The Ruins

He turned, stared toward the Mayans, who were standing in the center of the cleared ground, watching him, their weapons lowered finally. They seemed slightly bored by what they were seeing, and Jeff supposed he could understand this also. After all, he'd done nothing here that they hadn't witnessed on other occasions. The posting of the sign, the circumnavigation of the hill, the discovery of the bodies, the slowly dawning awareness of what sort of world he'd become trapped in: they'd seen it all before. And not only that; they could probably guess what was still to come, too, could've told Jeff, if they'd only shared a language, how the approaching days would unfold, how they'd begin and how they'd end. It was with these thoughts in his head that Jeff returned to the trail and began his slow climb up it to tell the others of all he'd discovered.

Stacy had opened her eyes to the sound of screaming. Eric was writhing about beside her, obviously in some sort of distress, and it took her a moment to realize that it wasn't his cries that were filling the tent. The noise was coming from outside. It was Pablo. Pablo was screaming. And yet something was wrong with Eric, too. He was leaning on his elbow, staring toward his legs, kicking them, saying, 'Oh fuck, oh my God, oh Christ.' He kept repeating the words, and Pablo kept screaming, and Stacy couldn't understand what was happening. Amy was on the other side of her, just coming awake, looking even more confused, even more lost than Stacy felt herself.

The three of them were alone in the tent; there was no sign of Jeff or Mathias.

Eric's left leg was covered with the vine.

'What is it?' Stacy said. 'What's going on?'

Eric didn't seem to hear her. He sat up, leaning forward, and began to yank at the vine, struggling to pull it free from his body. The plant's leaves ripped and crumpled as he tugged at them, sap oozing out, beginning to burn him, to burn her, too, when she reached to help him. The vine had wound itself around his left leg, climbing all the way to his groin. His sperm, Stacy thought, remembering the hand job she'd given him the night before. It was drawn to his sperm. Because it was true: the vine had wrapped itself not only around Eric's leg but also his penis, his testicles. Eric was struggling to free himself from its hold, pulling gingerly now, still repeating that string of words: 'Oh fuck, oh my God, oh Christ…'

Pablo's screaming grew louder, if this were possible; the tent seemed to be shaking beneath it. Stacy could hear Mathias yelling now, too. Calling for them, she thought, but she couldn't focus on this, was simply aware of it in a distant way while she continued to yank at the vine, her hands not merely burning but feeling abraded, lacerated; the tips of her fingers had begun to bleed. Amy was getting up, hurrying toward the flap, unzipping it, stepping out. She left the flap hanging open behind her, and sunlight poured through the opening, flooding the tent, the heat entering, too, making Stacy, even in the midst of all this chaos, abruptly aware of her thirst. Her mouth was webbed with it; her throat felt swollen, cracked.

It wasn't just Eric's semen, she realized. It was his blood, too. The vine seemed to have fastened, leechlike, to his wounded knee.

Outside, quite suddenly, Pablo stopped screaming.

'It's inside me,' Eric said. 'Oh Jesus-it's fucking inside me.'

And it was true. Somehow the vine had pushed itself into his wound, opening it, widening it, thrusting a tendril into his body. Stacy could see it beneath his skin, the ridged rise of it, three inches long, like a thick finger, probing. Eric tried to pull it free, but he was too panicky, too quick, and the vine broke, oozing more sap, burning him, leaving the tendril snagged beneath his skin.

Eric started yelling. At first, it was just noise, but then there were words, too. 'Get the knife!' he shouted.

Stacy didn't move. She was too stunned. She sat and stared. The vine was inside him, under his skin. Was it moving?

'Get the fucking knife!' Eric screamed.

And then she was up, on her feet, rushing for the tent flap.

Amy had awakened a few seconds after Stacy. She hadn't realized what was happening with Eric; Pablo's screaming was too loud for her to take note of anything else. Then Mathias was yelling for them, and for some reason Eric and Stacy weren't responding. They were thrashing about; they seemed to be wrestling. Amy couldn't make any sense of this-she was still half-asleep, and not thinking very clearly. Pablo was screaming; nothing else mattered. She jumped up and hurried outside to see what was happening. The screaming was loud, full of obvious pain, and it showed no sign of stopping, but she wasn't particularly worried by this. After all, Pablo's back was broken-why shouldn't he be screaming? It might take some time, but they'd calm him down, just as they had the night before, and then he'd slip back into sleep.

Outside, she stood blinking for a long moment, the sun too bright for her to see. She felt dizzy from it, disoriented, and was about to duck back inside the tent to search for her sunglasses, when Mathias turned toward her with a look of panic. It was as if a hand had grabbed Amy, shaken her roughly; she felt a rush of fear.

'Help me!' Mathias called. He was crouched beside the backboard, bent over the Greek's legs, and he had to shout to be heard above the screaming.

Amy stepped quickly toward him, seeing and not seeing at one and the same time. The sleeping bag was lying crumpled on the ground beside Mathias, leaving Pablo bare beneath the waist. Or no, not bare, not bare at all, because his legs were completely covered by the flowering vine, covered so thickly that it almost looked as if he'd pulled on a pair of pants made of the stuff. Not an inch of skin was visible from his waist to his feet. Mathias was pulling at it, yanking long tendrils off and throwing them aside, sap shining slickly on his hands and wrists. Pablo had lifted his head enough to watch; he kept trying to rise onto his elbow, but he couldn't seem to manage it. The tendons were taut on his neck with the effort, and his mouth hung open in a perfectO, screaming. The sound was so loud, so terrible, that, moving toward them, Amy felt as if she were wading through an actual physical barrier, a zone of inexplicably heightened gravity. Then she, too, was on her knees, tearing at the vine, ignoring the sap seeping across her hands, cool at first, slightly slippery, but then burning with such intensity that she might've stopped if it hadn't been for the screaming, the incessant screaming, the screaming that seemed to have entered her, to be inside her body now-resonating, echoing-growing louder with each passing second, impossibly louder, excruciatingly louder, far more painful than the burning. She needed to stop it, to silence it, and the only way she could think to do this was to keep pulling at the vines-tugging, yanking, tearing- freeing Pablo's body from their grip. And still she was seeing and not seeing, the legs coming into view finally, a flash of white beneath the knee, not the white of skin, but deeper, brighter-shiny and wet-a bone white. She kept clearing the vine away, buffeted by Pablo's screaming, seeing and not seeing, not bone white, but bone itself, the flesh stripped cleanly from it, blood beginning to pool now, pool and drip, as the plant was pulled free, revealing more white, more bone white, more bone, his lower leg nothing but bone, the skin and muscle and fat gone, eaten, blood dripping from the Greek's knee, dripping and pooling, a long tendril wrapped completely around his shinbone, gripping it, refusing to relinquish its hold, a trio of flowers hanging from the length of green, red flowers, bright red, bloodred.

'Oh my God,' Mathias said.

He'd stopped pulling at the vines, was crouched now, staring in horror at Pablo's mutilated legs, and suddenly Amy's not seeing wasn't working anymore; it was just seeing now-the bones, the flowers, the pooling blood-and the screaming didn't matter any longer, nor the burning; there were only the bones shining so whitely up at her, and a sense of pressure in her chest, her stomach rising, a surge of nausea. She jumped up, took three quick steps away from the lean-to, and vomited into the dirt.

Pablo stopped screaming. He was crying now-she could hear him crying, whimpering. She didn't turn around; she stood, bent over, with her hands on her knees, a long string of drool hanging from her mouth, swinging slightly, a little puddle of bile spreading between her feet, all that precious water she'd stolen in the night, gone now, draining slowly into the dirt. She wasn't done yet; she could feel more coming, and she shut her eyes, waiting for it.

'He woke up and just started screaming,' Mathias said.

Amy didn't move, didn't glance toward him. She coughed once, spit, her eyes still closed.

'I pulled off the sleeping bag. I didn't-'

Then it was there, worse than the first surge; she bent low, a thick torrent spewing from her mouth. It was painful; she felt as if she were vomiting part of herself up, part of her body. Mathias fell silent-watching, Amy