The Ruins - Страница 25

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.