Free The Gospel of Z by Stephen Graham Jones Page A

lodges—”
    “Festers,” Glasses corrected.
    “ Mixes with what’s left of the brewery his spinal fluid already is. So then, six months later, there’s another booking photo, only, in this one, you can like see the kid’s cheekbone through his skin, you can like look into his sinus cavity and see maybe like a spider living in—”
    “Over!” the wiry dudefinally insisted, stepping between Jory and Glasses, pushing them apart, then crossing the room to the reprobate, pulling the reprobate’s hand up in victory. “We have a winner, gentlemen!”
    “What?” Fishnet said, rolling to the edge of his bunk to see better.
    In answer, the wiry dude held the already halfway-through-it radio out.
    … and can it be any kind of coincidence that at the exact same moment the plague first started being reported, there were also reports that the fast food industry was failing, was collapsing, not due to lack of customers, but lack of product, lack of converted South American jungle to sustain their precious cows? What does that tell you, people? Picture this. Obese American pulls up into the fast food lane, already dying on the inside, just trying to pack dead cows around his mortality, dead cows if he was lucky , and then —
    “Preach it, brother,” Fishnet interrupted, taking the radio from the wiry dude, to hold it higher, but rolling the tuner instead, losing the sermon.
    The reprobate laughed through his nose. “Double-meat with cheese, ladies,” he said, coming up to a sitting position on his bunk, his legs hanging down now, the knife easy in his hand, then gone. “Now you know the rest of the story.”
    “His name is Dalton,” Glasses said, sickened. Nodding down to the radio to show who he’s talking about. “Self-styled Buddha of the apocalypse. Ex-dungeon master, one-time big-name hacker, back when there were servers. This is one of his better ones. They run it every night at—”
    “—just after three…” the reprobate cut in.
    “You cheated,” the punk said.
    “I won,” the reprobate corrected, then jumped down, his biker boots heavy against the concrete floor.
    “Won what?” Jory asked, squinting with his whole face.
    The reprobate crossed to the bulletin board, the stack of names in a line from top to bottom, first to last. “This,” he said, and took his name out of the third slot, tacked it back on at the very bottom.
    “I up there?” Jory asked. “Gray, Jory.”
    “We all are,” the reprobate said, scanning the room.
    Then everybody was at the board, looking for their places in line.
    Except Jory. And Glasses.
    “Circus animals,” Jory said, at a conversational level. Just talking. “Circus animals. There’s a guy comes on at four who says it’s circus animals, all doped up six ways from Sunday. That they were getting loose, mixing genes that never should have been mixed.”
    “There’s really some out there, I’ve heard,” Glasses said, watching the mob at the bulletin board.
    “Some what?”
    “Giraffes, lions, whatever there used to be. Monkeys.”
    “Popcorn.”
    Glasses smiled, said, “Music.”
    Jory nodded. Looked down to his hand. Shaking.
    He held it tighter to his leg.
    “Zebras,” Glasses said then. “Remember when Z was for zebra ?”
    Jory nodded, did remember, then the punk was holding two fingers to his lips, asking around.
    Jory hooked his head for the punk to follow him to his bag on the floor.
    Inside, carton after carton.
    “Shit,” the punk hissed. “Think I can kill myself on these before seven o’clock rolls around?”
    In answer, Jory lobbed cartons out to the rest of the room and then the radio was up again, music this time, Fishnet strutting out with some serious Eastside swagger, the whole bunkhouse whooping and catcalling, trying to prove how alive they still were, like they could stave off the morning if they laughed enough, if they smoked enough cigarettes.
    Twelve hours later, three of them would be dead.

Chapter Eleven
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