The Ruins

It was Amy, Eric knew. She was vomiting.

Jeff turned from the bag, the tangle of vine, the loosened bones. There was a clenched immobility to his face. Eric could see how hard he was working not to cry. He wanted to say something, wanted to comfort him, but Jeff was moving too quickly, and Eric's mind wasn't supple enough; he couldn't find the proper words. He watched Jeff stoop to retrieve the remaining piece of fruit, then rise, start toward the trail. He was just exiting the clearing when Amy's voice emerged, very faintly, through the gagging: Help me.

Jeff stopped, turned back toward Eric.

Help me, Jeff.

Jeff shook his head. He looked helpless suddenly, startlingly young, a boy fighting tears. 'I didn't know,' he said. 'I swear. It was too dark. I couldn't see her.' He didn't wait for Eric's response; he spun away and strode quickly off.

Eric stood there, staring after him-Stacy still pressed tightly against his body, weeping-while Amy's voice grew fainter and fainter, pursuing Jeff down the hill.

Help me, Jeff… Help me… Help me…

Jeff hadn't gone more than a hundred feet before the vine fell silent. He would've thought he'd find some relief in this, but it wasn't true. The quiet was even worse, the way the voice stopped so abruptly, the inexplicable feeling of aloneness that followed in its wake. It was the sound of Amy dying, of course-that was what Jeff was hearing-her voice cut off in mid-cry. He felt the tears coming and knew they were too strong for him this time, that he had no choice but to submit. He crouched in the center of the trail, folded his arms across his knees, buried his face within them.

It was absurd, but he didn't want the vine to know he was crying. He had the instinct to hide himself, as if he feared the plant might find some pleasure in his suffering. He wept but didn't sob, restricting himself to a furtive sort of gasping. He kept his head bowed the entire time. When he finally managed to quiet, he rose back to his feet, using his shirtsleeve to wipe clean the dampness, the snot. His legs felt shaky, his chest strangely hollow, but he could sense that he was stronger for the purging, and calmer, too. Still grief-stricken-how could he not be?-still guilt-ridden and bereft, but steadier nonetheless.

He started down the hill again.

Above him, to the west, clouds were continuing to build, darkening ominously. A storm was coming-a big one, it appeared. Jeff guessed they had another hour, maybe two, before it reached them. They'd have to huddle together in the tent, he supposed, and it made him anxious, the thought of all four of them in that confined space, time stretching slowly out. There was also the question of Pablo. They couldn't just leave him in the rain, could they? Jeff searched vainly for an answer to this dilemma; he imagined the backboard dragged inside with them, the wind whipping at the nylon walls, water dripping from the fabric above, while that terrible stench rose off the Greek's body, and he realized immediately that it wasn't possible. Yet no other solution came. Perhaps it won't rain, he thought, knowing even as he did so that he was acting like a child, no better than the rest of them, passively hoping that whatever he found too horrible to contemplate might simply go away if he could only avert his eyes for a sufficient stretch of time.

Mathias was sitting cross-legged at the bottom of the hill, facing the tree line. He didn't hear Jeff approach, or, hearing him, didn't bother to turn. Jeff sat beside him, held out the halved banana. 'Lunch,' he said.

Mathias took the fruit without a word. Jeff watched him begin to eat. It was Friday; Mathias and Henrich were supposed to have flown back to Germany today. Jeff and the others would've given them their E-mail addresses, their phone numbers; they would've made vague but heartfelt promises to visit. There would've been hugs in the lobby; Amy would've taken their picture. Then the four of them would've stood together at the big window, waving, as the van pulled away, bearing the two brothers toward the airport.

Jeff wiped his face on his sleeve again, worried that there might be some residue of his weeping still visible there, tear tracks down his dirt-smeared cheeks. It seemed clear that Mathias hadn't heard the vine, and Jeff was surprised by the degree of relief he felt in this. He didn't want the German to know, he realized, was frightened of his judgment.

She called me. She called my name.

The Mayans were stringing up a plastic tarp just inside the tree line-to provide some shelter from the coming storm, Jeff assumed. There were four of them working at it-three men and a woman. Two other men sat near the smoldering campfire, facing Jeff and Mathias, their bows in their laps. One of them kept blowing his nose in a dirty-looking bandanna, then holding the cloth up to examine whatever he'd expelled. Jeff leaned forward, peered left and right along the corridor of cleared ground, but he could see no sign of their leader, the bald man with the pistol on his belt. They were probably working in shifts, he supposed, some of them guarding the hill, while the others remained back at the village, tending to their fields.

'You'd think they'd just kill us,' he said.

Mathias paused in his eating, turned to look at him.

'It takes so much effort, sitting here like this. Why not just slaughter us from the start and be done with it?'

'Maybe they feel it would be a sin,' Mathias said.

'But they're killing us by keeping us here, aren't they? And if we tried to leave, they wouldn't hesitate to shoot us.'

'That's self-defense, though, isn't it? From their perspective? Not murder.'

Murder, Jeff thought. Was that what was happening here? Had Amy been murdered? And if so, by whom? The Mayans? The vine? Himself? 'How long do you think it's been going on?' he asked.

'It?'

Jeff waved about them, at the hillside, the cleared ground. 'The vine. Where do you think it came from?'

Mathias started in on the banana's skin, frowning slightly, thinking. Jeff waited while he chewed. There was a trio of large black birds shifting about in the trees above the Mayans' tarp. Crows, Jeff guessed. Carrion birds, drawn by the smell of Pablo or Amy, but too wise to venture any nearer. Mathias swallowed, wiped his mouth with his hand. 'The mine, I guess,' he said. 'Don't you think? Someone must've dug it up.'

'But how did they contain it? How did they have time to seal off the hill? Because they would've had to hack down all this jungle, plow the dirt with salt. Think how long that must've taken.' He shook his head-it didn't seem possible.

'Maybe you're wrong about them,' Mathias said. 'Maybe it isn't about quarantining the vine. Maybe they know how to kill it but choose not to.'

'Because?'

'Maybe it would just keep coming back. And this is a way of holding it at bay, confining it. A sort of truce they've stumbled upon.'

'But if it's not about quarantining it, why won't they let us leave?'

'Maybe it's just a taboo they have among themselves, passed down through the generations, a way of ensuring that the vine never escapes its bounds. If you step into it, you can't come back. And then, when outsiders started to arrive, they simply applied the taboo to them, too.' He thought about this for a moment, staring off toward the Mayans. 'Or it could even be religious, right? They see the hill as sacred. And once you step on it, you can't leave. Maybe we're some sort of sacrifice.'

'But if-'

'This is just us guessing, Jeff,' Mathias said, sounding fatigued, a little impatient. 'Just talk. It's not worth arguing about.'

They sat together for a stretch, watching the crows flap from branch to branch. The wind was picking up, the storm almost upon them. The Mayans were moving their belongings back into the tree line, beneath the shelter of the tarp. Mathias was right, of course. Theorizing was pointless. The vine was here, and so were they, while the Mayans were over there. And beyond the Mayans, far out of reach, lay the rest of the world. That was all that mattered.

'What about the archaeologists?' Jeff asked.

'What about them?'