had, and Pablo, that it was only the three of them now. She reached for Mathias's hand, half-worried he might not let her take it, but he did, and they started forward like that, in silence.
They moved along the base of the hill, keeping close to the vines, trudging through the mud. They didn't talk. The bald Mayan followed them, accompanied by the two young bowmen. It wasn't very far; it didn't take long to get there.
Mathias crouched beside the little mound, started to pull the tendrils from it, slowly revealing Jeff's body. He was still recognizable, only partially eaten, as if the vine had curbed its hunger, wanting them to know, without any doubt, that Jeff was dead. He was lying on his stomach, stretched out, his arms above his head; it looked like he'd been dragged there by his feet. Mathias rolled him over. There were wounds on his throat, one on either side, and his shirt was completely saturated with blood. The flesh had been stripped from the bottom half of his face, revealing his teeth and jawbone, but his eyes were untouched. They were open, staring cloudily up at them. Stacy had to look away.
She was startled by how calm she was acting; it frightened her.
Mathias unbuckled Jeff's watch from his wrist. Then he reached into his pocket, removed his wallet. There was a silver ring on Jeff's right hand, and Mathias retrieved this, too. He had to work at it-tugging-before it finally slipped free.
Stacy could remember going with Amy to buy the ring. They'd found it in a pawnshop in Boston. Amy had presented it to Jeff on the anniversary of their first date. Over the years that followed, Stacy and she had spent many hours trying to imagine its original owner-what he'd been like, how he'd ever managed to reach the point where he'd needed to pawn such a beautiful object. They'd created a whole character out of this fantasy, a failed musician, a sometimes junkie, sometimes pusher, whose great, perhaps apocryphal claim to fame was that he'd once sold Miles Davis an ounce of heroin. They'd given him a name, Thaddeus Fremont, and whenever they glimpsed an older, downtrodden man shuffling through the world, they'd nudge each other and whisper, 'Look- there's Thaddeus. He's searching for his ring.'
Mathias held out Jeff's things to her, and she took them from him.
'I should've gotten Henrich's, too,' he said. 'He wore a pendant-a good-luck charm.' He touched his chest, showing her where it had hung. Then he spent a moment staring along the clearing, as if he were thinking of going to fetch it now. But when he stood up, it was to turn back toward the trail.
They set off together, walking side by side-once more, in silence. Stacy's feet were caked in mud; it felt as if she were wearing a pair of heavy boots.
'Not that it worked,' Mathias said.
She turned, glanced at him. 'Not that what worked?'
'His good-luck charm.'
Stacy couldn't think how to react to this. She knew it was a joke, or an attempt at one, but the idea of laughing, or even smiling, in response to it seemed abominable. The humming had returned inside her skull; she was having trouble suddenly keeping her eyes open. For some reason, talking made them ache. She kept walking, her arms folded across her chest, hugging herself, Jeff's watch gripped in one hand, his wallet and ring in the other. She waited for enough time to pass so that it could seem as if Mathias hadn't spoken-until they were nearly at the trail again-and then she said, 'What do we do now?'
'Go back to the tent, I guess. Try to rest.'
'Shouldn't one of us watch for the Greeks?'
Mathias shook his head. 'Not for another hour or so.'
Stacy's mind shifted toward the tent, the little clearing. She thought of Pablo on his backboard, the agony he'd suffered there. She thought of herself, how she'd bent to collect Amy's scattered bones that morning, so casually, as if she were tidying up after a party.
Those words were inside her head again:
Without any warning, she started to cry. It was like a coughing fit-two dozen full-bodied sobs-they came and went in less than a minute. Mathias waited beside her till they passed. Then he rested his hand on her shoulder.
'Do you want to sit for a moment?' he asked.
Stacy lifted her eyes, looked about them. They were standing in four inches of mud. To their right, the hillside climbed steeply upward, swathed in its vine. To their left, midway across the clearing, stood the three Mayans, watching them. She shook her head, wiped at her face. 'Eric's dying, isn't he?' she said. 'It's inside him, and he's going to die.'
Her hands had opened as she'd sobbed; she'd dropped Jeff's watch, his wallet and ring. Mathias crouched to retrieve them. They were muddy now, and he tried to wipe them clean on his pants.
'I don't know if I can handle it, Mathias. Watching him die.'
Mathias slid Jeff's ring into the wallet. His hands were bleeding, she noticed, the skin cracked and scored from the vine's sap. His clothes were hanging off him in shreds. His stubble was thickening into a beard, and it made him seem older. He nodded. 'No,' he said. 'Of course not.'
Stacy turned, stared toward the three Mayans. They had a way of watching her without ever meeting her gaze. She assumed this was something they'd consciously learned to do, a trick to make their duty here less arduous on themselves. It seemed to her that it would have to be much harder to kill someone once you'd looked them in the eyes. 'What do you think they'd do if we stepped forward now?' she asked. 'If we just kept walking, right at them?'
Mathias shrugged. The answer was obvious, of course. 'Shoot us.'
'Maybe we should do it. Maybe we should just get it over with.'
Mathias watched her; he seemed to be giving the idea serious consideration. But then he shook his head. 'Someone's going to come, Stacy. Eventually. How can we say for certain that it won't be today?'
'But it might not be. Right? It might not be for weeks. Or months. Or ever.'
Mathias didn't answer; he just stared at her. From the first moment they'd met, she'd found his gaze-so somber, so unflinching-a little frightening. After a few seconds, she had to look away. He reached and took her hand then, and, still not speaking, led her back along the clearing to the trail.
Eric could feel the vine moving about inside his body. It was in the small of his back, his left armpit, his right shoulder. The knife lay ten feet away from him-mud-stained, still damp with his own blood. He'd assumed that he'd immediately begin to cut himself, as soon as Stacy and Mathias left the clearing, but then the moment arrived and he'd discovered he was too scared to do it. He'd already spilled a terrifying amount of blood-he could just look at his body and see this-and he wasn't certain how much more he could afford to lose.
He sat up, took a deep breath, then folded into himself, coughing dryly. There was no phlegm, just the sense of something residing in his chest that shouldn't be there, something his body was trying, unsuccessfully, to expel. Eric had been battling this cough all night; it seemed strange to him that he shouldn't have realized earlier what its source was. It was the vine, of course-he was certain of this. Yes, there was a tendril growing inside his lungs.
He coughed again.
It would've been easier, he believed, if Stacy had stayed with him. She could've talked to him, argued. He might've listened-who could say? And if he hadn't, she could've always grabbed at his arm, held him back. But she wasn't there-she'd abandoned him-so there was no one to stop him now when he stood up and retrieved the knife.
He sat back down, holding it in his lap.
He tried his word games again, his imaginary vocabulary test, but he couldn't remember what letter he'd reached last. The shiftings inside his body made it hard to concentrate. It seemed important that he keep track of them.
