The Ruins (10 page)

 Misstep.
Misplace. Misconstrue.

 That
last one was a good one. Eric wished he knew more words like that,
wished he could be the sort of teacher who effortlessly used them, his
students straining to understand him, learning just through listening,
but he knew this wasn't who he'd ever be.
He'd be the boy-man, the baseball coach, the one who winked
and smiled at his students' pranks, a favorite among them,
probably, but not really much of a teacher at all. Not someone from
whom they'd ever learn anything important, that is.

 Mischief.
Misanthrope. Misconception.

 Eric
was growing a little less frightened with each step he took, and he was
glad for this, because for a moment or two there, he'd been
very frightened indeed. When the bald man fired into the dirt at
Jeff's feet, Eric had been glancing toward Stacy, making sure
she was all right. He hadn't seen the man lower his aim;
he'd heard the pistol go off, and for an instant
he'd thought the man had shot Jeff, shot him in the chest,
killed him. Then everything had happened so fast—they were
herded backward, prodded up the trail—and only now was his
heart beginning to slow a bit. Someone would figure something out. Or
the archaeologists would help them. And all this would come to nothing.

 Misrepresent.
Mislead. Misguide.

 "
Henrich
!"
Mathias
called, and they stopped, staring up the hill, waiting for a response.

 None
came. They hesitated a few more seconds, then started to walk again.

 It
was a tent. Eric could see it clearly now as they climbed higher, a
bright traffic-cone orange, looking a little worse for wear. It
must've been there for quite some time, because the vines had
already managed to grow up its aluminum poles, using them like a
trellis. A four-person tent, Eric guessed. Its doorway was facing away
from them.

 "Hello?"
Jeff called, and they stopped again to listen.

 They
were close enough now that they could hear the breeze tugging at the
tent, a flapping noise, like a sail might make. But there was nothing
else, no sound at all, nor any sign of people. In this quiet, Eric
noticed for the first time what Stacy had realized earlier: the
mosquitoes had vanished. The tiny black flies, too. This ought to have
offered him at least a small sense of relief, but for some reason it
didn't. It had the exact opposite effect, in fact: it made
him anxious, bringing back an odd echo of that fear he'd felt
in the clearing as he'd turned, expecting to see
Jeff's body lying there, the gunshot echoing back at him from
the tree line. It seemed strange to be standing here, sweating, halfway
up a hill in the midst of the jungle, and not be harassed by those
little insects. And Eric didn't want to feel strange just
now; he wanted everything to make sense, to be predictable. He wanted
someone to tell him why the bugs had vanished, why the men had forced
them up the hill, and why they still stood down there at the base of
the trail, staring after them, their weapons in their hands.

 
Misery
didn't
count.
Nor
miser
. Eric wondered briefly if they had the same root. Latin, he guessed.
Which was yet another thing he ought to know but didn't.

 The
cut on his elbow had begun to ache. He could feel his heart beating
inside it again, a little slower now, but still too fast. He tried to
picture the archaeologists, all of them laughing over this strange
situation, which would turn out to be not so strange after all, once
everything had been properly explained. There'd be a
first-aid kit in the orange tent, Eric assumed. Someone would clean his
wound for him, cover it with a white bandage. And then, when they got
back to
Cancún
—he
smiled at the thought of this—he'd buy a rubber
snake, hide it under Pablo's towel.

 The
vines covered everything but the path and the tent's orange
fabric. In some places, they grew thinly enough that Eric could glimpse
the soil underneath—rockier than he would've
expected, dry, almost
desertlike
—but
in others, they seemed to fold back upon themselves, piling layer upon
layer, forming waist-high mounds, tangled knoll-like profusions of
green. And everywhere, hanging like bells from the vines, were those
brilliant
bloodred
flowers.

 Eric
glanced back down the hill again, just in time to see a fourth man
arrive. He was on a bicycle, dressed in white, like the others, a straw
hat on his head. "There's another one,"
Eric said.

 Everyone
stopped, turned to stare. As they watched, a fifth man appeared, then a
sixth, also on bicycles. The new arrivals all had bows slung over their
shoulders. There was a brief consultation; the bald man seemed to be in
charge. He talked for a while, gesturing with his hands, and everyone
listened. Then he pointed up the hill and the other men turned to peer
at them. Eric felt the impulse to look away, but this was silly, of
course, a "Don't stare; it's
rude" reflex that had nothing to do with what was happening
here. He watched the bald man wave in either direction, the clipped
gestures of a military officer, and then the men with bows started off
along the clearing, moving quickly, two one way, three the other,
leaving the bald man alone at the base of the trail.

 "What
are they doing?" Amy asked, but nobody answered. Nobody knew.

 A
child emerged from the jungle. It was the smaller of the two boys
who'd followed them, the one they'd left behind in
the field. He stood next to the bald man, and they both stared up at
them. The bald man rested his hand on the boy's shoulder. It
made them look as if they were posing for a photograph.

 "Maybe
we should run back down," Eric said. "Quick. While
there's just him and the kid. We could rush them."

 "He's
got a gun, Eric," Stacy said.

 Amy
nodded. "And he could call the others."

 They
were silent again, all of them staring down the hill, struggling to
think, but if there was a solution to their present situation, no one
could find it.

 Mathias
cupped his hands, shouted once more toward the tent: "
Henrich
!"

 The
tent continued to billow softly in the breeze. It wasn't that
far from the base of the hill to the top, a hundred and fifty yards, no
farther, and they were more than halfway up it now. Close enough,
certainly, for anyone who might be present there to hear them shouting.
But no one appeared; no one responded. And, as the seconds slipped past
and the silence prolonged itself, Eric had to admit to himself what
everyone else was probably thinking, too, though none of them had yet
found the courage to say it out loud: there wasn't anyone
there.

 "Come
on," Jeff said, waving them forward.

 And
they resumed their upward march.

T
he hill grew flat at its top,
forming a wide plateau, as if a giant hand had come down out of the sky
and given it a gentle pat in those still-malleable moments following
its creation. It was larger than Jeff had expected. The trail ran past
the orange tent, and then, fifty feet farther along, it opened out into
a small clearing of rocky ground. There was a second tent here, a blue
one. It looked just as weathered as the orange one. There was no one
about, of course, and Jeff had the sense, even in that first glimpse,
that this had been true for some time.

 "Hello?"
he called again. And then the six of them stood there, just a few yards
short of the orange tent, going through the motions of waiting for an
answer without really expecting one to come.

 It
hadn't been that arduous a climb, but they were all a little
out of breath. Nobody spoke for a while, or moved; they were too hot,
too sweaty, too frightened. Mathias got out his water bottle and they
passed it around, finishing it off. Eric and Stacy and Amy sat down in
the dirt, leaning against one another. Mathias stepped over to the
tent. Its flap was zipped shut, and it took him a few moments to figure
out how to open it. Jeff went over to help
him.
Zzzzzzzzzzip
.
Then they both stuck their heads inside. There were three sleeping bags
unrolled on the floor. An oil lamp. Two backpacks. What looked like a
plastic toolbox. A gallon jug of water, half-full. A pair of hiking
boots. Despite this evidence of occupation, it was clear that no one
had been here for quite some time. The musty air would've
been evidence enough, but even more striking was the flowering vine.
Somehow it had gotten inside the sealed tent and had taken root,
growing on some things, leaving others untouched. The hiking boots were
nearly covered in it. One of the backpacks was hanging open and the
vine was spilling out of it.

 Jeff
and Mathias pulled their heads from the tent, looked at each other,
didn't speak.

 "What's
inside?" Eric called.

 "Nothing,"
Jeff said. "Some sleeping bags."

 Mathias
was starting off across the hilltop, heading for the blue tent, and
Jeff followed him, struggling to make sense of their situation.
Something, obviously, had happened to the archaeologists. Perhaps
there'd been some sort of conflict with the Mayans, and the
Mayans had attacked them. But then why would they have ordered them up
the hill? Wouldn't they have wanted to send them away? It was
possible, of course, that the Mayans were worried they'd
already seen too much, even from the base of the hill. But then why not
kill them outright? It would've been relatively easy to cover
this up, Jeff assumed. No one knew where they were. Just the Greeks,
maybe, if Pablo had, in fact, written them a note before he left. But
even so, it seemed simple enough. Kill them, bury them in the jungle.
Feign ignorance if someone ever came searching. Jeff forced himself to
remember his fears about their taxi driver, the same fears, unfounded,
as it turned out. So why shouldn't this present situation
prove to be equally benign?

 Mathias
unzipped the flap to the blue tent, stuck his head inside. Jeff leaned
forward to look, too. It was the same thing: sleeping bags, backpacks,
camping equipment. Again, there was that musty smell, and the vines
growing on some things but not on others. They pulled their heads out,
zipped the flap shut.

 Ten
yards beyond the tent, there was a hole cut into the dirt. It had a
makeshift windlass constructed beside it, a horizontal barrel with a
hand crank welded to its base. Rope was coiled thickly around the
barrel. From the barrel, it passed over a small wheel, which hung from
a sort of sawhorse that straddled the hole's mouth. Then it
dropped straight down into the earth. Jeff and Mathias stepped warily
to the hole, looked into it. The hole was rectangular—ten
feet by six feet—and very deep; Jeff couldn't see
its bottom. The mine shaft, he supposed. There was a slight draft
rising from it, an eerily chilly exhalation from the darkness.

 The
others had gotten to their feet now, followed them across the hilltop.
Everyone took turns peering into the hole.

 "There's
no one here," Stacy said.

 Jeff
nodded. He was still thinking. Perhaps it was something with the ruins?
Something religious? A tribal violation? But it wasn't that
sort of ruins, was it? It was an old mining camp, a shaft cut into the
earth.

 "I
don't think they've been here for a
while," Amy said.

 "So
what do we do?" Eric asked.

 They
all looked to Jeff, even Mathias. Jeff shrugged. "The trail
keeps going." He waved past the hole, and everyone turned to
follow his gesture. The clearing ended just a few yards from them; then
the vines resumed, and in the midst of the vines was the path. It wound
its way to the edge of the hilltop, vanished over it.

 "Should
we take it?" Stacy asked.

 "I'm
not going back the way we came," Amy said.

 So
they started along the path, single file again, with Jeff taking the
lead. For a while, he couldn't glimpse the base of the hill,
but then the trail tilted downward, more precipitously here than on
their route up, and Jeff saw exactly what he'd been fearing
he would see. The others were startled; they stopped all at once,
staring, and he stopped, too. But he wasn't surprised. As
soon as he'd heard the bald Mayan sending the bowmen running
along the clearing, he'd known. One of them was standing at
the bottom of the trail, staring up at them, awaiting their approach.

 "Fuck,"
Eric said.

 "What
do we do?" Stacy asked.

 No
one responded. It looked from here as if the jungle had been chopped
down all the way around the base of the hill, isolating it in a ring of
barren soil. The Mayans had spread themselves out along this ring,
surrounding them. Jeff knew that there was no point continuing down the
hill—the man obviously wasn't going to let them
pass—but he couldn't think of any other course to
pursue. So he shrugged and waved them forward. "We'll see," he said.

 The
trail was much steeper here; there were short stretches where they had
to drop onto their rear ends and slide down, one after the other. It
was going to be a hard climb back up, but Jeff tried not to think of
this. As they got closer, the Mayan man slid the bow off his shoulder,
nocked
an arrow. He shouted
toward them, shaking his head, waving them away. Then he called out to
his left, yelling what sounded like someone's name. A few
seconds later, another one of the bowmen came jogging into view along
the clearing.

 The
two men waited for them at the bottom of the hill, bows taut.

 They
all stopped on the edge of the clearing, wiping the sweat from their
faces, and Pablo said something in Greek. It had the upward lilt of a
question, but of course no one could understand him. He repeated it,
the same phrase, then gave up.