The Ruins (57 page)

 They'd
gone to a roadside zoo in
Cancún
one afternoon, as a lark. It had held no more than a dozen animals, one
of which was labeled a zebra, though it was clearly a donkey, with
black stripes painted on its hide. Some of the stripes had drip marks.
While the four of them stood staring at it, the animal had suddenly
braced its legs and peed, a tremendous torrent. Amy and Stacy had both
collapsed into giggles. For some reason, this was what came to Eric
now—the donkey relieving itself, the girls grabbing at each
other, the sound of their laughter.

 Thank
you,
he
was still
struggling to
say.
I'm
sorry. I love you.

 And
the pain was slowly easing…everything was…moving
further away…further away…further
away…

T
he vine claimed his body.
Stacy didn't try to fight it; she knew there was no point.

 The
sun was directly overhead; she guessed she had six more hours or so
before it would begin to set. She remembered Mathias's
words—"How can we say for certain that it
won't be today?"—and tried to draw some
hope from them. She'd be okay as long as it was light. It was
the dark that frightened her, the prospect of lying alone in that tent,
too terrified to sleep.

 She
shouldn't have been the one to survive, she knew; it
should've been Jeff. He wouldn't have been scared
to watch the sun start its long journey westward. Food and water and
shelter—he would've had a plan for all of these,
different from hers, which wasn't really a plan at all.

 She
sat just outside the tent and ate the remaining supplies—the
pretzels, the two protein bars, the raisins, the tiny packets of
saltines—washing them down with the can of Coke, the bottles
of iced tea.

 Everything—she
finished everything.

 She
stared out across the clearing and thought of the many others
who'd died in this place, these strangers whose mounds of
bones dotted the hillside. Each of them had gone through his or her own
ordeal here. So much pain, so much desperation, so much death.

 Fleeing
headlong from a burning building—could that be called a plan?

 Stacy
could remember how they'd talked about suicide late one
night, all four of them, more drunk than not, choosing prospective
methods for themselves. She'd been slouched on her bed,
leaning against Eric. Amy and Jeff had been on the floor, playing a
halfhearted game of backgammon. Jeff, ever efficient, had told them
about pills and a plastic bag—it was both painless and
reliable, he claimed. Eric proposed a shotgun, its barrel in his mouth,
a toe on the trigger. Amy had been drawn to the idea of falling from a
great height, but rather than jumping, she wanted someone to push her,
and they argued back and forth over whether this could count as
suicide. Finally, she surrendered, choosing carbon monoxide instead, a
car idling in an empty garage. Stacy's fantasy was more
elaborate: a rowboat, far out to sea, weights to bear her body down. It
was the idea of vanishing she found so attractive, the mystery
she'd leave behind.

 They'd
been joking, of course. Playing.

 Stacy
could feel the caffeine from the Coke, the iced tea; she was becoming
jittery with it. She held her hands up before her face, and they were
shaking.

 There
was no rowboat here, of course, no idling car or shotgun or bottle of
pills. She had the drop into the shaft. She had the rope hanging from
the windlass. She had the Mayans waiting at the bottom of the hill with
their arrows and their bullets.

 And
then there was the knife, too.

 How
can we say for certain that it won't be today?

 She
found her sunshade, used the roll of duct tape to repair the damage the
storm had wrought upon it. She retrieved the bottle of tequila from the
center of the clearing. Then she set off down the trail.

 Carrying
the knife.

 The
Mayans turned to appraise her as she approached: her bloodstained
clothes, her trembling hands. She sat at the edge of the clearing, the
knife in her lap, the sunshade propped against her shoulder. She
uncapped the bottle of tequila, took a long swallow.

 It
would've been nice if she could've figured out a
way to fashion some sort of warning for those who were yet to come. She
would've liked that, to be the one whose cleverness and
foresight was responsible for saving a stranger's life. But
she'd seen that pan with its single word of caution scraped
across its bottom; she knew others had tried and failed at this, and
she saw no reason why she should be any different. All she could hope
was that the mute fact of her presence here, the low mound of her bones
sitting at the path's mouth, would signal the proper note of
peril.

 She
drank. She waited. Above her, the sun eased steadily westward.

 No,
you couldn't really call it a plan at all.

 Stacy
spilled some of the tequila onto the knife's blade, scrubbed
at it with her shirt. It was silly, she knew—both pointless
and hopeless—but she wanted it to be clean.

 She
grew calmer as the day drew toward dusk. Her hands stopped shaking. She
was scared of many things—of what might come afterward, most
of all—but not of the pain. The pain didn't
frighten her.

 When
the sun finally touched the western horizon, the sky abruptly changed,
taking on a reddish hue, and Stacy knew that she'd waited
long enough. The Greeks weren't coming, not today. She
thought about the approaching darkness, pictured herself once more
alone in the tent, listening to whatever noises the night might offer,
and she knew she didn't have a choice.

 She
thought briefly about praying—
for what, forgiveness?
—only
to realize she had no one to pray to. She didn't believe in
God. All her life she'd been saying that, instinctively,
unthinkingly, but now, for the first time—about to do what
she was about to do—she could look inside and claim the words
with total assurance. She didn't believe.

 She
started with her left arm.

 The
first cut was tentative, exploratory. Even here, at the very end, Stacy
persisted in being herself, never leaping when she could wade. It hurt
more than she'd anticipated. That was okay,
though—that was fine—she knew she could bear it.
And the pain made it real in a way that it hadn't been
before, gave these last moments an appropriate heft. She cut deeper the
second time, starting at the base of her wrist and drawing the blade
firmly toward her elbow.

 The
blood came in a rush.

 She
switched the knife to her left hand. It was hard to get a good
grip—her fingers didn't seem to want to close, and
they were slick with blood now—but she managed it finally,
pressed the blade to her right wrist, slashed downward.

 Perhaps
it was just the fading light, but her blood seemed darker than
she'd expected—not nearly as bright as
Eric's or Mathias's—inky, almost black.
She rested her wrists in her lap, and it flowed down over her legs,
feeling hot at first, then gradually cooler as it began to pool around
her. It was odd to think that this liquid was part of her, that she was
becoming less and less for its steady loss.

 Who
am
I?
she
thought.

 The
Mayans were watching. Somehow they must've sensed that she
was the last, because the women were already beginning to break camp,
gathering things up, rolling them into bundles.

 Stacy
had assumed her heart would be racing, pumping faster and faster with
each passing second, but it turned out to be just the opposite.
Everything—inside and out—seemed to be steadily
slowing. She was astonished by how serene she felt.

 Am
I still me?

 The
vines came snaking toward her. She heard them start to suck at the
puddled
blood.

 She
should've cut the rope off the windlass, she realized. Why
hadn't she thought to do this? She tried to reassure herself
that it didn't matter, that her corpse was going to remain
here as a sentinel, warning any future visitors away, but she knew it
wasn't true, could sense it even before the tendrils began to
grab at her, dragging her off the trail. She fought as best she could,
right up to the very end, struggling to rise, but it was too late. It
had gone too far; she no longer had the strength. The vine held her
down—covered her, buried her. She died with a sensation of
drowning, with the memory of that rowboat, far out to sea, those
weights pulling her ever deeper, the green waves closing above her
head.

T
he Greeks arrived three days
later.

 They'd
taken the bus to
Cobá
,
then hired the yellow pickup truck to ferry them out to the trail.
They'd made three new friends in
Cancún
—Brazilians—whom
they'd brought along for the adventure. The
Brazilians' names were Antonio, Ricardo, and Sofia. Juan and
Don Quixote had both become deeply smitten with Sofia, though it
appeared that she might be engaged to Ricardo. This was hard to tell
for certain, however, since the Greeks couldn't speak
Portuguese, and the Brazilians, of course, didn't know Greek.

 They
were having fun together, even so. They were chattering and laughing as
they made their way into the jungle. Ricardo was carrying a cooler full
of beer and sandwiches. Antonio had brought along a boom box, and he
played the same CD over and over again on it—he was trying to
teach the Greeks how to salsa. Juan and Don Quixote cooperated in this
for Sofia's sake, for the joy of hearing her laughter at
their clumsiness.

 It
was impossible to miss the turnoff toward the ruins. There'd
been too many comings and goings of late to disguise the narrow path.
The dirt was well trodden, the brush beaten back.

 Just
as they were about to start down it, Ricardo noticed a little girl
watching them from the far side of the field. She was tiny, perhaps ten
years old; she was wearing a dirty-looking dress, had a goat on a rope.
She seemed upset—she was jumping up and down, waving at
them—and they stopped to stare. They gestured for her to
approach—Ricardo even held out one of their sandwiches as an
enticement—but she wouldn't come any closer, and
finally they gave up. It was hot in the sun. They knew they were nearly
at their destination and were impatient to get there.

 They
started down the path.

 Behind
them, Juan and Antonio saw the girl drop the goat's rope,
sprint off into the jungle. They shrugged at each other,
smiled:
Who
knows?

 Through
the trees, across the little stream, and then suddenly they found
themselves in bright sunlight again.

 A
clearing.

 And
beyond the clearing…a hill covered in flowers.

 They
paused here, stunned by the beauty of the place. Ricardo took a bottle
of beer from the cooler and they shared it among themselves. They
pointed at the flowers, commenting upon them in their dual languages,
saying how lovely they were, how stunning. Sofia took a photograph.

 Then,
all in a line, they started forward again.

 They
didn't hear the first horseman arrive. They were already too
far up the hill, calling Pablo's name.