The Ruins

to Eric now-the donkey relieving itself, the girls grabbing at each other, the sound of their laughter.

Thank you, he was still struggling to say. I'm sorry. I love you.

And the pain was slowly easing…everything was…moving further away…further away…further away…

The vine claimed his body. Stacy didn't try to fight it; she knew there was no point.

The sun was directly overhead; she guessed she had six more hours or so before it would begin to set. She remembered Mathias's words-'How can we say for certain that it won't be today?'-and tried to draw some hope from them. She'd be okay as long as it was light. It was the dark that frightened her, the prospect of lying alone in that tent, too terrified to sleep.

She shouldn't have been the one to survive, she knew; it should've been Jeff. He wouldn't have been scared to watch the sun start its long journey westward. Food and water and shelter-he would've had a plan for all of these, different from hers, which wasn't really a plan at all.

She sat just outside the tent and ate the remaining supplies-the pretzels, the two protein bars, the raisins, the tiny packets of saltines-washing them down with the can of Coke, the bottles of iced tea.

Everything-she finished everything.

She stared out across the clearing and thought of the many others who'd died in this place, these strangers whose mounds of bones dotted the hillside. Each of them had gone through his or her own ordeal here. So much pain, so much desperation, so much death.

Fleeing headlong from a burning building-could that be called a plan?

Stacy could remember how they'd talked about suicide late one night, all four of them, more drunk than not, choosing prospective methods for themselves. She'd been slouched on her bed, leaning against Eric. Amy and Jeff had been on the floor, playing a halfhearted game of backgammon. Jeff, ever efficient, had told them about pills and a plastic bag-it was both painless and reliable, he claimed. Eric proposed a shotgun, its barrel in his mouth, a toe on the trigger. Amy had been drawn to the idea of falling from a great height, but rather than jumping, she wanted someone to push her, and they argued back and forth over whether this could count as suicide. Finally, she surrendered, choosing carbon monoxide instead, a car idling in an empty garage. Stacy's fantasy was more elaborate: a rowboat, far out to sea, weights to bear her body down. It was the idea of vanishing she found so attractive, the mystery she'd leave behind.

They'd been joking, of course. Playing.

Stacy could feel the caffeine from the Coke, the iced tea; she was becoming jittery with it. She held her hands up before her face, and they were shaking.

There was no rowboat here, of course, no idling car or shotgun or bottle of pills. She had the drop into the shaft. She had the rope hanging from the windlass. She had the Mayans waiting at the bottom of the hill with their arrows and their bullets.

And then there was the knife, too.

How can we say for certain that it won't be today?

She found her sunshade, used the roll of duct tape to repair the damage the storm had wrought upon it. She retrieved the bottle of tequila from the center of the clearing. Then she set off down the trail.

Carrying the knife.

The Mayans turned to appraise her as she approached: her bloodstained clothes, her trembling hands. She sat at the edge of the clearing, the knife in her lap, the sunshade propped against her shoulder. She uncapped the bottle of tequila, took a long swallow.

It would've been nice if she could've figured out a way to fashion some sort of warning for those who were yet to come. She would've liked that, to be the one whose cleverness and foresight was responsible for saving a stranger's life. But she'd seen that pan with its single word of caution scraped across its bottom; she knew others had tried and failed at this, and she saw no reason why she should be any different. All she could hope was that the mute fact of her presence here, the low mound of her bones sitting at the path's mouth, would signal the proper note of peril.

She drank. She waited. Above her, the sun eased steadily westward.

No, you couldn't really call it a plan at all.

Stacy spilled some of the tequila onto the knife's blade, scrubbed at it with her shirt. It was silly, she knew- both pointless and hopeless-but she wanted it to be clean.

She grew calmer as the day drew toward dusk. Her hands stopped shaking. She was scared of many things-of what might come afterward, most of all-but not of the pain. The pain didn't frighten her.

When the sun finally touched the western horizon, the sky abruptly changed, taking on a reddish hue, and Stacy knew that she'd waited long enough. The Greeks weren't coming, not today. She thought about the approaching darkness, pictured herself once more alone in the tent, listening to whatever noises the night might offer, and she knew she didn't have a choice.

She thought briefly about praying-for what, forgiveness?-only to realize she had no one to pray to. She didn't believe in God. All her life she'd been saying that, instinctively, unthinkingly, but now, for the first time-about to do what she was about to do-she could look inside and claim the words with total assurance. She didn't believe.

She started with her left arm.

The first cut was tentative, exploratory. Even here, at the very end, Stacy persisted in being herself, never leaping when she could wade. It hurt more than she'd anticipated. That was okay, though-that was fine-she knew she could bear it. And the pain made it real in a way that it hadn't been before, gave these last moments an appropriate heft. She cut deeper the second time, starting at the base of her wrist and drawing the blade firmly toward her elbow.

The blood came in a rush.

She switched the knife to her left hand. It was hard to get a good grip-her fingers didn't seem to want to close, and they were slick with blood now-but she managed it finally, pressed the blade to her right wrist, slashed downward.

Perhaps it was just the fading light, but her blood seemed darker than she'd expected-not nearly as bright as Eric's or Mathias's-inky, almost black. She rested her wrists in her lap, and it flowed down over her legs, feeling hot at first, then gradually cooler as it began to pool around her. It was odd to think that this liquid was part of her, that she was becoming less and less for its steady loss.

Who am I? she thought.

The Mayans were watching. Somehow they must've sensed that she was the last, because the women were already beginning to break camp, gathering things up, rolling them into bundles.

Stacy had assumed her heart would be racing, pumping faster and faster with each passing second, but it turned out to be just the opposite. Everything-inside and out-seemed to be steadily slowing. She was astonished by how serene she felt.

Am I still me?

The vines came snaking toward her. She heard them start to suck at the puddled blood.

She should've cut the rope off the windlass, she realized. Why hadn't she thought to do this? She tried to reassure herself that it didn't matter, that her corpse was going to remain here as a sentinel, warning any future visitors away, but she knew it wasn't true, could sense it even before the tendrils began to grab at her, dragging her off the trail. She fought as best she could, right up to the very end, struggling to rise, but it was too late. It had gone too far; she no longer had the strength. The vine held her down-covered her, buried her. She died with a sensation of drowning, with the memory of that rowboat, far out to sea, those weights pulling her ever deeper, the green waves closing above her head.

The Greeks arrived three days later.

They'd taken the bus to Coba, then hired the yellow pickup truck to ferry them out to the trail. They'd made three new friends in Cancun-Brazilians-whom they'd brought along for the adventure. The Brazilians' names were Antonio, Ricardo, and Sofia. Juan and Don Quixote had both become deeply smitten with Sofia, though it appeared