The Ruins

'But-'

He turned toward Stacy, gestured for her to come and see for herself. 'It's the vine,' he said.

Mathias and Stacy both got up and went to sniff at the plants' tiny red flowers; Eric didn't need to. He could tell just from their expressions that Jeff was right, that, somehow, the vine had begun to give off the odor of freshly baked bread. Stacy returned to Amy's body, sat beside it. She pressed her hand over her mouth and nose, trying to block the smell. 'I can't handle this, Jeff. I really can't.'

'We'll eat some,' Jeff said. 'We'll split the orange.'

Stacy was shaking her head. 'It's not going to help.'

Jeff didn't answer. He vanished into the tent.

'How can it do that?' Stacy asked. She glanced from Eric to Mathias and then back again, as if expecting one of them to have some explanation. Neither of them did, of course. She seemed like she was about to cry; she was pinching her nose shut, breathing through her mouth, panting slightly.

After a moment, Jeff reappeared.

'It's doing it on purpose, isn't it?' Stacy asked.

No one answered her. Jeff sat down, started to work on the orange. Eric and Mathias watched him, the fruit slowly emerging from beneath its peel.

'Why now?' Stacy persisted. 'Why didn't it-'

'It wanted to wait until we were hungry,' Jeff said. 'Until our defenses were low.' He sectioned the fruit, counting out the segments; there were ten of them. 'If it had started earlier, it wouldn't have bothered us as much. We would've gotten used to it. But now…' He shrugged. 'It's the same reason it waited to start mimicking our voices. It waits till we're weak before it reveals its strength.'

'Why bread?' Stacy asked.

'It must've smelled it at some point. Someone must've baked bread here, or heated it at least. Because it imitates things-things it's heard, things it's smelled. Like a chameleon. A mockingbird.'

'But it's a plant. '

Jeff glanced up at her. 'How do you know that?'

'What do you mean?'

'How do you know it's a plant?'

'What else would it be? It's got leaves, and flowers, and-'

'But it moves. And it thinks. So maybe it just looks like a plant.' He smiled at her, as if pleased, once again, with the vine's many accomplishments. 'There's no way for us to know, is there?'

The smell changed, grew sharper, more intense. Eric was reaching for the word inside his head when Mathias said it: 'Meat.'

Stacy lifted her face skyward, sniffing. 'Steak.'

Mathias shook his head. 'Hamburgers.'

'Pork chops,' Eric countered.

Jeff waved them into silence. 'Don't.'

'Don't what?' Stacy asked.

'Talk about it. It'll only make it worse.'

They fell silent. Not pork chops, Eric thought. Hot dogs. The plant was still inside him; he was certain of this. Stitched inside him, biding its time. But maybe it didn't matter. It could mimic sounds and smells; it could think, and it could move. Inside his body or outside, the vine was going to triumph.

Jeff divided the orange into four equal piles, two and a half segments apiece. 'We should eat the peel, too,' he said. And then he portioned that out also. He gestured at Stacy. 'You choose first.'

Stacy stood up, approached the little mounds of fruit. She crouched over them, appraising each ration, measuring with her eyes. Finally, she reached down and scooped one up.

'Eric?' Jeff said.

Eric held out his hand. 'I don't care. Just give me one.'

Jeff shook his head. 'Point.'

Eric pointed at a pile, and Jeff picked it up, carried it to him. Two and a half slices of orange, a small handful of peels. If there'd been five of them still, there'd only be two segments apiece. That Amy's absence could be measured in such a paltry manner, half a slice of orange, seemed terribly sad to Eric. He put one of the sections into his mouth and shut his eyes, not chewing yet, just holding it on his tongue.

'Mathias?' Jeff said.

Eric heard the German stand up, go to claim his ration. Then everything was silent, each of them retreating to some inner place as they savored what would have to pass for their breakfast this morning.

The smell changed again. Apple pie, Eric thought, still not chewing, and struggling suddenly, inexplicably, against the threat of tears. How does it know what apple pie smells like? He could hear the others beginning to eat, the wet sound of their mouths working. He pulled his hat down over his eyes.

A hint of cinnamon, too.

Eric chewed, swallowed, then placed a piece of orange peel in his mouth. He wasn't crying; he'd fought off the impulse. But it was still there-he could feel it.

Whipped cream, even.

He chewed the tiny strip of peel, swallowed, slipped another one into his mouth. He could see the pie's crust in his mind-slightly burned on the bottom. And it wasn't whipped cream; it was ice cream. Vanilla ice cream, slowly melting across the plate-a small tin plate, with a mug of black coffee sitting beside it. Imagining this, Eric felt that urge to weep again. He had to squeeze his eyes shut, hold his breath, wait for it to recede, while the same four words kept running through his head.

How does it know? How does it know? How does it know?

There are some things we need to figure out,' Jeff said.

The orange had been divided, then eaten, peel and all. Afterward, they'd passed the jug of water around their little circle, and he'd told the others to drink their fill. Water wasn't his chief concern anymore; after the previous night's downpour, he felt confident it would rain again-almost daily, he believed. And he knew it would help morale if they could manage to eliminate at least that one discomfort. So they ate their meager breakfast, then drank water until their stomachs swelled.

Later, they could try to sew a pouch out of the leftover blue nylon. Maybe they'd even manage to collect enough rain to wash themselves. That, too, would help lift their spirits.

They weren't sated, of course. How could they be? An orange, split between the four of them. Jeff tried to think of it as fasting, a hunger strike: how long could these last? In his head, he had a picture, a newspaper photograph, black and white, of three young men staring defiantly from their cots-weak, emaciated, but undeniably alive, their eyes ablaze with it. Jeff struggled to see the headline, to remember the story that went with the picture. Why couldn't he do this? He wanted a number, wanted to know how long. Weeks, certainly-weeks with nothing but water.

Fifty days?

Sixty?

Seventy?

But eventually, there had to come a moment past which fasting blurred into starving, and in Jeff's mind this was connected in some way to their meager store of provisions, to its continued existence, no matter how little they might actually be consuming. He'd convinced himself that as long as some small scrap of food remained for them to portion out, they'd be okay; they'd be in control. Because they were rationing, not starving.

Denial. A fairy tale.

And then there were the things he knew and couldn't hide from, the things he'd read about over the years, the details he'd absorbed. At some point, their hunger pangs would disappear. Their bodies would start to break down muscle tissue, start to digest the fatty acids in their livers, the machine consuming itself for fuel. Their metabolic rates would fall, their pulses slow, their blood pressures drop. They'd feel cold even in the sun, lethargic. And all this would happen relatively quickly, too. Two weeks, three at the most. Then things would rapidly get worse: