The Ruins - Страница 34

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.