by Scott Smith
It wasn't just Eric's semen, she realized. It was his blood, too. The vine seemed to have fastened, leechlike, to his wounded knee.
Outside, quite suddenly, Pablo stopped screaming.
"It's inside me," Eric said. "Oh Jesus-it's fucking inside me."
And it was true. Somehow the vine had pushed itself into his wound, opening it, widening it, thrusting a tendril into his body. Stacy could see it beneath his skin, the ridged rise of it, three inches long, like a thick finger, probing. Eric tried to pull it free, but he was too panicky, too quick, and the vine broke, oozing more sap, burning him, leaving the tendril snagged beneath his skin.
Eric started yelling. At first, it was just noise, but then there were words, too. "Get the knife!" he shouted.
Stacy didn't move. She was too stunned. She sat and stared. The vine was inside him, under his skin. Was it moving?
"Get the fucking knife!" Eric screamed.
And then she was up, on her feet, rushing for the tent flap.
Amy had awakened a few seconds after Stacy. She hadn't realized what was happening with Eric; Pablo's screaming was too loud for her to take note of anything else. Then Mathias was yelling for them, and for some reason Eric and Stacy weren't responding. They were thrashing about; they seemed to be wrestling. Amy couldn't make any sense of this-she was still half-asleep, and not thinking very clearly. Pablo was screaming; nothing else mattered. She jumped up and hurried outside to see what was happening. The screaming was loud, full of obvious pain, and it showed no sign of stopping, but she wasn't particularly worried by this. After all, Pablo's back was broken-why shouldn't he be screaming? It might take some time, but they'd calm him down, just as they had the night before, and then he'd slip back into sleep.
Outside, she stood blinking for a long moment, the sun too bright for her to see. She felt dizzy from it, disoriented, and was about to duck back inside the tent to search for her sunglasses, when Mathias turned toward her with a look of panic. It was as if a hand had grabbed Amy, shaken her roughly; she felt a rush of fear.
"Help me!" Mathias called. He was crouched beside the backboard, bent over the Greek's legs, and he had to shout to be heard above the screaming.
Amy stepped quickly toward him, seeing and not seeing at one and the same time. The sleeping bag was lying crumpled on the ground beside Mathias, leaving Pablo bare beneath the waist. Or no, not bare, not bare at all, because his legs were completely covered by the flowering vine, covered so thickly that it almost looked as if he'd pulled on a pair of pants made of the stuff. Not an inch of skin was visible from his waist to his feet. Mathias was pulling at it, yanking long tendrils off and throwing them aside, sap shining slickly on his hands and wrists. Pablo had lifted his head enough to watch; he kept trying to rise onto his elbow, but he couldn't seem to manage it. The tendons were taut on his neck with the effort, and his mouth hung open in a perfectO, screaming. The sound was so loud, so terrible, that, moving toward them, Amy felt as if she were wading through an actual physical barrier, a zone of inexplicably heightened gravity. Then she, too, was on her knees, tearing at the vine, ignoring the sap seeping across her hands, cool at first, slightly slippery, but then burning with such intensity that she might've stopped if it hadn't been for the screaming, the incessant screaming, the screaming that seemed to have entered her, to be inside her body now-resonating, echoing-growing louder with each passing second, impossibly louder, excruciatingly louder, far more painful than the burning. She needed to stop it, to silence it, and the only way she could think to do this was to keep pulling at the vines-tugging, yanking, tearing-freeing Pablo's body from their grip. And still she was seeing and not seeing, the legs coming into view finally, a flash of white beneath the knee, not the white of skin, but deeper, brighter-shiny and wet-a bone white. She kept clearing the vine away, buffeted by Pablo's screaming, seeing and not seeing, not bone white, but bone itself, the flesh stripped cleanly from it, blood beginning to pool now, pool and drip, as the plant was pulled free, revealing more white, more bone white, more bone, his lower leg nothing but bone, the skin and muscle and fat gone, eaten, blood dripping from the Greek's knee, dripping and pooling, a long tendril wrapped completely around his shinbone, gripping it, refusing to relinquish its hold, a trio of flowers hanging from the length of green, red flowers, bright red, bloodred.
"Oh my God," Mathias said.
He'd stopped pulling at the vines, was crouched now, staring in horror at Pablo's mutilated legs, and suddenly Amy's not seeing wasn't working anymore; it was just seeing now-the bones, the flowers, the pooling blood-and the screaming didn't matter any longer, nor the burning; there were only the bones shining so whitely up at her, and a sense of pressure in her chest, her stomach rising, a surge of nausea. She jumped up, took three quick steps away from the lean-to, and vomited into the dirt.
Pablo stopped screaming. He was crying now-she could hear him crying, whimpering. She didn't turn around; she stood, bent over, with her hands on her knees, a long string of drool hanging from her mouth, swinging slightly, a little puddle of bile spreading between her feet, all that precious water she'd stolen in the night, gone now, draining slowly into the dirt. She wasn't done yet; she could feel more coming, and she shut her eyes, waiting for it.
"He woke up and just started screaming," Mathias said.
Amy didn't move, didn't glance toward him. She coughed once, spit, her eyes still closed.
"I pulled off the sleeping bag. I didn't-"
Then it was there, worse than the first surge; she bent low, a thick torrent spewing from her mouth. It was painful; she felt as if she were vomiting part of herself up, part of her body. Mathias fell silent-watching, Amy assumed. And, an instant later, inside the tent, Eric began to yell. Just shouting at first, just noise, but then words, too.
"Get the knife!" he screamed.
Amy lifted her head, puke still dripping from her mouth, down her chin, across her shirt. She turned toward the tent. They all did-even Pablo, pausing in his whimpering, lifting his head, straining to see.
"Get the fucking knife!"
Then Stacy appeared, stooping past the tent flap, hesitating for an instant just beyond it, staring at Amy, at the string of drool hanging from her mouth, the puddle of vomit between her feet. Stacy squinted, the sun too bright for her-seeing and not seeing, Amy thought-turned toward the lean-to, toward Mathias.
"I need the knife," she said.
"Why?" Mathias asked.
"It's inside him. Somehow…I don't know…it's gotten inside."
"What has?"
"The vine. Through his knee. It pushed inside." Even as she spoke, her gaze drifted toward Pablo, who'd resumed his whimpering, but more softly now. Seeing and not seeing: the exposed bones, the pooling blood, the vine still half-covering his legs.
From inside the tent came Eric's voice, shouting, sounding frightened: "Hurry!"
Stacy glanced back toward the open flap, then at Pablo again, then at Mathias. Amy could tell that she wasn't taking it in, wasn't understanding what had happened, any of it. Her face was slack, her voice flat. Shock, Amy thought.
"I think he wants to cut it out," Stacy said.
Mathias turned, rummaged for a moment through the debris beside the lean-to, the remaining strips of blue nylon, the jumble of aluminum poles. When he stood up, he had the knife in his hand. He was just starting for the tent, when he stopped suddenly, staring toward Amy, toward her feet, toward the ground beyond them. Stacy, too, turned to look, and-instantly-went equally still. Their faces shared an identical expression, a mix of horror and incomprehension, and even before Amy spun to see what it was, she felt her heart begin to accelerate, adrenaline rushing through her body. She didn't want to see, but that was over, the not seeing; that wasn't an option any longer. There was movement behind her, a shuffling sound, and Stacy lifted her right hand, covered her mouth, wide-eyed.
Amy turned.
To look.
To see .
She was in the cent
er of the little clearing before the tent. There were fifteen feet of dry, rocky dirt in any direction, and then the vines began, a knee-high wall of vegetation. Emerging from this mass of green, directly in front of her, was what Amy took at first to be a giant snake: impossibly long, dark green, with bright red spots running along its length. Bloodred spots, which weren't spots at all, of course, but flowers, because-although it moved like a snake, slithering toward her in wide S -shaped curves-that wasn't what it was. It was the vine.
Amy stepped backward, quickly, away from the puddle. She kept going until Mathias was in front of her, the knife held low at his side.
Pablo was watching from the backboard, silent now.
Eric called from the tent again, but Amy hardly heard him. She watched the vine snake its way across the clearing to her little pool of vomit. It hesitated there, as if sniffing at the muck, before sliding into it, folding itself into a loose coil. Then, audibly, it began to suck up the liquid, using its leaves, it seemed. They flattened across the surface of the puddle, siphoning it dry. Amy couldn't say how long this took. Not long, though-a handful of seconds, perhaps, half a minute at most-and when it was over, when the puddle was dry, just a damp shadow on the rocky soil, the vine began, with that same slithering motion, to withdraw across the clearing.
Stacy started to scream. She looked from one to the other of them, pointing toward the vine, horror-struck, screaming. Amy stepped toward her, took her in her arms, hugging her, stroking her, struggling to quiet her, both of them watching as Mathias pushed past them, carrying the knife into the tent.
Eric had stopped shouting when he heard Stacy begin to scream. His hands and legs and feet were burning from the vine's sap, and there was that three-inch tendril still inside him, under his skin, just to the left of his shinbone, running parallel to it. Moving, he thought, though maybe it was his body doing this-the muscles, spasming. He wanted it out of him-that was all he knew-and he needed the knife to get it out, to cut it free from his flesh.
But what was happening out there? Why was Stacy screaming?
He called to her, shouting, "Stacy?"
And then, an instant later, Mathias was ducking in past the flap, coming toward him with the knife, a clenched expression on his face. It was fear, Eric realized.
"What is it?" he asked. "What's happening?"
Mathias didn't answer. He was scanning Eric's body. "Show me," he said.
Eric pointed toward his wound. Mathias crouched beside him, examined it for a moment, the long bump beneath his skin. It was moving again, wormlike, as if intent on burrowing into Eric. Outside, Stacy finally stopped screaming.
Mathias held up the knife. "You want to?" he asked. "Or me?"
"You."
"It's going to hurt."
"I know."
"It's not sterilized."
"Please, Mathias. Just do it."
"We might not be able to stop the bleeding."
It wasn't his muscles, Eric realized. It was the vine; the vine was moving of its own accord, pushing its way deeper into his leg, as if it had somehow sensed the knife's presence. He felt the urge to cry out, but he bit it back. He was sweating, his entire body slick with it. "Hurry," he said.
Mathias straddled Eric's leg, sitting on his thigh, clamping it to the floor of the tent. His body blocked Eric's view; Eric couldn't see what he was doing. He felt the bite of the knife, though, and yelped, tried to jerk away, but Mathias wouldn't let him; the weight of his body held him in place. Eric shut his eyes. The knife sliced deeper, moved down his leg with a strange zippering sensation, and then he felt Mathias's fingers digging into him, grasping the length of vine, prying it free. Mathias threw it away from them, toward the pile of camping supplies at the rear of the tent. Eric heard it smack wetly against the tarped floor.
"Oh Jesus," he said. "Oh fuck."
He could feel Mathias applying pressure to his wound, struggling to staunch the fresh flow of blood, and he opened his eyes. Mathias's back was bare; he'd taken off his shirt, was using it as a makeshift bandage.
"It's all right," Mathias said. "I got it."
They stayed like that for several minutes, not moving, each of them struggling to catch his breath, Mathias using all his weight to press against the incision. Eric thought Stacy would come to check on him, but she didn't. He could hear Pablo crying. There was no sign of the girls.
"What happened?" he asked finally. "What happened outside?"
Mathias didn't answer.
Eric tried again. "Why was Stacy screaming?"
"It's bad."
"What is?"
"You have to see. I can't-" Mathias shook his head. "I don't know how to describe it."
Eric fell silent at this, taking it in, struggling to make sense of it. "Is it Pablo?" he asked.
Mathias nodded.
"Is he okay?"
Mathias shook his head.
"What's wrong with him?"
Mathias made a vague gesture with his hand, and Eric felt a tightening sensation in his chest: frustration. He wished he could see the German's face.
"Just tell me," he said.
Mathias stood up. He had his T-shirt in his hand, crumpled into a ball; it was dark now with Eric's blood. "Can you stand?" he asked.
Eric tried. His leg was still bleeding, and it was hard to put weight on it. He managed to pull himself to his feet, though, then nearly fell. Mathias grabbed him by the elbow, held him up, helped him hobble slowly toward the open flap of the tent.
Jeff found the four of them in the little clearing, sitting beside the orange tent. When they saw him approaching, they all started to talk at once.
Amy seemed to be on the edge of tears. "What are you doing here?" she kept asking him.
It turned out that he'd been gone so long, they'd begun to think he might've found a way to flee, that he'd sneaked past the guards at the base of the hill and sprinted off into the jungle, that he was on his way to Cobá now, that help would soon be coming. They'd talked through this scenario in such depth, playing out the various steps of his journey, imagining the time line-Would he be able to flag down a passing car once he'd reached the road, or would he have to hike the entire eleven miles? And was it only eleven miles? And would the police come immediately, or would they need time to gather a large enough force to overcome the Mayans?-that Amy seemed to have pushed past the murky realm of possibility into the far clearer, sharper-edged one of probability. His escape wasn't something that might be happening; it had become something that was happening.
Over and over again, the same question: "What are you doing here?"
When he told her he'd been down at the base of the hill, that he'd walked completely around it, she stared at him in incomprehension, as if he'd said he'd spent the morning playing tennis with the Mayans.
There was something wrong with Eric. He kept standing up, limping about, talking over everyone else, then dropping back down, his wounded leg extended in front of him. He was wearing shorts now-rifled, Jeff assumed, from one of the backpacks. He'd sit for a bit, rocking slightly, staring at the dried blood on his knee and shin, only to jump back up again: talking, talking, talking. The vine was inside him: that was what he was saying, repeating it to no one in particular, not waiting for a response, not seeming even to expect one. They'd gotten it out, but it was still inside him.
Stacy was the one who explained it to Jeff, what had happened to Eric, the vine pushing its way in through his wound while he slept, Mathias cutting it free with the knife. At first, she seemed much calmer than the other two, surprisingly so. But then, in mid-sentence, she suddenly jumped topics. "They'll come today," she said, her voice low and urgent. "Won't they?"
"Who?"
"The Greeks."
"I don't know," Jeff began. "I-" Then he saw her expression, a tremor moving across her face-terror-and he changed direction. "They might," he said. "This afternoon, maybe."
"They have to."
"If not today, then in-"
St
acy interrupted him, her voice rising. "We can't spend another night here, Jeff. Theyhave to come today."
Jeff went silent, staring at her, startled.
She watched Eric for a moment, his pacing and muttering. Then she leaned forward, touched Jeff's arm. "The vine can move," she said, whispering the words. As she spoke, she glanced toward the low wall of vegetation that surrounded the little clearing, as if frightened of being overheard. "Amy threw up, and it reached out." She made a snakelike motion with her arm. "It reached out and drank it up."
Jeff could feel them all watching him, as if they expected him to deny this, to insist upon its impossibility. But he just nodded. He knew it could move-knew far more than that, in fact.
He got Eric to sit still so that he could examine his leg. The cut on his knee had closed again; the scab was dark red, almost black, the skin around it inflamed, noticeably hot to the touch. And beneath this wound was another, running perpendicular to it, moving down the left side of Eric's shinbone, so that it looked as if someone had carved a capital T into his flesh.
"It seems okay," he said. He was just trying to calm Eric, to slow him down; he didn't think it seemed okay at all. They'd smeared some of the Neosporin from the first-aid kit on the cuts-Eric's leg was shiny with it-and there were flecks of dirt stuck in the gel. "Why didn't you bandage it?" Jeff asked.
"We tried," Stacy said. "But he kept tearing it off. He says he wants to be able to see it."
"Why?"
"It'll grow back if we don't keep watching," Eric said.
"But you got it out. How would it-"
"All we got was the big piece. The rest is still inside me. I can feel it." He pointed at his shin. "See? How puffy it is?"