The Ruins (34 page)

 Amy
could hear how short of breath he was. She was, too, and she stood
beside him for a long moment, not moving, struggling to regain herself.

 Jeff
crouched, grabbed the bottle of tequila, uncapped it. He picked up
Pablo's sock, spilled some of the liquor across it.

 "What're
you doing?" she whispered.

 There
was the sound of something stirring now from within the dark mouth of
the shaft, almost inaudible, but growing steadily louder. Jeff started
to stuff Pablo's sock down the neck of the tequila bottle,
using his forefinger to push it deep. The sound kept increasing in
volume, still too soft to hear clearly, but oddly
familiar—like the shuffle of cards—strange and
horrifying and almost human.

 "
Hurry,
Amy
,"
Jeff said.

 She
didn't argue; she reached for the sling, ducked her arms
through it, her head.

 Mathias
called again: "Jeff?"

 "Pull
her up!"

 Amy
tilted her head back, looked. The heads were still visible, peering
down at her from that tiny rectangle of sky. She knew they
couldn't see her in the darkness, though. She saw Mathias cup
his hands around his mouth. "What happened?" he
yelled.

 Jeff
was fumbling with the box of matches. "Now!" he
shouted.

 The
sound was louder—a little louder with every passing
second—and as it climbed in volume, it grew steadily more
familiar. Amy knew what it was; it was in her head, this knowledge, but
just out of reach. She didn't want to hear any more,
didn't want the knowledge to reveal itself. The sling gave a
jerk, and then that creaking began again, dropping toward her from
above, blotting out this other sound, the one she didn't want
to know, and she was in motion, rising into the air, her feet swinging
free of the shaft's floor. Jeff didn't even glance
at her. His gaze moved back and forth, from the box of matches to the
darkness where that sound lurked, even now continuing to gain in
volume, as if intent on following her upward into the light, capturing
her, dragging her back down.

 Beneath
her, Amy saw Jeff's hand flick, a match burst into flame. He
held it to Pablo's sock, the tequila catching instantly,
coming alight with the same pale blue fire as the torch. Jeff rose to
his feet, held the bottle out to his side for a moment, making sure it
was burning steadily. Then, side-armed, like a grenade, he threw it
down the open shaft. Amy heard the bottle shatter, and a glow swept
outward, illuminating Jeff more fully.

 A
Molotov
cocktail,
she
thought.
It seemed odd to her that she should know the name for this; she
pictured Poles throwing them impotently at Russian tanks, a futile,
desperate gesture. Beneath her, Jeff stood perfectly still, staring off
into the shaft; the fire was already dimming, and she kept rising so
steadily. Soon, she knew—quite soon—she'd
lose sight of him altogether. The flames ought to have stopped that
dreadful noise, that sound she recognized yet didn't want to
know, and at first this seemed to be the case, but then the noise
resumed again, more quietly, and yet in a manner that somehow seemed to
envelop her completely. It took Amy a moment to realize that the sound
wasn't coming from beneath her any longer; it was all around
her now, and above her, too. Jeff was slipping from sight, the fire
dying out, the shadows reclaiming him, and as she lifted her eyes to
see how much farther she had to climb, a hint of movement caught her
gaze, held it fast. It was the plants hanging from the walls of the
shaft, paler, more spindly versions of their cousins up above. Their
tiny flowers were opening and closing. This was what was making that
terrible noise, Amy realized—it was coming so much more
softly now, insidiously—the sound she finally had no choice
but to recognize, to acknowledge, the sound she also guessed was being
echoed all across the hillside.

 They're
laughing,
she
thought.

O
nce they'd pulled
them both back up from the shaft, there wasn't much left to
do. Jeff was out of plans, for once; he seemed a little dazed by what
he'd witnessed down there. They carried Pablo back to his
lean-to; then they all sat together—everyone but Stacy, who
was still at the base of the hill, waiting for the Greeks—and
passed around the plastic jug of water. Eric noticed that
Jeff's hands were shaking as he reached to take his allotted
swallow, and he felt an odd sense of pleasure in this. After all, his
own hands were shaking—they had been for quite some time
now—so it felt good to see the others beginning to join
him.
The
miserable misery of the miser,
he thought. For some reason,
he couldn't get the words out of his mind, and he had to keep
resisting the urge to speak them.

 "They
were laughing at us," Amy whispered.

 No
one said anything. Mathias capped the jug, stood up and returned it to
the tent. Jeff had told them what had happened as soon as
he'd emerged from the hole, how it was the plants
who'd been making that cell phone noise, trying to lure them
into a trap, and even this disappointment, with its accompanying
freight of terror, had held some solace for Eric. Because now they were
going
to
see
;
now, having witnessed the vine's power, they were going to
believe him when he said it was still in his body, growing, eating him
from the inside out. He could still feel it, certainly; he
couldn't
stop
feeling it. There was a burrowing sensation in his leg, something small
and wormlike in the flesh beside his shinbone, constantly in motion,
probing and chewing. It seemed to be working its way toward his foot.
And then, higher up, in his chest, there was no movement at all, only a
steady pressure, impossible to ignore. Eric imagined some sort of void
there, just beneath his ribs, a natural cavity within his body that was
slowly being filled by the vine, the plant twisting back upon itself as
it grew, shoving his organs aside, taking up more and more space with
each passing moment. He believed that if he were to cut himself at this
spot, just the smallest of incisions, the plant would tumble outward
into the light, smeared with his blood, like some horrific newborn,
writhing and twisting, its flowers opening and closing, a dozen tiny
mouths begging to be fed.

 Pablo
moaned—it almost sounded like a word, as if he were calling
out for something—but when they turned to look, his eyes were
still shut, his body
motionless.
Dreaming
,
Eric thought, yet he knew immediately that it wasn't so, that
it was worse, far worse. It was delirium, the stumble before the fall.

 Dreaming,
delirium, dying…

 "Shouldn't
we give him some water?" Amy asked.

 Her
voice sounded odd to
Eric.
Her
hands must be shaking, too,
he thought. No one answered her.
They sat for several long moments staring in silence at Pablo, waiting
for him to open his eyes, to stir, but he did neither. The only sound
was the wet,
phlegmy
rattle of his breathing. Eric had the memory of himself lying
half-asleep somewhere, early in the morning, listening as someone
dragged furniture back and forth across the floor of the room above
him, rearranging it. He'd been visiting a friend, sleeping on
a couch. Oddly, Eric couldn't remember the friend's
name. He could see the empty beer bottles lined up on the coffee table,
could smell the mustiness of the pillow he'd been given,
could hear the furniture being pushed and shoved from one side of the
room above him to another, but he was so tired, so parched, so famished
that somehow he couldn't remember who his host had been. That
was the noise he was hearing now, though—there was no doubt
of this—that was what Pablo's breathing sounded
like, a table being dragged across a wooden floor.

 Amy
persisted: "He hasn't had any water, not
since—"

 "He's
unconscious," Jeff said, cutting her off. "How are
we supposed to give him water?"

 Amy
frowned, silenced.

 One
by one, they all stopped watching Pablo—shutting their eyes,
glancing away, not looking back. Eric's gaze drifted around
the clearing, aimlessly, only to catch, finally, on the knife. It was
lying beside the lean-to. Its blade was dull with the Greek's
blood, completely stained from point to hilt. It wasn't that
far away—to reach it, all Eric had to do was shift a foot or
two to his left, then lean, stretching, and suddenly it was in his
hand. Its grip felt warm from the sun, comfortingly so, the right thing
for him to be holding. He tried to wipe the blade clean on his T-shirt,
but the blood had dried and wouldn't come off. Eric was
dehydrated enough that he had to work with his tongue before he could
gather enough saliva to spit. Even this didn't help, though;
as soon as he started to scrub at the blade, his
T-shirt—eaten to a
muslinlike
transparency by the green fuzz of the vine—began to shred
into nothingness.

 It
didn't matter, he decided. It wasn't infection that
he was worried about.

 He
leaned forward and cut a three-inch-long slit in his leg, just to the
left of his shin, slightly beneath the incision Mathias had made
earlier that morning. It hurt, of course, especially since he had to
push deep, probing down into the muscle, prying the flesh back with the
edge of the knife, so that he could hunt for the tiny piece of vine he
knew must be in there. The pain was intense—
loud,
was
how
it felt—but also strangely consoling: it felt bracing,
clarifying. Blood was pooling in the slit, spilling outward, running
down his leg, making it difficult to see, so he reached with his free
hand, stuck his forefinger into the wound, digging, searching by feel,
the pain like a man running up a flight of stairs now, sprinting,
skipping steps. The others were watching him, too startled to speak.
The worming sensation continued, despite the pain; Eric could feel the
thing fleeing downward, away from his finger. He started in once more
with the knife, cutting deeper, and then Jeff was on his feet, moving
quickly toward him.

 Eric
glanced up, the blood running thickly down his lower leg, beginning to
collect in his shoe again. He was expecting solicitude, an offer to
help, and was astonished to see the disgust on Jeff's face,
the impatience. Jeff reached, grabbed for the knife, yanking it from
Eric's grip. "Stop it," he said, tossing
the knife away, sending it skittering into the dirt. "Don't be a fucking idiot."

 There
was silence in the clearing. Eric turned to the others, assuming one of
them might offer something in his defense, but they avoided his eyes,
their faces set, echoing Jeff's disapproval.

 "Don't
you think we've got enough problems?" Jeff asked.

 Eric
made a helpless gesture, waving his bloody hands at his bloody shin. "It's inside me."

 "All
you're going to do is get yourself infected. Is that what you
want? An infected leg?"

 "It's
not just my leg. It's my chest, too." Eric touched
the spot on his chest, the dull ache there, laying his palm against it.
He believed he could feel the vine pressing subtly back.

 "Nothing's
inside you. Understand?" Jeff asked, his voice matching the
hardness in his face—the frustration, the fatigue. "You're imagining it, and you just—you
just fucking have to stop." With that, he turned and strode
back into the center of the clearing.

 He
started to pace, and everyone watched him. Pablo continued to drag that
heavy table along the wooden floor, and suddenly the name Mike
O'Donnell popped into Eric's head. That was his
friend:
redhaired
,
gap-toothed, a lacrosse player. They'd known each other in
high school, had gone to different colleges, gradually grown apart.
He'd been living in an old row house outside of Baltimore,
and Eric had spent a weekend there. They'd gone to an Orioles
game, had bought horrible tickets from a scalper, ended up not being
able to see a thing. All this was only two or three years ago, but it
seemed impossibly far away now, another life altogether from the one he
was living here, sitting in this little clearing, listening to the
dreadful rasp of Pablo's breathing—
dreaming,
delirium, dying
—wanting to push his finger into his
open wound again, but resisting the urge, telling
himself,
It's
not there,
and struggling to believe it.

 Jeff
stopped pacing. "Somebody should go relieve Stacy,"
he said.

 No
one moved; no one spoke.

 Jeff
turned first to Amy, then to Mathias. Neither of them met his eyes. He
didn't even bother to look at Eric. "All
right," he said finally, waving his hand, dismissing the
three of them—their inertia, their lassitude, their
helplessness—his disgust seeming generalized now,
all-encompassing. "I'll do it."

 And
then, without another word or glance, he turned and walked out of the
clearing.

T
hey should've eaten
something, Jeff realized as he picked his way down the hill. It was
well past noon now; they should've divided up the two
bananas, cut them into five equal portions, chewed and swallowed, and
called it lunch. Then the orange for dinner—maybe some of the
grapes, too—these were the things that wouldn't
keep, that were already beginning to spoil in the heat. And then what?
Pretzels, nuts, protein bars—how long could this last them? A
couple more days, Jeff assumed, and after that the fasting would begin,
the starving. There was no point in worrying about it, he supposed, not
when there wasn't anything he could do to change the
situation. Wishing or praying—increasingly this was all that
was left for them, and, in Jeff's mind, wishing or praying
was the same as doing nothing at all.