Elephants and Corpses Read Online Free

it to living it, to dying at it.
    â€œOnly ever asked you two questions,” she said, sputtering. He kicked harder, trying to keep them both afloat. “I asked how long you been a body merc, and how much pay was.”
    â€œThis makes three.”
    â€œToo many?”
    â€œThree too many.”
    â€œThat’s your problem, boy-child. Love the dead so much you stopped living. Man so afraid of death he doesn’t live is no man at all.”
    â€œI don’t need people.”
    â€œYeah? How’d you do without a body manager, before me?”
    He smelled a hot, barren field. Bloody trampled grain. He felt the terrible thirst of a man dying alone in a field without another body in sight, without a stash of his own. He had believed so strongly in his own immortality during the early days of the war that when he woke inside the corpse of a man in a ravine who would not stop bleeding no matter how much he willed it, it was the first time he ever truly contemplated death. He had prayed to three dozen gods while crawling out of the ravine, and when he saw nothing before him but more fields, and flies, and heat, he’d faced his own mortality and discovered he didn’t like it at all. He was going to die alone. Alone and unloved, forgotten. A man whose real face had been ground to dust so long ago all he remembered was the cut of his women’s trousers.
    â€œI managed,” he said stiffly. His legs were numb.
    Tera was growing limp in his arms. “When I die in here, don’t jump into my body. Leave me dead. I want to go on in peace.”
    â€œThere’s only darkness after—”
    â€œDon’t spray that elephant shit at me,” she said. “I know better, remember? I can … speak … to the dead now. You … leave me dead.”
    â€œYou’re not going to die.” His legs and arms were already tired. He hoped for a second wind. It didn’t come. He needed a new body for that.
    Tera huffed more water. Eventually Tera would die. Probably in a few minutes. Another body manager dead. And he’d have nowhere to leap but her body. He gazed up at the lip of the cistern. But then what? Hope he could get out of here in Tera’s body when he couldn’t in his own, fitter one?
    Tera’s head dipped under the water. He yanked her up.
    â€œNot yet,” he said. He hated drowning. Hated it.
    But there was nowhere to go.
    No other body …
    â€œShit,” he said. He pulled Tera close. “I’m going now, Tera. I’m coming back. A quarter hour. You can make it a quarter hour.”
    â€œNowhere … to … no … bodies. Oh.” He saw the realization on her face. “Shit.”
    â€œQuarter hour,” he said, and released her. He didn’t wait to see if she went under immediately. He dove deep and shed his tunic, his trousers. He swam deep, deeper still. He hated drowning.
    He pushed down and down. The pressure began to weigh on him. He dove until his air ran out, until his lungs burned. He dove until his body rebelled, until it needed air so desperately he couldn’t restrain his body’s impulse to breathe. Then he took a breath. A long, deep breath of water: pure and sweet and deadly. He breathed water. Burning.
    His body thrashed, seeking the surface. Scrambling for the sky.
    Too late.
    Then calm. He ceased swimming. Blackness filled his vision.
    So peaceful, though, in the end. Euphoric.
    *   *   *
    Nev screamed. He sat bolt upright and vomited blood. Blackness filled his vision, and for one horrifying moment he feared he was back in the water. But no. The smell told him he was in the sewers. He patted at his new body, the plump priest they’d thrown down the latrine: the bald pate, the round features, the body he had touched and so could jump right back into. He gasped and vomited again; bile this time. He realized he was too fat to get up through the