The Ruins

'He'll die if we leave him as he is.'

Stacy shuddered at that, as if Pablo's potential death were being laid at her feet-her fault, something she might easily have averted. 'I don't want him to die.'

'Of course not,' Jeff said.

Stacy could feel Mathias's gaze upon her. Watching her, unblinking. He wanted her to say no, she knew. She wished she could, too, but knew she couldn't.

'Okay,' she said. 'I guess you should do it.'

Amy was taking pictures.

As she'd set off from the clearing, she'd grabbed her camera-reflexively, with no conscious motive-just picking it up and hanging it around her neck. It was only while she was crouched beside the path, midway down the hill, in that moment of relaxation and clarity that followed the release of her bladder, that she'd realized why she'd reached for it. She wanted to photograph the Mayans, to collect evidence of what was happening here, because they were going to be rescued-she kept insisting upon this to herself-and, after this happened, there would inevitably be an investigation, and arrests, and a trial. Which meant there'd need to be evidence, of course, and what better evidence could there possibly be than photographs of the perpetrators?

She started shooting as soon as she reached the bottom of the hill, focusing on the men's faces. She enjoyed the feeling it gave her, a sneaky sort of power, the hunted turning on her hunters. They were going to be punished; they were going to spend the rest of their lives in jail. And Amy was going to help this happen. She imagined the trial while she aimed and snapped, the crowded courtroom, the hush as she testified. They'd project her photos on a giant screen, and she'd point at an image of the bald man, that pistol on his hip. He was the leader, she'd say. He was the one who wouldn't let us go.

The Mayans paid her no attention. They weren't watching, hardly even seemed to glance her way. Only when she stepped out into the clearing, searching for a better angle on the group of men clustered around the nearest campfire, did two of them stir, raising their bows in her direction. She took their picture, stepped quickly back into the vines.

After awhile, the sense of power started to slip away from her, and she had nothing good to replace it with. The sun kept climbing, and Amy was too hot, too hungry, too thirsty. But she'd already been all these things when she'd first arrived, so this wasn't what the shift was about. No, it was the Mayans' indifference to her presence there, so busy with her camera, that finally began to wear her down. They were clustered around their smoldering campfire, some of them napping in the slowly diminishing line of shade at the edge of the jungle. They were talking and laughing; one of them was whittling a stick, just carving it down into nothing, a bored man's task, a way to occupy his hands while time ticked sluggishly by. Because that was it, wasn't it? That was what they were so clearly doing here: they were waiting. And not in any suspense, either, not in any anxiety as to the outcome of their vigil. They were waiting with no apparent emotion at all, as one might sit over the course of an evening, watching a candle methodically burn itself into darkness, never less than certain of the outcome, confident that the only thing standing between now and the end of waiting was time itself.

And what does that mean? Amy wondered.

Maybe the Mayans knew about the Greeks. Maybe Juan and Don Quixote had already come, had walked by the opening to the trail, kept on until they reached the village, only to be turned back, oblivious, never even thinking to check the tree line. Neither Amy nor the others had mentioned this possibility, yet it seemed so obvious now, once she'd thought of it, so impossible to overlook. They weren't coming, she realized suddenly, with the weight of certainty: no one was coming. And if this were true, then there was no hope. Not for Pablo, certainly, nor for the rest of them. And the Mayans must have understood this-it was the source of their boredom, their lassitude-they knew that it was simply a matter of waiting for events to unfold. Nothing was asked of them but that they guard the clearing. Thirst and hunger and the vine would do the rest, as they had so many times before.

Amy stopped taking pictures. She felt dizzy, almost drunk; she had to sit down, dropping into the dirt at the foot of the trail. It's only the sun, she told herself. My empty stomach. She was lying, though, and she knew it. The sun, her hunger, they had nothing to do with it. What she was feeling was fear. She tried to distract herself from this realization, taking deep breaths, fussing with her camera. It was just a cheap point- and-shoot; she'd bought it more than ten years ago, with money she'd earned as a baby-sitter. Jeff had given her a digital camera for the trip, but she'd made him take it back. She was too attached to this one to think of relinquishing it yet. It wasn't very reliable-it took bad pictures more often than not, sun-bleached or shadowed, and almost always blurrily out of focus-but Amy knew she'd have to break it or lose it or have it stolen before she'd accept the prospect of a replacement. She checked how many shots she had left-three out of thirty-six. That would be it, then; she hadn't brought any extra rolls, hadn't thought they'd be gone long enough to need them. It seemed odd to think that there was an exact number of pictures she'd taken in her life, and that nearly all of them had been with this camera. There were x number of her parents, x of trees and monuments and sunsets and dogs, x of Jeff and Stacy. And, if what she was feeling just now was correct-if the Mayans were correct, if Jeff was correct-then it was possible that there were only three more to take in her entire life. Amy tried to decide what they should be. There ought to be a group shot, she supposed, using the timer, all of them clustered around Pablo on his backboard. And one of her and Stacy, of course, arm in arm, the last in the series. And then-

'Are you okay?'

Amy turned, and there Stacy was, standing over her, with that makeshift umbrella on her shoulder. She looked wretched-gaunt and greasy-haired. Her mouth was trembling, and her hands, too, making the umbrella rattle softly, as if in a slight breeze.

Am I okay? Amy thought, struggling for an honest answer. Her dizziness had been followed by an odd sense of calm, a feeling of resignation. She wasn't like Jeff, wasn't a fighter. Or maybe she simply couldn't fool herself as easily as he did. The threat of dying here didn't fill her with an urgency to be up and doing; it made her tired, made her feel like lying down, as if to hurry the process along. 'I guess so,' she said. And then, because Stacy looked so much worse than she herself felt: 'Are you?'

Stacy shook her head. She gestured behind her, up the hill. 'They're…you know…' She trailed off, as if unable to find the words. She licked her lips, which had become deeply cracked in the past twenty-four hours-chapped, rawly split-a castaway's lips. When she tried again, her voice was a whisper. 'They've started.'

'Started what?'

'Cutting off his legs.'

'What're you talking about?' Amy asked. Though she knew, of course.

'Pablo's,' Stacy whispered, lifting her eyebrows very high, as if this news were a surprise to her, too. 'They're using the knife.'

Amy stood up without knowing what she intended to do. She didn't feel herself reacting yet, was numb to the news. But she must've been feeling something, because her expression changed in some way. She could see Stacy reacting to it, stepping back from her, looking scared.

'I shouldn't have said yes, should I?' Stacy asked.

'Yes to what?'

'We voted on it, and I-'

'Why didn't anyone tell me?'

'You were down here. Jeff said it only mattered if there was a tie. But there wasn't. Eric said yes, and then I…' There was that same frightened expression again. She stepped forward now, reached out to clutch Amy's forearm. 'I shouldn't have, should I? You and Mathias and I-we could've stopped them.'

Amy couldn't bring herself to accept that this was happening. She didn't believe that it was possible to cut someone's legs off with a knife, didn't believe that Jeff would ever attempt such a thing. Perhaps they'd only been talking about it, were still talking about it now; perhaps she could stop them if she hurried. She pulled herself free of Stacy's grip. 'Stay here,' she said. 'Watch for the Greeks. Okay?'

Stacy nodded, still with that fear in her face, that trembling coming and going in the muscles around her mouth. She sat down, dropping awkwardly in the center of the path, as if some supporting string had been