another leg. A pair of jeans, a belt buckle, a black T-shirt. And then, finally, a young man's face. It was Mathias's face, only different: it had the same features, the family resemblance vivid even now, with some of Henrich's flesh oddly eaten away, so that his cheekbone was visible, the white socket of his left eye.
'Oh Jesus,' Amy said. 'No.'
Jeff held up his hand, silencing her. Mathias crouched over his brother's body, rocking slightly, that moaning coming and going. The T-shirt was only black, Jeff realized, because it had been stained that color: it was stiff with dried blood. And sticking out of Henrich's chest, pointing up through the thick vines, were three slender arrows. Jeff rested his hand on Mathias's shoulder. 'Easy,' he whispered. 'All right? Easy and slow. We'll stand up and we'll walk away. We'll walk back up the hill.'
'It's my brother,' Mathias said.
'I know.'
'They killed him.'
Jeff nodded. His hand was still on Mathias's shoulder, and he could feel the German's muscles clenching through his shirt. 'Easy,' he said again.
'Why…'
'I don't know.'
'He was-'
'Shh,' Jeff said. 'Not here. Up the hill, okay?'
Mathias seemed to be having trouble breathing. He kept struggling to inhale, but nothing went very deep. Jeff didn't let go of his shoulder. Finally, the German nodded, and then they both stood up. Stacy and Amy were holding hands, looking stricken, staring down at Henrich's corpse. Stacy had started to cry, very softly. Eric had his arm around her.
The Mayans kept their weapons raised-arrows nocked, bows taut, rifle shouldered-and watched in silence as Jeff and the others turned to start back up the hill.
The climb helped some-the physical demands of it, the need to concentrate on the steeper stretches, where they almost had to crawl at times, pulling themselves forward with their hands-and as Stacy moved slowly up the hill, she gradually managed to stop crying. She kept glancing back down toward the clearing as she went; she tried not to, but she couldn't help it. She was worried the men were going to come chasing after them. They'd killed Mathias's brother, so it only seemed logical that they'd kill her, too. Kill all six of them, let the vines grow over their bodies. But the men just stood there in the center of the clearing, staring after them.
At the top, things got hard again. Amy started crying, and then Stacy had to, too. They sat on the ground and held hands and wept. Eric crouched beside Stacy. He said things like 'It's gonna be okay.' Or 'We'll be all right.' Or 'Shh, now, shh.' Just words, nonsense really, little phrases to stroke and soothe her, and the fear in his face made her sob all the harder. But the sun burned down upon them and there was no shade to be found and she was worn-out from the climb, and after awhile she began to feel so stunned from it all that she couldn't even cry anymore. When she stopped, Amy did, too.
Jeff and Mathias had wandered off across the hilltop. They were standing on the far side of it, staring down toward the clearing, talking together. Pablo had disappeared into the blue tent.
'Is there any water?' Amy asked.
Eric dug through his pack, pulled out a bottle. They took turns drinking from it.
'It's gonna be okay,' he said again.
'How?' Stacy asked, hating herself for speaking. She knew she shouldn't be asking questions like that. She needed to be quiet and let Eric build this dream for them.
Eric thought for a moment, struggling. 'Maybe when the sun sets, we can go back down, sneak past them in the darkness.'
They drank some more water, considering this. It was too hot to think, and there was a persistent buzzing in Stacy's ears, like static, but higher-pitched. She realized she should get out of the sun, crawl into one of the tents and lie down, but she was frightened of the tents. She knew that whoever had set them up so carefully here upon the hilltop was almost certainly dead now. If Henrich was dead, then the archaeologists must be, too. Stacy couldn't see any way around this.
Eric tried again. 'Or we can always just wait them out,' he said. 'The Greeks will come sooner or later.'
'How do you know?' Amy asked.
'Pablo left them a note.'
'But how can you be sure?'
'He copied the map, didn't he?'
Amy didn't say anything. Stacy sat there, wishing she'd speak again, that she'd somehow manage to clarify this question, either refute Eric's logic or accept it, but Amy remained silent, peering off across the hilltop at Jeff and Mathias. There was no way to tell, of course. Pablo might've left a note or he might not have. The only way they'd know for certain was if the Greeks were eventually to show up.
'I've never seen a dead body before,' Eric said.
Amy and Stacy were silent. How could they possibly respond to a statement like that?
'You'd think something would've eaten him, wouldn't you? Come out of the jungle and-'
'Stop it,' Stacy said.
'But it seems odd, doesn't it? He's been there long enough for those vines to-'
'Please, Eric.'
'And where are the others? Where are the archaeologists?'
Stacy reached out and touched his knee. 'Just stop, okay? Stop talking.'
Jeff and Mathias were coming back toward them. Mathias was holding his hands out in front of himself, as if they were covered in paint and he was trying not to get it on his clothes. As they came closer, Stacy saw that his hands and wrists had turned a deep raw-meat red; they look scarred.
'What happened?' Eric asked.
Jeff and Mathias crouched beside them. Jeff reached for the water bottle, poured a tiny bit on Mathias's hands; then Mathias rubbed at them with his shirt, grimacing.
'There's something in the plants,' Jeff said. 'When he tore them off his brother, he got their sap on his hands. It's acidic. It's burned his skin.'
They all peered down at Mathias's hands. Jeff handed the water back to Stacy. She took off her bandanna, started to tilt the bottle over it, thinking the wet cloth might cool her head some, but Jeff stopped her.
'Don't,' he said. 'We need to save it.'
'Save it?' she asked. She felt stupid with the heat: she didn't know what he meant.
He nodded. 'We don't have that much. We'll each need a half gallon a day, at least. That's three gallons total, every day. We'll have to figure out a way to catch the rain.' He glanced up at the sky, as if searching for clouds, but there weren't any. It had rained every afternoon since they'd arrived in Mexico, and now, when they needed it, the sky was perfectly clear. 'We have to get organized,' Jeff said. 'Now, while we're still fresh.'
The others just stared at him.
'We can last without food. It's water that matters. We'll have to keep out of the sun, spend as much time as we can under the tents.'
Stacy felt sick, listening to him. He was acting as if they were going to be here for some time, as if they were trapped here, and the idea filled her with panic. She had the urge to cover her ears with her hands; she wanted him to stop talking. 'Can't we sneak away when it gets dark?' she asked. 'Eric said we could sneak away.'
Jeff shook his head. He waved across the hilltop, toward where he and Mathias had been standing. 'They keep coming,' he said. 'More and more of them. They're all armed, and the bald one sends them out along the clearing. They're surrounding us.'
'Why don't they just kill us?' Eric asked.
'I don't know. It seems like it's something to do with the hill. Once you step onto the hill, you're not allowed to step off it. Something like that. They won't step on it themselves, but now that we're on it, they won't let us leave. They'll shoot us if we try. So we have to figure out a way to survive until someone comes and finds us.'
'Who?' Amy asked.
Jeff shrugged. 'The Greeks, maybe-that would be quickest. Or else, when we don't come home, our parents
