Zoey Is Too Drunk for This Dystopia (Zoey Ashe #3)

by Jason Pargin

Zoey leaned over the box and looked the girl in the face. Iris had black hair, like Zoey’s, puddled under her skull. She wore a peaceful expression; she could have been asleep to a casual observer. Zoey looked over Iris’s naked body and wondered what parts of it she had hated in the mirror. Then she was suddenly aware of the spectators and drones and all the other curious cameras. Eyes on top of eyes, all around them. She asked, “Is there any evidence to be taken from the outside of the box?” “So many tourists had handled it by the time I got here that it’d be hopeless, even if the perps had been careless,” said Kowalski. “Whatever we get, we’ll get from the corpse inside.” “The tourists were, what, taking pictures with it?” Kowalski gave her a strangely offended look. “They were trying to get it open, Zoey. To help her, if they could. This city is full of weirdos but they’re not monsters. But yeah, they were also taking pictures with it.” Zoey turned back to Will. “Give me your jacket.” “Why?” “If you get a call one day that they’ve found me out here, in the middle of a crowd, naked, what would you do? Would you just let people stare?” He took off his jacket and laid it over the box, covering the top half of the woman’s nudity. Wu, without a word, removed his jacket and covered the bottom half.