Free The Gospel of Z by Stephen Graham Jones Page B

this. It’s important.
    A house deep in suburbia, before the plague.
    No, no, the approximation of a house, lost in Residential. Just one of many, like the huge mother-house ambled this way a few years ago, dropping model after model in these curving, maternal lines that keep branching out into the horizon. The kind of neighborhood where you can slip up, walk through the wrong front door. And where it might not even matter that much, because everybody’s already trying to be like each other anyway.
    How long would dinner go before the mistake was apparent? Before the kid smiled, mumbled an “oops” and slipped out, to his own house. How long before the husband really looked at this woman who wasn’t quite his wife. How long, not before the wife noticed this wasn’t the man she married, but how long before she said something about it?
    That kind of place.
    And names aren’t important here. Faces either.
    Mannequins. This is the mannequin family. Bland, featureless, right off the showroom floor. Fresh from the window display, in their street clothes, their creaky everyday wear.
    The four of them sitting around the dinner table—mom, brother, sister, the tall, tall, awkward dad.
    By the dad’s plate is his cell phone, a device both slender and bulky, so his molded plastic fingers can handle it.
    The dad’s got his mouth open, is about to relay some interesting story from work, or the drive home, when that phone burrs, becomes a bug flipped over on its back for him to stare down at. For him to not be sure if he wants to touch it or not.
    And if he hadn’t?
    The mom’s smiling pleasantly, expectantly. Like it’s painted on.
    “Just a—” the dad says, holding up the smooth index finger of his left hand, so he can open the phone with his right. He cocks his head theatrically at who could be calling at this hour, then licks his lips to answer, only catches the Caller ID as the phone’s rising to the side of his head.
    He doesn’t complete the motion. Locks eyes with his wife instead, across the table.
    “It’s XXXXX,” he says, a high-pitched whine where the name’s censored out. Not because it’s important—it is, or would be—but because it’s lost, because it’s been redacted.
    Brother and sister look to Mom for the answer to the obvious question here, and she smooths her napkin across her lap, comes through like always. “It’s your Uncle XXXXX.” So chipper.
    The dad completes the motion, pulling the phone to his ear and standing in one motion, turning away, motioning behind him for his family to eat, eat, don’t wait.
    XXXXX.
    “That really you?” he says, instead of hello.
    “Dude,” the voice comes back, maybe even stoned right now, “you know I was in Jakarta? Rocked. I mean—I might be technically married now, right? Anyway, I don’t have… I’m coming back stateside for a few here, get some paperwork ironed out, figured I might, you know, that my niece and nephew haven’t—”
    The rest is cut off by the dad’s plastic thumb on the End button.
    His wife comes in behind him, hugs him from behind, her posture somehow getting across that she understands how hard this was for him. Putting his family first. Not getting involved.
    Her face here, it’s completely expressionless. Absolutely real.
    “XXXXX,” the dad mouths to himself, and, because the name’s been lost to history, it’s just a long, flat tone, whining out. An apologetic tone.
    This is the Bible, yes. The Genesis of the new world, buried in the last few weeks of the old one. A phone ringing by a Pfaltzgraff blue plate on meatloaf night, a hand reaching down to cover it.
    It’s where Jory Gray was going.
    For all of us.

Day Four

Chapter Twelve
    By seven the next morning, the radio in J Barracks had died.
    “So you were really a teacher?” the wiry dude was saying to Jory. The two of them sitting outside, squinting against the sun, a pile of butts crushed out beside them.
    Jory licked his lips. “Science,” he