The Gospel of Z by Stephen Graham Jones Read Free Book Online Page A

His chances in the field were just about as good. Preburial was the absolute right name for this assignment, yes.
    At least it would be fast. That was something. In the postapocalypse, Jory guessed, you take what you can get. The toilet paper still in its crumbly plastic, that you hide for two weeks, ration out. That tube of face moisturizer you smuggle back onto base, leave behind the medicine cabinet mirror to make somebody’s day. The wine cellar you fall into, don’t tell anybody about.
    The fact that your death is going to be a fireball, not a feast.
    Jory tossed another butt over the edge and tracked its descent, the orange sparks crumbling into the night.
    “Very melodramatic,” Jory said to Scanlon. To the idea of Scanlon, standing behind him.
    There were worse things you found out in the field though.
    Mummy families sealed into a room so well you have to break in, and then spend the rest of the day caught between a running apology in your head and a guilty sense of jealousy.
    At least the radios up on the parking garage were all off tonight, for whatever reason. DJ holiday, Jory told himself. Big DJ party across town. DJ wake, DJ funeral, DJ wedding.
    More likely there’d been a raid, or a battery had failed. Or there was nothing left to say.
    Jory cupped a new cigarette close, sparked it alive. Stared through the smoke, very dramatically, at the Church. Flicked his cigarette over the edge long before it was a butt.
    Five minutes later and four stories down, the cherry of that cigarette still glowing, Jory ground it out under his boot, was still studying the high Church walls. Like gauging them.
    In his belt was the pistol he’d looted, the pistol he’d taken from a living room where one skull had a hole in each temple, where the other, slightly smaller skull had a small hole directly in back, a larger one where the eyes had once been.
    Again his plans were unspecific.
    But he was already dead, right?
    Jory shook another cigarette up, not sure if it was a firing-line smoke or not.
    It lit on the second roll of the wheel, and in its wavy nimbus of light was one of the Weeping Poles.
    Jory breathed in again, brighter, and looked behind him.
    This was the pole you passed if you were coming from base, most likely. If you’d started walking just before dawn, no duffel over your shoulder, no shoes on your feet, no carton of cigarettes to catch a ride through the gate because, if you’re wearing white all over, the guards know where you’re going. That they’re not going to have to let you back in.
    Jory’d seen the penitent walk through base before, seen them drift out of one life, into another, the guards averting their eyes, the trucks idling behind, waiting too.
    Everybody waiting. This holy walk.
    Jory blew smoke at the pole.
    When it cleared, there was just the usual torn-out pieces of maps—hometowns, probably—the curled-at-the-edges photographs, the medals and the earrings and the pages of books, the car keys people had held on to for nearly a decade. The dog tags.
    Mostly dog tags. At least on this pole.
    Not for pets, but for soldiers who never came back. Or who came back dead. Who came back hungry.
    Jory rubbed the heel of his hand into the exact center of his forehead. Closed his eyes. Said her name into his chest. Told himself he wasn’t blubbering. That his lips were steady. That his voice wasn’t breaking, wasn’t broken.
    When he could see through the blear again, he checked over both shoulders, ran his eyes along the skyline, along the silhouette of the Church walls.
    He was alone.
    Jory found Linse almost immediately. What she’d left was still close to the surface—her ID card, tacked up with an earring stud. The one you had to have to live on base.
    Jory slipped the ID into his pocket, looked up the Hill.
    “You did it,” he said to her. “You really did it.” Then, quieter, sucking his cigarette bright, “Good for you.”
    When he finally turned his back and shuffled off, twin