The Ruins

Eric told Pablo how people healed-implacably-how the worst part was the accident itself, then the body went to work, mobilizing, rebuilding. Even now, even as they were talking, it was beginning to happen. He told Pablo about the bones he'd broken as a child. He described falling on a wet sidewalk and cracking his forearm-he couldn't remember which bone, the radius, maybe, or the ulna; it didn't matter. He'd had a cast for six weeks, the end of the summer; he could remember the stink of it when they cut it off, sweat and mildew, his arm looking pale and too thin, his terror of the whirling saw. He'd broken his collarbone playing Superman, flying headfirst down a playground slide. He'd broken his nose falling off a pogo stick. And he described all of these accidents for Pablo now, in detail, the pain of each one, the course of his eventual recovery: his implacable, inevitable recovery.

Pablo couldn't understand a single word of this, of course. He moaned and muttered. Occasionally, he'd lift the arm Eric wasn't holding and seem to reach for something at his side, though Eric couldn't guess what, since there was nothing there but darkness. Eric ignored this movement-the moaning and muttering, too-he just kept talking, working at it, his voice high and falsely cheerful. He couldn't think of anything else to do.

He told Pablo of other accidents he'd witnessed: a boy who'd skate-boarded into traffic (a concussion and a handful of broken ribs), a neighbor who'd tumbled off his roof while cleaning out the gutters (a dislocated shoulder, a pair of broken fingers), a girl who'd mistimed her jump from a rope swing, landing not in the river, as intended, but upon its rocky bank (a shattered ankle, three lost teeth). He talked about the town where he'd been raised, how small it was, how ugly and provincial, yet somehow picturesque in its ugliness, somehow worldly in its provincialism. When a siren sounded, people went to their front doors, stepped out onto their porches, shaded their eyes to see. Children jumped on bicycles, raced after the ambulance or fire truck or police car. There was gawking involved, of course, but also empathy. When Eric had broken his arm, neighbors had come calling, bearing gifts: comic books for him to read, videos to watch.

He kept hold of Pablo's wrist with his right hand while he talked, squeezing sometimes to emphasize certain points, never letting go. His left hand moved back and forth between the oil lamp and the box of matches, touching one and then the other in a continuous, restless circuit, moving lightly across them, as if they were beads on a rosary. And there was something prayerful about the gesture, too; it was accompanied by a pair of words in his head. Yet, even as he told his tales to Pablo in his confident, assertively optimistic voice, he was silently repeating the two words, chanting them internally while his hand shifted from lamp to matches to lamp to matches: Still there, still there, still there, still there…

He described for Pablo what it had felt like to ride his bicycle in pursuit of the sirens, the flashing lights. The excitement-that giddy feeling of drama and disaster. He told him of happy endings. Of seven-year-old Mary Kelly, who knew how to climb a tree but not how to get down, her fear making her scramble higher and higher, crying as she went, pulling her tiny body upward, forty feet, into the very crown of an ancient oak, a crowd gathering beneath her, calling to her, urging her back down, while a wind came up, gradually increasing, making the branches sway, the entire tree seeming to dip and rise. He imitated for Pablo the collective gasp when she almost slipped, dangling for an excruciatingly long string of seconds before she managed to regain her foothold, crying all the while, the sirens approaching, the boys on their bicycles. Then the fire truck with its ladder slowly angling skyward, the cheers when the paramedic leaned deep into the foliage, grasped the little girl by her arm, yanked her toward him, throwing her over his shoulder.

Eric had the sudden sense, in the darkness, of a hand touching the small of his back. He jumped, almost yelped, but caught himself. It was just the vine. Somehow, it had managed to take root down here, too, at the bottom of the shaft. He must've leaned into it as he talked, creating the impression of its having reached out and touched him, cradling him at the base of his spine, almost caressing him. It was impossible to keep his bearings here; he was as good as blind. All he had to orient himself was Pablo's wrist and-still there, still there, still there-the oil lamp and the box of matches. He slid forward to escape the vine's touch-it was creepy, and it made him shiver; he didn't like it-shifting until he was right up against Pablo's broken body. When he moved, there was a sharp, tearing pain from the cut in his knee, and it started to bleed again. He patted at the ground, searching for Jeff's T-shirt, then pressed it once more to the wound.

He circled back to the girl on the rope swing; Marci Brand, thirteen years old. She'd had braces and a long brown ponytail. He told Pablo how they'd all laughed at first, seeing her fall, he and the other children. There'd been something comical about it, cartoonlike. They'd watched her drop, heard that awful slapping sound as she hit the rocks; everyone must've known she was hurt. But they'd laughed, all of them, as if to deny this, to undo it, stopping only when they saw her try to stand, then crumple awkwardly, falling onto her side and sliding down the rocky bank into the water. Her mouth was cut-she'd hit her face against the stones-and a murky cloud of blood slowly formed around her in the water as she floated there, thrashing her arms. Her eyes were clenched shut, Eric remembered, her expression contorted. She was grimacing, but not crying; she didn't make a sound, not even when they pulled her out, dragging her back up onto the bank while one of them rode off on his bicycle to get help. Later, they all felt guilty about having laughed, especially when it looked as if she might not be able to walk again. But she did, eventually-implacably, inexorably-with a slight limp, perhaps, although this was barely noticeable, not noticeable at all, really, unless you knew the story, unless you were watching for it.

Now and then, Eric thought he could see things in the darkness-floating shapes, balloonlike, faintly luminescent. They seemed to approach, then hover right in front of him before slowly withdrawing again. Some had a bluish green tint; others were a faint yellow, almost white. These were tricks his eyes were playing on him, he knew, physiological reactions to the darkness, but he couldn't help himself: whenever they appeared to come especially close, he'd relinquish his grip on Pablo's wrist so that he could try to touch them. As soon as he'd lift his hand, though, the shapes would vanish, only to reappear at some new spot, farther away, and resume their slow, gently bobbing approach. He took the T-shirt away from his cut knee. The wound had stopped bleeding again. Immediately, he reached for the lamp, the matches: still there, still there…

He told Pablo other stories, too, tales that hadn't ended so happily-implacably, inexorably-changing them for the wounded man's benefit. Little Stevie Stahl, who was swept into a storm sewer while playing in a flooded field, was no longer discovered by a volunteer scuba diver, half-buried in silt, bloated beyond recognition. No: he reappeared five minutes later and almost a mile away, spit out into the river, cut and bruised and crying, it was true, but otherwise, miraculously, unharmed. And Ginger Ruby-who'd set her uncle's garage on fire while playing with a book of matches, and then, disoriented by the smoke and her rising panic, fled away from the door through which she could've easily escaped, and died crouching against the back wall, behind a row of garbage cans-was, in Eric's retelling of the story, saved by a fireman, brought out to the cheers of the gathered crowd, gasping and coughing and covered with soot, her shirt and hair scorched, but otherwise (yes, miraculously) unharmed.

The cold air coming from the open shaft on the far side of Pablo's body wasn't constant. Sometimes it would stop, seem to hold its breath, and the temperature in the hole would instantly begin to rise. Eric would start to sweat, his shirt growing damp with it, and then, abruptly, the cold air would return. This constant fluctuation unsettled Eric, frightened him, made the darkness within the shaft seem threateningly animate. Each time the draft paused, he felt as if it had been blocked by someone-or something-a presence that was hesitating just in front of him, examining and appraising him. Once, he even thought he heard it sniffing, taking in his scent. His senses were playing tricks again, he knew. But still, he had to resist the urge to light the lamp, his hand pausing, wavering, then resuming its steady back and forth: still there, still there, still there.

He told Pablo of his friend Gary Holmes, who'd dreamed of becoming a pilot. Gary had badgered and cajoled and begged his parents, wearing them down year by year, until they finally gave him flying lessons for his sixteenth birthday. Every Saturday, he'd ride his bicycle out to the local airport and spend the afternoon there, entering this new world. Three months into it, Eric was playing soccer-a youth league, four separate games going on at once, the fields lying parallel to one another. A small plane flew over, very low, buzzing them, the players pausing for a reflexive instant as the aircraft's shadow swept across them, everyone ducking involuntarily, then peering upward. The plane flew on, banked, made another pass, the games stuttering to a more complete halt. The referees blew their whistles; they were waving their arms, struggling to restore order, when the plane banked a second time, its engine stuttering, coughing, falling silent. And then-a handful of seconds later, the time it takes to breathe, exhale, breathe again-from somewhere within the wooded area west of the fields came the slamming, splintering, crunching sound of the crash. Not in the version Eric shared with Pablo, though. No, as Eric told the story, someone had understood what was happening on that very first low pass. One of the coaches, then another. They began to shout, pointing, the referees joining in with their whistles, everyone yelling suddenly, running. The plane was in distress; it was attempting an emergency landing. They needed to clear the fields. And they did it. By the time the plane had banked, returned for its second pass, everyone was crowded back against the sidelines. The plane landed roughly, bouncing, crashing through one of the wooden goals, its front wheels digging into the soft earth, nearly flipping it, so that it finally came to rest tipped forward on its nose, its propeller bent, its windshield cracked. Eric hesitated for a moment here, struggling to imagine what Gary and his instructor's injuries might've been, how that plane's abrupt return to earth would've battered the two bodies in its cockpit. A shattered kneecap, he decided. A dislocated shoulder, a cracked pelvis, a mild concussion. He waved these aside even as he listed them. They all healed, he assured Pablo, as such injuries always do-yes, once again-implacably, inexorably.

The others were busy up above, braiding the strips of nylon they'd cut from the blue tent, building their backboard; they didn't have time to think. But Eric was down here in the dark, with the smell of Pablo's shit and urine, the rising and falling of his moans, his muttering. So it was probably natural that he was the first of them to begin to wonder if the Greek might not survive this adventure, if his body had moved beyond the realm ofimplacable andinexorable , if he was, after all, going to die in the coming hours or days while they hovered helplessly about him.

It seemed as if Pablo might've fallen asleep-or lost consciousness. He'd stopped muttering, anyway, stopped moaning, stopped reaching out into the darkness for whatever it was that he imagined to be waiting there for him to grasp. Eric fell silent, too, sat beside Pablo, holding his wrist with one hand, touching the lamp, the matches with the other. Time seemed to pass even more slowly without the sound of his voice echoing back at him from the shaft's narrow walls. His thoughts returned to Gary Holmes, to the photograph of the mangled plane on the front page of the local paper, the memorial service in the high school auditorium.

Gary had been a friend of his-not a close one, but more than an acquaintance, and, a month after the funeral, Gary 's mother had stopped by Eric's house. "Eric?" his own mother had called. "There's someone here to see you."

Eric had hurried downstairs, to find Mrs. Holmes standing in the front hall. She'd come to ask if he wanted Gary 's bicycle. It was an odd, awkward encounter; Eric's mother had stood there watching them talk, looking tearful. She kept reaching out to touch Mrs. Holmes's shoulder. Eric had felt startled by the request, and strangely embarrassed-after all, he hadn't been that close to Gary. He tried to decline the offer, only to change his mind when he saw how stricken Mrs. Holmes looked at the first, hesitant shake of his head. Yes, he said. Of course he'd take the bike. He thanked her, and then his mother was crying in earnest. So was Mrs. Holmes.

The bicycle was still at the airport, locked to the chain-link fence where Gary had left it that final day. Eric's father dropped him off there early one morning, on his way to work, and Eric claimed the bike, hunching over it with the slip of paper Mrs. Holmes had given him, squinting to decipher her handwriting, the three numbers for the combination lock. He had to try it a half dozen times before it worked, and then he rode off, straight to school, a fifteen-mile trip, arriving a few minutes late, the first bell having already rung, the halls silent and empty. The bicycle's seat had been too high for him, making it difficult to pedal; the chain needed oil; the rims were rusting from having sat out in the weather for the past month. It wasn't a thing to feel proud of, and he already had his own bike anyway-perhaps it was this, or else simply that he was late, but he didn't lock the bicycle when he arrived at school; he tossed it down against the rack and hurried inside. He left it there that night, too, still unlocked, taking the bus home instead. And in the morning, it was gone.

There was that pressure against Eric's back once more, a hand touching him. He felt his heart jump in his chest even as he struggled to reassure himself. It was just the vine. He must've slouched back into it again. He shifted toward Pablo, only to realize that he was already as close to the Greek as he could get. The vine had moved somehow, crept toward him, drawn by his warmth, perhaps. It made him uneasy, a little scared, to think of the vine like this-something volitional, almost sentient-it made him want to flee the hole altogether. He thought about shouting upward, calling to the others, but he stopped himself at the last instant, worried that he'd wake Pablo from his sleep.

Gary 's mother had gone from house to house, passing on her son's possessions to boys who didn't know what to do with them. Boys who lost her son's sweaters and jackets, his baseball mitt and swim goggles, who gave them away or discarded them outright, who buried them in closets and trunks and basements. This was the way death always worked, Eric supposed; the living did everything possible to sweep all evidence of it from sight. Even Gary's closest friends continued forward with their lives, unmarred in any significant way by his absence, climbing from grade to grade, then leaping off into college, forgetting him as they went, remembering instead that photograph of the crumpled plane, the abrupt silence on the soccer fields before its crash.

Eric had to pee. But he was afraid to stand up and step toward the wall of the shaft to do this, irrationally frightened that the Greek or the lamp or the matches would no longer be there when he returned. He unbuckled his belt to ease the pressure on his bladder, tried to distract himself with word games, making up a vocabulary test for his future students, beginning with the A 's, ten words, a little quiz to start the week, five points for the definitions, five for the spelling.

Albatross, he thought. Avarice . Annunciation. Alacrity. Armament. Adjacent. Arduous. Accentuate. Accommodate. Allegation.

He was just turning to theB 's-Boisterous. Bravado. Bandoleer. Botanist-when that electronic chirping began again, waking Pablo, startling them both. Eric let go of the Greek's wrist, stood up, the wound on his knee making him stagger-step, like a clubfoot. The chirping seemed to be coming from his right, yet when he limped toward it, he realized he was wrong. It was coming from behind him now. He started to turn, but then wasn't so certain. It seemed to be circling him, drifting along the walls of the shaft.

"Eric?" Jeff yelled down. "Can you find it?"

Eric craned his head back. He could see them leaning into the rectangle of blue sky. He called up, told them how it was moving on him, first in one direction, then another.

"Is there a light?" Jeff shouted. "Look for a light."

The sound seemed to be coming from the opening beyond Pablo's body now, just inside the mouth of the shaft. Eric limped past Pablo, the air growing noticeably cooler. The chirping retreated, as if to draw him down the shaft. He hesitated, frightened suddenly. "I don't see it," he called. And then the chirping fell silent. "It's stopped," he yelled. He counted to ten inside his head, waiting for it to start again, but it didn't. When he peered up at the mouth of the hole, the heads had vanished and the sky had taken on a reddish tint. The sun was beginning to set.

He hobbled back to Pablo's body. He could sense him moving in the darkness, shifting his head, but he remained silent. He didn't resume his moaning or muttering, and this frightened Eric.

"Pablo?" Eric said. "You okay?" He wanted the Greek to start speaking again, but he just lay there, motionless now. Eric reached for the lamp, found it, reached for the matches, and…they weren't there. He patted at the rocky floor of the shaft, in a slowly widening circle, with a sense of growing panic. He couldn't find the box.

There was a creaking sound above him, and he looked up. The sky was rapidly growing dark, but he could see something silhouetted against it, an oblong shape, almost filling the hole. They'd finished their backboard, were setting it into place. He kept patting at the ground, reaching farther and farther away from himself, then returning to the lamp, starting outward again. But the matches weren't there.

The creaking grew louder, steadier, and he glanced up again. They were lowering the backboard into the shaft. "Eric?" he heard Amy call.

"What?" he yelled.

"Light the lamp!" She was on the backboard, he realized, dropping slowly toward him.

He stood up, limped a step, thinking that he might've been holding the matches when the chirping began, might've carried them with him as he started off to discover the source of the sound, only, absentmindedly, to set them down again. It didn't make sense, and he didn't really believe in it, but then he took another step and his foot hit something, kicking it, and he knew by the noise it made, by the way it felt against his foot, that it was the box of matches. He lowered himself carefully to his hands and knees, began to pat the ground, searching.

The creaking continued. The sky had grown dark now; he couldn't see the backboard any longer, but he could sense its approach. "Light the lamp, Eric," Amy called again. She was closer now, and there was an urgency to her voice. She sounded scared.

He kept patting at the ground. He was in a corner of the shaft that the vine had colonized fairly aggressively; his hands kept getting tangled in its tendrils, giving him the eerie sensation that the plant was purposefully impeding him. When he finally found the box of matches, it was buried underneath the vine, almost completely covered by it. Eric had to tug it free, tearing at the plant, its sap sticking damply to the fingers of his left hand, cool at first, then suddenly burning.

"Eric?" Amy shouted again. She was almost upon him.

"Just a sec," he called. He hobbled back to the lamp, crouched over it, lifted its glass globe. He didn't realize how badly his hand was trembling until he struck the first match: he was shaking so much that it immediately fluttered out. He had to take a moment, two deep breaths, working to calm himself, then try again. This time, he was successful-he lighted the lamp-and there Amy was, barely fifteen feet up, peering anxiously down at them, dropping, dropping, dropping.

He had to turn away from the lamp's brightness after so many hours sitting in the dark, but, even so, the flame was somehow fainter than he'd remembered-or than he'd hoped, perhaps. Much of the shaft remained shadowed, impenetrably so. His hand was burning from the vine's sap. He wiped it on his pants, but it didn't help.

When the backboard came within reach, he took hold of it, guiding it slightly to the right so that it would come to rest at Pablo's side, but then, with three feet still to go, it jerked to a halt, almost toppling Amy off her perch.

"Amy?" Jeff called from above.

"What?" she shouted.

"Have you reached them?"

"Almost. A few more feet."

There was a brief silence while this information was absorbed. Then: "How many?"

Amy leaned, peered down off the backboard at Pablo's broken body. "I don't know. Three?"

"It's the end of the rope," Jeff called. There was a pause. Then: "Can you still do it?"

Amy and Eric looked at each other. The whole point of the backboard was to keep Pablo's spine straight while he was lifted: without it, there'd be twisting or bending, which would, of course, cause further damage to his injured body. But if they decided to wait, it meant winching the backboard back up, taking it off the rope, braiding another length of nylon, reattaching the backboard, dropping the whole thing down the shaft once more, all of this attempted in complete darkness.

"What do you think?" Amy asked Eric. She was still crouched on the backboard, though she could've easily slid to the ground. It seemed as if she didn't want to attempt this, as if she felt it might commit her to a task she was still hoping she could evade.

Eric struggled for something that might approximate thought; it wasn't easy. He noticed a shovel leaning against the far wall of the shaft-a camp shovel, the type that could be folded up and carried in a backpack-and he spent a long moment staring at it, trying to imagine a way in which it might be useful to them. He couldn't come up with anything, though, and when the words grave digger popped into his head, he almost flinched, as if he'd picked up something hot.

"We can undo the backboard," he said. "Put him on it, then lift it up and tie it back on."

"By ourselves?" Amy asked. It was clear she didn't think this was possible.

Eric shook his head. "They'll have to lower someone else to help. Stacy, I guess. Two of us to lift him, one to tie the knots."

They thought about this for a moment, imagining all the steps, the time it would take.

"We'll need to blow out the lamp," Eric said. "Wait for her in the dark."

Amy shifted her weight, and the backboard began to swing. Eric extended his hand, stopped it. He thought she was going to climb off it, but she didn't.

"Or we can just lift him ourselves," he said.

Amy was silent, staring down at Pablo. Eric wished she'd say something. He couldn't do this by himself.

"It's only a few feet."

"If he twists-"

"I could take his shoulders. You take his feet. One, two, three-easy as that."

Amy frowned, uncertain.

Eric lifted the lamp, tilted it, examining its reservoir, the diminishing pool of oil. "We have to decide," he said. "The light's not going to last."

"Amy?" Jeff called.

They both craned their heads to look, but it had grown too dark up there to see him.

"We're gonna try it," she yelled.

Eric held the backboard steady while she climbed off, then he set the oil lamp on the ground. Amy gathered the belts from the sleeping bag, dropped them next to the lamp. Pablo was watching them, his eyes moving back and forth from one to the other.

"We're going to pick you up," Amy said to him. She made a lifting motion with her hands, palms open, then pointed to the backboard. "We're going to put you onto here, and then hoist you up and out."

Pablo stared at her.

Eric moved to the Greek's head; Amy stood at his feet.

"His hips," Eric said.

Amy hesitated. "You sure?"

"If you lift from his feet, he'll bend at the waist."

"But if I lift at his hips, won't he end up arching his back?"

They both stared down at Pablo, picturing these two different scenarios. It was a bad idea, Eric knew. They should send the backboard back up, have them lengthen the rope. Or at least have Stacy come join them. He glanced toward the lamp. It was nearly out of oil.

"At his knees," Eric said.

Amy considered this, but not long enough. A handful of seconds, and then she crouched over Pablo's knees. Eric bent, sliding his hands under the Greek's shoulders. He could feel the cut on his leg stretching, tearing, beginning to bleed again. Pablo groaned, and Amy started to pull away, but Eric shook his head.

"Quickly," he said. "On three."

They counted together: "One…two…three."

And then they lifted.

It was a disaster-far worse than Eric had feared. It seemed to take forever, and yet it happened so fast. They'd barely gotten him off the ground before Pablo began to scream-even more loudly than before, if possible, a pure shriek of pain. Amy almost gave up, almost set him back down on the ground, but Eric shouted at her-"No!"-and she kept going. Pablo's body sagged at the waist; he began to thrash his arms. His scream went on and on. His body was too heavy for Amy; she couldn't keep up with Eric. The Greek's shoulders were level with the backboard now, but his knees were still a good foot beneath it, and it looked as if Amy might not be able to lift them any higher. The bend at Pablo's waist increased. His right arm, flailing, hit the backboard, and it began to swing wildly back and forth.

"Lift!" Eric shouted at Amy, and she tried to hoist Pablo's legs higher, lunging, the Greek's torso twisting, his screams going higher.

Afterward, Eric wasn't even certain how they managed it. It was as if he'd had some sort of blackout in those final moments. He had the impression that they'd been reduced, finally, to making a lurching sort of toss toward the swaying backboard, throwing the Greek's body onto it. All he knew was that he felt terrible, as if he'd absentmindedly stepped on an infant. Amy had begun to cry, was standing there, looking stricken.

"It's okay," Eric said. "He'll be okay." He didn't think she could hear him, though, because Pablo was still screaming. Eric had the urge to vomit, his tongue going thick, bile rising in his throat. He forced himself to breathe. His leg was bleeding again, draining wetly into his shoe, and, once more, he was abruptly conscious of his bladder. "I have to pee," he said.

Amy didn't even look at him. She stood with her hand over her mouth, watching Pablo shriek, the lower half of his body perfectly still while his arms flailed about, the backboard continuing to swing to and fro. Eric limped to the wall, unzipped, began to urinate. By the time he was through, Pablo had started to quiet. His eyes were tightly clenched; there were beads of sweat standing on his forehead.

"We have to tie him down," Amy said. She'd stopped crying, was wiping at her face with her sleeve.

There were four belts on the ground beside the oil lamp; Eric stripped off his, added it to the pile. Amy picked up two of them, buckled them together so that they formed one long strap. She draped this over Pablo's chest, sternum-high, pulled it tight, knotted it in place. The Greek's eyes remained shut. Eric put two more belts together, handed them to Amy, and she repeated the procedure, securing Pablo at his thighs.

"We need another one," Eric said, holding up the last remaining belt.

Amy leaned over Pablo, carefully undid his buckle, started to pull his belt free of its loops. The Greek still didn't open his eyes. Eric handed her the belt he was holding, and she used these last two to tie Pablo across his forehead. Then they stepped back to examine their work.

"It's okay," Eric said again. "He'll be okay." Inside, he felt wretched, though. He wanted Pablo to open his eyes, wanted him to start muttering again, but Pablo just lay there, swaying slightly on the backboard, the beads of sweat continuing to form on his forehead, growing larger and larger, and then suddenly collapsing, rolling sideways down his skull. Eric could feel the blood filling his shoe. His elbow was hurting, his hand burning. There was a bruise on his chin, and his back was itching-he was covered with bug bites from their long walk through the jungle. He was thirsty, hungry; he wanted to go home-not simply back to the relative safety of their hotel, but home. And it wasn't possible, he knew. Nothing was going to be okay. Pablo was terribly hurt, and they were part of this, part of his pain. Eric felt like weeping.

Amy lifted her head toward the darkness above them. "Ready!" she yelled. And then: "Go slow!"

They were just starting to raise him, the windlass beginning to creak, the backboard climbing past Eric's face, moving upward-above him, beyond his reach now-when the lamp dimmed, flickered, and went out.

Jeff," Stacy said, her voice quiet, almost a whisper, but tense, too-he could hear an urgency in it.

He and Mathias were working the windlass's crank, struggling to keep it slow and steady, and he answered without looking at her. "What?"

"The lamp went out."

Now he turned, Mathias and he both, pausing to stare at the mouth of the shaft. It had gone dark, like everything else around them. The sky was clear; there was starlight but the moon hadn't risen yet. Jeff tried to recall if he'd seen it in the preceding nights-what stage it was at, what time it ought to appear-but all that came to him was the image of a cantaloupe slice hanging just above the horizon on one of their first evenings at the beach. Whether it had been rising or sinking, waxing or waning, he couldn't guess. "Call to them," he told her.

Stacy leaned over the hole, cupped her hands around her mouth, shouted, "What happened?"

Eric's voice came echoing up the shaft: "It's out of oil."

Jeff was trying to keep everything in his head, but it wasn't working. He wished he had a sheet of paper, and the time to write things down, make a list, bring a little order to the chaos into which they'd stumbled. In the morning, he could use one of the archaeologists' notebooks, but for now he had to keep going over everything in his mind, feeling at each moment as if he were forgetting some crucial detail. There was water and food and shelter to think about. There were the Mayans at the base of the hill, and Henrich's corpse stuck full of arrows. There was Pablo with his broken back. There were the other Greeks, who might or might not be coming to their rescue. And there was the lamp to add to it all-the lamp without any oil to light it.

He and Mathias resumed their cranking of the windlass. "Let us know when you see him," Jeff said to Stacy.

Thinking wasn't important right now, he told himself; thinking would only confuse things, make him hesitate, slow him down. Thinking could wait until the morning, until daylight. What he needed to do was pull everyone out of the shaft, set them up in the orange tent, and then try, somehow, to get some sleep.

The windlass creaked and creaked as the rope slowly coiled around the barrel. Stacy remained silent; Pablo was still hidden in darkness. Jeff could smell him, though, quite suddenly: an outhouse odor, his shit, his urine. All the time they'd been cutting and braiding the strips of nylon, taping the aluminum poles together, he'd kept trying to tell himself that maybe Eric was wrong, maybe Pablo's back wasn't broken after all. They'd laugh about it later-tomorrow morning, when the Greek was up and limping about-how they'd jumped to their doomsday conclusion. But now, with that stench coming toward him from the shaft, he knew better.

Stop, he told himself. Just get everyone out. Into the tent. And then to sleep.

"I see him," Stacy whispered.

"When he clears the hole," Jeff said, "you'll have to grab the backboard, guide it toward the ground."

They kept working at the crank.

"Okay," Stacy said, and they paused, turning to look. The backboard was hanging above the shaft, just beneath the sawhorse, Pablo a dark form upon it, perfectly still, like a mummy. Stacy was gripping the sleeping bag, one of the aluminum poles. "Lower it a little," she told them.

They reversed the crank, and as the backboard began to descend again, Stacy pulled at it, guiding it toward the edge of the hole.

"Careful," she said. "Slow."

They eased him down onto the ground, then Mathias and Jeff stepped toward him, everyone crouching beside the backboard. Maybe it was just the darkness, or his own fatigue, but Pablo looked even worse than Jeff had feared. His cheeks were sunken, his face gaunt and strikingly pale, almost luminescent in the darkness. And his body seemed smaller, as if his injury had somehow diminished him, atrophy already setting in. His eyes were shut.

"Pablo?" Jeff said, touching his shoulder.

The Greek's eyelids fluttered open, and he stared up at Jeff, then at Stacy and Mathias. He didn't say anything. After a moment, he closed his eyes again.

"It's bad, isn't it?" Stacy asked.

"I don't know," Jeff said. "It's hard to tell." And then, because this seemed like a lie: "I think so."

Mathias remained silent, staring down at Pablo, his face somber. A breeze had come up, and with the sun gone, the night was starting to grow cooler. Jeff's sweat was drying, goose bumps rising on his arms.

"Now what?" Stacy asked.

"We'll put him in the tent. You can sit with him while we pull the others out." Jeff glanced at her, wondering if she was going to protest, but she didn't. She was still staring down at Pablo. Jeff leaned over the hole, shouted into it: "We're carrying him to the tent. Then we'll come back. Okay?"

"Hurry," Amy yelled.

They had trouble untying the knots connecting the backboard to the nylon braids, and finally Mathias just took the knife and cut it free. Then he and Jeff carried Pablo across the hilltop toward the orange tent, moving slowly, trying not to jostle him, while Stacy followed behind them, whispering, "Careful…careful…careful."

They set him down outside the tent, and Jeff unzipped the flap. He pushed his way inside to clear a space for the backboard, but instantly-as soon as he breathed in the stale air-he knew it was the wrong idea. He turned, stepped back outside. "We can't put him there," he said. "His bladder-he's gonna keep leaking urine."

Mathias and Stacy stared down at Pablo. "But we can't just leave him out here," Stacy said.

"We'll have to rig up some sort of shelter." Jeff waved back across the hilltop. "We can use what's left of the blue tent."

The other two considered this, silent. Pablo's eyes were shut; his breathing had developed a burr, a phlegmy roughness.

"We'll pull Amy and Eric up, then figure it out. Okay?"

Stacy nodded. Then Jeff and Mathias ran back toward the shaft.

Pablo started to shiver. One moment, he was just lying there, eyes shut-not sleeping, Stacy could tell, but quiet-and the next, he was trembling so violently that she began to wonder if he was having some sort of seizure. She didn't know what to do. She wanted to call out for Jeff, but she could hear the windlass creaking. They were pulling Amy or Eric up from the hole, and she knew she couldn't interrupt them. The belts were still buckled tightly around Pablo's body-at his thighs, his chest, his forehead-and she wished she could loosen them, yet she wasn't certain if this were allowed. She touched Pablo's hand, and he opened his eyes, stared at her. He said something in Greek, his voice sounding hoarse, weak. He was still trembling; struggling against it, she could tell, but unable to stop.

"Are you cold?" Stacy asked. She hugged herself, tucked her head into her shoulders, mimed a shiver.

Pablo shut his eyes.

Stacy stood up, darted into the tent. It was even darker inside than out, but-groping on her hands and knees-she managed to find one of the sleeping bags. She rose with it, intending to hurry back outside and drape it across Pablo's body, then felt a sudden hesitation, the temptation to lie down instead, curl into herself here in this musty stillness, hide. It lasted only an instant, this temptation. Stacy knew it was pointless-there'd be no hiding here-and she pushed past the moment. When she stepped back outside, the Greek was still shivering. Stacy laid the sleeping bag across his body, then sat down next to him, reaching to take his hand. She felt she ought to speak, ought to find some words to soothe him, but she couldn't think of a single thing to say. He was lying with a broken back in his own shit and urine, surrounded by strangers who didn't speak his language. How could she possibly hope to make this better?

There was a slight breeze, and the tent billowed in it. The vines seemed to be moving, too: shifting, whispering. It was too dark to see anything; there was just her and Pablo and the tent, and-somewhere out of sight across the hilltop-the creak, creak, creak of the windlass. Soon Amy or Eric would appear out of the shadows, coming to sit with her and Pablo, and then things would be easier. That was what Stacy told herself: This is the hardest moment, right here, all alone with him.

She didn't like the rustling sounds. It seemed as if more were happening out there than the wind could account for. Things were moving about; things were creeping closer. Stacy thought of the Mayans, with their bows and arrows, and had to repress the urge to flee, to drop Pablo's hand and sprint across the hilltop, toward Jeff and the others. But this was silly, of course, as silly as her fantasy of hiding in the tent. There was nowhere for her to run. If the sounds were what she feared, then attempting to flee would only prolong her terror, draw out her suffering. Better to end it now, swiftly, with an arrow from the darkness. She sat clenched, waiting for it, listening for the soft twang of the bowstring, while that furtive rustling among the vines continued, but the arrow didn't arrive. Finally, Stacy couldn't bear it any longer-the suspense, the anticipation. "Hello?" she called.

Jeff's voice came toward her from across the hilltop: "What?" The windlass had stopped its squeaking.

"Nothing," she yelled. And then, as the windlass resumed its turning, she repeated the word, in a whisper now: "Nothing, nothing, nothing."

Pablo stirred, stared up at her. His hand felt cold to her, oddly damp, like something found rotting in a cellar. He licked his lips. "Nottin?" he said with a rasp.

Stacy nodded, smiled. "That's right," she said. "It's nothing." And then she sat there, waiting for the others to join her, struggling to believe it was true, that it was nothing-the wind, her imagination-that she was pulling monsters out of the night. "It's nothing," she kept whispering. "It's nothing. It's nothing. It's nothing."

Amy had asked Eric if she could hold his hand. She wasn't frightened, she'd explained; it was just so dark down there in the hole, and she needed some sort of contact, needed more than the sound of his voice to reassure her of his presence beside her. He'd agreed, of course, and though at first it had felt a little awkward, sitting on the rocky floor of the shaft, holding hands with her best friend's boyfriend, she'd soon grown comfortable with it.

This was while they were waiting for Jeff and Mathias to return from the orange tent and lower the rope back into the hole. She and Eric spent the whole time talking-assiduously-as if they sensed some danger in even the briefest silence. The danger of thinking, Amy supposed, of stopping and assessing where they were, what they were dealing with. She felt as if they were sitting on some perilously high cliff, sensing the earth so far beneath them but trying not to look down and see it. Talking felt safer than thinking, even if they ended up talking about precisely what would've occupied their thoughts, because with talking there was at least the chance for reassurance, for them to bolster and encourage each other in a way that was impossible to do on one's own. And there was the chance to lie, too, if this were necessary. They talked about Eric's knee (it hurt when he put any weight on it, but it had stopped bleeding again, and Amy assured him it was going to be okay). They talked about how thirsty they were and how long their water would last (very thirsty, and only another day or so, though they both agreed that they'd probably be able to catch enough rain to tide them over). They talked about whether the other Greeks would come in the morning (probably, Eric said, and Amy seconded this, though she knew they were only hoping it was true). They talked about the possibility of their signaling a passing plane, or of one of them sneaking past the Mayans in the middle of the night, or of the Mayans simply losing interest at some point, vanishing back into the jungle, leaving the path open for their departure.

The one thing they didn't talk about was Pablo. Pablo and his broken back.

They talked about what they were going to do when they finally managed to return to their hotel, the very first thing, debating the merits of their various choices, until it became too painful to think about any longer-the meals they both dreamed of eating made them feel too hungry; the icy beer made them feel too thirsty, the shower too dirty.

The cold draft came and went, yet it did nothing to clear the shaft of the smell of Pablo's shit. Amy had to breathe through her mouth, but even so, the stench managed to reach her; she began to feel as if it were some sort of paint into which she'd been dipped, as if she'd never be free of it. Eric asked her if she could see things in the darkness, floating lights, bobbing slowly toward them. "Over there," he said, and his hand fumbled for her chin, turned her head to her left, held it still. "A bluish sphere, like a balloon. Can't you see it?" But she couldn't; there was nothing there.

Jeff yelled down that they were back. All they had to do was knot together a sling, and then they'd pull them up.

Amy and Eric discussed who should go first, both of them offering this opportunity to the other. Amy insisted that Eric should be the one. He was wounded, after all, and he'd already spent so many hours alone in the hole. She swore she wasn't frightened, said it would only be a minute or two, that she didn't mind at all. But Eric wouldn't hear of it; he refused outright, and, finally, with secret relief-because she was frightened, because she did mind-Amy accepted his decision.

The windlass started to squeak. Jeff and Mathias were lowering the rope.

It was too dark to make out the sling's approach. They sat staring upward, seeing nothing, and then the creaking stopped. "Got it?" Jeff yelled.

Eric and Amy stood up, still clasping hands, and held their free arms out, swinging them slowly to and fro until Amy felt the cool nylon of the sling; it seemed to materialize out of the darkness at her touch. "Here it is," she said, and she guided Eric to it. They stood for a moment, both of them gripping the sling. Amy shouted upward, "Got it!"

"Tell us when," Jeff called back.

Amy could hear Eric breathing beside her. "Are you sure?" she asked.

"Definitely," he said. And then he laughed, or pretended to. "Just don't forget to send it back down."

"How do I do it?"

"Pull it over your head. Tuck it under your arms."

She let go of his hand, pushed her arms through the sling's opening, her head. Eric helped her, adjusting it beneath her armpits.

"You're sure it's okay?" she asked again.

Somehow, she could sense him nodding in the darkness, cutting her off. "Want me to shout?"

"I can," she said. Eric didn't respond. He stood beside her, with one hand resting lightly on her shoulder, waiting for her to call out. She craned back her head, yelled, "Ready!"

And then the windlass began its squeaking, and suddenly she was rising into the air, her feet dangling free, Eric's hand falling from her shoulder, vanishing into the darkness behind her.

The chirping began again. At first, it seemed to be coming from above Eric; then it was right in front of him, nearly at his feet. He reached toward the sound, patting with his hands, but found only more of the vine, its leaves slick to his touch, slimy even, like the skin of some dark-dwelling amphibian.

The windlass paused in its creaking, leaving Amy dangling somewhere up above him.

"Can you see it?" Jeff yelled.

Eric didn't answer. The chiming had moved away now, toward the open shaft in front of him, then into it, down it, growing fainter.

"Eric?" Amy called.

There was a pale yellow balloon bobbing to his left. It wasn't real, of course, just a trick of his eyes, and he knew this. So why should the chirping be real? He wasn't going to follow the sound down the shaft, wasn't going to move, was determined to keep crouching here, with one hand on the oilless lamp, the other on the box of matches, waiting for the sling to come dropping back toward him.

"I can't see it," he shouted up at them.

The windlass resumed its creaking.

The wound on his knee throbbed steadily. He had a headache-he was hungry, thirsty. And tired now, too. He was trying not to think about everything he and Amy had discussed, trying to fill his mind with static, because it was so much harder now, all alone down here, to keep believing in the hopeful scenarios they'd created. The Mayans weren't going to leave-which of them had been the one to propose such a foolish idea? And how did they imagine they'd ever be able to signal a plane for help, it flying so far above them, so quickly, so tiny in the sky? Chiropractor, he thought, struggling to mute these questions. Credentials. Collision. Celestial. Cadaver. Circumstantial. Curvaceous. Cumulative. Cavalier. Circumnavigate.

The chirping stopped. And then, a moment later, so did the windlass. Eric could hear them helping Amy out of the sling.

What if the Greeks didn't come? Or, having come, were simply trapped here on the hill with them? Derisive, he thought. Dilapidated. Decadent. And what if it didn't rain? What would they do then for water? Delectable, he thought Divinity. Druid. Jeff had told him that he had to wash the cut on his elbow, that even something as small as that could get infected very quickly in this climate, and now he had a much deeper wound on his knee, with no chance of cleaning it. It could become gangrenous. He could lose his leg. Dovetail, he thought. Disastrous. Devious.

And Pablo…what about Pablo and his broken back?

The creaking resumed, and Eric stood up. Effervescent, he was thinking. Eunuch. He had the matches in one hand, the lamp in the other, and he lifted his arms, held them blindly out before him, waiting to receive the sling.

Stacy and Amy sat next to each other on the ground, a few feet away from Pablo's backboard. They were holding hands, watching Jeff examine Eric's knee. Eric had gingerly lowered his pants, grimacing as he pulled them free of his wound, the fabric tearing at the dried blood. Jeff crouched over him, struggling unsuccessfully in the darkness to get a sense of how badly Eric had been injured. Finally, he gave up; it would have to wait till morning. All that mattered for now was that it had stopped bleeding.

Mathias was building a shelter for Pablo, using the duct tape to fashion a flimsy-looking lean-to from what remained of the blue tent's nylon and aluminum poles.

"One of us should probably stay on watch while the others sleep," Jeff said.

"Why do we need someone on watch?" Amy asked.

Jeff nodded toward Pablo. They'd removed the belts, and he was lying on the backboard, eyes shut. "In case he wants something," Jeff said. "Or…" He shrugged, glanced across the clearing, toward the trail that led down the hill. The Mayans, he was thinking, but he didn't want to say it. "I don't know. It just seems smarter."

Everyone was silent. Mathias tore off a strip of tape, using his teeth.

"Two-hour shifts," Jeff said. "Eric can skip his." Eric was sitting there, looking dazed, his pants bunched around his ankles. Jeff couldn't tell if he was listening. "I'm thinking we should probably start collecting our urine, too. Just to be safe."

"Our urine?" Amy asked.

Jeff nodded. "In case we run out of water before it rains. We can hold ourselves over for a little while by-"

"I'm not going to drink my urine, Jeff."

Stacy nodded in agreement. "There's no way," she said.

"If we reach the point where it's either drinking urine or dying of-"

"You said the Greeks would come tomorrow," Amy protested. "You said-"

"I'm only trying to be careful, Amy. To be smart. And part of being smart is thinking about the worst-case scenario. Because if it comes to that, we'll wish we'd planned for it. Right?"

She didn't answer.

"Our urine's only going to get more and more concentrated as we become dehydrated," Jeff continued. "So now's the time to start saving it."

Eric shook his head, rubbed tiredly at his face. "Jesus," he said. "Jesus fucking Christ."

Jeff ignored him. "Tomorrow, once it's light, we'll figure out how much water we have and how we should go about rationing it. Food, too. For now, I think we should each just take a single swig and then try our best to get some sleep." He turned to Mathias, who was still working on the lean-to. "You have that empty bottle?"

Mathias stepped toward the orange tent. His pack was lying in the dirt beside it. He unzipped it, rummaged about for a moment, then pulled out his empty water bottle. He handed it to Jeff.

Jeff held it up before the others; it was a two-liter bottle. "If you have to pee, use this. Okay?"

Nobody said anything.

Jeff placed the bottle beside the doorway to the tent. "Mathias and I will finish Pablo's shelter. Then I'll take the first watch. The rest of you should try to get some sleep."

They talked only long enough to agree that they shouldn't talk, that they'd just end up agitating themselves, lying in the darkened tent, whispering back and forth. Stacy was in the middle, between Eric and Amy, on her back, holding hands with both of them. They'd left enough space for Mathias on the far side of Amy. There were two sleeping bags remaining in the tent, but it was too hot to think of using them. They'd pushed them and everything else-the backpacks, the plastic toolbox, the hiking boots, the jug of water-into a pile against the tent's rear wall. They'd talked, briefly, about drinking some of the water, whispering conspiratorially, hunched over the plastic jug. Amy was the one who'd suggested it, saying it as if it were a joke, her hand poised above the cap. It was hard to tell if she'd meant it-maybe she would've taken a long, gulping swallow if they'd agreed-but when they'd shaken their heads, insisting it wouldn't be fair to the others, she'd set the jug quickly aside, laughing. Stacy and Eric had laughed, too, but it had sounded odd in the darkness, the musty closeness of the tent, and they'd quickly fallen silent.

Eric removed his shoes, and then Stacy helped him pull his pants the rest of the way off. She and Amy remained fully clothed. Stacy didn't feel safe enough to disrobe; she wanted to be ready to run. She assumed Amy felt the same way, though neither of them admitted to it.

Not that there would be anywhere to run, of course.

Stacy lay very still, listening to the other two breathe, trying to guess if they were close to sleep. She wasn't; she was tired to the point of tears, but she didn't believe she'd ever be able to find any rest here. She could hear Jeff and Mathias talking softly outside the tent, without being able to tell what they were saying. After awhile, Amy let go of her hand, rolling away from her, onto her side, and Stacy almost cried out, calling her back. Instead, she shifted closer to Eric, pressing against him. He turned his head toward her, started to speak, but she put a finger to his lips, silencing him. She laid her head on his shoulder, snuggling. She could smell his sweat, and she stuck out her tongue, licked his skin, tasted the salt. Her hand was resting on his stomach, and without really thinking, she slid it down his body, slipping beneath the waistband on his boxers. She touched his penis, tentatively, the sleepy softness of it, let her fingers rest on top of it. She wasn't thinking of sex-she was too tired, too frightened for this to be any sort of motivation. What she was searching for was reassurance. She was fumbling for it, not knowing how to find it, trying this particular route only because she couldn't think of any other. She wanted to make him hard, wanted to jerk him off, wanted to feel his body arch as the sperm spurted out of him. She believed she'd find some comfort in this, some illusory sense of safety.

So that was what she did. It didn't take long. His penis slowly stiffened beneath her touch, and then she began to stroke him, fast, grimacing with the effort. His breath deepened, with a rasp hiding in it, and then-just as her arm was beginning to ache with the exertion-rose to a moan as he climaxed. Stacy heard the first, thick shot of semen splatter wetly to the tent's floor beside him. She could feel his body relax in the aftermath, could even feel the moment when he fell asleep, the tension easing from his muscles. It was infectious, that abrupt sense of relief, that sudden abatement, like an emptiness sweeping through her, and in the face of it, her fear seemed, if only temporarily, to retreat a step. That was enough, though; it was all she needed. Because in that brief moment-somehow, miraculously-with her hand still clasping Eric's sticky, slackening penis, Stacy, too, slipped into sleep.

Amy heard the whole thing. She lay there listening to Stacy's furtive rustling, its rhythmic push and pull, growing faster and faster, tugging Eric's breathing along behind it, the steady climb in volume, the suppressed moan, the silence that followed. In another context, she would've found the whole thing funny, would've teased Stacy in the morning, maybe even said something at the moment of climax, clapped, shouting, "Bravo! Bravo!" But here, in the stuffy darkness of the tent, she simply lay on her side with her eyes shut, enduring it. She could tell when they fell asleep, and she felt a moment's envy, a yearning for Jeff to be here, holding her, soothing her out of consciousness. Then the flap zippered open, and Mathias entered in his stocking feet. He stepped over her body and lowered himself into the empty space beside her. It was startling, how rapidly he joined the other two in sleep, as if it were a shirt he'd pulled over his head, adjusting it, tucking it into his pants, brushing out the wrinkles, before, his eyes drifting shut, he began to snore. Amy counted his snores. Some were so deep, they echoed in the air above her, while others were like whispers she had to strain to hear. When she reached one hundred, she sat up, crawled to the tent's flap, unzipped it, and slipped out into the night.

It wasn't as dark outside as in; Amy could see Jeff's shape beside the longer shadow of the lean-to, could sense him lifting his head to look at her. He didn't say anything; she assumed he didn't want to wake Pablo. She picked up the plastic bottle, unbuttoned her pants, and-crouching right there in front of the tent, with Jeff watching her through the darkness-started to urinate. It took her a moment to guide the mouth of the bottle beneath her stream, and she peed on her hand in the process. The bottle was already bottom-heavy with someone else's piss-Mathias's, Amy guessed-and there was something disturbing about this, the sound of her urine spurting into his, sloshing and spattering and merging. She wasn't going to drink it, she assured herself; it would never come to that. She was just humoring Jeff, showing him what a good sport she could be. If he wanted her to pee in the bottle, that was what she'd do, but in the morning the Greeks would arrive, and none of it would matter anymore. They'd send them off to get help, and by nightfall everything would be resolved. She capped the bottle, returned it to its spot beside the doorway, then pulled her pants back up, buttoning them as she moved toward Jeff.

The moon had risen, finally, but it was tiny, a faint silver sliver hanging just above the horizon. It didn't give off much light; she could make out the shapes of things, but not their details. Jeff was sitting cross-legged, looking oddly at peace-content, even. Amy dropped to the ground beside him, reached out and took his hand, as if she hoped by touching him she might claim some of his calm for herself. She was making a conscious effort not to glance beneath the lean-to. He's asleep, she told herself. He's fine.

"What are you doing?" she whispered.

"Thinking," Jeff answered.

"About?"

"I'm trying to remember things."

Amy felt a catch at this, a dropping sensation inside her chest, as if she'd reached for a light switch in a darkened room and encountered someone's face instead. She remembered visiting her mother's father, an old man with a smoker's cough, as he lay on his deathbed, tubed and monitored, clear fluids dripping into him, dark ones dripping out. Amy was six, maybe seven; she didn't let go of her mother's hand, not once, not even when she was prodded forward to kiss the dying man good-bye on his stubbled cheek.

"What are you doing, Dad?" her mother had asked the old man when they'd first arrived.

And he'd said, "Trying to remember things."

It was what people did, Amy had decided, as they waited for death; they lay there struggling to remember the details of their lives, all the events that had seemed so impossible to forget while they were being suffered through, the things tasted and smelled and heard, the thoughts that had felt like revelations, and now Jeff was doing this, too. He'd given up. They weren't going to survive this place; they were going to end just like Henrich, shot full of arrows, the vines coiling and flowering around their bones.

But no: it wasn't like that, not for Jeff. She should've known better.

"There's a way to distill urine," he said. "You dig a hole. You put the urine in it, in an open container. You cover the hole with a waterproof tarp, weigh it down to hold it in place. In its center you place a stone, so that the tarp droops there. And beneath that spot, in the hole, you leave an empty cup. The sun heats the hole. The urine evaporates, then condenses against the tarp. The water droplets slide down to the center and drip into the cup. Does that sound right to you?"

Amy just stared at him. She'd stopped following almost from the start.

It didn't matter, though; she knew Jeff wasn't really talking to her. He was thinking out loud, and might not even have heard her if she'd bothered to answer. "I'm pretty sure it's right," he said. "But I feel like I'm forgetting something." He fell silent again, considering this. She couldn't make out his face in the dim light, but she could picture it easily enough. There'd be a slight frown, a wrinkling of his forehead. His eyes would appear to be squinting at her, intensely, but this would be an illusion. He'd be looking through her, past her. "It doesn't have to be urine," he said finally. "We could cut the vine, too. Place it in the hole. The heat will suck the moisture right out of it."

Amy didn't know what to say to this. Ever since their arrival here, there'd been a jitteriness to Jeff, a heightened quality to his voice, his gestures. She'd assumed it was merely a symptom of anxiety, the same fear, the same nervousness the rest of them were feeling. But maybe it wasn't, she realized now; maybe it was something more unexpected. Maybe it was excitement. Amy had the sudden sense that Jeff had been preparing for something like this all his life-some crisis, some disaster-studying for it, training, reading his books, memorizing his facts. Trailing along behind this thought was the realization that if anyone was going to get them out of here, it would be Jeff. She knew this ought to have made her feel more safe rather than less, but it didn't. It unsettled her; she wanted to pull away from him, creep back into the tent. He seemed happy; he seemed glad to be here. And the possibility of this made her feel like weeping.

I'm not going to drink the urine, she wanted to say. Even distilled, I'm not going to drink it.

Instead, she lifted her head, sniffed the air. There was the faint, slightly musky scent of wood burning, a campfire smell, and she felt her stomach stir in response to it. She was hungry, she realized; they hadn't eaten since the morning. "Is that smoke?" she whispered.

"They've built fires," Jeff said. He lifted his arm, made a circular motion, encompassing them within it. "All around the base of the hill."

"To cook with?" she asked

He shook his head. "So they can see us. Make sure we don't try to sneak past in the dark."

Amy took this in, along with all its implications, the sense of being under siege. There were questions she knew she should be asking him, doors opening off of this particular hallway, leading to rooms that needed to be explored, but she didn't think she had the courage for his answers. So she kept silent, her fear chasing off her hunger, her stomach going tight and fluttery.

"There'll be dew in the morning," Jeff said. "We can tie rags to our ankles, walk through the vines, and the rags'll pick up the moisture. We can squeeze it out of them. Not much, but if-"

"Stop it," she said. She couldn't help herself. "Please, Jeff."

He fell silent, staring at her through the darkness.

"You told us the Greeks will come," she said.

He hesitated, as if choosing between different possible responses. Then, very quietly, he said, "That's right."

"So it doesn't matter."

"I guess not."

"And it'll rain, too. It always rains."

Jeff nodded, without saying anything. He was humoring her, Amy knew. And that was okay; she wanted him to humor her, wanted him to tell her it was all right, that they'd be rescued tomorrow, that they'd never have to dig a hole to distill their urine, never have to tie rags to their ankles and shuffle up and down the hillside collecting dew. A mouthful of dew, squeezed from dirty rags-how could they possibly have reached the point where this was a topic of conversation?

They sat in silence, still holding hands, her right clasped in his left. She remembered walking out of a movie once, their second date, how Jeff had reached to slide his arm through hers. It had been raining; they'd shared an umbrella, pressing close together as they walked. He was shier than she would've guessed; even that evening, standing so near, the rain spattering against the taut fabric only inches above their heads, he hadn't dared to kiss her good night. This was still to come, another week or so in the future, and it was nice that way; it gave weight to the other things, the smaller gestures, his arm hooking hers as they stepped out from beneath the brightly lighted marquee onto the rain-slick streets. She almost spoke of it now, but then stopped herself, worried he might not have any memory of the moment, that what had felt so touching to her, so joyous, had been an idle gesture on his part, a response to the inclement weather rather than a timid advance toward her heart.

A wind came up, briefly, and for a moment Amy felt almost chilly. But then it stopped, and the heat returned. She was sweating; she'd been sweating since she'd stepped off the bus, so many hours ago now, a different epoch altogether. Pablo shifted his head, muttered something, then fell silent. It took effort not to look at him; she had to shut her eyes.

"You should be sleeping," Jeff said.

"I can't."

"You're going to need it."

"I said I can't." Amy knew she sounded angry, peevish-she was doing it again, complaining, ruining everything, spoiling this moment of quiet they'd managed to forge together, this false sense of peace-and she wished she could take back the words, soften them somehow, then lie down with her head in Jeff's lap so that he might soothe her into sleep. Her left hand was sticky with urine. She lifted it to her nose, sniffed. Then she opened her eyes and, without meaning to, looked at Pablo. They'd taken the sleeping bag off him. He was lying on his back beneath the little lean-to, his arms folded across his chest. His eyes were closed. Sleeping, she reassured herself. Resting. You couldn't see the damage-it was inside him, his shattered vertebrae, his crushed spinal cord-but it was easy enough to imagine. He looked shrunken, aged. He looked withered and diminished. Amy couldn't understand how this transformation could have happened so rapidly. She remembered him standing beside the hole, holding that imaginary phone to his ear, waving for them to approach; it seemed impossible that this ragged figure could belong to the same person. His pants were gone; he was naked from the waist down, and his legs looked wrong, askew somehow, as if he'd been carelessly dropped here. Amy could see his penis, nearly hidden in the darkly shadowed growth of his pubic hair. She looked away.

"You took off his pants," she said.

"We cut them off."

Amy pictured the two of them, Jeff and Mathias, leaning over the backboard with the knife, one of them cutting, the other holding Pablo's legs still. But no: Pablo's legs wouldn't have needed to be held still, of course-that was the whole point. Mathias was like Jeff, Amy supposed: head down, eyes focused, a survivor. His brother was dead, but he was far too disciplined to grieve. He would've been the one to wield the knife, she decided, while Jeff crouched beside him, setting the strips of denim aside, already imagining how he could use them, the ones that weren't too soiled, how they could tie them to their ankles in the morning and gather the dew to drink. She knew that if she were Mathias, she'd still be at the bottom of the hill, clutching her brother's rotting body, sobbing, screaming. And what good would this do any of them?

"We have to be able to keep him clean," Jeff said. "That's how it will happen, I think. If it does."

There was that breeze again, chilling her. Amy shivered. She was breathing through her mouth, trying not to smell the fires burning at the base of the hill. "If what does?" she asked.

"If he dies here. It'll be an infection, I'm guessing. Septicemia, maybe-something like that. There's nothing, really, we can do to stop it."

Amy shifted slightly, her hand slipping free of Jeff's grasp. You weren't supposed to speak the words, but he'd gone and done it anyway, so casually, a man flicking his hand at a fly. If he dies here. Amy felt the need to say something, to assert some other reality-more benign, more hopeful. The Greeks were going to arrive in the morning, she wanted to tell him. By this time tomorrow, they'd all be saved. No one was going to have to drink any urine, any dew. And Pablo wasn't going to die. But she remained silent, and she knew why, too. She was afraid Jeff might contradict her.

Jeff yawned, stretching, his arms rising over his head.

"Are you tired?" she asked.

He made a vague gesture in the darkness.

Amy waved toward the tent. "Why don't you go to sleep? I can sit with him. I don't mind."

Jeff glanced at his watch, pushing a button to make it glow, briefly. Pale green: if she'd blinked, she would've missed it. He didn't speak.

"How much longer do you have?" she asked.

"Forty minutes."

"I'll add it to mine. I can't sleep anyway."

"That's all right."

"Seriously," she persisted. "Why should we both be up?"

He looked at his watch again, that green luminescence; she could almost see his face in its glow, the jut of his chin. He turned toward her. "I'm thinking of going down the hill," he said.

Amy knew what he was saying, but she didn't allow herself to admit it. "Why?"

He waved beyond her, past the tent. "There's a spot where the fires are a little farther apart. It might be possible to sneak by."

She pictured Mathias's brother, the arrows in his body. No, she thought. Don't. But she didn't speak. She wanted to believe that he could do it, that he could move, ghostlike, across the clearing, creeping slowly, silently, invisibly past the Mayans standing guard there. Then into the jungle, through the trees-running.

"I figure they're watching the trails. If I make my way straight down through the vines…" He fell silent, waiting for Amy's reaction.

"You have to be careful," she said. It was the best she could do.

"I'm just gonna check it out. I'll only try it if it seems clear."

She nodded, not certain if he could see her. He stood up, then bent to tie one of his shoelaces.

"If I don't come back," he said. "You'll know where I am."

Running, he meant. Heading for help. But what she pictured was Henrich's corpse again, the bones showing through on his face. "Okay," she said, thinking, No. Thinking, Don't . Thinking, Stop.

Then she sat there, next to Pablo, and watched as he walked away, without another word, vanishing into the darkness.

Eric woke, briefly, as Jeff moved past the tent. He lay on his back, wondering where he was. He was thirsty and his leg ached, and it was darker than it seemed like it ought to be. Then it came to him, everything, the whole day, all in a flash. The Mayans with their bows, his descent into the shaft, Amy and he tossing Pablo's body onto the backboard. This last bit was too much for him, too horrible; he shoved the image aside, feeling wretched.

Stacy had rolled away from him, and he could hear someone snoring on the far side of the tent. Mathias, he supposed. He wondered what time it was, how Pablo was doing, and thought about getting up to check on him. But he was too tired; the impulse came and went, and then his eyes were drifting shut again. He slid his hand in under the waistband of his boxers, scratched at his groin; it felt sticky. Only then did he remember Stacy jerking him off. There was something else down there, too, in the darkness, something soft, tentative but insistent, like a spiderweb, brushing against his leg. He tried to kick it away, rolled onto his side, slipped back into sleep.

Jeff headed straight through the vines, angling downhill. The Mayans had built fires all along the margin of the clearing, evenly spaced, and close enough together so that the light from one merged into the light of the next. But there were two that were just slightly farther apart, with a narrow strip of shadow between them. It wasn't much; Jeff knew it wouldn't be sufficient on its own. There'd have to be another factor to help him, a lapse in vigilance, one of the Mayans drowsing, perhaps, or two of them talking quietly together, telling a story. What he needed was ten seconds, maybe twenty, time enough for him to approach the clearing, cross it, then vanish into the jungle.

It was harder to move through the vines than he'd anticipated. They grew knee-high in most spots, but in some stretches they climbed almost to his waist. They clung to him as he passed, tangled their tendrils about his legs. It was slow going, and arduous, too-he kept having to stop to catch his breath. He knew he'd need to conserve his strength for the bottom of the hill, in case it came to a sprint, him crashing through the jungle, the Mayans yelling, pointing their bows toward him, the hiss of their arrows.

It was after one of these pauses, when he started forward again, while he was still only halfway down the hill, that the birds began to cry out, screeching, marking his passage through the vines. Jeff couldn't see them in the darkness. He stopped walking, and they fell silent. But then, as soon as he took another step, they began to call again. Their cries were loud, dissonant; there seemed to be a whole flock of them nesting on the hillside. Jeff had a sudden memory of himself as a child, visiting the birdhouse at the zoo, his fear of the noise, the echoing, the abrupt flappings. His father had pointed to the wire net hanging from the ceiling far above them, had struggled to calm him, but it hadn't been enough for Jeff; he'd cried, made them leave. There was no point in going on, Jeff knew: the Mayans would know he was coming now. But he continued downhill anyway, the shrieking of the birds following him through the darkness.

As he neared the bottom, he saw the Mayans waiting for him. There were three men standing by the fire on the left, two by the one on the right. One of them had a rifle; the others had their bows out, arrows nocked. Jeff hesitated, then stepped out into the margin of cleared ground, the light from the fires flickering softly off his body. The men with the bows didn't seem to be looking at him; they were scanning the hillside above, as if they expected the others to be coming, too. The man with the rifle raised it, aimed it at Jeff's chest. In the same instant, the birds fell silent.

The Mayans were standing with their backs to the fires-to preserve their night vision, Jeff assumed. Their faces were shadowed, so he wasn't certain if they were the same men who'd confronted them earlier, or some more recent arrivals. There was a large black pot hanging on a tripod over the fire to the right, steam rising thickly from it, the smell of chicken stewing, tomatoes. Jeff's stomach stirred hungrily; he couldn't help himself: He stood for a long moment, staring at the pot. Someone was singing softly in the shadows beyond it, a woman's voice, but then one of the bowmen whistled shrilly, and the singing stopped. No one spoke. The Mayans watched him, waiting to see what he might do.

Jeff wished he could speak to them, ask them what it was they wanted, why they were keeping him captive on this hillside, what it would take to purchase his freedom, but he didn't know their language, of course, and doubted, somehow, that they would deign to answer him even if he did. No, they'd just keep staring, weapons raised, waiting. Jeff could either stride bravely toward them and be shot like Mathias's brother or turn and make his way slowly back up through the vines, the shrieking birds, the darkness. There was no other option.

So he started back up the hill.

The return was much easier, too, for some inexplicable reason, than his descent had been. There was the exertion of the climb, of course, the impeding pull of gravity, but the vines caused him much less difficulty now, seeming almost to part for his passing, rather than grabbing and snaring at his legs. And, even more puzzling, the birds remained silent. Jeff wondered about this as he made his way higher up the hillside. It was possible, he supposed, that they'd flown off while he and the Mayans were standing at the base of the hill, in their mute confrontation, but if so, he couldn't understand why he hadn't heard their wing beats. And why hadn't he noticed the birds earlier, too, while it was still day? There had to be quite a few of them, judging by the volume of their calls as he'd made his way down the hill, and it seemed strange that he wouldn't have registered their presence. The only explanation he could think of was that they'd arrived at dusk, while he and Mathias were too busy raising Pablo from the shaft to take note of them. Obviously, the birds spent their nights here, though, which would mean he'd be able to find their nests in the morning. And their eggs, too, perhaps. At the very least, he'd be able to string up some snares to catch the adult birds, and Jeff found a measure of relief in this. They could distill their urine and gather dew and hope for rain, yet none of that was going to help them feed themselves. Jeff had been postponing confronting this problem, not wanting to think of it because he'd sensed he wouldn't find a solution, and now, like an unexpected gift, one seemed to have presented itself.

They'd have to use something thin, he thought, but strong, like fishing line. He was too tired, though, to think beyond this point. It didn't matter; they had plenty of time. All he needed to do now was get back to the tent, drop into sleep. In the morning, when it grew light, he was certain that everything would be clearer: the many things that still had to be done, and the ways in which he ought to do them.

Stacy had the third shift. Amy roused her, jostling her shoulder, whispering that it was time. Stacy was thirsty, open-eyed but still not quite awake; it was too dark inside the tent to see. She could tell that Eric was still lying there, with his back to her, and then there was Amy crouching over her, shaking her, and then Jeff and Mathias. The boys were all asleep. Mathias was snoring softly.

Amy kept whispering the same thing: "It's time." Stacy struggled first to grasp the words, then their meaning, then suddenly she understood. She was awake; she was getting up and leaving the tent, zippering it shut behind her.

Awake, but still dazed. She had to go back for Amy's watch, stepping carefully over Jeff, Amy already slipping into sleep, mumbling something, holding out her hand. It took Stacy several fumbling tries before she managed to unbuckle the watch's strap. Then she was back outside, alone with Pablo, sitting beside him, growing more and more awake with each passing moment. She slid Amy's watch onto her own wrist, and it felt warm against her skin, a little damp.

Pablo was asleep. She could hear him breathing, and it didn't sound right. There was too much fluid in it, a raggedness, and Stacy thought of his lungs, wondered what was happening inside him, the crises that were building, the systems failing. She stared at him dreamily, not really focusing, and several minutes passed before she noticed his legs in the darkness, his crotch, exposed. She had the momentary impulse-absurd and inappropriate and quickly repressed-to reach forward and touch his penis. The sleeping bag was lying on the ground beside the backboard, and she stood up to drape it across him, lowering it stealthily, gently, trying not to wake him.

He stirred, shifted his head, but his eyes remained shut.

This ought to have been the time for Stacy to attempt some appraisal of her situation-to glance back over the day or reach forward into the coming hours-and though she was conscious of this, though she understood the wisdom of such a course, she couldn't bring herself to attempt it. She sat listening to the liquid sound of Pablo's breathing, and her mind remained empty, not asleep, but not fully awake yet, either. Her eyes were open-she was aware of her surroundings, would've known if Pablo had stopped breathing suddenly, or called out for her-but she didn't quite feel as if she were present. She thought of a mannequin, propped in a store window, staring out at the street; that was how she felt.

She kept checking Amy's watch, squinting to read its numbers in the darkness. Seven minutes passed, then three, then six, then two, and then she forced herself to stop looking, knowing it was only going to stretch out her time here, eating it in such little bites.

She tried singing inside her head to help speed things along, but the only things she could think of were Christmas carols. "Jingle Bells," "O Tannenbaum," "Frosty the Snowman." She didn't know all the lines, and even silently, the words rising and falling in her mind, she didn't like the sound of her voice. So she stopped, stared vacantly down at Pablo.

Against her will, she checked the time again. She'd been awake for twenty-nine minutes; she had an hour and a half to go. For a moment, she panicked, wondering whom she was supposed to rouse when she was through, but then she figured it out, feeling proud of herself for her cleverness. Amy had been the one to shake her shoulder, pulling her from sleep, and Jeff had gone first, so that must mean Mathias was next. She glanced at the watch and another minute had passed.

I just hope Pablo doesn't wake up, she thought, and, at that very instant-as if these words inside her head had roused him-he did.

He lay perfectly still for a long moment, peering up at Stacy. Then he coughed, rolling his head away from her. He lifted his hand, as if to cover his mouth, but didn't seem to have the strength; he only made it to his throat. His hand hung in the air for a few seconds, hovering over his Adam's apple, then dropped slowly back to his chest. He licked his lips, turned toward her again, said something in Greek; it sounded like a question. Stacy smiled at him, but she felt false doing it, a liar, and she thought he must know it, must guess everything the smile was trying to hide, how hopeless things were. She couldn't stop herself, though; the smile was there and it wouldn't go away. "It's okay," she said, but that wasn't enough, of course, and Pablo spoke again, asking the same question. He paused, then repeated it once more, and his arms began to move, both of them, emphasizing his words, his hands patting the air. This made the stillness of his legs beneath the sleeping bag that much more difficult to ignore, and Stacy felt a rising sense of panic. She didn't know what she was supposed to do.

He kept speaking: the same question, over and over again, his hands cutting the air above his chest.

Stacy tried nodding, but then stopped, worried suddenly that he might be asking "Am I going to die?" She tried shaking her head then, only to realize that this was equally perilous, because couldn't he also be asking "Am I going to recover?" She was still smiling-she couldn't stop herself-and she sat staring down at him, feeling each moment closer and closer to tears, but not wanting to cry, desperately not wanting it, wanting to be strong, to make him feel safe, if only because she was with him, because she was his friend, and would've helped him if she could. She wondered how much Pablo understood of his situation. Did he realize that his back was broken? That he'd almost certainly never walk again? And that he very well might die here before they could get him to help?

He kept waving his arms at her, kept asking that same question over and over, his voice rising now, as if in impatience or frustration. There were six or seven words to the question, Stacy guessed, though it was hard to tell because they sounded enjambed, each flowing into the next, and there was that watery fricativeness lurking behind them, rounding their edges. She tried to guess what the words might mean, but her mind wouldn't help. It kept offering her "Am I going to die?" "Am I going to recover?" And she sat beside him, alternately feeling as if she ought to shake her head, or nod, but doing neither, not moving at all, while her liar's smile slowly stiffened on her face. She wanted to check her watch again, wanted someone to emerge from the tent and help her, wanted Pablo to slip back into silence, into sleep, for his eyes to drift shut, his arms to go still. She took his hand, gripped it tightly, and this seemed to help some, to calm him. And then, without thinking, Stacy started to sing her Christmas carols, very softly, humming the lines she didn't know. She did "Silent Night," "Deck the Halls," "Here Comes Santa Claus." Pablo fell quiet. He smiled up at her, as if he recognized the songs; he even seemed to join her for "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," mumbling along with her in Greek. Then his eyes drifted shut and his hand went slack in hers; he fell back asleep, his breathing going deep, that watery sound rising from his chest.

Stacy stopped singing. She felt stiff; she wanted to stand up and stretch, but she was afraid to let go of Pablo's hand, worried that she might wake him. She shut her eyes-just resting, she told herself-and listened to his breathing, wishing it didn't sound like that, counting his inhalations, matching them with her own: one, two, three, four…

Suddenly, Mathias was beside her, crouching in the darkness, his hand on her forearm, that cool touch, and she was blinking at him, confused, slightly alarmed, wondering who he was, what he wanted, until everything came back with a snapping sensation, and she realized she'd fallen asleep. She felt flustered, embarrassed, derelict in her duty. She struggled into a sitting position. "I'm sorry," she said.

Mathias seemed startled by this. "For what?" he asked.

"I fell asleep."

"It's okay."

"I didn't mean to," she said. "I was singing to him, and he-"

"Shh." Mathias gave her arm a pat. Then he took his hand away, producing a tilting sensation in her chest, a subtle shift in gravity; she felt herself leaning toward him, had to jerk herself back. "He's fine," Mathias said. "Look." He nodded toward Pablo, who was still asleep, his mouth slightly open, his head canted away from them. He didn't seem fine, though; he seemed ravaged, as if something were sitting on his chest, slowly sucking the life from him. "It's been two hours," Mathias said.

Stacy lifted her arm, peered down at Amy's watch. He was right; she was done now. She could shuffle back to the tent and sleep till morning. But she still felt ashamed. She didn't move. "How did you wake up?" she asked.

He shrugged, dropped from his crouch into a sitting position at her side. "I can do that. Tell myself when to wake up. Henrich could, too. And our father. I don't know how."

Stacy turned, watched his profile for a moment. "Listen," she said finally, stumbling a bit, groping for the words. No one had taught her how to do this. "About your brother. I wanted, you know…to tell you how-"

Mathias waved her into silence. "It's all right," he said.

"I mean, it must be-"

"It's okay. Really."

Stacy didn't know what else to say. She wanted to offer him her sympathy, wanted him to tell her how he felt, but she couldn't find the words to make this happen. She'd known him for a week, had barely spoken to him in this time. She'd seen him staring at her that night she'd kissed Don Quixote, had felt frightened by his gaze, anxious that she was being judged, and then he'd surprised her by being so nice in the bus station, when her hat and sunglasses were stolen-he'd stopped and crouched and touched her arm. She had no idea who he was, what he was like, what he thought of her, but his brother was lying dead at the base of the hill, and she wanted to reach toward him somehow, wanted him to cry so that she could soothe him-to take him in her arms, maybe, rock him back and forth. But he wasn't going to cry, of course; she could see the impossibility of this. He was sitting right beside her, yet he felt too far away to touch. She had no idea what he was feeling.

"You should go to sleep," he said.

Stacy nodded but didn't move. "Why do you think they did it?" she asked.

"Who?"

She waved toward the base of the hill. "The Mayans."

Mathias was silent for a long moment, considering this. Then he shrugged. "I guess they didn't want him to leave."

"Like us," she said.

"That's right." He nodded. "Like us."

Pablo stirred, shifting his head, and they both stared down at him. Then Mathias reached out, patted her arm again, the cool touch of his fingertips.

"Don't," he said.

"Don't what?"

He made a wringing motion with his hands. "Twist yourself up. Try to be like an animal. Like a dog. Rest when you have the chance. Eat and drink if there's food and water. Survive each moment. That's all. Henrich-he was impulsive. He mulled over things, and then he lunged at them. He thought too much and too little, all at the same time. We can't be like that."

Stacy was silent. His voice had risen toward the end, sounding angry, startling her.

Mathias made an abrupt gesture, waving it all away. "I'm sorry," he said. "I'm just talking. I don't even know what I'm saying."

"It's okay," Stacy said, thinking, This is how he cries. She was about to reach toward him, when he shook his head, stopping her.

"No," he said. "It's not. Not at all."

Nearly a minute passed then, while Stacy tried out words and phrases inside her head, searching for the right combination but not finding it. Pablo's ragged breathing was the only thing to break the silence. Finally, Mathias waved her toward the tent again.

"You really ought to go back to sleep."

Stacy nodded, stood up, feeling stiff, a little dizzy. She touched his shoulder. She rested her hand there for a moment, squeezed, then crept back toward the tent.

Amy jerked awake, her pulse in her throat. She sat up, struggling to orient herself, to understand what had yanked her so abruptly out of sleep. She thought it must've been a noise, but if so, it seemed to be one only she had heard. The others were still lying motionless, eyes shut, their breath coming deep and steady. She could count the bodies in the darkness: Eric's and Stacy's and Jeff's. Mathias would be outside, she supposed, keeping watch over Pablo. So everyone was accounted for.

She sat listening, waiting for the noise to come again, her heart slowly calming.

Silence.

It must've been a dream, then, though Amy couldn't remember any details of it; there was simply that instant sense of panic as she sat up, her blood feeling too thick for her veins, moving too fast. She lay back down, shut her eyes. But she was awake now, still listening, still frightened-even though she couldn't have said of what-and thirsty, too, her lips sticking together with a gummy, crusty feeling, a foul, cottony taste in her mouth. Gradually, as she rested there, wishing for sleep but sleep not coming, her thirst began to triumph over her fear, a big dog barking a smaller dog into silence. She reached with her foot, stretching like a ballerina, and touched the plastic water jug sitting against the back wall of the tent. If she could just have a sip of water, a single small swallow to wash that dreadful taste from her mouth, Amy believed she'd be able to fall back asleep. And wasn't that important? They'd need to be rested in the morning, need to be up and about doing whatever it was that Jeff felt ought to be done to ensure their survival here. Walking through the vines with rags tied to their ankles. Digging a hole to distill their urine. One very tiny mouthful-was this too much to ask? Of course, they'd agreed not to drink anything more until morning. When they were all awake and rested, they'd gather around and ration out their food and water. But what good did this do Amy now, with her gummy lips, her sewer mouth, while the others lay on either side of her, blissfully sunk in sleep?

She sat up again, squinted toward the rear of the tent, struggling to discern the jug in the darkness. She couldn't do it; she could see the pile of things there, a shadowy mass, but couldn't make out the individual items, the backpacks, the toolbox, the hiking boots, the plastic jug. She'd felt it with her foot, though: she knew where it was. All she'd need to do would be crawl a few feet, groping with her hands to find it. Then it would simply be a matter of unscrewing its cap, raising the jug to her lips, tilting back her head. One small swallow-who could begrudge her this? If Eric, say, were to wake now, begging for a drink, Amy would gladly offer him one, even if she herself weren't thirsty. And she was certain the others would feel the same, would act toward her with a similar spirit of generosity. She could wake them right now, ask their permission, and they'd say "Yes, of course." But why should she disturb them when they all seemed to be sleeping so soundly?

She shifted a little closer, still straining to glimpse the jug, careful not to make any noise.

Amy wasn't going to steal any water, of course-no, not even a sip. Because that was what it would amount to, wouldn't it? A theft. They didn't have much water, and-despite Jeff's schemes-they couldn't be certain of getting more. So if she were to take a swallow now while the others slept, even the smallest, the daintiest of sips, it would be that much less water for all of them to share. Amy had seen enough survival movies-the plane crashes, the castaways, the space travelers trapped on distant planets-to know how there was always someone who grabbed, wild-eyed and swearing, who wrestled for the last ration, who gulped when others sipped, and she wasn't going to be that person. Selfish, thinking only of her own needs. They'd each taken their allotment of water before they went to sleep, passing the jug from hand to hand, and that was it, they'd agreed, that was all they'd have till morning. If the others could wait, why shouldn't she?

She edged a little closer. She just wanted to see the jug, maybe touch it, heft it in her hand, reassure herself with its weight. What harm was there in this? Especially if it might help her slip back into sleep?

The thing was, though, they hadn't really agreed, had they? It wasn't as if they'd discussed it, or voted on it. Jeff had simply made the decision, then imposed it on them, and they'd been too tired to do anything but bow their heads and accept this. If Amy had been more rested, or less frightened, she might've spoken up, might've demanded a larger ration right then and there. And the others might've added their voices, too.

No, you couldn't really call it an agreement.

And what was going to happen in the morning? They'd pass the jug around again, wouldn't they? They'd all take their allotted sip. But since Amy was thirsty now, why shouldn't she claim her portion a few hours earlier than the others? This wouldn't be grabbing or stealing; it would be like taking an advance on one's salary. When the jug was handed to her in the morning, she'd simply shake her head, explain that she'd grown thirsty during the night-terribly thirsty-and so had already consumed her morning's ration.

She shifted another foot forward, and she could see it now, make out its shape amid the large jumble there against the tent's rear wall. All she'd need to do was tilt forward onto her hands and knees, stretch her arm out, grasp the jug by its handle. She sat for a long moment, hesitating. In her mind, she was still debating, was even beginning to lean away from the idea, telling herself that she should just wait till morning like everyone else, that she was being a baby, and then suddenly-even as she was thinking these thoughts-her body was moving closer to the jug, her hand reaching for it, lifting it toward her, unscrewing its cap. Everything was happening in a rush now, as if someone might call out to stop her. She lifted the jug to her mouth, took her small sip, but it wasn't enough, not nearly enough, and she raised the jug higher, pouring the water down her throat: a long, gulping swallow, then a second one, the water spilling down her chin.

She lowered the jug, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. She was twisting the cap back onto the jug when she glanced guiltily at the shadowed forms of the others, Eric and Stacy both lost in sleep, Jeff peering toward her through the darkness. They stared at each other for a long moment. She thought he was going to speak, berate her in some way, but he didn't. It was dark enough that she could almost convince herself that his eyes weren't open after all, that it was just a trick of perception, her conscience tugging at her, but then he shook his head, once-less in admonition, it seemed to Amy, than revulsion-and rolled away from her.

Amy returned the jug to its resting place against the rear wall, crawled back to her spot. "I was thirsty," she whispered. She felt like crying, but she was angry, too, a terrible cocktail of emotion: guilt and fury and shame. And relief, too: the water in her mouth, her throat, her stomach.

Jeff didn't respond. He remained perfectly silent, perfectly still, and this felt worse to Amy than anything he might've said. She wasn't worth the trouble of a response-that was what he was telling her.

"Fuck off," Amy said, not loudly, but loudly enough. "All right, Jeff? Just fuck off." She could feel tears coming now; she didn't try to stop them.

"What?" Stacy asked, befuddled, still asleep.

Amy didn't answer her. She lay curled into herself, crying softly, wanting to lash out and hit Jeff, pummel his shoulders, wanting him to turn and tell her it was okay, that she hadn't done anything wrong, that he understood, forgave her, that it was nothing, nothing at all, but he lay there with his back to her-sleeping now, she thought, like Stacy and Eric, all of them leaving her alone here, awake in the dark, her face damp with tears.

The sun had risen. That was the first thing Eric noticed when he opened his eyes, the light filtering through the orange nylon of the tent. It already felt hot, too-that was the second thing-he was sweaty, dry-mouthed. He lifted his head, glanced about. Stacy was sleeping at his side. And then, beyond her, was Amy, curled into a tight ball. Mathias was gone. Jeff, too.

Eric thought about sitting up, but he was still tired, and his body ached. He lowered his head, shut his eyes again, spent a few moments cataloging the various sensations of pain his body was offering him, starting at the top and moving downward. His chin felt bruised; it hurt when he opened and shut his mouth. His elbow was sore; when he probed at the cut, it was hot to his touch. His lower back was stiff, the pain radiating down his left leg each time he shifted his body. And then there was his knee, which didn't hurt nearly as much as he'd anticipated, which felt a bit numb, actually. He tried to bend it, but his leg wouldn't move; it was as if something were sitting upon it, holding it to the floor of the tent. He lifted his head to look, and was startled to see that the vine had grown dramatically in the night, reaching out from the pile of supplies at the rear of the tent to spread across his left leg, up his left side, almost to his waist.

"Jesus," Eric said. It wasn't fear he felt, not yet; it was closer to disgust.

He sat up and was just reaching to yank the plant off his body, when Pablo began to scream.

Jeff was at the base of the hill, too far away to hear the screams. He'd emerged from the tent shortly before dawn, urinated into the plastic bottle. By the time he'd finished, it was more than half-full. Later, after the sun rose, they could dig a hole, attempt to distill what they'd collected. Jeff wasn't certain it would work-he still felt as if he were forgetting some crucial detail-but at the very least it would occupy them for a few hours, keep their minds off their thirst and hunger.

He capped the bottle, set it back on the ground, then moved toward the little lean-to. Mathias was sitting cross-legged beside it; he nodded hello as Jeff approached. It wasn't light yet, but the darkness had already begun to diminish somewhat. Jeff could see Mathias's face, the stubble growing on his cheeks. He could see Pablo, too, unconscious on his backboard, a sleeping bag covering him from the waist down, could see him well enough to read the damage in his face, the sunken quality, the shadowed eye sockets, the slack-looking mouth. Jeff lowered himself to the ground beside Mathias and they sat in silence for a stretch. Jeff liked that about the German, his separateness, the way he'd always wait for someone else to be the first to speak. He was easy to be around. There was no pretense; things were exactly what they appeared to be.

"He looks pretty bad, doesn't he?" Jeff said.

Mathias's gaze moved slowly up Pablo's body, came to rest on his face. He nodded.

Jeff ran his hand through his hair. He could feel how greasy it was; his fingers came away slippery with it. His body was giving off a sour, yeasty smell. He wished he could shower, wished for it with an abrupt, almost tearful urgency, a childhood feeling-of frustration, of knowing that he wasn't going to get what he desired, no matter how hard he might work to attain it. He pulled back from the feeling, the yearning, forced himself to focus on what was rather than on what he wished to be, the here and now in all its painful extremity. His mouth was dry; his tongue felt swollen. He thought of the water jug, but he knew they'd have to wait until everyone was awake. This reflection led, inevitably, to the memory of Amy, her furtive thievery during the night. He'd need to speak to her; she couldn't keep doing things like that. Or maybe not; maybe he should let it go. He tried to think of a way to address the theft indirectly, but he felt dirty and tired and thirsty, and his mind refused to help him. His father was good at that sort of thing, telling a story rather than delivering a lecture. It was only afterward that you realized what he was saying: Don't lie. Or: It's okay to be frightened. Or: Do the right thing even if it hurts. But his father wasn't here, of course, and Jeff wasn't like him; Jeff didn't know how to be subtle in that way. He felt a jolt of emotion at this thought, missing his father even more than the unattainable shower, missing both his parents, wishing they were here to make things right. He was twenty-two years old; he'd spent nine-tenths of his life as a child, could still reach back and touch the place. It frightened him, in fact, how accessible it was. He knew that being a child now, waiting for someone else to save him, would be as easy a way to die as any other.

He'd keep silent, he decided. He'd only speak if Amy did it again.

He told Mathias about the hole with the tarp over it to distill their urine. He described how they could collect the dew, with rags tied to their ankles. "Now would be the time for it, too," he said. "Just before the sun rises."

Mathias turned, glanced toward the east. It wasn't true what they said, about the darkest moment being right before the dawn. It was lighter already, a graying quality to the sky, but there was still no sign of the sun.

"Or maybe not," Jeff continued. "Maybe we should wait. Let everyone get their sleep. We have enough water for today. And it may rain, too."

Mathias made an ambiguous gesture, half nod, half shrug, and then they sat for a minute in silence. Jeff listened to Pablo's breathing. It was too thick-gluey with phlegm. They'd have him pumped full of antibiotics if he were in a hospital; they'd be suctioning clear his airway. That was how bad it sounded.

"We should put up a sign, I guess," Jeff said. "Just to be safe. In case the Greeks come when no one's there. A skull and crossbones or something."

Mathias laughed, very softly. "You sound like a German."

"What do you mean?"

"Always doing the practical thing, even when it's pointless."

"You think a sign is pointless?"

"Would a skull and crossbones have stopped you from climbing the hill yesterday?"

Jeff mulled over that, frowning. "But it's worth a try, isn't it?" he asked. "I mean, couldn't it stop someone else, even if it wouldn't have stopped us?"

Mathias laughed again. "Ja, Herr Jeff. By all means. Go make your sign." He waved him away." Gehen," he said. "Go."

Jeff stood up, headed off. The contents of the blue tent were still tumbled beside the shaft-the backpacks, the radio, the camera and first-aid kit, the Frisbee, the empty canteen, the spiral notebooks. Jeff dug through first one of the backpacks, then the other, until he found a black ballpoint pen. He took it and one of the notebooks, carried them back across the hilltop to the debris remaining from Mathias's hurried construction of the lean-to. From this, he retrieved the roll of duct tape, a three-foot aluminum pole. Mathias watched him-smiling, shaking his head-but he didn't say anything. It was growing subtly lighter; the sun was about to rise, Jeff could tell. As he set off along the trail, the Mayans' fires came into view, still burning on the far edge of the clearing, flickering palely in the fading darkness.

Halfway down the hill, he felt the urge to defecate: powerful, imperative. He set down everything he was carrying, then stepped into the vines and quickly lowered his pants. It wasn't diarrhea, but something one notch short of it. The shit slipped wetly out of him, snakelike, collapsing into a small pile between his feet. There was a strong smell rising off it, sickening him. He needed to wipe himself, but he couldn't think of anything to use. There was the vine growing all around him, with its flat, shiny leaves, but he knew what happened when these were crushed in any way, the acid sting of their sap. He shuffled back to the trail, only half-rising, his pants still bunched around his ankles, and ripped a sheet of paper from the notebook. He crumpled it, rubbed roughly. They should probably dig a latrine, he realized, somewhere downhill from the tent. Downwind, too. They could leave one of the other notebooks beside it, for toilet paper.

Dawn had begun to break, finally. It was an extraordinary sight-clear pink and rose above a line of green. Jeff crouched there, watching, the shit-stained sheet of paper still held in his hand. Then the sun, all in an instant, seemed to leap above the horizon: pale yellow, shimmering, too bright to look at.

It was as he was stepping back into the vines to kick some dirt over his shit-pulling his pants up, fumbling for his zipper-that he felt his fingers begin to burn. In the growing light, he could see that there was a pale green fuzz sprouting across his jeans. His shoes, too. It was the vine, he realized; tendrils of it had taken root on his clothes during the night, so tiny that they still looked more like the spread of a fungus than a plant-diaphanous, veil-like, nearly invisible. When Jeff brushed them away, they crumpled, leaking their stinging sap, singeing his hands. He stared at the green fuzz a long moment, not certain what to make of it. That the vine could grow so quickly seemed extraordinary, an important development, and yet what did it mean? He couldn't think, couldn't decide, had to give up finally. He forced himself to look away, to continue forward into the day. He tossed the wad of paper onto the little pile of shit. The dirt was too packed, too dry for him to kick any free; he had to crouch and chop at it with a rock, sweat rising on his skin from the effort. He loosened one handful of the pale yellow soil, then another, scattering them across the mess he'd made, partially obscuring it, burying the stench; it was good enough.

Then it was back to the trail, where he stooped to retrieve the tape and pen, the notebook and the aluminum pole. He was just turning to resume his downward journey, when he hesitated, thinking, There should be flies. Why aren't there flies? He crouched again, puzzling over this, staring back toward his half-covered pile of shit, as if waiting for the insects to appear, belatedly, buzzing and swirling. But they didn't, and his mind kept jumping-too rapidly, without pause, like a burglar rifling a desk, yanking open drawers, dumping their contents to the floor.

Not just here but on Pablo, too. Flies hovering over his smell, crawling across his skin.

And mosquitoes.

And gnats.

Where are they?

The sun continued to rise. The heat, too-so fast.

Maybe the birds, Jeff thought. Maybe they've eaten all the insects.

He stood up, stared across the hillside, searching for the birds, listening for their calls. They ought to be awake now, flitting about, greeting the dawn. But there was nothing. No movement, no sound. No flies, no mosquitoes, no gnats, no birds.

Droppings, he thought, and scanned the surrounding vines, searching among the bright red flowers, the flat, hand-shaped leaves, for the white or amber splatter of bird shit. But, once again, there was nothing.

Maybe they live in holes, burrows they gouge from the earth with their beaks . He remembered reading of birds who did this; he could almost picture the creatures, earth-colored, taloned, hook-beaked. But he could see no sign of tunneled dirt, no shadowed openings.

He noticed a pebble at his feet, perfectly round, no larger than a blueberry, and he crouched, picked it up, popped it into his mouth. This was something else he'd read: how people lost in the desert would sometimes suck on small stones to keep their thirst at bay. The pebble had an acrid taste, stronger than he'd expected; he almost spit it out, but he resisted the impulse, using his tongue to push the tiny stone behind his lower lip, like a pinch of tobacco.

You were supposed to breathe through your nose, not your mouth; you lost less moisture that way.

You were supposed to refrain from talking unless it was absolutely necessary.

You were supposed to limit your eating, and avoid alcohol.

You were supposed to sit in the shade, at least twelve inches off the ground, because the earth acted like a radiator, sucking your strength from you.

What else? There was too much to remember, too much to keep track of, and no one here to help him.

He'd heard the birds last night. Jeff was certain he'd heard them. He was tempted to stride off across the hillside, searching for their burrows, but knew that he ought to wait, that it wasn't important. The sign first. Then back up to the tent, so that they could ration out the day's water and food. Then the hole to distill their urine, and the latrine-they'd need to get the digging done before it got much hotter. Then, after all that, he could find the birds, search for their eggs, string up some snares. It was crucial not to lunge at things, not to become overwhelmed. One task and then another, that was how they'd make it through.

He started down the trail.

The Mayans were waiting for him at the bottom, four of them, three men and a woman. They were crouching beside the still-smoldering remains of their campfire. They watched him approach, the men rising as Jeff neared the foot of the hill, reaching for their weapons. One of them was the man who'd first tried to stop Jeff and the others, the bald man with the holstered pistol. He held the gun in his hand now, hanging casually at his side but ready to be raised. Ready to be aimed, fired. His two companions each had a bow, arrows loosely nocked. There were half a dozen more Mayans along the far tree line, Jeff saw, wrapped in blankets, straw hats hiding their faces, sleeping. One of them stirred, as if sensing Jeff's approach. He jostled the man lying beside him, and they both sat up to stare.

Jeff stopped at the mouth of the trail, set everything down. He crouched with his back to the Mayans. It filled him with a fluttery sense of panic-he kept imagining the bows being raised, the arrows pulled taut-but he thought it might make him appear less threatening. He tore a blank page out of the rear of the notebook, uncapped the pen, and began to draw the first of his signs, a skull and crossbones, stark and simple, appropriately ominous. He went over and over it with his pen, making the drawing as dark as possible.

He tore off another page, wrote "SOS" on it.

Then a third page: "HELP."

And a fourth: "DANGER."

He pried up a softball-size stone, used it to pound the aluminum pole into the dirt, right at the edge of the clearing, blocking the trail. Then he duct-taped his signs to the pole, one beneath another. He turned finally, as if to see the Mayans' reaction. The two along the tree line had lain down again, their hats over their faces, and the woman by the fire had her back to him now. She was stirring the embers with her left hand, setting a small pot onto an iron tripod with her right: breakfast, Jeff assumed. The other three were still watching him, but with a much more casual air. They almost seemed to be smiling-good-humoredly, he thought. Or was there an air of mockery, too? Jeff turned, banged at the pole a few more times with his stone. Someone would have to come and sit by it later in the day, after the bus arrived in Cobá, but for now this ought to suffice. Just as a precaution, in case the Greeks somehow managed to appear earlier than expected. If they'd hitchhiked, say. Or rented a car.

Jeff retrieved the pen and the notebook and the roll of tape and was just about to start back up the trail, when he changed his mind. He set everything down again and-very hesitantly, very carefully-stepped out into the clearing, lifting his hands, patting at the air. The Mayans raised their weapons. Jeff pointed to his right, trying to show them that he just wanted to walk along the clearing's margin, keeping close to the vines: he wasn't going to try to flee. The Mayans kept staring at him, the bows drawn, the pistol aimed at his chest, but they didn't say anything, made no overt attempt to stop him, so Jeff took this as permission. He started slowly along the base of the hill.

The Mayans followed him, leaving the trail momentarily unguarded. Then, after about a dozen yards, the man with the pistol shouted something to the woman behind them, and she rose from her cooking, kicked at one of the sleeping men along the tree line. He pushed himself into a sitting position, rubbing his eyes. He stared after Jeff for a long moment, then roused one of his companions. They reached for their bows, stood up, shuffled sleepily toward the watch fire.

Jeff continued along the edge of the clearing, the Mayans keeping pace with him, their weapons raised. His mind was jumping again-the latrine, the hole to distill their urine, Amy stealing the water. He wondered if the signs would have any meaning to the Greeks, if they'd just walk right past them. He checked the sky-a pale blue now, perfectly clear-and wondered if it would darken later in the afternoon, if the customary showers would sweep over them, brief but intense, so inexplicably absent yesterday. He tried to think how they ought to go about collecting the rain if it did fall-they could use the remains of the blue tent, maybe, fashion it into a giant nylon funnel, but leading into what? There was no point gathering the water if they couldn't store it; they needed containers, bottles, urns. And this was the problem that was occupying Jeff when he glimpsed the first waist-high mound of vines and finally realized why he'd set off along the clearing, what he was looking for here, what-without admitting it to himself-he'd known that he'd eventually find.

The mound lay ten feet out into the clearing, a small island of green amid the dark, barren soil. Jeff stopped while he was still a few yards short of it, feeling a little frightened, almost turning back. But no, though he knew what it was-he was sure he knew-he still had to see for certain. He stepped toward it, dropped into a crouch, started to tear at the vines, forgetting the danger of their sap until he felt his palms begin to burn. By then, he already had the thing half uncovered; he could stop, wiping his hands in the dirt.

It was another body.

Jeff stood up, used his foot to part the remaining vines. It was a woman, perhaps even the one Henrich had met on the beach, the one whose beauty had enticed him here, luring him to his death. She had dark blond hair, shoulder-length, but beyond that it was difficult to say, as most of her flesh had already been eaten away. Her face was a blankly staring skull. Her clothes were gone, too; she was just a skeleton and hair, some mummified strips of meat, a tarnished silver bracelet still encircling her bony wrist, a belt buckle, zipper, and copper button resting in the otherwise-empty hollow of her pelvis. She couldn't be Henrich's love, of course; she was too far gone. Such a degree of dissolution had to have taken months to accomplish, even in this climate. Or maybe not, Jeff realized, bending to remove more of the vine, carefully this time, gently. Maybe it was the plant that had done it, eaten away at the flesh, fed off its nutrients.

The Mayans stood twenty feet away, watching him.

Jeff pulled more of the vine free, and the skeleton's left arm came loose, fell from its socket, dropped with a clatter to the ground. The vine wasn't growing out of the soil, he noticed; it was clinging directly to the bones. Jeff considered this for a moment, his mind jumping to the mystery of the clearing itself: how had the Mayans managed to keep it free of vegetation? The vine sprouted so quickly; in a single night it had taken root on his clothing, his shoes. And yet the earth he was standing upon was utterly barren. He scooped up a handful of dirt, examined it closely. Dark, rich-looking soil, flecked with white crystals. Salt, he thought, touching it with the tip of his tongue to make sure. They've sowed it with salt.

It was at this instant, up on the hill, that Pablo began to scream. Far away-too far away-Jeff didn't hear a thing.

He stood, dropped the handful of dirt, continued walking. His three companions followed, keeping themselves between him and the far tree line. He passed another watch fire, seven Mayans clustered around it, eating their morning meal. They paused as he approached, lowering their tin plates into their laps. He could smell the food, see it. It was some sort of stew-chicken, tomatoes, rice-perhaps left over from the night before, and Jeff's stomach clenched hungrily. He had the urge to beg from them, to drop to his knees and extend his open palms in supplication, but he resisted it, sensing the futility of such a gesture. He kept moving forward, sucking dryly on the pebble in his mouth.

He could already see the next mound.

When he reached it, he crouched, carefully pulled some of the vines away.

Another corpse.

This one seemed to belong to a man, though it was hard to tell, since it was even more reduced than the blond woman's. The bones had collapsed in a loose pile; they no longer bore any obvious relationship to a skeleton. Jeff guessed at the corpse's gender more from the size of its skull than anything else-it was large, almost boxlike. One of the flowering vines had pushed its way into the eye sockets, entering the right one, emerging from the left. There were buttons again, and a thin wormlike length of zipper from the man's pants. A pair of wire-rimmed glasses, a plastic comb, a ring of keys. Jeff counted three small arrowheads, stripped of their shafts. And then, lying in the dirt, nearly hidden beneath the tangle of bones, there was a scramble of credit cards, a passport. It was the contents of a wallet, of course. Which must've been made of leather, Jeff guessed, since there was no sign of it now. What remained was the inorganic, the synthetic-the metal and plastic and glass-everything else had been eaten. And that was the right word for it, too: eaten. Because it was the flowering vine that had done this, Jeff realized, not a passive force-not rot or dissolution-but an active one.

Jeff crouched over the body, examining the passport. It belonged to a Dutchman named Cees Steenkamp. Inside, his picture revealed him to be broad-browed, with thinning blond hair and an expression that could either be read as aloof or melancholic. He'd been born on November 11, 1951, in a town named Lochem. When Jeff looked up, he found the three Mayans watching him. It was possible, of course, that they were the ones who'd killed this man, shooting him with their arrows. Jeff felt the urge to extend the man's passport toward them, to show them the photo of Cees Steenkamp, his large, slightly bovine eyes staring so sadly out at the world: dead now, murdered. But he knew it wouldn't matter, wouldn't change anything. He was beginning to grasp what was happening here, the whys and wherefores, the forces at play. Guilt, empathy, mercy: these weren't what this was about. The photo would mean nothing to these men, and Jeff, increasingly, could understand this-even sympathize, perhaps. Half a dozen yards beyond the Mayans, there was a cloud of gnats swirling in the air, hovering over the jungle's edge, as if held back from approaching any nearer by some invisible force. And this, too, made sense to Jeff.

He slid the passport into his pocket, continued walking, the three Mayans mutely accompanying him. They passed other watch fires, everyone pausing at Jeff's approach, staring at him as he shuffled by. It took him nearly an hour to make his way around the base of the hill, and he found another five mounds before he was through. More of the same: bones, buttons, zippers. Two pairs of glasses. Three passports-an American's, a Spaniard's, a Belgian's. Four wedding rings, some earrings, a necklace. More arrowheads, and a handful of bullets, flattened from striking bone. And then, of course, there was Henrich, though at first Jeff had difficulty recognizing him. His body was in the right location, but it had changed dramatically overnight. The flesh was completely gone, as was most of his clothing, eaten by the vine.

Yes, Jeff understood now, or was beginning to understand. But it wasn't until he completed the circle, returning to his starting point at the base of the trail, that the true depths of their situation began to open before him.

His signs had vanished.

At first, Jeff assumed the Mayans must've taken them down, but this didn't fit into the picture he was forming in his mind, and he stood for a long moment, staring about, searching for some other possibility. He could see the hole where he'd pounded the pole into the dirt; he could see the stone he'd used as an improvised mallet, the notebook, the pen, the roll of tape. But the signs were nowhere to be found.

Just as he was about to give up, he noticed a glint of metal beside the trail, three feet from its margin, buried under the vines. He stepped toward it, crouched, began probing with his hands beneath the knee-high vegetation. It was the aluminum pole, still warm to the touch from its time in the sun. The vines had wrapped themselves so tightly around it that Jeff had to strain to tug it free. The signs he'd drawn had been torn from their duct tape; the plants were already starting to dissolve the paper, eating away at it. Yet even now, having glimpsed this, Jeff still couldn't stop himself from clinging to the old logic, the ways of the world beyond this vine-covered hill: perhaps the Mayans had thrown stones at the pole, he thought, knocking it off the trail. Then he noticed something else beneath the thickly coiled vegetation, a blackened sheet of metal. He kicked the vines clear of it, reached to drag the thing out into the open. It was a baking pan, a foot square, three inches deep. Someone had scratched a single word onto its soot-encrusted bottom, gouging deeply, cutting a groove into the metal.

¡PELIGRO!

Jeff stood for a long moment, contemplating this.

Danger.

The day was growing steadily warmer. He'd left his hat behind in the tent, and he could feel the sun beginning to scorch his neck, his face. His thirst had climbed to a new level. It was no longer simply a desire for water; there was pain involved now, a sense of damage being done to his body. The pebble he'd been sucking was proving useless to combat this, and he spit it out, only to be startled by a leap of movement amid the vegetation as the tiny stone dropped into the vines. Something had seemed to dart, snakelike, at the pebble, too quickly for Jeff to see it clearly, just the abrupt blur of motion.

The birds, he thought.

But no, of course not, it wasn't the birds-and he knew this. Because though he'd yet to understand where the noise had come from last night, he'd already realized that there weren't any birds on the hillside. No birds, no flies, no mosquitoes, no gnats. He bent, picked up another pebble, tossed it into the profusion of vines beside him. Once more, there was that jump of movement, nearly too fast to glimpse, and Jeff knew what it was now-knew what had pulled down his sign, too-and felt almost sickened by the knowledge.

He threw another pebble. This time there was no movement, and that made sense to Jeff, too. It was exactly what he'd expected. If it had kept happening, it would've simply been a reflex, and that wasn't what this was about.

He turned, stared toward the Mayans, who were standing in the center of the cleared ground, watching him, their weapons lowered finally. They seemed slightly bored by what they were seeing, and Jeff supposed he could understand this also. After all, he'd done nothing here that they hadn't witnessed on other occasions. The posting of the sign, the circumnavigation of the hill, the discovery of the bodies, the slowly dawning awareness of what sort of world he'd become trapped in: they'd seen it all before. And not only that; they could probably guess what was still to come, too, could've told Jeff, if they'd only shared a language, how the approaching days would unfold, how they'd begin and how they'd end. It was with these thoughts in his head that Jeff returned to the trail and began his slow climb up it to tell the others of all he'd discovered.

Stacy had opened her eyes to the sound of screaming. Eric was writhing about beside her, obviously in some sort of distress, and it took her a moment to realize that it wasn't his cries that were filling the tent. The noise was coming from outside. It was Pablo. Pablo was screaming. And yet something was wrong with Eric, too. He was leaning on his elbow, staring toward his legs, kicking them, saying, "Oh fuck, oh my God, oh Christ." He kept repeating the words, and Pablo kept screaming, and Stacy couldn't understand what was happening. Amy was on the other side of her, just coming awake, looking even more confused, even more lost than Stacy felt herself.

The three of them were alone in the tent; there was no sign of Jeff or Mathias.

Eric's left leg was covered with the vine.

"What is it?" Stacy said. "What's going on?"

Eric didn't seem to hear her. He sat up, leaning forward, and began to yank at the vine, struggling to pull it free from his body. The plant's leaves ripped and crumpled as he tugged at them, sap oozing out, beginning to burn him, to burn her, too, when she reached to help him. The vine had wound itself around his left leg, climbing all the way to his groin. His sperm, Stacy thought, remembering the hand job she'd given him the night before. It was drawn to his sperm. Because it was true: the vine had wrapped itself not only around Eric's leg but also his penis, his testicles. Eric was struggling to free himself from its hold, pulling gingerly now, still repeating that string of words: "Oh fuck, oh my God, oh Christ…"

Pablo's screaming grew louder, if this were possible; the tent seemed to be shaking beneath it. Stacy could hear Mathias yelling now, too. Calling for them, she thought, but she couldn't focus on this, was simply aware of it in a distant way while she continued to yank at the vine, her hands not merely burning but feeling abraded, lacerated; the tips of her fingers had begun to bleed. Amy was getting up, hurrying toward the flap, unzipping it, stepping out. She left the flap hanging open behind her, and sunlight poured through the opening, flooding the tent, the heat entering, too, making Stacy, even in the midst of all this chaos, abruptly aware of her thirst. Her mouth was webbed with it; her throat felt swollen, cracked.

It wasn't just Eric's semen, she realized. It was his blood, too. The vine seemed to have fastened, leechlike, to his wounded knee.

Outside, quite suddenly, Pablo stopped screaming.

"It's inside me," Eric said. "Oh Jesus-it's fucking inside me."

And it was true. Somehow the vine had pushed itself into his wound, opening it, widening it, thrusting a tendril into his body. Stacy could see it beneath his skin, the ridged rise of it, three inches long, like a thick finger, probing. Eric tried to pull it free, but he was too panicky, too quick, and the vine broke, oozing more sap, burning him, leaving the tendril snagged beneath his skin.

Eric started yelling. At first, it was just noise, but then there were words, too. "Get the knife!" he shouted.

Stacy didn't move. She was too stunned. She sat and stared. The vine was inside him, under his skin. Was it moving?

"Get the fucking knife!" Eric screamed.

And then she was up, on her feet, rushing for the tent flap.

Amy had awakened a few seconds after Stacy. She hadn't realized what was happening with Eric; Pablo's screaming was too loud for her to take note of anything else. Then Mathias was yelling for them, and for some reason Eric and Stacy weren't responding. They were thrashing about; they seemed to be wrestling. Amy couldn't make any sense of this-she was still half-asleep, and not thinking very clearly. Pablo was screaming; nothing else mattered. She jumped up and hurried outside to see what was happening. The screaming was loud, full of obvious pain, and it showed no sign of stopping, but she wasn't particularly worried by this. After all, Pablo's back was broken-why shouldn't he be screaming? It might take some time, but they'd calm him down, just as they had the night before, and then he'd slip back into sleep.

Outside, she stood blinking for a long moment, the sun too bright for her to see. She felt dizzy from it, disoriented, and was about to duck back inside the tent to search for her sunglasses, when Mathias turned toward her with a look of panic. It was as if a hand had grabbed Amy, shaken her roughly; she felt a rush of fear.

"Help me!" Mathias called. He was crouched beside the backboard, bent over the Greek's legs, and he had to shout to be heard above the screaming.

Amy stepped quickly toward him, seeing and not seeing at one and the same time. The sleeping bag was lying crumpled on the ground beside Mathias, leaving Pablo bare beneath the waist. Or no, not bare, not bare at all, because his legs were completely covered by the flowering vine, covered so thickly that it almost looked as if he'd pulled on a pair of pants made of the stuff. Not an inch of skin was visible from his waist to his feet. Mathias was pulling at it, yanking long tendrils off and throwing them aside, sap shining slickly on his hands and wrists. Pablo had lifted his head enough to watch; he kept trying to rise onto his elbow, but he couldn't seem to manage it. The tendons were taut on his neck with the effort, and his mouth hung open in a perfectO, screaming. The sound was so loud, so terrible, that, moving toward them, Amy felt as if she were wading through an actual physical barrier, a zone of inexplicably heightened gravity. Then she, too, was on her knees, tearing at the vine, ignoring the sap seeping across her hands, cool at first, slightly slippery, but then burning with such intensity that she might've stopped if it hadn't been for the screaming, the incessant screaming, the screaming that seemed to have entered her, to be inside her body now-resonating, echoing-growing louder with each passing second, impossibly louder, excruciatingly louder, far more painful than the burning. She needed to stop it, to silence it, and the only way she could think to do this was to keep pulling at the vines-tugging, yanking, tearing-freeing Pablo's body from their grip. And still she was seeing and not seeing, the legs coming into view finally, a flash of white beneath the knee, not the white of skin, but deeper, brighter-shiny and wet-a bone white. She kept clearing the vine away, buffeted by Pablo's screaming, seeing and not seeing, not bone white, but bone itself, the flesh stripped cleanly from it, blood beginning to pool now, pool and drip, as the plant was pulled free, revealing more white, more bone white, more bone, his lower leg nothing but bone, the skin and muscle and fat gone, eaten, blood dripping from the Greek's knee, dripping and pooling, a long tendril wrapped completely around his shinbone, gripping it, refusing to relinquish its hold, a trio of flowers hanging from the length of green, red flowers, bright red, bloodred.

"Oh my God," Mathias said.

He'd stopped pulling at the vines, was crouched now, staring in horror at Pablo's mutilated legs, and suddenly Amy's not seeing wasn't working anymore; it was just seeing now-the bones, the flowers, the pooling blood-and the screaming didn't matter any longer, nor the burning; there were only the bones shining so whitely up at her, and a sense of pressure in her chest, her stomach rising, a surge of nausea. She jumped up, took three quick steps away from the lean-to, and vomited into the dirt.

Pablo stopped screaming. He was crying now-she could hear him crying, whimpering. She didn't turn around; she stood, bent over, with her hands on her knees, a long string of drool hanging from her mouth, swinging slightly, a little puddle of bile spreading between her feet, all that precious water she'd stolen in the night, gone now, draining slowly into the dirt. She wasn't done yet; she could feel more coming, and she shut her eyes, waiting for it.

"He woke up and just started screaming," Mathias said.

Amy didn't move, didn't glance toward him. She coughed once, spit, her eyes still closed.

"I pulled off the sleeping bag. I didn't-"

Then it was there, worse than the first surge; she bent low, a thick torrent spewing from her mouth. It was painful; she felt as if she were vomiting part of herself up, part of her body. Mathias fell silent-watching, Amy assumed. And, an instant later, inside the tent, Eric began to yell. Just shouting at first, just noise, but then words, too.

"Get the knife!" he screamed.

Amy lifted her head, puke still dripping from her mouth, down her chin, across her shirt. She turned toward the tent. They all did-even Pablo, pausing in his whimpering, lifting his head, straining to see.

"Get the fucking knife!"

Then Stacy appeared, stooping past the tent flap, hesitating for an instant just beyond it, staring at Amy, at the string of drool hanging from her mouth, the puddle of vomit between her feet. Stacy squinted, the sun too bright for her-seeing and not seeing, Amy thought-turned toward the lean-to, toward Mathias.

"I need the knife," she said.

"Why?" Mathias asked.

"It's inside him. Somehow…I don't know…it's gotten inside."

"What has?"

"The vine. Through his knee. It pushed inside." Even as she spoke, her gaze drifted toward Pablo, who'd resumed his whimpering, but more softly now. Seeing and not seeing: the exposed bones, the pooling blood, the vine still half-covering his legs.

From inside the tent came Eric's voice, shouting, sounding frightened: "Hurry!"

Stacy glanced back toward the open flap, then at Pablo again, then at Mathias. Amy could tell that she wasn't taking it in, wasn't understanding what had happened, any of it. Her face was slack, her voice flat. Shock, Amy thought.

"I think he wants to cut it out," Stacy said.

Mathias turned, rummaged for a moment through the debris beside the lean-to, the remaining strips of blue nylon, the jumble of aluminum poles. When he stood up, he had the knife in his hand. He was just starting for the tent, when he stopped suddenly, staring toward Amy, toward her feet, toward the ground beyond them. Stacy, too, turned to look, and-instantly-went equally still. Their faces shared an identical expression, a mix of horror and incomprehension, and even before Amy spun to see what it was, she felt her heart begin to accelerate, adrenaline rushing through her body. She didn't want to see, but that was over, the not seeing; that wasn't an option any longer. There was movement behind her, a shuffling sound, and Stacy lifted her right hand, covered her mouth, wide-eyed.

Amy turned.

To look.

To see .

She was in the center of the little clearing before the tent. There were fifteen feet of dry, rocky dirt in any direction, and then the vines began, a knee-high wall of vegetation. Emerging from this mass of green, directly in front of her, was what Amy took at first to be a giant snake: impossibly long, dark green, with bright red spots running along its length. Bloodred spots, which weren't spots at all, of course, but flowers, because-although it moved like a snake, slithering toward her in wide S -shaped curves-that wasn't what it was. It was the vine.

Amy stepped backward, quickly, away from the puddle. She kept going until Mathias was in front of her, the knife held low at his side.

Pablo was watching from the backboard, silent now.

Eric called from the tent again, but Amy hardly heard him. She watched the vine snake its way across the clearing to her little pool of vomit. It hesitated there, as if sniffing at the muck, before sliding into it, folding itself into a loose coil. Then, audibly, it began to suck up the liquid, using its leaves, it seemed. They flattened across the surface of the puddle, siphoning it dry. Amy couldn't say how long this took. Not long, though-a handful of seconds, perhaps, half a minute at most-and when it was over, when the puddle was dry, just a damp shadow on the rocky soil, the vine began, with that same slithering motion, to withdraw across the clearing.

Stacy started to scream. She looked from one to the other of them, pointing toward the vine, horror-struck, screaming. Amy stepped toward her, took her in her arms, hugging her, stroking her, struggling to quiet her, both of them watching as Mathias pushed past them, carrying the knife into the tent.

Eric had stopped shouting when he heard Stacy begin to scream. His hands and legs and feet were burning from the vine's sap, and there was that three-inch tendril still inside him, under his skin, just to the left of his shinbone, running parallel to it. Moving, he thought, though maybe it was his body doing this-the muscles, spasming. He wanted it out of him-that was all he knew-and he needed the knife to get it out, to cut it free from his flesh.

But what was happening out there? Why was Stacy screaming?

He called to her, shouting, "Stacy?"

And then, an instant later, Mathias was ducking in past the flap, coming toward him with the knife, a clenched expression on his face. It was fear, Eric realized.

"What is it?" he asked. "What's happening?"

Mathias didn't answer. He was scanning Eric's body. "Show me," he said.

Eric pointed toward his wound. Mathias crouched beside him, examined it for a moment, the long bump beneath his skin. It was moving again, wormlike, as if intent on burrowing into Eric. Outside, Stacy finally stopped screaming.

Mathias held up the knife. "You want to?" he asked. "Or me?"

"You."

"It's going to hurt."

"I know."

"It's not sterilized."

"Please, Mathias. Just do it."

"We might not be able to stop the bleeding."

It wasn't his muscles, Eric realized. It was the vine; the vine was moving of its own accord, pushing its way deeper into his leg, as if it had somehow sensed the knife's presence. He felt the urge to cry out, but he bit it back. He was sweating, his entire body slick with it. "Hurry," he said.

Mathias straddled Eric's leg, sitting on his thigh, clamping it to the floor of the tent. His body blocked Eric's view; Eric couldn't see what he was doing. He felt the bite of the knife, though, and yelped, tried to jerk away, but Mathias wouldn't let him; the weight of his body held him in place. Eric shut his eyes. The knife sliced deeper, moved down his leg with a strange zippering sensation, and then he felt Mathias's fingers digging into him, grasping the length of vine, prying it free. Mathias threw it away from them, toward the pile of camping supplies at the rear of the tent. Eric heard it smack wetly against the tarped floor.

"Oh Jesus," he said. "Oh fuck."

He could feel Mathias applying pressure to his wound, struggling to staunch the fresh flow of blood, and he opened his eyes. Mathias's back was bare; he'd taken off his shirt, was using it as a makeshift bandage.

"It's all right," Mathias said. "I got it."

They stayed like that for several minutes, not moving, each of them struggling to catch his breath, Mathias using all his weight to press against the incision. Eric thought Stacy would come to check on him, but she didn't. He could hear Pablo crying. There was no sign of the girls.

"What happened?" he asked finally. "What happened outside?"

Mathias didn't answer.

Eric tried again. "Why was Stacy screaming?"

"It's bad."

"What is?"

"You have to see. I can't-" Mathias shook his head. "I don't know how to describe it."

Eric fell silent at this, taking it in, struggling to make sense of it. "Is it Pablo?" he asked.

Mathias nodded.

"Is he okay?"

Mathias shook his head.

"What's wrong with him?"

Mathias made a vague gesture with his hand, and Eric felt a tightening sensation in his chest: frustration. He wished he could see the German's face.

"Just tell me," he said.

Mathias stood up. He had his T-shirt in his hand, crumpled into a ball; it was dark now with Eric's blood. "Can you stand?" he asked.

Eric tried. His leg was still bleeding, and it was hard to put weight on it. He managed to pull himself to his feet, though, then nearly fell. Mathias grabbed him by the elbow, held him up, helped him hobble slowly toward the open flap of the tent.

Jeff found the four of them in the little clearing, sitting beside the orange tent. When they saw him approaching, they all started to talk at once.

Amy seemed to be on the edge of tears. "What are you doing here?" she kept asking him.

It turned out that he'd been gone so long, they'd begun to think he might've found a way to flee, that he'd sneaked past the guards at the base of the hill and sprinted off into the jungle, that he was on his way to Cobá now, that help would soon be coming. They'd talked through this scenario in such depth, playing out the various steps of his journey, imagining the time line-Would he be able to flag down a passing car once he'd reached the road, or would he have to hike the entire eleven miles? And was it only eleven miles? And would the police come immediately, or would they need time to gather a large enough force to overcome the Mayans?-that Amy seemed to have pushed past the murky realm of possibility into the far clearer, sharper-edged one of probability. His escape wasn't something that might be happening; it had become something that was happening.

Over and over again, the same question: "What are you doing here?"

When he told her he'd been down at the base of the hill, that he'd walked completely around it, she stared at him in incomprehension, as if he'd said he'd spent the morning playing tennis with the Mayans.

There was something wrong with Eric. He kept standing up, limping about, talking over everyone else, then dropping back down, his wounded leg extended in front of him. He was wearing shorts now-rifled, Jeff assumed, from one of the backpacks. He'd sit for a bit, rocking slightly, staring at the dried blood on his knee and shin, only to jump back up again: talking, talking, talking. The vine was inside him: that was what he was saying, repeating it to no one in particular, not waiting for a response, not seeming even to expect one. They'd gotten it out, but it was still inside him.

Stacy was the one who explained it to Jeff, what had happened to Eric, the vine pushing its way in through his wound while he slept, Mathias cutting it free with the knife. At first, she seemed much calmer than the other two, surprisingly so. But then, in mid-sentence, she suddenly jumped topics. "They'll come today," she said, her voice low and urgent. "Won't they?"

"Who?"

"The Greeks."

"I don't know," Jeff began. "I-" Then he saw her expression, a tremor moving across her face-terror-and he changed direction. "They might," he said. "This afternoon, maybe."

"They have to."

"If not today, then in-"

Stacy interrupted him, her voice rising. "We can't spend another night here, Jeff. Theyhave to come today."

Jeff went silent, staring at her, startled.

She watched Eric for a moment, his pacing and muttering. Then she leaned forward, touched Jeff's arm. "The vine can move," she said, whispering the words. As she spoke, she glanced toward the low wall of vegetation that surrounded the little clearing, as if frightened of being overheard. "Amy threw up, and it reached out." She made a snakelike motion with her arm. "It reached out and drank it up."

Jeff could feel them all watching him, as if they expected him to deny this, to insist upon its impossibility. But he just nodded. He knew it could move-knew far more than that, in fact.

He got Eric to sit still so that he could examine his leg. The cut on his knee had closed again; the scab was dark red, almost black, the skin around it inflamed, noticeably hot to the touch. And beneath this wound was another, running perpendicular to it, moving down the left side of Eric's shinbone, so that it looked as if someone had carved a capital T into his flesh.

"It seems okay," he said. He was just trying to calm Eric, to slow him down; he didn't think it seemed okay at all. They'd smeared some of the Neosporin from the first-aid kit on the cuts-Eric's leg was shiny with it-and there were flecks of dirt stuck in the gel. "Why didn't you bandage it?" Jeff asked.

"We tried," Stacy said. "But he kept tearing it off. He says he wants to be able to see it."

"Why?"

"It'll grow back if we don't keep watching," Eric said.

"But you got it out. How would it-"

"All we got was the big piece. The rest is still inside me. I can feel it." He pointed at his shin. "See? How puffy it is?"

"It's just swollen, Eric. That's natural. That's what happens after you've been hurt."

Eric waved this aside, a tautness entering his voice. "That's bullshit. It's fucking growing in there." He pushed himself up onto his feet, limped off across the clearing. "I've got to get out of here," he said. "I've got to get to a hospital."

Jeff watched him pace, startled by his agitation. Amy still looked as if she might begin to cry at any moment. Stacy was wringing her hands.

Mathias was wearing a dark green shirt; he must've pulled it from one of the backpacks. This whole time, he hadn't spoken. But now, finally, in his quiet voice, with its almost unnoticeable accent, he said, "That's not the worst of it." He turned, looked toward Pablo.

Pablo. Jeff had forgotten about Pablo. He'd given him a quick glance when he'd first come walking back into the clearing, seen him lying so still beneath his lean-to, his eyes shut. Good, he'd thought, he's sleeping. And then that was it; there'd been Amy repeating her strange question-"What are you doing here?"-and Stacy worrying over the Greeks' arrival and Eric insisting the vine was growing inside him, all of it distracting him, making no sense, pulling his mind from where it ought to be.

The worst of it.

Jeff stepped toward the lean-to. Mathias followed him; the rest of them watched from across the clearing, as if frightened to approach any closer. Pablo was lying on his backboard, the sleeping bag covering him from the waist down. He didn't look any different, so Jeff couldn't understand why he was feeling such a strange intimation of peril. But he was: a sense of imminent danger, a tightness in his chest.

"What?" he asked.

Mathias crouched, carefully pulled back the sleeping bag.

For a long moment, Jeff couldn't take it in. He stared, he saw, but he couldn't accept the information his eyes were offering him.

The worst of it.

It wasn't possible. How could it be possible?

On both legs, from the knees down, Pablo's flesh had been almost completely stripped away. Bone, tendon, gristle, and ropy clots of blackened blood: this was all that remained. Mathias and the others had tightened a pair of tourniquets around the Greek's thighs, clamping shut the femoral arteries. They'd used some of the strips of nylon from the blue tent. Jeff bent low to examine them; it was an effort at escape-he could admit this to himself-a way of not having to look at the exposed bones. He needed to occupy his mind for a moment, distract it, give it time to adjust to this new horror. He'd never tied a tourniquet before, but he'd read about them, and knew-in the abstract at least-how to apply them. You were supposed to loosen them at regular intervals, then retighten them, but Jeff couldn't remember the exact time frame, or even what it was supposed to accomplish.

It didn't matter, he supposed.

No: Heknew it didn't matter.

"The vines?" he said.

Mathias nodded. "When we pulled them off, the blood started to spurt. They were holding it back somehow, and once they were gone…" He made a spraying motion with his hands.

Pablo's eyes were shut, as if he were asleep, but his hands seemed to be clenched, the skin across his knuckles drawn to a taut whiteness. "Is he conscious?" Jeff asked.

Mathias shrugged. "It's hard to tell. He was screaming at first; then he stopped and shut his eyes. He's rolled his head back and forth, and he shouted once. But he hasn't opened his eyes again."

There was an oddly sweet smell coming off of Pablo, stomach-turning once you began to notice it. This was decay, Jeff knew. It was the Greek's legs beginning to rot. He needed to be operated on, needed to get to a hospital-and sooner rather than later. Help would have to arrive by tonight for him to survive. If it didn't, they'd spend the coming days watching Pablo die.

Or maybe there was a third option.

Jeff was fairly certain help wasn't going to arrive before nightfall. And he didn't want to sit and watch Pablo die. But this third option…he knew the others wouldn't be ready for it, not nearly-not in concept, not in practice. And he'd need their help, of course, if he was going to attempt it.

So it was with the idea of preparing them, of hardening them, that he turned from Pablo's mutilated body and began to speak of his own discoveries that morning.

Given everything she'd seen of the vine's capabilities since dawn-how it had pushed its way into Eric's leg, stripped Pablo of his flesh, snaked across the clearing to suck dry Amy's vomit-Stacy felt little surprise at Jeff's revelations. She listened to him with a strangely numb sensation; her only noticeable emotion was a low hum of irritation toward Eric, who continued to pace about the little clearing, paying no attention whatsoever to Jeff and his story. Stacy wanted him to sit down, to stop obsessing on what she was certain was the purely imaginary presence of the plant inside his body. The plant wasn't inside his body; the very idea seemed absurd to her, pointlessly frightening. Yet assuring Eric of this had no effect at all. He just kept pacing, stopping now and then to probe wincingly at his wounds. The only thing one could do was struggle to ignore him.

The vine was the reason they were being held captive here: that was the gist of what Jeff was telling them. The Mayans had cut the clearing around the base of the hill in an attempt to quarantine the plant, sowing the surrounding soil with salt. Jeff's theory was that the vine spread through contact. When they touched it, they picked up its seeds or spores or whatever served as its means of reproduction, and if they were to cross the cleared swath of ground, they'd carry these with them. This was why the Mayans refused to allow them off the hill.

"What about birds?" Mathias asked. "Wouldn't they-"

"There aren't any," Jeff said. "Haven't you noticed? No birds, no insects-nothing alive here but us and the plant."

They all stared about the clearing, as if searching for some refutation of this. "But how would they know to stay away?" Stacy asked. She pictured the Mayans stopping the birds and mosquitoes and flies, just like they'd attempted to stop the six of them, the bald man waving his pistol toward the tiny creatures, shouting at them, keeping them at bay. How, she wondered, could the birds have known to turn aside when she hadn't?

"Evolution," Jeff said. "The ones who've landed on the hillside have died. The ones who've somehow sensed to avoid it have survived."

"All of them?" Amy asked, clearly not believing this.

Jeff shrugged. "Watch." His shirt had plastic buttons on its pockets; he reached up, yanked one off, tossed it out into the vines.

There was a jumping movement, a blur of green.

"See how quick it is?" he asked. He seemed oddly pleased, as if proud of the plant's skill. "Imagine if that were a bird. Or a fly. It wouldn't have a chance."

No one said anything; they were all staring out into the surrounding vegetation, as if waiting for it to move again. Stacy remembered that long arm swaying toward her across the clearing, the sucking sound it made as it drank up Amy's vomit. She realized she was holding her breath, felt dizzy with it, had to remind herself to exhale…inhale…exhale.

Jeff pulled the button off his other pocket and tossed it, too. Once more, there was that darting flash. "But here's the amazing thing," he said, and he reached up to his collar, plucked a third button from the shirt, threw it out into the vines.

Nothing happened.

"See?" He smiled at them. There was that sense of pride again; he couldn't seem to help himself. "It learns, " he said. "It thinks."

"What're you talking about?" Amy asked, as if affronted by Jeff's words. Or scared, maybe-there was an edge to her voice.

"It pulled down my sign."

"You're saying it can read?"

"I'm saying it knew what I was doing. Knew that if it wanted to succeed in killing us-and maybe others, too, whoever else might come along-it had to get rid of the sign. Just like it had gotten rid of this one." He kicked at the metal pan with that single Spanish word scraped across its bottom.

Amy laughed. No one else did. Stacy had heard everything Jeff was saying, but she wasn't following his words, wasn't grasping that he meant them literally. Plants bend toward the light: that was what she was thinking. She even, miraculously, remembered the word for this reflex-a darting glance back toward high school biology, the smell of chalk dust and formaldehyde, sticky bumps of dried gum hanging off the underside of her desk-a little bubble rising toward the surface of her mind, breaking with a popping sound: phototropism. Flowers open in the morning and shut at night; roots reach toward water. It was weird and creepy and uncanny, but it wasn't the same as thinking.

"That's absurd," Amy said. "Plants don't have brains; they can't think."

"It grows on almost everything, doesn't it? Everything organic?" Jeff gestured at his jeans, the pale green fuzz sprouting there.

Amy nodded.

"Then why was the rope so clear?" Jeff asked.

"It wasn't. That's the reason it broke. The vine-"

"But why was there any rope left at all? This thing stripped the flesh off Pablo's legs in a single night. Why wouldn't it have eaten the rope clean, too?"

Amy frowned at him; she clearly didn't have an answer.

"It was a trap," Jeff said. "Can't you see that? It left the rope because it knew whoever came along would eventually decide to look in the hole. And then it could burn through, and-"

Amy threw up her hands in disbelief. "It's a plant, Jeff. Plants aren't conscious. They don't-"

"Here," Jeff said. He reached into his pockets, emptied them one after another onto the dirt at his feet. There were four passports, two pairs of glasses, wedding rings, earrings, a necklace. "They're all dead. These are the only things left. These and their bones. And I'm telling you that the vine did this. It killed them. And right now, even as we're speaking, it's planning to kill us, too."

Amy shook her head, vehement. "The vine didn't kill them. The Mayans did. They tried to flee and the Mayans shot them. The vine just claimed their bodies once they'd been shot. There's no thought involved in that. No-"

"Look around you, Amy."

Amy turned, glanced about the clearing. Everyone did, even Eric. Amy lifted her hands: "What?"

Jeff started across the clearing, stepped into the surrounding vegetation. Half a dozen strides and he reached one of those odd waist-high mounds. He crouched beside it, began yanking at the vines. He's going to get burned, Stacy thought, but she could tell he didn't care. As he pulled at the plants, she began to glimpse bits of yellowish white beneath the mass of green. Stones, she thought, knowing better even as she fashioned the word in her head. Jeff reached into the center of the mound, pulled out something vaguely spherelike, held it toward them. Stacy didn't want to see what it was; that was the only explanation she could devise for how long it took her to recognize the object, which was otherwise so instantly identifiable, that smiling Halloween image, that pirate flag flapping from the mast of Jeff's arm, poor Yorick of infinite jest. He was holding a skull toward them. She had to repeat the word inside her head before she could fully absorb it, believe in it. A skull, a skull, a skull…

Then Jeff waved across the hilltop, and all their heads swiveled in unison to follow the gesture. Those mounds were everywhere, Stacy realized. She started to count them, reached nine, with many more still to number, and flinched away from the task.

"It's killed them all," Jeff said. He strode back toward them, wiping his hands on his pants. "Thevine, not the Mayans. One by one, it's killed them all."

Eric had finally stopped pacing. "We have to break out," he said.

Everyone turned to stare at him. He was flipping his hand quickly back and forth at his side, as if he'd just caught it in a drawer and was trying to shake the pain out. That was how jumpy he'd become, how anxious.

"We can make shields. Spears, maybe. And charge them. All at once. We can-"

Jeff cut him off, almost disdainfully. "They have guns," he said. "At least two, maybe more. And there are only five of us. With what? Thirteen miles to safety? And Pablo-"

Eric's hand started to go faster, blurring, making a snapping sound. He shouted, "We can't just sit here doing nothing!"

"Eric-"

"It's inside me!"

Jeff shook his head, very firmly. His voice, too, was firm, startlingly so. "That's not true. It might feel like it is, but it's not. I promise you."

There was no reason for Eric to believe this, of course. Jeff was simply asserting it-even Stacy could see that. But it seemed to work nonetheless. She watched Eric surrender, watched the tension ease from his muscles. He lowered himself to the ground, sat with his knees hugged to his chest, shut his eyes. Stacy knew it wasn't going to last, though; she could tell he'd soon be back up on his feet, pacing the length of the clearing. Because even as Jeff turned away, thinking that he'd solved this one problem and could now move on to the next, she saw Eric's hand drifting down toward his shin again, toward the wound there, toward the subtle swelling around its margins.

They each took a swig of water. They sat in the clearing beside Pablo's lean-to, in a loose circle, and passed the plastic jug from hand to hand. Amy didn't think of her vow from the night before-her intention to confess her midnight theft and refuse the morning's ration-she accepted her allotted swallow without the slightest sense of guilt. She was too thirsty to do otherwise, too eager to wash the sour taste of vomit from her mouth.

The Greeks are coming : this was what she kept telling herself, imagining their progress with each passing moment, the two of them laughing and capering in the Cancún bus station, buying the tickets with their names printed on them-Juan and Don Quixote-the delight they'd feel at this, slapping each other's shoulders, grinning in that impish way of theirs. Then the bus ride, the haggling for the taxi, the long walk along the trail through the jungle to the first clearing. They'd skip the Mayan village, Amy decided-somehow they'd know better-they'd find the second trail, and hurry down it, singing, perhaps. Amy could picture their faces, their utter astonishment, when they emerged from the trees and glimpsed the vine-covered hill before them, with her or Jeff or Stacy or Eric standing at its base, waving them away, miming out their predicament, their peril. And the Greeks would understand, too. They'd turn, rush back into the jungle, go for help. All this was hours away, Amy knew. It was still so early. Juan and Don Quixote weren't even at the bus station yet; maybe they weren't even awake. But they were going to come. She couldn't allow herself to believe otherwise. Yes, it didn't matter if the vine was malevolent, if-as Jeff asserted-it could think and was plotting their destruction, because the Greeks were hurrying to their rescue. Any moment now they'd be rousing themselves, showering and breakfasting and studying Pablo's map…

Jeff had them empty their packs so they could inventory the food they'd brought.

Stacy produced her and Eric's supplies: two rotten-looking bananas, a liter bottle of water, a bag of pretzels, a small can of mixed nuts.

Amy unzipped Jeff's knapsack, pulled out two bottles of iced tea, a pair of protein bars, a box of raisins, a plastic bag full of grapes going brown.

Mathias set down an orange, a can of Coke, a soggy tuna fish sandwich.

They were all hungry, of course; they could've easily eaten everything right then and there and still not been satisfied, not nearly. But Jeff wouldn't let them. He crouched above the little pile of food, frowning down at it, as if hoping that he might, simply through his powers of concentration, somehow manage to enlarge it-double it, triple it-miraculously providing enough food for them to survive here for as long as might be necessary.

As long as might be necessary. That was the sort of phrase he'd use, too, Amy knew-objective and detached-and she felt a brief push of anger toward him. The Greeks would show up this afternoon. Why was he so stubbornly refusing to acknowledge this? They'd find a way to warn the two of them off, turn them back for help; rescue would arrive by nightfall. There was no need to ration food. It was alarmist and extreme. Later, Amy believed, they'd tease him about it, mimic the way he'd picked up the tuna fish sandwich, unwrapped it, then used the knife to cut it into five equal sections. Amy spent a few moments imagining this scenario-all of them back on the beach in Cancún, laughing at Jeff. She'd hold her finger an inch away from her thumb to show everyone how small the pieces had been, how absurdly small-yes, it was true, no bigger than a cracker-she could fit the whole thing in her mouth. And this was what she was doing now, too, even as she busied herself picturing that happier scene still to come-tomorrow, showered and rested, on the beach with their brightly colored towels-she opened her mouth, placed the little square of sandwich inside it, chewed a handful of times, swallowed, and it was gone.

The others were tarrying over theirs-taking tiny, mouselike bites-and Amy felt a lurch of regret. Why hadn't she thought to do this, to draw the process out, elongate what couldn't really even be called a snack into something that might almost resemble a meal? She wanted her ration back, wanted a new one altogether, so that she might find a way to consume it more gradually. But it was gone; it had dropped irretrievably into her stomach, and now she had to sit and wait while the others lingered over theirs, nibbling and sniffing and savoring. She felt like crying suddenly-no, she'd felt like crying all morning, maybe ever since they'd arrived here on this hill, but now it was only more so. She was thrashing about in deep, deep water, trying to pretend all the while that this wasn't true, and it was wearing her down-the thrashing, the pretending-she didn't know how much longer she could keep it up. She wanted more food, more water, wanted to go home, wanted Pablo not to be lying there beneath the lean-to with the flesh stripped from his legs. She wanted all this and more, and none of it was possible, so she kept thrashing and pretending, and any moment now she knew it would become too much for her, that she'd have to stop thrashing, stop pretending, and give herself over to the drowning.

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.

Eric 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.

Eric could hear the faint murmur of Jeff's and Mathias's voices, but he couldn't make out what they were saying. They were out of sight, somewhere farther down the hill, digging the latrine.

He squeezed Stacy's hand; she still hadn't looked at him. "So…" he began, tentatively, not certain if it was the right path, "there was this guy, and he had a vine growing inside him."

Silence. She's not going to answer, he thought. And then she did. "We got it out," she said, her voice quiet. Eric had to lean to hear her.

"You're supposed to say ‘but.'"

Stacy shook her head. "I'm not playing. I'm telling you he cut it out. It's not inside you anymore."

"But I can still feel it."

She finally looked at him. "Just because you can feel it doesn't mean it's there."

"But what if it is?"

"We can't do anything about it."

"So you admit it might be."

"I'm not saying that."

"But I canfeel it, Stacy."

"I'm saying no matter what might be true, we just have to wait it out."

"So I'm going to end up like Pablo."

"Stop it, Eric."

"But it's inside me-it's in my blood. I can feel it in my chest."

"Please stop."

"So I'm going to die here."

"Eric."

He fell silent, startled by the jump in her voice. She was crying. When had she begun to cry?

"Please stop, sweetie," she said. "Can you do that? Can you calm down?" She wiped at her face with the back of her hand. "I really need you to calm down."

Eric was silent. In my chest -where had that come from? He hadn't realized it till he said it, but it was true. He could feel the vine inside his chest, a subtle yet definite pressure against his lower rib cage, pressing outward.

Stacy pulled her hand free from his grip, pushed herself to her feet, stepped across the clearing. She bent over Pablo's pack, rummaged through it, dragged out one of the glass bottles, then started back toward him, opening it as she came. "Here," she said, standing over him, offering him the tequila.

Eric didn't take it. "Jeff said we shouldn't drink."

"Well, Jeff isn't here, is he?"

Still not moving, Eric eyed the bottle, the amber liquid within it. He could smell the tequila, could feel its pull, which was mixed-illogically but inextricably-with his larger sense of thirst. He lifted his hand, took the bottle from her. It was the one they'd drunk from the previous afternoon, after their aborted crossing of the muddy field-a different world altogether, peopled by other versions of themselves, untouched and unknowing. He remembered Pablo standing before them, so full of laughter, offering the bottle, and with this image in his mind-more dream, it seemed, than memory-Eric tilted back his head and took a long swallow of the liquor. It was too much; he gasped, coughed, tears briefly blurring his vision. But it was good, too; it was the right thing. Without waiting to recover-just his breath, that was all he needed-he lifted the bottle to his lips again.

The only thing he'd eaten since yesterday morning was that tiny square of tuna fish and bread-he was dehydrated, exhausted-and he could feel the tequila within seconds, pleasantly enervating, letting him breathe, finally. It happened so quickly, like the plunge of a needle into a vein, a numbness, a slurred quality to his thoughts. He wiped his mouth on his forearm and surprised himself by laughing.

Stacy was still standing over him, the absurd-looking umbrella resting on her shoulder, enclosing him within its circle of shade. "Not too much," she said, and when he raised the bottle for another swallow, she bent quickly and pulled it from his grasp.

She capped it, put it back in Pablo's bag. Then she sat beside him, letting him take her hand again. The tequila burned in his chest, made his ears ring. Maybe they're right, he thought. Maybe I'm overreacting. He could still feel something moving, wormlike, in his leg, and that odd pressure continued in his lower chest, but he could see now, as the liquor quieted the tumble of his thoughts, that none of this necessarily had anything to do with the vine. It was possible that he was simply frightened, that he was paying too much attention to his body. There was always something odd to feel if only you stopped and searched for it.

"The miserable misery of the miser," he said, the words coming to him suddenly, for no apparent reason.

"What?" Stacy asked.

Eric shook his head, waving it aside. There were three bottles of tequila, and he struggled to tilt his thoughts forward into the coming hours, rationing out the liquor sip by sip, like a bag dripping solace into a vein. The Greeks would be here soon, and everyone was going to be okay. What he needed to do now was sit, holding Stacy's hand, and in a little while he'd be able to ask her for the bottle again. In that way, one small sip at a time, he believed he could make it through the coming day.

They didn't have a shovel.

Jeff had found a sharp rock, shaped like a giant spearhead, big enough that he had to get down on his knees and use both hands to chop at the dry, hard-packed soil. Mathias used one of the metal stakes from the blue tent, stabbing the earth with it, grunting each time he swung his arm. When a sufficient amount of dirt was loosened in this manner, they stood up to kick it free, then paused for a few moments-catching their breath, wiping the sweat from their faces-before starting the whole process all over again.

It was hard work, and not going nearly as well as Jeff had hoped. He had an image in his mind: a hole four feet deep, just wide enough for someone to squat over it, one foot on either side, its walls dropping into the earth, perfectly perpendicular. It was possible Jeff had read a book that described such a thing, or seen a drawing of it somewhere, but this wasn't what he and Mathias were creating here. At even a slight depth, the walls of their latrine began to collapse and crumble, so that it widened as quickly as it deepened. For it to be narrow enough to allow someone to squat above it, the hole would have to stop while it was still only two feet deep, which defeated the whole purpose, of course. A latrine that shallow wasn't really a latrine at all; they might as well just continue to fumble through what Jeff had done earlier that morning, shuffling off into the vines and shitting, covering the mess with a parting kick of dirt.

Thinking this, Jeff realized the truth, what he should've known from the very start: it was a stupid idea. They didn't need a latrine, even a well-made one. Sanitation wasn't high on their list of problems just now, and no matter what might happen to them here, they'd be gone long before it became an issue of any urgency. Rescued, perhaps. Or dead. Jeff and Mathias were digging now not because it made any sense to be doing so, but because Jeff was floundering about, looking for something solid to cling to, some action to take, anything to keep from simply having to sit, helpless, and wait. Realizing this, accepting it, Jeff stopped digging, dropped back on his haunches. Mathias did, too.

"What are we doing?" Jeff asked.

Mathias shrugged, gesturing toward the sloppy, shallow ditch they'd managed to gouge out of the earth. "Digging a latrine."

"And is there any point in that?"

Mathias shook his head. "Not really."

Jeff tossed his stone into the dirt, wiped his hands on his pants. His palms burned-that green fuzz was growing on his jeans again. They all had it-on their clothes, their shoes-he'd seen each of them, at one moment or another, reaching to brush it away as they'd crouched together in the clearing.

"We could use it for the urine," Mathias said. "To distill it." He made a motion with his hands, spreading an imaginary tarp across the hole.

"And is there any point in that?" Jeff asked.

Mathias bridled at this, lifting his head. "You were the one who-"

Jeff nodded, cutting him off. "I know-my idea. But how much water will we get out of it?"

"Not much."

"Enough to make up for whatever we're sweating right now, digging like this?"

"I doubt it."

Jeff sighed. He felt foolish. And-what else? Tired, maybe, but more than this: defeated. Perhaps this was despair, which he knew was the worst thing of all, the opposite of survival. Whatever it was, the feeling was on him now, and he didn't know how to shake it. "If it rains," he said, "we'll have plenty of water. If it doesn't, we'll die of thirst."

Mathias didn't say anything. He was watching him closely, squinting slightly.

"I was trying to make work," Jeff said. "Give us things to do. Keep up our morale." He smiled, mocking himself. "I was even planning to drop back down into the shaft."

"Why?"

"The beeping. The cell phone sound."

"There's no oil for the lamp."

"We could make a torch."

Mathias laughed, incredulous. "A torch?"

"With rags-we could soak them in tequila."

"You see?" Mathias asked. "How German you are?"

"You're saying there's no point?"

"None worth the risk."

"What risk?"

Mathias shrugged, as if it were self-evident. And perhaps it was. "Look at Pablo," he said.

Pablo. The worst thing. Jeff hadn't mentioned his idea yet, his plan to save the Greek, and he hesitated even now, wondering at his motives, how pure they were, how mixed. The possibility that he was simply, yet again, making work for them hovered at the edge of his mind, then was quickly dismissed. They could save him if they tried; he was certain of it. "You think he's going to make it?" he asked.

Mathias frowned. When he spoke, his voice went low, almost inaudibly so. "Not likely."

"But if help came today-"

"Do you believe help is coming today?"

Jeff shook his head, and they were silent for a stretch. Mathias picked at the dirt with his stake. Jeff was working up his courage. Finally, he cleared his throat, said the words. "Maybe we could save him."

Mathias kept probing at the dirt, not even bothering to glance up. "How?"

"We could amputate his legs."

Mathias went still, watching Jeff now, smiling at him, but uncertainly. "You're joking."

Jeff shook his head.

"You want to cut off his legs."

"He'll die if we don't."

"Without anesthesia."

"There wouldn't be any pain. He has no feeling beneath his waist."

"He'd lose too much blood."

"The tourniquets are already in place. We'd cut below them."

"With what? You don't have any surgical instruments, any-"

"The knife."

"You'd need a bone saw-a knife wouldn't do a thing."

"We could break the bones, then cut."

Mathias shook his head, looking appalled. It was the most emotion Jeff had ever seen on his face. "No, Jeff. No way."

"Then he's dead."

Mathias ignored this. "What about infection? Cutting into him with a dirty knife?"

"We could sterilize it."

"We don't have any wood. Or water to boil. Or a pot, for that matter."

"There are things to burn-those notebooks, the backpacks full of clothes. We could heat the knife directly in the flames. It'll cauterize as it cuts."

"You'll kill him."

"Or save him-one or the other. But at least there's a chance. Would you rather sit back and watch him die over the coming days? It's not going to be quick-don't trick yourself into thinking that."

"If help comes-"

"Today, Mathias. It would have to come today. With his legs exposed like that, septicemia's going to set in-maybe it already has. Once it gets going, there'll be nothing anyone can do."

Mathias started picking at the dirt again, hunched into himself. "I'm sorry I brought us here," he said.

Jeff waved this aside; it seemed beside the point. "We chose to come."

Mathias sighed, dropped the tent stake. "I don't think I can do it," he said.

"I'll do it."

"I mean agree to it-I can't agree to it."

Jeff was silent, absorbing this; he hadn't expected it, had thought that Mathias would be the easiest to convince, the one to help him sway the others. "Then we should put him out of his misery," Jeff said. "Get him drunk-pour the tequila down his throat, wait for him to pass out. And, you know…" He made a sharp gesture with his arm, waving it through the air, a blow. It was harder than he would've thought to put the thing into words.

Mathias stared at him; Jeff could tell he didn't understand. Or didn't want to, maybe, was going to force him to say it outright. "What?" he asked.

"End it. Cut his throat. Smother him."

"You can't be serious."

"If he were a dog, wouldn't you-"

"But he's not a dog."

Jeff threw up his hands in frustration. Why had this become so difficult? He was just trying to be practical. Humane. "You know what I mean," he said.

He wasn't going to continue with this. He'd offered his idea; what more could he do? He felt that weight again, that leaden quality. The sun was climbing higher. They ought to be in the tent, in the shade; it was foolish for them to be out in the open like this, sweating. But he made no attempt to move. He was pouting, he realized, punishing Mathias for not embracing his plan. He disliked himself for this, and disliked Mathias for witnessing it; he wished he could stop. But he couldn't.

"Have you spoken to the others?" Mathias asked.

Jeff shook his head.

Mathias brushed some of the green fuzz off his jeans, then wiped his hands in the dirt, thinking it all through. Finally, he stood up. "We should vote," he said. "If the others say yes, then I will, too."

And with that, he started back up the hill toward the tent.

They gathered, once again, in the clearing.

First Mathias reappeared, and then, a few moments later, Jeff. They sat on the ground beside Eric and Stacy, forming a little half circle around the lean-to. Pablo lay there with his eyes shut, and-even as they spoke of his situation-no one seemed willing to look at him. They were avoiding using his name, too; rather than speaking it, they'd say "he," and throw a vague wave toward his broken body. Amy was still down at the base of the hill, watching for the other Greeks, but even after they started talking, when it became clear that there was a purpose to this conversation, that something important-something dreadful-was in the process of being decided, no one mentioned her absence. Stacy thought of her, wondered if she ought to be fetched-Stacy wanted this to happen, to have Amy beside her, holding her hand, the two of them thinking their way through this together-but she couldn't bring herself to speak. She wasn't good in situations like this. Fear made her passive, silent. She tended to cower and wait for bad things to pass her by.

But they wanted her opinion. Wanted both hers and Eric's. If they said yes, then it would happen: Jeff would cut off Pablo's legs. Which was horrible and unimaginable, but also, according to Jeff, the only hope. So, by this logic, if they said no, there'd be no hope. Pablo would die. This was what Jeff told them.

No hope-there was a precursor to these words, a first hope that had to be relinquished in order for the second, also, to be risked. They weren't going to be rescued today: that was what Jeff was telling them. And this was what Stacy found herself focusing on, even though she knew she should've been thinking about Pablo-they were going to have to spend another night here in the orange tent, surrounded by the vine, which could move, which could burrow into Eric's leg, and which-if she were to believe Jeff-wanted them all dead. She didn't see how she could do this.