was the kind of walk you guarantee you’re going to make worth it. And Jory wasn’t just weak, he was wasted. Done, over, finished with all of this already.

  Except all of this wasn’t finished with him yet.

  “Mess-en-ger,” the dead man croaked out, its vocal cords parched, the word breaking into parts.

  Jory pretended not to hear. Because zombies don’t talk. He patted the goat, slicking down what hair he could.

  “Tic, tic, tic,” the dead man said then, its throat clearing. And, the closer Jory looked, he wasn’t a zombie at all. He was worse, somehow. Worse because he wasn’t dead yet, had skipped that part, gone straight to the long decay, the slow rotting away, an ambling state of decomp.

  Jory stopped patting the goat.

  “You’re not dead,” Jory said across the walkway.

  The man who wasn’t dead shrugged, like the argument could go either way here.

  It was the single most human gesture Jory had ever seen.

  “What did you do?” he asked. “To be…to be here.”

  The dead man laughed through his torn nose a bit, said it again, “Tic tic tic,” then mimed an explosion with his hands. He pointed a spindly finger at Jory to show where that explosion was going to take place.

  Jory stood, felt all over himself. He was just himself, nothing strapped on.

  Across from him, the dead man scraped something from his scalp, worked it into his mouth. The teeth there were all broken off and black, the tongue a blind eel, stabbing around.

  “You’re saying I’m infected,” Jory said. “That they infected me. That I’m going to turn.”

  The dead man just stared with his gone eyes.

  “What happened to you?” Jory asked.

  “History,” the dead man said, his voice clearer than Jory would have guessed possible. “The world.”

  “You can’t see, can you?”

  “With my ears.”

  “There’s something on my…they did something to my back, I think. Something you can’t hear, I guess.”

  The dead man used two of his crooked fingers to drag a shaky cross in the air before him. Or a plus. Like he was blessing Jory.

  “You’re a priest?” Jory said. Because of how tall he was, even sitting down. Because of the rotted, pitted face. Because the other end of this tunnel was a doorway to the Hill. Maybe one of them had come here on a spy mission, got himself nabbed.

  The dead man’s mouth cracked into a smile about this idea of him being a priest. It made a seep of blood spill from his lip. He tried to finger it back in, didn’t look to have enough to waste.

  “Kind of the”—cough, cough—“kind of the opposite of a priest,” he said, “according to them.”

  “Them?”

  “GI Joe,” he said, tilting his head up the passageway.

  Jory looked that way, and came back. Then, moving slowly and deliberately, he held his own two fingers out before him, like the dead man had, but, instead of dragging a plus sign in the air, he spread the fingers like the dead man couldn’t, so that what he traced through the air, it wasn’t a cross, but— “Tic-tic…tic-tac-toe, ” he said.

  It was what Hillford had carved into Jory’s back.

/>   “His move now,” the dead man creaked, pointing with his chin up the passageway again. To Scanlon.

  “I’m not infected,” Jory said. “I’m not going to die, come back.”

  “You’re just going to die, then?”

  “Probably.”

  “They like to make me watch, make me”—cough—“atone.”

  “Watch?”

  “Listen. See it worse in my head. What are they calling themselves these days?” the dead man asked.

  Jory stared into the dirt at his feet. He looked back to the half door.

  “The Church?” he said, not tracking the question so well.

  The dead man nodded, his face slack.

  Jory shrugged, said, “The Church, I guess, I don’t know. I was just visiting, didn’t mean to check in.”

  The dead man rubbed at the blood seeping down his chin, got enough on his index finger to rub it against his right tear duct, pushing in past the stitches a bit where he could, like he could touch his brain.

  “The Church,” he repeated. “Like, the only one, right? The last one.”

  “I guess.”

  “Then they won,” he said, looking at whatever he’d snagged with his fingertip. Looking at it with eyes sewn over.

  “Who are you?” Jory asked.

  “There used to be more churches, at first,” the dead man said, looking off, into some past.

  “Bottleneckers?”

  “Other”—cough, cough—“other one.”

  “Church of Z?”

  “Z,” the dead man repeated, spitting afterward. “Glorified suicide cult.”

  “Infected their own, from what I hear.”

  “Sound familiar now?”

  “I’m not a priest. Or a novitiate. Not even the janitor. I was just wearing one of their…”

  The dead man nodded when Jory trailed off. Point made—the Church does infect its own, apparently.

  “So?” Jory said.

  “So,” the dead man went on, redistributing his gaunt weight, his shoulders creaking into a different, less crooked angle, “so they found it one fine day, this Z Church. By accident, on purpose, who knows. But they found it.”