The Ruins

by Scott Smith

  There was no reaction.

  "Let's rush them," Eric suggested again. "All at once."

  "Shut up, Eric," Stacy said.

  But he didn't listen. "Or go make shields. If we had some shields, we could-"

  Another man came running toward them along the clearing, heavier than the others, bearded, someone they hadn't seen before. He was carrying a rifle.

  "Oh my God," Amy said.

  Jeff put the money back in his wallet, returned the wallet to his pocket. The vine had invaded the clearing here, formed an outpost in its midst. Ten feet in front of the path, there was one of those odd knob-like growths, this one a little smaller than the others, knee-high, thick with flowers. The Mayans had arranged themselves on the far side of it, with their drawn bows. And now the man with the rifle joined them.

  "Let's go back up the hill," Stacy said.

  But Jeff was staring at the vines, the isolated island, knowing already what it was, knowing it deep, without quite being conscious of this knowledge.

  "I wanna go back," Stacy said.

  Jeff stepped forward. It was ten feet, and it took him four strides. He walked with his hands held up in front of him, calming the men, trying to show them that he meant no harm. They didn't shoot; he'd known they wouldn't, that they'd allow him to see what was beneath the vines, what he already knew but wasn't letting himself know. Yes, they wanted him to see it.

  "Jeff," Amy called.

  He ignored her, crouching beside the mound. He reached out, sinking his hand into the flowers, parting them. He grasped a stalk, tugged, pulled it free, glimpsed a tennis shoe, a sock, the lower part of a man's shin.

  "What is it?" Amy asked.

  Jeff turned, stared at Mathias. Mathias knew, too; Jeff could see it in his eyes. The German stepped forward, crouched beside him, started to pull at the vines, gently at first, then more aggressively, tearing at them, a low moan beginning to rise from his chest. Twenty feet away, the Mayans watched. Another shoe was revealed, another leg. A pair of jeans, a belt buckle, a black T-shirt. And then, finally, a young man's face. It was Mathias's face, only different: it had the same features, the family resemblance vivid even now, with some of Henrich's flesh oddly eaten away, so that his cheekbone was visible, the white socket of his left eye.

  "Oh Jesus," Amy said. "No."

  Jeff held up his hand, silencing her. Mathias crouched over his brother's body, rocking slightly, that moaning coming and going. The T-shirt was only black, Jeff realized, because it had been stained that color: it was stiff with dried blood. And sticking out of Henrich's chest, pointing up through the thick vines, were three slender arrows. Jeff rested his hand on Mathias's shoulder. "Easy," he whispered. "All right? Easy and slow. We'll stand up and we'll walk away. We'll walk back up the hill."

  "It's my brother," Mathias said.

  "I know."

  "They killed him."

  Jeff nodded. His hand was still on Mathias's shoulder, and he could feel the German's muscles clenching through his shirt. "Easy," he said again.

  "Why…"

  "I don't know."

  "He was-"

  "Shh," Jeff said. "Not here. Up the hill, okay?"

  Mathias seemed to be having trouble breathing. He kept struggling to inhale, but nothing went very deep. Jeff didn't let go of his shoulder. Finally, the German nodded, and then they both stood up. Stacy and Amy were holding hands, looking stricken, staring down at Henrich's corpse. Stacy had started to cry, very softly. Eric had his arm around her.

  The Mayans kept their weapons raised-arrows nocked, bows taut, rifle shouldered-and watched in silence as Jeff and the others turned to start back up the hill.

  The climb helped some-the physical demands of it, the need to concentrate on the steeper stretches, where they almost had to crawl at times, pulling themselves forward with their hands-and as Stacy moved slowly up the hill, she gradually managed to stop crying. She kept glancing back down toward the clearing as she went; she tried not to, but she couldn't help it. She was worried the men were going to come chasing after them. They'd killed Mathias's brother, so it only seemed logical that they'd kill her, too. Kill all six of them, let the vines grow over their bodies. But the men just stood there in the center of the clearing, staring after them.

  At the top, things got hard again. Amy started crying, and then Stacy had to, too. They sat on the ground and held hands and wept. Eric crouched beside Stacy. He said things like "It's gonna be okay." Or "We'll be all right." Or "Shh, now, shh." Just words, nonsense really, little phrases to stroke and soothe her, and the fear in his face made her sob all the harder. But the sun burned down upon them and there was no shade to be found and she was worn-out from the climb, and after awhile she began to feel so stunned from it all that she couldn't even cry anymore. When she stopped, Amy did, too.

  Jeff and Mathias had wandered off across the hilltop. They were standing on the far side of it, staring down toward the clearing, talking together. Pablo had disappeared into the blue tent.

  "Is there any water?" Amy asked.

  Eric dug through his pack, pulled out a bottle. They took turns drinking from it.

  "It's gonna be okay," he said again.

  "How?" Stacy asked, hating herself for speaking. She knew she shouldn't be asking questions like that. She needed to be quiet and let Eric build this dream for them.

  Eric thought for a moment, struggling. "Maybe when the sun sets, we can go back down, sneak past them in the darkness."

  They drank some more water, considering this. It was too hot to think, and there was a persistent buzzing in Stacy's ears, like static, but higher-pitched. She realized she should get out of the sun, crawl into one of the tents and lie down, but she was frightened of the tents. She knew that whoever had set them up so carefully here upon the hilltop was almost certainly dead now. If Henrich was dead, then the archaeologists must be, too. Stacy couldn't see any way around this.

  Eric tried again. "Or we can always just wait them out," he said. "The Greeks will come sooner or later."

  "How do you know?" Amy asked.

  "Pablo left them a note."

  "But how can you be sure?"

  "He copied the map, didn't he?"

  Amy didn't say anything. Stacy sat there, wishing she'd speak again, that she'd somehow manage to clarify this question, either refute Eric's logic or accept it, but Amy remained silent, peering off across the hilltop at Jeff and Mathias. There was no way to tell, of course. Pablo might've left a note or he might not have. The only way they'd know for certain was if the Greeks were eventually to show up.

  "I've never seen a dead body before," Eric said.

  Amy and Stacy were silent. How could they possibly respond to a statement like that?

  "You'd think something would've eaten him, wouldn't you? Come out of the jungle and-"

  "Stop it," Stacy said.

  "But it seems odd, doesn't it? He's been there long enough for those vines to-"

  "Please, Eric."

  "And where are the others? Where are the archaeologists?"

  Stacy reached out and touched his knee. "Just stop, okay? Stop talking."

  Jeff and Mathias were coming back toward them. Mathias was holding his hands out in front of himself, as if they were covered in paint and he was trying not to get it on his clothes. As they came closer, Stacy saw that his hands and wrists had turned a deep raw-meat red; they look scarred.

  "What happened?" Eric asked.

  Jeff and Mathias crouched beside them. Jeff reached for the water bottle, poured a tiny bit on Mathias's hands; then Mathias rubbed at them with his shirt, grimacing.

  "There's something in the plants," Jeff said. "When he tore them off his brother, he got their sap on his hands. It's acidic. It's burned his skin."

  They all peered down at Mathias's hands. Jeff handed the water back to Stacy. She took off her bandanna, started to tilt the bottle over it, thinking the wet cloth might cool her head some, but Jeff stopped her.

  "Do
n't," he said. "We need to save it."

  "Save it?" she asked. She felt stupid with the heat: she didn't know what he meant.

  He nodded. "We don't have that much. We'll each need a half gallon a day, at least. That's three gallons total, every day. We'll have to figure out a way to catch the rain." He glanced up at the sky, as if searching for clouds, but there weren't any. It had rained every afternoon since they'd arrived in Mexico, and now, when they needed it, the sky was perfectly clear. "We have to get organized," Jeff said. "Now, while we're still fresh."

  The others just stared at him.

  "We can last without food. It's water that matters. We'll have to keep out of the sun, spend as much time as we can under the tents."

  Stacy felt sick, listening to him. He was acting as if they were going to be here for some time, as if they were trapped here, and the idea filled her with panic. She had the urge to cover her ears with her hands; she wanted him to stop talking. "Can't we sneak away when it gets dark?" she asked. "Eric said we could sneak away."

  Jeff shook his head. He waved across the hilltop, toward where he and Mathias had been standing. "They keep coming," he said. "More and more of them. They're all armed, and the bald one sends them out along the clearing. They're surrounding us."

  "Why don't they just kill us?" Eric asked.

  "I don't know. It seems like it's something to do with the hill. Once you step onto the hill, you're not allowed to step off it. Something like that. They won't step on it themselves, but now that we're on it, they won't let us leave. They'll shoot us if we try. So we have to figure out a way to survive until someone comes and finds us."

  "Who?" Amy asked.

  Jeff shrugged. "The Greeks, maybe-that would be quickest. Or else, when we don't come home, our parents will-"

  "We're not supposed to leave for another week," Amy said.

  Jeff nodded.

  "And then they'd have to come searching for us."

  Again, he nodded.

  "So you're talking-what, a month?"

  He shrugged. "Maybe."

  Amy looked appalled by this. Her voice jumped a notch. "We can't live here for a month, Jeff."

  "If we try to leave, they'll shoot us. That's the one thing we know for certain."

  "But what will we eat? How will we-"

  "Maybe the Greeks will come," Jeff said. "They could come tomorrow, for all we know."

  "And then what? They'll just end up trapped here with us."

  Jeff shook his head. "We'll keep someone posted at the base of the hill. To warn them away."

  "But those men won't let us. They'll force them-"

  Again, Jeff shook his head. "I don't think so," he said. "It wasn't until you stepped beyond the clearing that they made us climb the hill. In the beginning, they were trying to keep us away. I think they'll try to stop the Greeks from coming up, too. All we have to do is figure out a way to communicate to them, to let them know what's happened, so that they can go get help."

  "Pablo," Eric said.

  Jeff nodded. "If we can get him to understand, then he can warn them off."

  They all turned and stared at Pablo. He'd emerged from the blue tent and was wandering around the hilltop. He seemed to be talking to himself, very softly, muttering. He had his hands in his pants pockets, his shoulders hunched. He didn't sense them watching him.

  "Planes might fly over, too," Jeff said. "We can signal to them with something reflective. Or maybe pull up some of the vines, dry them out, start a fire. Three fires in a triangle-that's supposed to be a signal for help."

  He stopped talking then; he didn't have any more ideas. And neither Stacy nor the others had any ideas at all, so they just sat without speaking for a stretch. In the silence, Stacy gradually became aware of a strange chirping sound-steady, insistent, barely audible. A bird, she thought, then knew immediately she was wrong. No one else seemed to notice the noise, and she was turning to track its source when Pablo started yelling. He was jumping up and down beside the mine shaft, pointing into it.

  "What's he doing?" Amy asked.

  Stacy watched him pressing his hand to his head, to his ear, as if he were miming talking on a phone, and she sprang to her feet, started quickly toward him. "Hurry," she said to the others, waving for them to follow. She'd realized suddenly what that steady chirping was: somehow-miraculously, inexplicably-there was a cell phone ringing at the bottom of the hole.

  Amy didn't believe it. She could hear the noise coming from the hole, and-along with the others-she had to admit it sounded like a cell phone, yet even so, she had no faith in it. Jeff had told her not to pack her own phone before they left; it would be too expensive to use in Mexico. But that didn't mean there weren't local networks, of course, and why shouldn't it be possible that what they were hearing was a phone linked to one of these? It should be possible-there was no reason for it not to be possible-and Amy struggled to convince herself of this. It wasn't working, though. Inside, in her heart, she'd already dropped into a place of doom, and the plaintive beeping coming from the darkness wasn't enough to pull her free. When she peered into the hole, what she imagined was not a phone calling out to them, but a baby bird, open-beaked, begging to be fed-chirrrp…chirrrp…chirrrp-a thing of need rather than assistance.

  The others were enthusiastic, however, and who was Amy to question this? She stayed silent; she feigned hope along with the rest of them.

  Pablo had already uncoiled a short length of rope from the windlass. He was wrapping it around his chest, tying it into a knot. It seemed he wanted them to lower him into the hole.

  "He won't be able to answer it," Eric said. "We have to send someone who speaks Spanish." He reached for the rope, but Pablo wouldn't relinquish it. He was tying one knot after another across his chest: big, sloppy tangles of hemp. It didn't look like he knew what he was doing.

  "It doesn't matter," Jeff said. "He can bring it back up, and we'll try calling from here."

  The chirping stopped, and they stood over the hole, waiting, listening. After a long moment, it started up again. They all smiled at one another, and Pablo moved to the edge of the shaft, eager to begin his descent. The flowering vine had twined itself around the windlass, growing on the rope, the axle, the crank, the sawhorse and its little wheel; Jeff pulled much of it off, careful not to get the sap on his skin. Mathias had vanished into the blue tent. When he reappeared, he was carrying an oil lamp and a box of matches. He set the lamp on the ground beside the hole, scratched one of the matches into flame, and carefully lighted the wick. Then he handed the lamp to Pablo.

  The windlass was a primitive piece of equipment: jerry-built, flimsy-looking. It sat beside the shaft on a small steel platform, which appeared to have been bolted somehow into the rock-hard dirt. Its barrel was mounted on an axle that was rusting in places and in definite need of greasing. The crank didn't have a brake to it; if it became necessary to hold it in place midway down or up, this would have to be accomplished by brute strength. Amy didn't believe the apparatus could support Pablo's weight; she thought he'd step into the open space above the hole and the entire contraption would give way. He'd drop into the darkness-fall and fall and fall-and they'd never see him again. But, after the exchange of many hand signals and gestures and pats of encouragement, when he finally began his descent, the windlass groaned, settling into its mount, and then started to turn, creaking loudly as Jeff and Eric strained against its hand crank, slowly lowering the Greek into the shaft.

  It was working. And, despite herself, Amy felt her heart lift. Maybe it was a cell phone after all. Pablo would find it down there in the darkness; they'd hoist him back up and then call for help: the police, the American embassy, their parents. The beeping had stopped once more, and this time it didn't resume, but it didn't matter. It was down there. Amy was beginning to believe now-she wanted to believe, had given herself permission to believe-they were going to be saved. She stood beside the hole, peering over its edge, with Stacy on her right and Mathias across from her,
watching Pablo drop foot by foot into the earth. His oil lamp illuminated the walls of the shaft: the dirt was black and pitted with rocks toward the top, but it became brown and then tan and then a deep orange-yellow as he descended. Ten feet, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five, and they still couldn't see the bottom. Pablo smiled up at them, dangling, one hand reaching out to steady himself against the shaft's wall. Amy and Stacy waved to him. But not Mathias. Mathias was staring at the slowly uncoiling rope.

  "Stop!" he shouted suddenly, and everyone jumped.

  Jeff and Eric were straining against the crank, both of them sweating already, their hair sticking to their foreheads. Amy could see the muscles standing out on Jeff's neck-taut, tendoned-and it gave her a sense of the immense tension on the rope, gravity grasping at the Greek, dragging him downward.

  Mathias was growing frantic now, yelling, "Pull him up! Pull him up!"

  Jeff and Eric hesitated, uncertain. "What?" Eric said, blinking at him stupidly.

  "The vine," Mathias shouted, his voice urgent, waving for them to start reeling Pablo back up. "The rope."

  And then they saw it. Jeff had stripped most of the vine off the windlass, but not all of it. The tendrils he'd left behind had burrowed their way into the spool of rope and now, as the windlass turned, they were being crushed, their milky sap oozing out, darkening the rope's hemp, eating away at it.

  Pablo shouted up to them, a short string of Greek words, a question, and Amy had a brief glimpse of him, swinging gently back and forth there, twenty-five feet down the shaft, the oil lamp in his hand; then she was rushing with Stacy and Mathias toward the crank, all of them struggling to help, getting in one another's way, putting their weight into it, the sap visibly burning into the rope now-implacably, too fast, faster than they could work. Pablo was just beginning to bump his way upward when there was an abrupt, gut-dropping jerk, and they fell forward onto one another, the windlass spinning wildly behind them, free of its weight. There was a long silence-too long, far too long-and then a thump they seemed to feel more than hear, a jump in the earth beneath them, which was followed an instant later by the shattering pop of the lamp. They scrambled to the hole, peered into it, but there was nothing for them to see.