The Ruins - Страница 23

"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, hetold 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.