Meet Me in the Future

by Kameron Hurley

  Pig did not stir.

  Nev didn’t want to leave Pig alone with the body because it could still be contaminated. So though it pained him, he pulled on a pair of old gloves and picked Pig off the body and rolled the body up in an old sheet. He hauled the body up into the loft, grateful for this new body’s strong arms and legs. Nev avoided looking into the face of his old body. When he was done with a corpse it became a thing, a tool, like a pen or an ax.

  Pig squealed at him throughout the ordeal. He ran around in circles, irate at what was being done to the body it knew and loved.

  “Come, Pig,” Nev said one last time as he moved to the threshold. But Pig trotted up to the end of the ladder and lay down and gazed up at the old corpse there in the loft.

  Nev rubbed at his eyes. He needed to keep moving, because if he paused to think about what he needed to do now, he would lose heart. Someone had deliberately used him to offload those fish; even many buyers were likely in on what he was selling. Maybe they had even meant for him to die, too, and he didn’t take kindly to that. People who tried to kill him often came back to finish the job. He took his cloak, which was a cast-off large enough to cover him, from the wall, and knotted it around his thick waist with an old length of rope.

  Nev walked outside, shielding his eyes in the low afternoon light. At the bottom of the path leading up to his house was a llama. Two llamas, in fact, hitched to a small cart filled with empty baskets. Llamas. It had to be llamas.

  “You know where you’re going?” he asked the llamas. One of them bared its teeth at him. “Good,” Nev said, “because I don’t.”

  Nev climbed up into the seat of the cart and took up the reins. He had seen a few llamas around the village, but never driven a cart pulled by them.

  “Forward,” Nev said. “Go?” He flicked the reins.

  The llamas looked back at him sedately. “Dinner?” Nev suggested. “I’d like to have a word with Parn.”

  That seemed to spur some latent memory, and the llamas trundled up the path and around Nev’s house, heading back toward the village. Nev held the reins loosely, hoping they knew where they were going. If nothing else, maybe they would take him to a tavern where he could drown out his memory of this whole day.

  But the llamas took him instead through the village and halfway to the next, down a little pebbled path to a dilapidated wreck of a mill along the waterfront. They halted in front of a big, empty feed trough and made a little humming sound, oddly soothing after Nev’s day.

  Nev got down from the cart and turned just as little Parn came out from the mill, wiping his grimy hands on a leather apron.

  “Where in the seven hells have you been?” Parn said. “What happened to your fucking clothes?”

  Nev considered his options. He walked toward Parn, the mud squelching pleasingly between his toes. Nev took Parn by the throat and lifted him. It had been a long time since he could do something like that, and he reveled in it.

  Parn kicked and gurgled.

  “What’s the game?” Nev said. “Who’s handing that weapon out?”

  Parn moved his lips. No sound came out.

  Nev lowered him so his toes touched the ground, and eased up his grip. Parn gasped. “The fuck are you?”

  Nev tightened his grip again. “I had a very happy life here as a very happy hermit, and you’ve fucked it up.”

  “Just a job,” Parn sputtered. “Who the fuck . . . oh fuck . . . fuck . . . you’re . . . you’re a corpse jumper! Corpse mercenary! Fuck you! Fuck!”

  “Let him go!”

  Nev turned. A young woman was scrambling out from underneath the musty blanket in the back of the cart. She was in her late teens, all knees and elbows. Her dark hair hung into her face. She leveled a crossbow at Nev; not a homegrown version, either, but the sort carried by soldiers. Her clothing was torn and filthy; it was a wonder he hadn’t smelled her from his place at the front of the cart, but his senses were imperfect when he was still getting used to a body.

  “This doesn’t concern you,” Nev said.

  “It sure as shit does!” she said. “He murdered my sisters with that shit in the back.”

  “There’s a great deal of filthy language being bandied about,” Nev said. “Is it necessary?”

  Color flooded her already dark face. “I’ve been at the front,” she said. “I can skewer you through the eye.”

  “To what end?” Nev said. “You can murder him when I’m done.”

  “You can’t murder him,” she said. “He knows where the necromancer is.”

  “Necromancer?” Nev said, because he had not heard that word, in any language, in decades.

  “Necromancers make that shit in the fish,” she said. “It brings the dead back to life.”

  Nev had a moment of dissonance. “It . . . does what?”

  Parn was still struggling, limply. Nev released him. Parn tumbled to the ground, gasping and clawing at his throat.

  Nev turned to the girl. “I know that toxin,” he said. “It murders people.”

  “Sure it does,” she said. “Then it brings them back to life. They’re testing it up there at the front, and out here, because no one gives a shit about backward people out here.”

  Nev said, “I think I need to find this necromancer.” He couldn’t help but put a hand to his own throat. This body had swallowed the fish, and the toxin it contained. So had his prior body. But if it brought the dead back to life . . . which dead was coming back into this body? Nev broke out into a cold sweat.

  He kicked over Parn and pressed his bare, muddy foot to the man’s throat. “You heard the girl,” Nev said. “Where’s the necromancer?”

  The girl’s name was Branka, and according to her she was seventeen, “nearly eighteen,” and had enlisted the year before to fight in “the war.” Nev did not ask what the war was about because it was assumed, in every age, that when one spoke of “the war” everyone else knew exactly which war they were talking about.

  Branka insisted on coming with him, though he tried to dissuade her. She did know how to use a crossbow, and that seemed handy. Nev found some clothes inside the mill that fit him, though no shoes. Nev took it upon himself to drag Parn up into the mill and strangle him. It was done cleanly and without malice. A body mercenary needed a body. It was quite possible he would need this one later.

  Branka saw him come out alone but did not ask about Parn.

  “If he was telling the truth,” she said, “the necromancer’s only four days away by cart. We can do that faster, in two days maybe, if we take turns driving.”

  “Llamas need rest,” Nev said, “like people. You can’t drive them into the ground.”

  “Sure, sure,” Branka said. “I knew that, you know? I’ll drive first.”

  Nev said nothing, but neither did he protest as she got up into the cart. He spent some time gathering a few supplies around the mill, and then they were out onto the road again, bumping along.

  “So you’re really a corpse mercenary?” Branka said. She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. The world lay at the cusp of evening, but it was nearly summer, and the day would stretch on another couple of hours. Nev wanted as many miles between them and the mill as possible before dark.

  “We called ourselves body mercenaries,” he said, “back when we did that.”

  “I wondered,” she said, “when I saw you come out of that house. I mean, a guy went in, but it was clear some other guy came out. I thought maybe that old man put a spell on you.”

  “Not far off, really.”

  “Yeah, I guess. So you could jump into my body, then?”

  “Only if you were dead.”

  “Was that meant to be comforting? Because it wasn’t.”

  “I’m simply clarifying,” Nev said. “It’s not as if I cast out your soul. Your soul is already gone when I inhabit your body.”

  “Like a parasite,” she said.

  “I prefer to think of myself as a snail,” Nev said.

  Branka
nodded. “Sure. A worm.”

  Nev sighed. “What are you intending to do when you meet this necromancer?”

  “Same as you, I expect,” Branka said. “I’ll kill him.”

  “Because he killed your family?”

  “Sure,” she said. “You?”

  “He murdered my life,” Nev said, and he thought of Pig. “This life, anyway.”

  “There’s always some other life for you, though, isn’t there?” Branka said.

  Nev shrugged his broad shoulders. He was beginning to get used to this body. He enjoyed the heft of it. He rubbed at the stubble on his face. “I liked my life,” he said. “I don’t always like the lives I have.”

  “So why not just jump into some other one? You know, I thought all you guys were extinct. Burned out. Hunted down. I’ve never met a real corpse mercenary.”

  “I haven’t met another one like me in a long time,” Nev said. “The world was different then.”

  They rode on in silence until dark. They didn’t make camp so much as simply halt. Nev wrestled with the harnesses for the llamas and let them graze. After a time, they started up their humming, which he hoped was a good sign.

  Then he lay in the back of the cart with Branka and pulled his cloak up over them both. They lay pressed together, warmed mostly by the heat of their bodies. Above them, the great spinning orbs of the God’s wheel tracked across the sky. Nev was reminded of the night before, when he had sat out under the stars with Pig and his turtle and breathed in the scent of the new grass and been still, so very still.

  “Can you have sex?” Branka asked. “I mean, not now, but just . . . generally?”

  Nev started. “What sort of fool question is that?”

  “I mean . . . do you shit like other people?”

  “You’ve seen me piss. These are very personal questions.”

  “I’m a curious person,” Branka said. “Plus, if we’re going to fight a necromancer together, I want to know something about you.”

  “Better not to,” Nev said. “I haven’t asked about you.”

  “I noticed,” Branka said. “It’s polite to ask people questions.”

  “I find it rude,” Nev said.

  “Not me,” Branka said.

  “Clearly,” Nev said.

  She sighed heavily. “My sisters raised me,” she said. “I was the youngest. I enlisted last. My brothers stayed home and made some good matches, you know, but we all had heads for tactical stuff. Well, my sisters did. Not me, so much. They looked out for me. But on the field, that day, this same smell . . . like rotten lemons . . .”

  “I know it,” Nev said.

  “Everyone died,” Branka said. “I saw them die. I was up a tree, though, acting as lookout, trying to get us back on the road. Navigating from maps is shit, you know? I don’t know how they got us. Catapults? From where? But that stuff ended up in the air. Pretty big wind. I guess it all blew out when I came down. But that guy came by later, Parn. And I followed these guys for weeks. Weeks! And I heard about the necromancer when they talked at night.”

  “Long time to track them,” Nev said, because she seemed to want some kind of human response. It had been so long since he’d engaged in a sustained conversation that he had the urge to flee.

  “They were my sisters,” Branka said.

  Nev had a fleeting moment where he remembered his own sisters, all older, all dead now. “I understand,” he said.

  “Have you ever fought a necromancer?” Branka said, and he heard the hopeful expectation in her voice.

  “No,” Nev said, “but there’s a first time for everything.”

  Four days later, they wound their way into the little green valley that Parn had told them about before Nev wrung his neck. Torture, as a rule, did not work often, but Branka’s earnestness had helped. Parn might not have believed that Nev would spare him, but he hoped Branka might. It had been enough.

  The valley was lovely; a little crease in the world, set against the sparkling, wine-dark sea. At the center of the valley was what had once been a little village, now just a charred ruin. The only building that still stood was the silver temple to the Eight Sisters of God.

  Nev reined in the llamas beside the temple and tied them to the hitching post outside.

  “Now what?” Branka whispered. She had her crossbow out.

  “First,” Nev said, “put that fool thing away.”

  Nev stepped up into the temple and pushed open the double doors. The benches were all focused around the center of the room. There, an altar stood with a great orb fixed atop it. The light of the suns drenched it from a hole in the roof, sending dazzling little colored spots of light dancing around the room.

  A woman sat at the farthest seat from the door, head bent over a book. She was an old plump woman with a cloud of white hair and a kind face. She reminded Nev at once of his grandmother on his mother’s side. He remembered his grandmother braiding back his hair and telling him to be a good strong girl.

  The woman raised her head from her book and smiled at them.

  “You must be the corpse mercenary,” she said.

  “Everyone keeps calling me that,” Nev said. “I’m a body mercenary.”

  “New words, same profession,” the woman said, and stood.

  “Are you the necromancer?” Nev asked.

  “I prefer the term ‘knowledge seeker.’”

  “New words, same profession,” Nev said.

  She laughed at that. “Oh, you are clever,” she said, “but I suppose one has to be, to survive as long as you have.”

  “You don’t know me,” Nev said, with more conviction than he felt. It was impossible that he had given away who he was. He could be any number of body mercenaries. They had fled like insects after the last great war, set loose by a terrible act.

  “I know your type,” the woman said, and she began to walk toward them.

  Nev raised a hand. “That’s far enough,” he said. “I’m inhabiting a body killed with your serum. I need to know what happens when it comes back to life.”

  The woman raised her brows. “Indeed,” she said, “so do I.”

  “You don’t know?” Nev said.

  “Of course not,” she said. “Why do you think we’ve been testing it? Many governments have been working together over the last fifty years to eradicate the last of the rogue corpse mercenaries. The body-hopping must stop. You must rest.”

  “I decide when I rest.”

  “That’s a selfish thing,” she said.

  “Hold on here,” Branka said, and out came the crossbow, too fast for Nev to bat it back down again. “You’re murdering people. You murdered my sisters.”

  “I murder a lot of people’s sisters,” the woman said. She pointed at Nev. “He has murdered more. He has even murdered himself.”

  “She doesn’t have any answers,” Nev said. “Let’s go.” He would find out soon enough what would happen to him.

  He turned just as he heard the clink and hiss of the crossbow bolt.

  “Dammit, Branka!” Nev said as the crossbow bolt thumped into the necromancer’s chest. She grabbed at the bolt and grimaced.

  “Foolish,” the necromancer said. “Foolish.”

  The air around her began to darken. Nev thought it was a trick of his eyes, but no. A swirling mist kicked up around her, darkening the room.

  Branka yelled and barreled toward her.

  Nev called after Branka. The air filled with a low buzzing sound—flies. They seemed to burst out of the mist, made from motes of dust. The flies clogged his mouth and eyes, and he began to scream. He had woken up like this many times, covered in flies, screaming.

  Branka was tangling with the necromancer, using her crossbow like a bludgeon. The waves of flies pelted her, buffeting her away from the necromancer like a strong wind, but she was persistent.

  Nev clawed his way through the swarm of flies. He gripped the necromancer by the collar and head-butted her in the face. Blood burst from her nose. Her legs b
uckled. She collapsed. The wall of flies collapsed with her, becoming a misty cloud, like smoke, that dissipated.

  Nev let himself collapse on one of the benches, spent. He was trembling.

  Branka stood over the body of the necromancer, crossbow still in hand. “Is that it?” she said.

  Nev coughed. He spit up a couple of flies. Grimaced. But there was something deeper, something caught way down. He coughed again, harder this time. Again. He had trouble catching his breath.

  “Are you all right?” Branka asked.

  Nev heaved. His whole body trembled. The world began to feel fuzzy, and he was filled with the blazing warmth that suffused him each time he came awake in a new body.

  “Go,” Nev said. “He’s coming back, Branka. Go.”

  “What about you?” Branka said.

  Nev showed his teeth. “There is always another body.”

  The darkness took him.

  Nev woke in the loft of the mill, gasping and screaming. He rolled over and vomited and gazed at the little hands that had once been Parn’s.

  The necromancer had done it. She’d thrown him out of a body. If he hadn’t had another backed up somewhere/here . . . If he had only relied on the others from the battlefield, dead and contaminated . . . He shivered. They were coming for him, and people like him. He had been foolish to think that if he lived a peaceful life, they would forget about him. People like him could never be peaceful. The world didn’t let them.

  Nev walked all the way back to the hermit’s cottage, unsure of what he would find there.

  When he stepped up to the door, it was already open. He gazed up into the loft and saw the sheet he had used to cover his former body. But the body was gone.

  The old hermit was alive again, brought back from the dead. He shivered.

  Nev walked into the back. He didn’t see the turtle anywhere, but the turtle was likely as safe here as he would ever be. And there, at the corner of the house near a rain barrel, he saw Pig.

  Pig lay there in the mud, very still.

  Nev approached, resigned. They took everything, all of them.

  The little pig stirred, then, and Nev’s heart leaped. “You silly pig,” Nev murmured. “He didn’t know what to do with you either, eh?”