The Ruins (55 page)

 Stacy
was still holding the bottle of tequila; it was resting in her lap. She
kept twisting its cap on and off. "You think he's
dead, don't you?" she asked.

 Mathias
turned to peer at her, squinting slightly. "I want it not to
be true just as much as you do. But wanting and
believing—" He shrugged. "They're not the same, are they?"

 Stacy
didn't answer. She brought the bottle to her lips, tilted her
head back, swallowed. Eric could sense Mathias's desire to
take the bottle from her, could see him almost doing it but then
deciding not to. He wasn't like Jeff; he was too reserved to
be a leader, too aloof. If Stacy wanted to drink herself into some sort
of peril here, then that would be her choice. There was no one left to
stop her.

 Mathias
climbed to his feet. "I shouldn't be
long," he said.

 Instantly,
Stacy set the bottle aside, jumped up to join him. "I'll come, too." Once again, Eric had
the sense that she was frightened of him, terrified of what was
happening inside his body. He could tell she didn't want to
be left here with him.

 Mathias
peered down at Eric, at his shirtless, bloodied, mud-smeared torso. "Will you be okay?" he asked.

 
No,
Eric
thought.
Of
course not.
But he didn't say it. He was thinking
of the knife, of being alone in the clearing with it, free to act as he
chose. He nodded. Then he lay there in the sun, feeling strangely at
peace, and watched as they walked off together, disappearing down the
trail.

S
tacy and Mathias stood for a
while at the bottom of the hill, staring out at the cleared swath of
ground and the wall of trees beyond it. The sun had already baked a
thin, brittle skin across the dirt, but beneath this the mud was still
ankle-deep. The Mayans were moving laboriously about in it, the muck
sticking in clumps to their feet. Stacy watched two of the women
spreading things out to dry. They had a big pile: blankets, clothes.

 There
were three Mayans standing beside the campfire. One of them was the
bald man from that first day, with the pistol on his hip. The other two
were much younger, barely more than boys. They both had bows. The bald
man's white trousers were rolled to his knees, in what Stacy
guessed must've been an effort to keep them clean. His shins
looked very thin, almost withered.

 Mathias
stepped out into the clearing, his shoes vanishing beneath the mud. He
glanced to the left, stared. His face didn't change, but
Stacy knew what he was looking at, although she couldn't have
said how. The tequila had settled into her stomach with a sour
sensation, making her light-headed; sweat was running down her back.
There was only one thing for her to do now—she had no
choice—but she took her time with it, not wanting to join
Mathias quite yet, wanting to find some buffer between his seeing and
hers. She carefully removed her sandals, one after the other, set them
in the center of the trail, side by side. Then she stepped forward, out
into the mud. It was colder than she would've guessed
possible—it made her think of snow—and she
concentrated on that (
white like the bald man's
trousers, white like bone
) while she peered off toward the
little mound twenty-five yards away from them, a tiny peninsula of
green protruding into the cleared soil, like a finger. The
day's growing heat threw a shimmer across it; Stacy
could've easily convinced herself that it was nothing but a
mirage. She knew better, though, knew it was Jeff, knew that
he'd abandoned them, just as Amy had, and Pablo, that it was
only the three of them now. She reached for Mathias's hand,
half-worried he might not let her take it, but he did, and they started
forward like that, in silence.

 They
moved along the base of the hill, keeping close to the vines, trudging
through the mud. They didn't talk. The bald Mayan followed
them, accompanied by the two young bowmen. It wasn't very
far; it didn't take long to get there.

 Mathias
crouched beside the little mound, started to pull the tendrils from it,
slowly revealing Jeff's body. He was still recognizable, only
partially eaten, as if the vine had curbed its hunger, wanting them to
know, without any doubt, that Jeff was dead. He was lying on his
stomach, stretched out, his arms above his head; it looked like
he'd been dragged there by his feet. Mathias rolled him over.
There were wounds on his throat, one on either side, and his shirt was
completely saturated with blood. The flesh had been stripped from the
bottom half of his face, revealing his teeth and jawbone, but his eyes
were untouched. They were open, staring cloudily up at them. Stacy had
to look away.

 She
was startled by how calm she was acting; it frightened
her.
Who
am I?
she
thought.
Am
I still me?

 Mathias
unbuckled Jeff's watch from his wrist. Then he reached into
his pocket, removed his wallet. There was a silver ring on
Jeff's right hand, and Mathias retrieved this, too. He had to
work at it—tugging—before it finally slipped free.

 Stacy
could remember going with Amy to buy the ring. They'd found
it in a pawnshop in Boston. Amy had presented it to Jeff on the
anniversary of their first date. Over the years that followed, Stacy
and she had spent many hours trying to imagine its original
owner—what he'd been like, how he'd ever
managed to reach the point where he'd needed to pawn such a
beautiful object. They'd created a whole character out of
this fantasy, a failed musician, a sometimes junkie, sometimes pusher,
whose great, perhaps apocryphal claim to fame was that he'd
once sold Miles Davis an ounce of heroin. They'd given him a
name, Thaddeus Fremont, and whenever they glimpsed an older,
downtrodden man shuffling through the world, they'd nudge
each other and whisper, "Look—there's
Thaddeus. He's searching for his ring."

 Mathias
held out Jeff's things to her, and she took them from him.

 "I
should've gotten
Henrich's
,
too," he said. "He wore a pendant—a
good-luck charm." He touched his chest, showing her where it
had hung. Then he spent a moment staring along the clearing, as if he
were thinking of going to fetch it now. But when he stood up, it was to
turn back toward the trail.

 They
set off together, walking side by side—once more, in silence.
Stacy's feet were caked in mud; it felt as if she were
wearing a pair of heavy boots.

 "Not
that it worked," Mathias said.

 She
turned, glanced at him. "Not that what worked?"

 "His
good-luck charm."

 Stacy
couldn't think how to react to this. She knew it was a joke,
or an attempt at one, but the idea of laughing, or even smiling, in
response to it seemed abominable. The humming had returned inside her
skull; she was having trouble suddenly keeping her eyes open. For some
reason, talking made them ache. She kept walking, her arms folded
across her chest, hugging herself, Jeff's watch gripped in
one hand, his wallet and ring in the other. She waited for enough time
to pass so that it could seem as if Mathias hadn't
spoken—until they were nearly at the trail
again—and then she said, "What do we do
now?"

 "Go
back to the tent, I guess. Try to rest."

 "Shouldn't
one of us watch for the Greeks?"

 Mathias
shook his head. "Not for another hour or so."

 Stacy's
mind shifted toward the tent, the little clearing. She thought of Pablo
on his backboard, the agony he'd suffered there. She thought
of herself, how she'd bent to collect Amy's
scattered bones that morning, so casually, as if she were tidying up
after a party.

 Those
words were inside her head
again:
Am
I still me?

 Without
any warning, she started to cry. It was like a coughing
fit—two dozen full-bodied sobs—they came and went
in less than a minute. Mathias waited beside her till they passed. Then
he rested his hand on her shoulder.

 "Do
you want to sit for a moment?" he asked.

 Stacy
lifted her eyes, looked about them. They were standing in four inches
of mud. To their right, the hillside climbed steeply upward, swathed in
its vine. To their left, midway across the clearing, stood the three
Mayans, watching them. She shook her head, wiped at her face. "Eric's dying, isn't he?" she
said. "It's inside him, and he's going to
die."

 Her
hands had opened as she'd sobbed; she'd dropped
Jeff's watch, his wallet and ring. Mathias crouched to
retrieve them. They were muddy now, and he tried to wipe them clean on
his pants.

 "I
don't know if I can handle it, Mathias. Watching him
die."

 Mathias
slid Jeff's ring into the wallet. His hands were bleeding,
she noticed, the skin cracked and scored from the vine's sap.
His clothes were hanging off him in shreds. His stubble was thickening
into a beard, and it made him seem older. He nodded. "No," he said. "Of course not."

 Stacy
turned, stared toward the three Mayans. They had a way of watching her
without ever meeting her gaze. She assumed this was something
they'd consciously learned to do, a trick to make their duty
here less arduous on themselves. It seemed to her that it would have to
be much harder to kill someone once you'd looked them in the
eyes. "What do you think they'd do if we stepped
forward now?" she asked. "If we just kept walking,
right at them?"

 Mathias
shrugged. The answer was obvious, of course. "Shoot
us."

 "Maybe
we should do it. Maybe we should just get it over with."

 Mathias
watched her; he seemed to be giving the idea serious consideration. But
then he shook his head. "Someone's going to come,
Stacy. Eventually. How can we say for certain that it won't
be today?"

 "But
it might not be. Right? It might not be for weeks. Or months. Or
ever."

 Mathias
didn't answer; he just stared at her. From the first moment
they'd met, she'd found his gaze—so
somber, so unflinching—a little frightening. After a few
seconds, she had to look away. He reached and took her hand then, and,
still not speaking, led her back along the clearing to the trail.

E
ric could feel the vine moving
about inside his body. It was in the small of his back, his left
armpit, his right shoulder. The knife lay ten feet away from
him—mud-stained, still damp with his own blood.
He'd assumed that he'd immediately begin to cut
himself, as soon as Stacy and Mathias left the clearing, but then the
moment arrived and he'd discovered he was too scared to do
it. He'd already spilled a terrifying amount of
blood—he could just look at his body and see
this—and he wasn't certain how much more he could
afford to lose.

 He
sat up, took a deep breath, then folded into himself, coughing dryly.
There was no phlegm, just the sense of something residing in his chest
that shouldn't be there, something his body was trying,
unsuccessfully, to expel. Eric had been battling this cough all night;
it seemed strange to him that he shouldn't have realized
earlier what its source was. It was the vine, of course—he
was certain of this. Yes, there was a tendril growing inside his lungs.

 I
should go into the
tent,
he
thought.
I
should lie down. It doesn't matter if it's wet.
But he didn't move.

 He
coughed again.

 It
would've been easier, he believed, if Stacy had stayed with
him. She could've talked to him, argued. He
might've listened—who could say? And if he
hadn't, she could've always grabbed at his arm,
held him back. But she wasn't there—she'd
abandoned him—so there was no one to stop him now when he
stood up and retrieved the knife.

 He
sat back down, holding it in his lap.

 He
tried his word games again, his imaginary vocabulary test, but he
couldn't remember what letter he'd reached last.
The
shiftings
inside
his body made it hard to concentrate. It seemed important that he keep
track of
them.
The
top of my right foot…the nape of my neck…

 Eric
leaned forward, scratched at his left calf, felt a lump there. He
stared down at it, watching it flatten itself out, then bunch together
again slightly lower on his leg. It was nearly the size of a golf ball.
When he probed at it with his finger, there was that familiar sense of
numbness.

 The
incision wouldn't hurt, he knew; it was the pulling forth
that would make him cry out. As he sat thinking this, he noticed
another bulge. This one was on his left forearm, much smaller than the
others, about three inches long and thin as a worm. He touched it, and
it vanished, burrowing down into his flesh.

 All
this was too much for Eric, of course: he couldn't just sit
quietly, watching these things appear and disappear across his body.
Something needed to be done, and there was really only one solution,
wasn't there?

 He
lifted the knife from his lap, leaned forward, began to cut.

S
omehow, the trail up the hill
seemed to have grown much steeper since
Stacy'd
last climbed it. As they made their way ever higher, she started to
pant, her clothes clinging to her sweaty body. She had a cramp in her
side. Mathias appeared to sense her distress, and—even though
they were nearly to the top—he stopped so she could rest. He
stood beside her, staring off across the hillside while Stacy struggled
to catch her breath.

 Her
heart had just begun to slow, when the voices started.

 
Wo
ist
Eric?
Wo
ist
Eric?