The Gospel of Z (22 page)

Jory turned to the doorway, the silhouette of Hillford just standing there, same pose, same serenity. Same satisfaction.

“You lied,” Jory said in something like wonder—bonefaces can do that?—his voice cracking somewhere in the middle, the rest of him stumbling unaccountably when he tried to take a step. Falling forward. Because of the mask, the mask, that medicinal taste. Sleeping something—gas, fumes, vapor, paste.

No. No no no.

Jory pawed at the mask, couldn’t find the edge, his fingers numb, already somebody else’s fingers.

Hillford cradled him down to the ground, saying through some long tube into Jory’s ear that he’d never had a blade at all, had he? That that particular auditorium, with the blue seats, the rows were an educational exercise for the students, weren’t they? Not letters, but states—J should be the
tenth
row, Kansas the eleventh. Right in front of Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, all the other places that weren’t places anymore.

Jory’s eyelashes were raspy against the back of the ceramic mask, the lights in this room in rows now too, for Jory, banks of lights going black, section by section, so that Jory closed his eyes before the darkness could get to him, on the chance it would pass him by, leave him alone.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

The past, the old world. When mannequins roamed the earth, completely unaware that their age was almost over.

That night the husband drives through all the rain to save his brother.

He’s in a building now, a reception area, the chairs and lamps from decades before. Everything is miniature, up against his lankiness, his face even more gaunt than usual. His long-fingered hands on the reception counter are pale spiders, the palms not touching the Formica at all.

He’s begging.

“I don’t care, okay? You’re not— I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Okay, okay. It’s not you, I know. I want to see whoever’s in charge then. You can’t hold him against his will. I don’t care who—”

The night receptionist stands up to
her
full height, has maybe played some ball herself, back when the hoops were orange baskets. Like, for fruit.

The husband—
brother
, now—leans up off her counter, still has her by about four inches.

“Sir,” she says, her tone telling him exactly how interested she is in his case, “if you’ll just sit down, I’m sure we can straighten this misunderstanding—” then she stops, the entry doors behind them swishing open.

It’s two MPs. Military police, helmets, armbands, posture.

Their presence ramps the husband up. “No, no, you can’t, I insist on seeing the project coordinator. Don’t make me”—the MPs each taking one of his arms—“
Lazarus Complex! Lazarus Complex!
” he starts screaming, casting about for a camera to scream it into.

They’re alone though. It’s after hours.

He tries to whip an arm free can’t.

“Listen,” he says, slumping down to their height, “I just…he’s my—”

“That’ll be enough, gentlemen,” a female voice cuts in. With authority.

The husband looks up.

It’s a doctor. White lab coat, sensible shoes, severe bun, or the display-window estimation of a bun. Clipboard. About his age.

“You’ve got a sister, don’t you?” the husband says to her. “A brother?”

“‘Lazarus Complex’,” she repeats when he’s done. “This is inflammatory enough that merely shouting it in an abandoned waiting area is supposed to compel us to abandon our research? Am I following correctly, Mr. XXXXX?”

The husband doesn’t answer.

“Do you feel compelled, Maddy?” the doctor asks the night receptionist, leaning around the husband to ask it.

“He’s my brother,” the husband says.

“Not according to his entry interview,” the doctor says—
that’s
what’s on the clipboard. She runs her eyes up it, down it. Flips it over like there might be more.

The husband laughs. Kind of blubbers.

The MPs let him go, but stay close.

“You know my name,” the husband tells her.

“Not that I’m disregarding the family resemblance,” the doctor says, holding the clipboard to her chest now. “The pronounced height. The tendency towards theatrics.”

The husband closes his eyes. Is not going to lose control here.

“He didn’t put me on there,” the husband says, nodding to the clipboard, “he didn’t put me on there”—not even slightly in control of his lower lip anymore—“because last time I, because, when he left, I told him, I told him…”

“I know, I know,” the doctor says. “I do have a sister, Mr. XXXXX. We say things we wish we hadn’t. It’s part of this human race, I’m afraid.”

“Then you understand?”

Stare, stare.

“I just want to
see
him,” the husband adds, taking a step closer, to implore at close range, but the MPs step in with him.

“The project coordinator, you mean,” the doctor fills in, deep in her clipboard again.

“What?” the husband says. “No, no—”

“Then you were— Is it your
habit
to always be saying things you don’t in actuality mean, Mr. XXXXX?”

The husband just studies the floor here. For an answer.

“Oppenheimer,” he says at last, his eyes coming back up to the doctor. “Sure, okay, whatever.”

The doctor steps in now, interested. “
Robert
J. Oppenheimer, Mr. XXXXX?” she asks, trying to catch his eyes. “I’m sorry, but I believe you have us confused with another project. In another decade.”

The husband looks past her. To the door she must have come through.

“What are you doing to him, that I can’t see him?” he finally says.

The doctor smiles, says, “It’s strictly dietary,” then nods the MPs away, one of them slipping her a manila envelope first.

“Dietary?” the husband asks, watching the MPs make their exit, when what he should have been looking at, using his height to see, is the grainy black-and-white photograph the doctor was keeping angled away from him, slightly—his broken-armed son in the backseat of the car, as seen past the orange-and-white-striped dropbar of a guard booth.

“This way,” the doctor says then, all business again, nodding once to the night receptionist, then turning on her sensible heel, the manila envelope closed now, tucked at the back of her clipboard.

The husband swallows, his Adam’s apple more supple than it would appear to be, and follows, ducking his head to get through the door, back into the bowels of this Lazarus project.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

The humming was what finally brought Jory up from inside himself. It was like being trapped in a dial tone. If there were still phones.

Opening his eyes was no better.

Standing within arm’s reach, miles taller because Jory was lying down, was Hillford.
All
the novitiates shuffling past glancing at him then away.

Jory raised his hand to peel the mask off, but it was already gone, was—it was back on Hillford. And Jory’s hand wouldn’t reach his face anyway.

He tracked down to it, from it to the thin white sheet knotted around his wrists. He was tied to a smooth pole in the center of the courtyard. And his back, the skin on his back, it was wrong, too stiff, too painful, like he’d scraped it.

From dragging him on the ground?

There was no time though.

“It’s only fitting,” Hillford was already saying, his voice so even, just stating a fact, “only fitting that you would deliver yourself to us, Jory Gray, to be the messenger. Perhaps for a while you even believed you actually
had
one of the instruments—”

“No!”
Jory said then, trying to stand—boots still on, pants too, but…wearing one of their stupid white robes over it all? Was
that
what was wrong with his back?—“I
do
, I have one!”

“Of course you do,” Hillford said, turning to address the congregation. “Now, is there anyone here willing to speak on behalf of the messenger?”

“‘Messenger’?” Jory said, pulling against his tether.

No response from the novitiates. Just another hum, building. And Hillford, stepping into Jory’s line of sight, his white blade suddenly in his left hand, his right hand…
whole
?

Hillford saw him looking, raised that hand for inspection. Moved the fingers against the thumb, as if dislodging wet sand, or rolling a tiny marble.

“There are many mysteries, Jory Gray, yes,” Hillford said, holding the knife out to Jory, as if offering it. “Of which you are now an intimate part.”

The humming swelled at that.

Instead of looking at the knife, Jory turned his head to the rest of the courtyard, and each doorway was still doorless, but there was a boneface in them all now. A real priest, not just a novitiate.

So, not a door that would keep
Jory
from passing, not if he really wanted to get through, but one that would—that would keep the
dead
from coming through?

Jory studied the novitiates, one by one, only stopping at the one female who turned her face away at the last instant. Just the slightest readjustment of her face, but he couldn’t see her eyes now.

“Linse?” he said, but Hillford was blocking his sight line again.
“Linse!”
he screamed then, fighting to see around Hillford’s robes. The pole creaked, the sheet straining.

“You can chew through it,” Hillford said quietly to Jory then, like it was a kindness he was offering here, and held the knife out again, for Jory to take it. But the only part Jory could touch would be the blade, and then he’d be a short-finger in everything but virus.

“No, no no no,” Jory said, looking up to Hillford.

Hillford stepped in closer, with the knife.

“It’s not—you can’t,” Jory said, cringing back, looking up again to the deep gouges in the wall. The scratch marks.

Chew through it
.

It’s why the soldiers in the street had been using chain and pipe. Because the dead used their mouths like dogs did—the first tool.

And then Jory’s face went cold. His head shaking
no
.

“You’re going to infect me,” Jory said. “That’s what this is all about.”

“
Anoint
you,” Hillford corrected, so calm, and now Jory was pulling the other way, his feet against the pole, the sheet a guitar string.

Those gouges
were
from the dead. But from one at a time. All the novitiates would be up on the ramparts by the time it had chewed through its bindings. Allowing them to see the dead’s true nature, up close, and accept it.

But who would
make
a zombie? If you needed one, if you were the
military
and you needed one, you’d just go out into a restricted zone, set a trap.

“I’m not your messenger,” Jory said, up to Hillford. “Just let me—they’re already, my friends, my unit, my driver, they know where I am, they’re coming to look for me.”

“Yes, the soldiers on their violent parade,” Hillford said, keeping his distance. “I expect them to come asking after you at any moment now. But—there’s a shortcut, as it were. As it
is
, I should say.”

Jory pulled harder, his left boot slipping off the pole, his right still there, all his attention on it, on pushing, straining.

“Yes, yes,” Hillford said, watching, impressed. “Maybe you’ll be the one, Jory Gray. Maybe you’ll—”

Hillford was still talking, but Jory couldn’t hear anymore.

The knife, the stupid fucking white blade.

It was still in his right boot.

Jory faked a slip, collapsed, his new robes billowing all over him. Giving him room.

He stood with the white blade, cut through the knotted sheet like nothing.

All the novitiates stepped back, eyes large.

But not the priests. Not Hillford.

“Jory Gray,” Hillford said, impressed again, not intimidated at all.

Jory edged around. Keeping the pole between himself and Hillford, he crabbed over to the novitiates, pulling their hoods off as he went. Bald head after bald head. All with eyes that matched each other.

“
What did you do with her?
” Jory said then, coming around to face Hillford again.

“Her place is with us, Jory Gray,” Hillford said back, his hands holding each other again. Not even close to slipping up his sleeve. “As, I would offer, is yours. As you reestablish so elegantly each time we meet. A truly amazing specimen, yes. Let your anointing take place, Jory Gray, and you can be the first of a race of angels. In your pupa dreams, you can be with her again, as before, and never have to, have to use a-a…what was it?” he asked, knowing full well. “A hammer?”

Jory looked down to his hand, the curved white blade flickering into something more blunt. Something more matted with blood and hair. Jory’s fingers started to let it slip, but then, his mind accelerating enough to slow the courtyard down, he came back up to Hillford’s satisfied mask of a face. His patience.

And he tried to cut it away.

He came up fast with the knife, slashing across, trying to go from hip to opposite shoulder, spill Hillford out of himself like a piñata, but Hillford’s arm was already in the way, the blade burying itself there, Jory’s hand continuing the motion without it, the rest of him backing away, falling down, using the smooth pole to stand again.

“Ah, yes,” Hillford said, rotating his arm around to study the blade, “one of the originals,” then centering his rotting eyes back on Jory. “Have you suffered any injury?” he asked then, nodding down to Jory’s hands, but Jory was coming at his midsection now.

Hillford sidestepped easily, guided Jory past, into the dirt.

Three times this happened, Hillford careful with his left arm. Careful for the blade, not the flesh.

“Children,” another of the priests intoned somewhere in there, the novitiates hearing, lowering their heads. They lined up for the unfurling rampart ladders and climbed up into the sky, then rolled those ladders up behind them, tying them off, their eyes on Jory the whole time.

They were waiting for it to happen, Jory knew. Waiting for Hillford to cut him, for Jory to bleed out, die his first death, breathe his last breath, then rise again after they poured the infection in.