The Ruins (28 page)

 They
passed the plastic jug of water around and everyone took another
swallow to wash the food down.

 "What
about Pablo?" Mathias asked.

 Jeff
glanced toward the lean-to. "I doubt he can stomach
it."

 Mathias
shook his head. "I mean his pack."

 They
scanned the clearing for Pablo's knapsack. It was lying next
to Jeff; he reached, unzipped it, pulled out three bottles of tequila,
one after another, then upended the bag, shaking it. A handful of tiny
cellophane packets tumbled out: saltines. Stacy laughed; so did Amy,
and it was a relief, too. It felt good, almost normal. Her head seemed
to clear a little, her heart to lighten. Three bottles of
tequila—what had Pablo been thinking? Where had he imagined
they were going? Amy wanted to keep laughing, to prolong the moment in
the same way that the others had stretched out their paltry portion of
tuna fish, but it was too slippery, too quick for her. Stacy stopped
and then it was just Amy, and she couldn't sustain it on her
own. She fell silent, watched Jeff slide the bottles back into the
knapsack before adding the saltines to their small cache of food. She
could see him making calculations in his head, deciding what they ought
to eat and when. The perishables first, she assumed—the
bananas and grapes and orange—rationing them out bite by
bite. In her mouth, the aftertaste of the tuna was mixing with the
lingering residue of vomit. Her stomach ached, felt oddly bloated; she
wanted more food. It wasn't enough, what Jeff had given them;
this seemed obvious to her. He had to offer them something
further—a cracker at least, a slice of orange, a handful of
grapes.

 Amy
glanced around the loose circle they'd formed. Eric
wasn't part of it; he was hobbling back and forth again,
pacing, stopping now and then to bend and examine his leg. Mathias was
watching Jeff arrange the pile of food; Stacy was working on her last
meager morsel of sandwich, taking a tiny nibble, then chewing for a
long time with her eyes shut. The Greeks were
coming—they'd be here in a handful of
hours—it was ridiculous for them to be rationing in such a
manner, and somebody needed to speak this truth. But it
wasn't going to be any of the others, Amy realized. No, as
usual, she would have to be the one: the complainer, the whiner, the
squeaky wheel.

 "One
of us ought to go down the hill and watch for the Greeks,"
Jeff said. "And I was thinking we should dig a
latrine—now, before the sun rises any higher.
And—"

 "Is
that all we get?" Amy asked.

 Jeff
lifted his head, looked at her. He didn't know what she was
talking about.

 Amy
waved at the pile of food. "To eat," she said.

 He
nodded. That was it, just a single curt dip of his head. Apparently,
her question wasn't even worth a spoken response. There was
to be no discussion, no debate. Amy turned to the others, expecting
support, but it was as if they hadn't heard her. They were
all watching Jeff, waiting for him to continue. Jeff hesitated another
moment, his gaze resting on Amy, making sure she was done. And she was,
too. She shrugged, looked away, surrendered to the will of the group.
She was a coward in that way, and she knew it. She could complain, she
could pout, but she couldn't rebel.

 "Mathias
and I will do the digging," Jeff said. "Eric should
probably try to rest—in the tent, out of the sun. That means
one of you two will have to go down the hill, while the other one stays
here with Pablo." He looked at Stacy and Amy.

 Stacy
wasn't paying attention, Amy could tell; her eyes were still
shut, savoring the last of her tuna. Amy was conscious, beyond her
hunger and thirst and general sense of discomfort, of a growing need to
urinate. She'd been holding it in all morning, not wanting to
empty her bladder into the bottle again, hoping she could find a moment
to sneak off and pee in the dirt somewhere. This was what prompted her
to speak, more than anything else; she wasn't thinking about
what it would be like down the hill, all alone, facing the Mayans
across that barren stretch of land—no, she was thinking about
crouching on the trail, out of sight from the others, her jeans pulled
down around her ankles, a puddle of piss slowly forming beneath her.

 "I'll
go," she said.

 Jeff
nodded his approval. "Wear your hat. Your sunglasses. And try
not to move around too much. We'll want to wait a couple
hours before we take any more water."

 Amy
realized that he was dismissing her. She stood up, still thinking only
of her bladder, the relief that awaited farther down the hill. She put
on her hat, her sunglasses, looped her camera around her neck, then set
off across the clearing. She was just starting along the trail, when
Jeff called out after her, "Amy!"

 She
turned. He'd stood up, was jogging toward her. When he
reached her side, he took her by the elbow, spoke in a low voice. "If
you see the chance to run," he said, "don't hesitate. Take it."

 Amy
didn't say anything. She wasn't going to try to
run—it seemed like a preposterous idea to her, a pointless
risk. The Greeks were coming; even now, they were probably waking up,
showering, packing their knapsacks.

 "All
you have to do is get into the jungle—just a little ways.
Then drop to the ground. It's thick enough that they probably
wouldn't be able to find you. Wait awhile, and then make your
way out. But carefully. It's when you move that
they'll see you."

 "I'm
not going to run, Jeff."

 "I'm
just saying if you have the—"

 "The
Greeks are coming. Why would I try to run?"

 Now
it was Jeff who didn't say anything. He stared at her,
expressionless.

 "You
act like they're not coming. You won't let us eat
or drink or—"

 "We
don't know that they're coming."

 "Of
course they're coming."

 "And
if they do come, we can't be certain they won't
just end up on the hill here with us."

 Amy
shook her head at that, as if the very idea were too outlandish to
consider. "I wouldn't let them."

 Again,
Jeff didn't speak. There was the hint of a frown on his face
now.

 "I'll
warn them away," Amy insisted.

 Jeff
continued to watch her in silence for a long moment, and she could
sense him debating, toying with the idea of saying something further,
setting it down, picking it back up again. When he finally spoke, his
voice dropped even lower, almost to a whisper. "This is
serious, Amy. You know that, don't you?"

 "Yes,"
she said.

 "If
it was just a matter of waiting, I'd feel okay. As hard as it
might be, I'm pretty sure we'd make it. Maybe not
Pablo, but the rest of us. Sooner or later, someone would
come—we'd just have to tough it out until then. And
we would, too. We'd be hungry and thirsty, and maybe
Eric's knee would get infected, but we'd be all
right in the end, don't you think?"

 She
nodded.

 "But
it's not just waiting now."

 Amy
didn't respond. She knew what he was saying, but she
couldn't bring herself to acknowledge it.

 Jeff's
gaze remained intent upon her, forcing eye contact. "You
understand what I mean?"

 "You
mean the vine."

 He
nodded. "It's going to try to kill us. Like all
these other people. And the longer we stay here, the better its
chances."

 Amy
stared off across the hilltop. She'd seen what the vine could
do. She'd seen it come squirming toward her across the
clearing so that it could suck up her little puddle of vomit.
She'd seen Pablo's legs stripped free of flesh. Yet
all this was so far beyond what she took to be the immutable laws of
nature, so far beyond what she knew a plant ought to be capable of,
that she couldn't quite bring herself to accept it. Strange
things had happened—dreadful things—and
she'd witnessed them with her own eyes, but even so, she
continued to doubt them. Looking at the vine now, tangled and coiled
across the hill, its dark green leaves, its
bloodred
flowers, she could muster no dread of it. She was scared of the Mayans
with their bows and guns; she was scared of not getting enough to eat
or drink. But the vine remained just a plant in her mind, and she
couldn't bring herself to fear it in the way she knew she
ought to. She couldn't believe that it would kill her.

 She
fell back to her place of safety: "The Greeks will
come," she said.

 Jeff
sighed. She could tell that she'd disappointed him, that
she'd once again turned out to be less than he'd
needed her to be. But it was all she could do—she
couldn't be better or braver or smarter than she
was—and she could see him thinking this, too, resigning
himself to her failure. His hand dropped from her elbow.

 "Just
be careful, okay?" he said. "Stay alert. Scream if
anything happens—loud as you can—and
we'll come running."

 With
those parting words, he sent her down the hill.

E
ric was back in the orange
tent. It was a bad idea, he knew; it was the worst possible place for
him to be, but he couldn't bring himself to leave. He felt
passive and inert, and yet—within this outer shell of
sluggishness—full of panic. Trapped, out of control, and
being in the tent only made it worse. But Jeff had told him to get into
the shade and try to rest, so that was what he was doing.

 He
sensed it wasn't the right thing, though.

 It
was growing hot, the sun climbing implacably upward, beating down on
the tent's orange nylon, so that soon the cloth itself began
to seem as if it were radiating light and heat, rather than merely
filtering it. Eric lay on his back, sweaty, greasy-haired, trying to
bring his breathing under control. It was too fast, too shallow, and he
believed that if he could only quiet it down some, deepening his
inhalations, letting the air fill his chest, everything else would
follow—his heart would slow, and then maybe his thoughts
would, too. Because that was the main problem just now: his thoughts
were moving too fast, jumping and rearing. He knew that he was on the
edge of hysteria—that he'd maybe even drifted over
into the thing itself. He was having some sort of anxiety attack, and
he couldn't seem to find a way back from it. There was his
breathing and his heart and his thoughts, and all of them had
inexplicably slipped beyond his control.

 He
kept sitting up to examine his wounded leg—bending close,
squinting, pushing at the swollen tissue with his finger. The vine was
inside him. Mathias had cut it out, but there was still some in there.
Eric could feel it—he was certain of it—yet the
others refused to listen. They were ignoring him, dismissing him, and
the vine was starting to grow; it was starting to grow and eat, and
when it was done, Eric would be just like Pablo, his legs stripped
clean of flesh. He and the Greek weren't going to leave this
place alive; they were going to end up as two more of those green
mounds scattered across the hillside.

 The
tent was where it had happened—so why was he back in the
tent? Jeff was the reason: he'd told him to come inside here,
to rest, as if rest were still possible now. But that was because Jeff
didn't believe him. He'd spent a few seconds
looking at Eric's knee, and that wasn't long
enough, not nearly; he
hadn't
seen
it. Or maybe you couldn't see it, no matter how long you
looked; maybe that was the problem. Eric knew the truth because he
could feel it; there was something awry inside his leg, something
moving that wasn't himself, but a thing foreign to him, with
goals all its own. Eric wished he could see it, wished Jeff and the
others could see it, too; everything would be better if they could only
see it. He shouldn't be here in the tent, where it had
happened, where it might happen again. He shouldn't be alone.

 He
surprised himself by standing up. He limped to the flap and stooped
through it, into the sunlight. Stacy was beside the lean-to.
They'd constructed a little sunshade for her, using some of
the leftover poles and nylon from the other tent, fashioning this
debris into a battered-looking sort of umbrella. She was sitting in the
dirt beneath it, cross-legged, facing Pablo at an oblique angle, so
that she could watch over him without actually having to look at him.
No one wanted to look at Pablo anymore, and Eric understood
this—he didn't want to look at the Greek, either.
What troubled him was the sense that the others were beginning to
include him, too, in their zone of not seeing. Even now, as he dropped
to the ground beside her, Stacy's gaze remained averted.

 Eric
reached, took her hand, and she let him, but passively, her muscles
limply inert, so that it felt as if he were holding an empty glove.
They sat for a few moments without speaking, and in this brief silence
Eric almost managed to achieve a sort of peace. They were just two
people resting in the sun together—why shouldn't it
be this simple? It didn't last, though, this momentary
serenity; it fell away from him with the suddenness of something made
of glass, shattering, and his heart leapt abruptly into his throat. He
could feel the sweat rising on his skin, his grip on Stacy's
hand becoming slippery with it. He had to resist the urge to jump up
and begin to pace. He could hear Pablo's
breathing—wet-sounding, unhealthy, like someone dragging a
saw back and forth through a tin can—and he risked a quick
glance at him, immediately regretting it. Pablo's face had
taken on an odd grayness, his eyes were closed and deeply sunken, and
there was a thin string of dark liquid draining from the corner of his
mouth, vomit or bile or blood—Eric couldn't tell
which.
Someone
should wipe it away,
he thought, but he made no move to do
this. And under the sleeping bag, of course, were Pablo's
legs, or what was left of them—the bones, the thick clots of
blood, the yellow tendons. Eric knew the Greek couldn't
survive like this, stripped clean of flesh, knew Pablo was going to
die, and wished only that it would happen sooner rather than later, now
even—
a blessing, a
release,
he
thought—all the lies people utter around death in order to
comfort themselves, to bury their grief with the body, but here,
suddenly, they were
true.
Die
,
Eric said in his
head.
Do
it now, just die.
And all the while—
yes,
implacably
,
inexorably
—the Greek's breathing
continued its ragged course.