The Ruins

Stacy made no attempt to help. She watched, feeling increasingly ill. She was hungover, of course; she was dizzy and bloated and achingly nauseous. And Amy was dead. Jeff had wanted to eat her body, so that the rest of them might, in turn, keep from dying, but Stacy had stopped him. She tried to feel some pleasure in her victory, yet it wouldn't come to her.

There was an odd moment of hesitation before the boys zipped shut the bag, as if they sensed the symbolic importance of this act, its finality-that first shovelful of soil thumping down onto the casket's lid. Stacy could see Amy's face through the opening; it had already taken on a noticeable puffiness, a faintly greenish tinge. Her eyes had drifted open once again. In the past, Stacy knew, they used to rest coins upon people's eyes. Or did they put coins in the mouth, to pay the ferryman? Stacy wasn't certain; she'd never bothered to pay attention to details like that, and was always regretting it, the half knowing, which felt worse than not knowing at all, the constant sense that she had things partly right, but not right enough to make a difference. Coins on the eyes seemed silly, though. Because wouldn't they fall off as the casket was carried to the graveyard, jostled and tilted, then lowered into its hole? The corpses would lie beneath that weight of dirt for all eternity, open-eyed, with a pair of coins resting uselessly on the wooden planks beside them.

No casket for Amy-no coins, either. Nothing to pay the ferryman.

We should have a ceremony, Stacy thought. She tried to imagine what this might entail, but all she could come up with was a vague image of someone standing over an open grave, reading something from the Bible. She could picture the mound of dirt beside the hole, the raw pine of the coffin bleeding little amber beads of sap. But of course they didn't have any of this, not Bible nor hole nor coffin. All they had was Amy's body and a musty-smelling sleeping bag, so Stacy remained silent, watching as Jeff leaned forward, finally, to drag the zipper slowly shut.

Eric pulled his hat back over his face. Mathias sat down, closed his eyes. Jeff vanished into the tent. Stacy wondered if he was fleeing them, if he wanted to be alone so that he could weep or keen or bang his head against the earth, but then, almost instantly, he reappeared, carrying a tiny plastic bottle. He crouched right in front of her, startling her; she almost backed away, only managed to stop herself at the last instant. 'You need to put this on your feet,' he said.

He held out the little bottle. Stacy squinted at it, struggling to decipher its label. Sunscreen. Jeff's khaki shirt was stained through with perspiration, salt-rimed around the collar. She could smell him, the stench of his sweat, and it gave strength to her nausea; she was conscious of the chewed fruit in her stomach, those scraps of peel, how tenuous their residence within her body was, how easily surrendered. She wanted Jeff to leave, wished he'd stand up again, walk off. But he didn't move; he just crouched there, watching as she hurriedly squirted some of the lotion onto her palm, then leaned forward to smear it across her right foot, careful to avoid the thin leather straps of her sandal.

'Come on,' Jeff said. 'Do it right.'

'Right?' she asked. She had no idea what he was talking about; all her attention was focused on her effort not to vomit. If she vomited, the vine would slither forth and steal those slices of orange from her, those pieces of peel, and she knew there'd be nothing to replace them.

Jeff grabbed the bottle from her. 'Take off your sandals.'

She clumsily removed them, then watched as he began to massage a large glob of sunscreen into her skin. 'Are you angry with me?' she asked.

'Angry?' He wasn't looking at her, just her feet, and it frightened Stacy, made her feel as if she weren't quite present. She wanted him to look at her.

'For, you know…' She waved toward the sleeping bag. 'Stopping you.'

Jeff didn't answer immediately. He started in on her second foot, and a drop of sweat fell from his nose onto her shin, making her shiver. Pablo's breathing was worsening again, that deep, watery rasp returning. It was the only sound in the clearing, and it took effort not to hear it. She could sense Jeff choosing his words. 'I just want to save us,' he said. 'That's all. Keep us from dying here. And food…' He trailed off, shrugged. 'It'll come down to food in the end. I don't see any way around that.'

He capped the bottle, tossed it aside, gestured for her to pull her sandals back on. Stacy stared at her feet. They were already burned a bright pink. It'll hurt in the shower, she thought, and had to fight back tears for a moment, so certain was she, abruptly, that there wasn't going to be a shower, not for her, not for any of them, because it wasn't only Amy; no one was going to make it home from here.

'What about you?' Jeff asked.

'Me?'

'Are you angry?'

A humming had risen in Stacy's skull-hunger or fatigue or fear. She couldn't have said which, knew only that one would account for it just as well as any other. She was far too worn out for anything as vigorous as anger to have much hold over her; she'd been here too long, gone through too much. She shook her head.

'Good,' Jeff said. And then, as if he were announcing a prize she'd won for choosing the correct answer: 'Why don't you take the first shift down the hill.'

Stacy didn't want to do this. Yet even as she sat there searching for a reason to refuse him, she knew she had no choice. Amy was gone, and it seemed like this ought to change everything. But the world was carrying on, and Jeff was moving with it, worrying about sunscreen and the Greeks-planning, always planning-because that was what it meant to be alive.

Am I alive? she wondered.

Jeff picked up the water, held it out to her. 'Hydrate first.'

She took the jug from him, uncapped it, drank. It helped her nausea enough for her to stand.

Jeff handed her the sunshade. 'Three hours,' he said. 'Okay? Then Mathias will relieve you.'

Stacy nodded, and then he was turning away, already moving on to his next task. There was nothing left for her to do but leave. So that was what she did, the sunscreen making her feet feel slippery in her sandals, that humming sound rising and falling in her head. I'm okay, she said to herself. I can do this. I'm alive. And she kept repeating the words, mantra-like, as she made her way slowly down the trail. I'm alive. I'm alive. I'm alive…

Eric was lying on his back in the center of the clearing. He could feel the sun against his body-his face, his arms, his legs-hot enough to carry a trace of pain. There was pleasure in it, too, though- pleasure not despite the pain but because of it. He was getting a sunburn, and what could be so terrible about that? It was normal; it could happen to anyone-lying beside a pool, napping on a beach-and Eric found a definite measure of reassurance in this. Yes, he wanted to be sunburned, wanted to be in the grip of that mundane discomfort, believing that it might somehow obscure the far more extraordinary stirrings of his body, the sense that his wounds would rip open if he were to move too suddenly, the suspicion-no, the certainty-that the vine was still lurking within his body, sewed up tight by Jeff's stitches, interred but not dead, merely dormant, seedlike, biding its time. With his eyes shut, his mind focused on the surface of his body, the burning tautness of his skin, Eric had stumbled upon a temporary refuge, all the more alluring for its tenuousness. But he knew he couldn't take it too far. There was an element of balance to the process, a tipping point he had to avoid. He was exhausted-he kept having to resist the urge to yawn-he was certain that if he relaxed even slightly, he'd drop into sleep. And sleep was his enemy here; sleep was when the vine laid claim to him.

He forced open his eyes, rose onto his elbow. Jeff and Mathias were tending to Pablo's stumps. They used water from the jug to flush the seared tissue; then Jeff threaded a needle, sterilized it with a match. Pablo still had half a dozen blood vessels leaking their tiny rivulets of red. Jeff was bending now to stitch them shut. Eric couldn't bear to watch; he lowered himself onto his back again. The smell of the match alone was too much for him, bringing back as it did the previous day's horror-Jeff pressing that heated pan against the Greek's flesh, the aroma of cooking spreading across the hilltop.

He should go into the tent, he knew; he should get out of the sun. But even as he thought this, he was shutting his eyes. He heard his own voice inside his head: I'll be okay. Jeff is right there. He'll watch over me. He'll keep me safe. The words just came; Eric wasn't conscious of