The Ruins - Страница 37

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.