The Ruins

He heard the man shout.

He'll miss, Jeff thought. He'll -

The arrow hit him just below his chin, piercing his throat, entering on the left side, exiting on the right, passing completely through his body. Jeff fell to his knees, but he was instantly back up on his feet, thinking, I'm okay; I'm not hurt, while his mouth rapidly filled with blood. He managed three more steps before the next arrow struck him. This one entered his chest, a few inches beneath his armpit, burying itself almost to its fletches. Jeff felt as if he'd been hit with a hammer. His breath left him, and he could sense that he wasn't going to get it back. He fell again, harder this time. He opened his mouth, and blood poured forth from it, a great surging gush splattering down into the mud beneath him. He tried to rise, but he didn't have the strength. His legs wouldn't move; they felt cold and far away, somewhere behind him in the darkness. Everything was becoming increasingly blurry-not just his vision but his thoughts, too. It took him a moment to understand what was grabbing at him. He thought it was one of the Mayans.

But of course that wasn't it at all.

The tendrils had reached out into the clearing and were wrapping themselves around his limbs now, dragging him backward through the mud. He tried to rise once more, managed an awkward sort of push-up before the vine jerked his left arm out from under him. He fell onto the arrow still protruding from his chest, the weight of his body pushing it deeper into himself. The tendrils kept tugging him toward the hillside. The mud beneath him felt oddly warm. It was his blood, Jeff knew. He could hear the vine sucking noisily at it, siphoning it up with its leaves. There were figures looming on the far periphery of his vision, a handful of Mayans, staring down at him, bows still drawn. 'Help me,' he begged, his voice making a gurgling sound as it passed through the blood, which continued to fill his mouth. His words were inaudible, he knew, yet he kept struggling to speak. 'Please…help…me.'

That was all he could manage. Then a tendril covered his lips. Another slipped wetly across his eyes, his ears, and the world seemed to shift back a step-the Mayans peering down at him, the rain, the warmth of his blood-one step and then another, everything retreating, everything but the agony of his wounds, until finally, in the last long moment before the end, all that remained was darkness: darkness and silence and pain.

The rain continued into the night, unabated. The tent's walls became saturated with it; the dripping leaks steadily multiplied. A puddle of water soon covered the entire floor, nearly an inch deep. The three of them sat in it together, in the dark. It was impossible to sleep, of course, so Stacy and Eric passed the time talking.

Eric begged her forgiveness, and she gave it to him. They leaned against each other, embracing. Stacy slid her hand down to his groin, but he couldn't seem to get an erection, and after awhile she gave up. It was warmth she wanted anyway-figurative and literal-not sex. His skin seemed colder than hers, though, markedly so, and the longer they embraced, the more it began to feel as if he were draining the heat from her own flesh, chilling her. When he coughed suddenly, hunching forward, she used it as an excuse to pull away from him.

She tried not to think about Pablo, but she couldn't stop herself. It felt strange to sit there, knowing that the vine was stripping the flesh from his bones, that he'd be a skeleton before morning. Off and on, as the night progressed, Stacy started to weep over this-over her part in it, her failure to protect him. Eric comforted her as best he could, assuring her that it wasn't her fault, that the Greek's death had been a given from the moment he fell down the shaft, that it was a mercy for it finally to be over.

They spoke of Jeff, too, of course, pondering his absence, probing at the various possibilities it presented, returning obsessively to the prospect of his having found a way to flee. And the more they discussed it, the more obvious it began to seem to Stacy. Where else could he possibly be? He was making his way back to Coba even now; before the sun set tomorrow, they'd be rescued. Yes. They weren't going to die here after all.

Mathias remained quiet through all of this. Stacy could sense him in the darkness, four feet away from them; she could tell he was awake. She wanted him to speak, wanted him to join in the construction of their fantasy. His silence seemed to imply doubt, and Stacy felt threatened by this, as if his skepticism might somehow have the power to alter what was happening. She needed him to believe in Jeff's flight, too, needed his help to make it true. It was absurd, she knew, childish and superstitious, but she couldn't shake the feeling, was growing slightly panicky in the face of it.

'Mathias?' she whispered. 'Are you asleep?'

'No,' he replied.

'What do you think? Could he have escaped?'

There was the sound of the rain falling upon the tent, the steady dripping from the nylon above them. Eric kept shifting restlessly about, creating ripples in their little puddle. Stacy wished he would stop. The seconds were ticking past, one after another, and Mathias wasn't answering.

'Mathias?'

'All I know is that he's not here,' he said.

'So he might've run, then. Right? He might've-'

'Don't, Stacy.'

This caught her by surprise. She peered toward him. 'Don't what?'

'If you let yourself hope, and then you're wrong, think how terrible you'll feel. We can't afford that.'

'But if-'

'We'll see in the morning.'

'See what?'

'Whatever there is to see.'

'You mean, you think he might be-'

'Shh. Just wait. It'll be light in a few more hours.'

It was shortly after this that they heard Pablo's breathing start up again. There was that ragged intake of air, that whistling exhalation, then the pause before it all recommenced. Despite herself, knowing better even as she did so, Stacy sprang to her feet. Mathias had also risen; they brushed against each other as they both made their way toward the tent flap. He grabbed at her, holding her wrist, stopping her.

'It's the vine,' he whispered.

'I know,' she said. 'But I want to make sure.'

'I'll do it. You wait here.'

'Why?'

'It wants us to see something, don't you think? Something it's done to him. It's hoping to upset us.'

Outside, there was another rasping inhalation. It sounded exactly like Pablo; even after all she'd witnessed here, it was hard to believe that it wasn't him. But she knew Mathias was right, and knew, too, that she didn't want to glimpse whatever it was the vine had prepared for them out there beneath the lean-to. 'Are you sure?' she asked.

She sensed him nod. He let go of her wrist, moved to the flap, bent to zip it open.

Almost instantly, as soon as he stooped out into the rain, the breathing stopped. Then a man's voice began to shout. He was speaking in a foreign language; it sounded like German to Stacy. Wo ist dein Bruder? Wo ist dein Bruder?

Stacy sat back down. She reached for Eric's hand, found it in the dark, clasped it tightly. 'It's talking about his brother,' she said.

'How can you tell?' Eric asked.

'Listen.'

Dein Bruder ist da. Dein Bruder ist da.

Mathias reappeared, the rain running off him, audibly dripping to the tent's puddled floor. He zipped the flap shut, returned to his spot beside them.

'What happened?' Stacy asked.

He didn't answer.

'Tell me,' she said.

'It's eating him. His face-all the flesh is gone.'

Stacy could sense him hesitating. There's something else, she thought, and she waited for it.