SSmith - Ruins

by The Ruins (v1. 0) [lit]

  Halfway down the hill, he felt the urge to defecate: powerful, imperative. He set down everything he was carrying, then stepped into the vines and quickly lowered his pants. It wasn’t diarrhea, but something one notch short of it. The shit slipped wetly out of him, snakelike, collapsing into a small pile between his feet. There was a strong smell rising off it, sickening him. He needed to wipe himself, but he couldn’t think of anything to use. There was the vine growing all around him, with its flat, shiny leaves, but he knew what happened when these were crushed in any way, the acid sting of their sap. He shuffled back to the trail, only half-rising, his pants still bunched around his ankles, and ripped a sheet of paper from the notebook. He crumpled it, rubbed roughly. They should probably dig a latrine, he realized, somewhere downhill from the tent. Downwind, too. They could leave one of the other notebooks beside it, for toilet paper.

  Dawn had begun to break, finally. It was an extraordinary sight—clear pink and rose above a line of green. Jeff crouched there, watching, the shit-stained sheet of paper still held in his hand. Then the sun, all in an instant, seemed to leap above the horizon: pale yellow, shimmering, too bright to look at.

  It was as he was stepping back into the vines to kick some dirt over his shit—pulling his pants up, fumbling for his zipper—that he felt his fingers begin to burn. In the growing light, he could see that there was a pale green fuzz sprouting across his jeans. His shoes, too. It was the vine, he realized; tendrils of it had taken root on his clothes during the night, so tiny that they still looked more like the spread of a fungus than a plant—diaphanous, veil-like, nearly invisible. When Jeff brushed them away, they crumpled, leaking their stinging sap, singeing his hands. He stared at the green fuzz a long moment, not certain what to make of it. That the vine could grow so quickly seemed extraordinary, an important development, and yet what did it mean? He couldn’t think, couldn’t decide, had to give up finally. He forced himself to look away, to continue forward into the day. He tossed the wad of paper onto the little pile of shit. The dirt was too packed, too dry for him to kick any free; he had to crouch and chop at it with a rock, sweat rising on his skin from the effort. He loosened one handful of the pale yellow soil, then another, scattering them across the mess he’d made, partially obscuring it, burying the stench; it was good enough.

  Then it was back to the trail, where he stooped to retrieve the tape and pen, the notebook and the aluminum pole. He was just turning to resume his downward journey, when he hesitated, thinking,There should be flies. Why aren’t there flies? He crouched again, puzzling over this, staring back toward his half-covered pile of shit, as if waiting for the insects to appear, belatedly, buzzing and swirling. But they didn’t, and his mind kept jumping—too rapidly, without pause, like a burglar rifling a desk, yanking open drawers, dumping their contents to the floor.

  Not just here but on Pablo, too. Flies hovering over his smell, crawling across his skin.

  And mosquitoes.

  And gnats.

  Where are they?

  The sun continued to rise. The heat, too—so fast.

  Maybe the birds,Jeff thought.Maybe they’ve eaten all the insects .

  He stood up, stared across the hillside, searching for the birds, listening for their calls. They ought to be awake now, flitting about, greeting the dawn. But there was nothing. No movement, no sound. No flies, no mosquitoes, no gnats, no birds.

  Droppings,he thought, and scanned the surrounding vines, searching among the bright red flowers, the flat, hand-shaped leaves, for the white or amber splatter of bird shit. But, once again, there was nothing.

  Maybe they live in holes, burrows they gouge from the earth with their beaks. He remembered reading of birds who did this; he could almost picture the creatures, earth-colored, taloned, hook-beaked. But he could see no sign of tunneled dirt, no shadowed openings.

  He noticed a pebble at his feet, perfectly round, no larger than a blueberry, and he crouched, picked it up, popped it into his mouth. This was something else he’d read: how people lost in the desert would sometimes suck on small stones to keep their thirst at bay. The pebble had an acrid taste, stronger than he’d expected; he almost spit it out, but he resisted the impulse, using his tongue to push the tiny stone behind his lower lip, like a pinch of tobacco.

  You were supposed to breathe through your nose, not your mouth; you lost less moisture that way.

  You were supposed to refrain from talking unless it was absolutely necessary.

  You were supposed to limit your eating, and avoid alcohol.

  You were supposed to sit in the shade, at least twelve inches off the ground, because the earth acted like a radiator, sucking your strength from you.

  What else? There was too much to remember, too much to keep track of, and no one here to help him.

  He’d heard the birds last night. Jeff was certain he’d heard them. He was tempted to stride off across the hillside, searching for their burrows, but knew that he ought to wait, that it wasn’t important. The sign first. Then back up to the tent, so that they could ration out the day’s water and food. Then the hole to distill their urine, and the latrine—they’d need to get the digging done before it got much hotter. Then, after all that, he could find the birds, search for their eggs, string up some snares. It was crucial not to lunge at things, not to become overwhelmed. One task and then another, that was how they’d make it through.

  He started down the trail.

  The Mayans were waiting for him at the bottom, four of them, three men and a woman. They were crouching beside the still-smoldering remains of their campfire. They watched him approach, the men rising as Jeff neared the foot of the hill, reaching for their weapons. One of them was the man who’d first tried to stop Jeff and the others, the bald man with the holstered pistol. He held the gun in his hand now, hanging casually at his side but ready to be raised. Ready to be aimed, fired. His two companions each had a bow, arrows loosely nocked. There were half a dozen more Mayans along the far tree line, Jeff saw, wrapped in blankets, straw hats hiding their faces, sleeping. One of them stirred, as if sensing Jeff’s approach. He jostled the man lying beside him, and they both sat up to stare.

  Jeff stopped at the mouth of the trail, set everything down. He crouched with his back to the Mayans. It filled him with a fluttery sense of panic—he kept imagining the bows being raised, the arrows pulled taut—but he thought it might make him appear less threatening. He tore a blank page out of the rear of the notebook, uncapped the pen, and began to draw the first of his signs, a skull and crossbones, stark and simple, appropriately ominous. He went over and over it with his pen, making the drawing as dark as possible.

  He tore off another page, wrote “SOS” on it.

  Then a third page: “HELP.”

  And a fourth: “DANGER.”

  He pried up a softball-size stone, used it to pound the aluminum pole into the dirt, right at the edge of the clearing, blocking the trail. Then he duct-taped his signs to the pole, one beneath another. He turned finally, as if to see the Mayans’ reaction. The two along the tree line had lain down again, their hats over their faces, and the woman by the fire had her back to him now. She was stirring the embers with her left hand, setting a small pot onto an iron tripod with her right: breakfast, Jeff assumed. The other three were still watching him, but with a much more casual air. They almost seemed to be smiling—good-humoredly, he thought. Or was there an air of mockery, too? Jeff turned, banged at the pole a few more times with his stone. Someone would have to come and sit by it later in the day, after the bus arrived in Cobá, but for now this ought to suffice. Just as a precaution, in case the Greeks somehow managed to appear earlier than expected. If they’d hitchhiked, say. Or rented a car.

  Jeff retrieved the pen and the notebook and the roll of tape and was just about to start back up the trail, when he changed his mind. He set everything down again and—very hesitantly, very carefully—stepped out into the clearing, lifting his hands, patting at the air. The Maya
ns raised their weapons. Jeff pointed to his right, trying to show them that he just wanted to walk along the clearing’s margin, keeping close to the vines: he wasn’t going to try to flee. The Mayans kept staring at him, the bows drawn, the pistol aimed at his chest, but they didn’t say anything, made no overt attempt to stop him, so Jeff took this as permission. He started slowly along the base of the hill.

  The Mayans followed him, leaving the trail momentarily unguarded. Then, after about a dozen yards, the man with the pistol shouted something to the woman behind them, and she rose from her cooking, kicked at one of the sleeping men along the tree line. He pushed himself into a sitting position, rubbing his eyes. He stared after Jeff for a long moment, then roused one of his companions. They reached for their bows, stood up, shuffled sleepily toward the watch fire.

  Jeff continued along the edge of the clearing, the Mayans keeping pace with him, their weapons raised. His mind was jumping again—the latrine, the hole to distill their urine, Amy stealing the water. He wondered if the signs would have any meaning to the Greeks, if they’d just walk right past them. He checked the sky—a pale blue now, perfectly clear—and wondered if it would darken later in the afternoon, if the customary showers would sweep over them, brief but intense, so inexplicably absent yesterday. He tried to think how they ought to go about collecting the rain if it did fall—they could use the remains of the blue tent, maybe, fashion it into a giant nylon funnel, but leading into what? There was no point gathering the water if they couldn’t store it; they needed containers, bottles, urns. And this was the problem that was occupying Jeff when he glimpsed the first waist-high mound of vines and finally realized why he’d set off along the clearing, what he was looking for here, what—without admitting it to himself—he’d known that he’d eventually find.

  The mound lay ten feet out into the clearing, a small island of green amid the dark, barren soil. Jeff stopped while he was still a few yards short of it, feeling a little frightened, almost turning back. But no, though he knew what it was—he was sure he knew—he still had to see for certain. He stepped toward it, dropped into a crouch, started to tear at the vines, forgetting the danger of their sap until he felt his palms begin to burn. By then, he already had the thing half uncovered; he could stop, wiping his hands in the dirt.

  It was another body.

  Jeff stood up, used his foot to part the remaining vines. It was a woman, perhaps even the one Henrich had met on the beach, the one whose beauty had enticed him here, luring him to his death. She had dark blond hair, shoulder-length, but beyond that it was difficult to say, as most of her flesh had already been eaten away. Her face was a blankly staring skull. Her clothes were gone, too; she was just a skeleton and hair, some mummified strips of meat, a tarnished silver bracelet still encircling her bony wrist, a belt buckle, zipper, and copper button resting in the otherwise-empty hollow of her pelvis. She couldn’t be Henrich’s love, of course; she was too far gone. Such a degree of dissolution had to have taken months to accomplish, even in this climate. Or maybe not, Jeff realized, bending to remove more of the vine, carefully this time, gently. Maybe it was the plant that had done it, eaten away at the flesh, fed off its nutrients.

  The Mayans stood twenty feet away, watching him.

  Jeff pulled more of the vine free, and the skeleton’s left arm came loose, fell from its socket, dropped with a clatter to the ground. The vine wasn’t growing out of the soil, he noticed; it was clinging directly to the bones. Jeff considered this for a moment, his mind jumping to the mystery of the clearing itself: how had the Mayans managed to keep it free of vegetation? The vine sprouted so quickly; in a single night it had taken root on his clothing, his shoes. And yet the earth he was standing upon was utterly barren. He scooped up a handful of dirt, examined it closely. Dark, rich-looking soil, flecked with white crystals.Salt, he thought, touching it with the tip of his tongue to make sure.They’ve sowed it with salt .

  It was at this instant, up on the hill, that Pablo began to scream. Far away—too far away—Jeff didn’t hear a thing.

  He stood, dropped the handful of dirt, continued walking. His three companions followed, keeping themselves between him and the far tree line. He passed another watch fire, seven Mayans clustered around it, eating their morning meal. They paused as he approached, lowering their tin plates into their laps. He could smell the food, see it. It was some sort of stew—chicken, tomatoes, rice—perhaps left over from the night before, and Jeff’s stomach clenched hungrily. He had the urge to beg from them, to drop to his knees and extend his open palms in supplication, but he resisted it, sensing the futility of such a gesture. He kept moving forward, sucking dryly on the pebble in his mouth.

  He could already see the next mound.

  When he reached it, he crouched, carefully pulled some of the vines away.

  Another corpse.

  This one seemed to belong to a man, though it was hard to tell, since it was even more reduced than the blond woman’s. The bones had collapsed in a loose pile; they no longer bore any obvious relationship to a skeleton. Jeff guessed at the corpse’s gender more from the size of its skull than anything else—it was large, almost boxlike. One of the flowering vines had pushed its way into the eye sockets, entering the right one, emerging from the left. There were buttons again, and a thin wormlike length of zipper from the man’s pants. A pair of wire-rimmed glasses, a plastic comb, a ring of keys. Jeff counted three small arrowheads, stripped of their shafts. And then, lying in the dirt, nearly hidden beneath the tangle of bones, there was a scramble of credit cards, a passport. It was the contents of a wallet, of course. Which must’ve been made of leather, Jeff guessed, since there was no sign of it now. What remained was the inorganic, the synthetic—the metal and plastic and glass—everything else had been eaten. And that was the right word for it, too:eaten. Because it was the flowering vine that had done this, Jeff realized, not a passive force—not rot or dissolution—but an active one.

  Jeff crouched over the body, examining the passport. It belonged to a Dutchman named Cees Steenkamp. Inside, his picture revealed him to be broad-browed, with thinning blond hair and an expression that could either be read as aloof or melancholic. He’d been born on November 11, 1951, in a town named Lochem. When Jeff looked up, he found the three Mayans watching him. It was possible, of course, that they were the ones who’d killed this man, shooting him with their arrows. Jeff felt the urge to extend the man’s passport toward them, to show them the photo of Cees Steenkamp, his large, slightly bovine eyes staring so sadly out at the world: dead now, murdered. But he knew it wouldn’t matter, wouldn’t change anything. He was beginning to grasp what was happening here, the whys and wherefores, the forces at play. Guilt, empathy, mercy: these weren’t what this was about. The photo would mean nothing to these men, and Jeff, increasingly, could understand this—even sympathize, perhaps. Half a dozen yards beyond the Mayans, there was a cloud of gnats swirling in the air, hovering over the jungle’s edge, as if held back from approaching any nearer by some invisible force. And this, too, made sense to Jeff.

  He slid the passport into his pocket, continued walking, the three Mayans mutely accompanying him. They passed other watch fires, everyone pausing at Jeff’s approach, staring at him as he shuffled by. It took him nearly an hour to make his way around the base of the hill, and he found another five mounds before he was through. More of the same: bones, buttons, zippers. Two pairs of glasses. Three passports—an American’s, a Spaniard’s, a Belgian’s. Four wedding rings, some earrings, a necklace. More arrowheads, and a handful of bullets, flattened from striking bone. And then, of course, there was Henrich, though at first Jeff had difficulty recognizing him. His body was in the right location, but it had changed dramatically overnight. The flesh was completely gone, as was most of his clothing, eaten by the vine.

  Yes, Jeff understood now, or was beginning to understand. But it wasn’t until he completed the circle, returning to his starting point at the base of the trail, that the t
rue depths of their situation began to open before him.

  His signs had vanished.

  At first, Jeff assumed the Mayans must’ve taken them down, but this didn’t fit into the picture he was forming in his mind, and he stood for a long moment, staring about, searching for some other possibility. He could see the hole where he’d pounded the pole into the dirt; he could see the stone he’d used as an improvised mallet, the notebook, the pen, the roll of tape. But the signs were nowhere to be found.

  Just as he was about to give up, he noticed a glint of metal beside the trail, three feet from its margin, buried under the vines. He stepped toward it, crouched, began probing with his hands beneath the knee-high vegetation. It was the aluminum pole, still warm to the touch from its time in the sun. The vines had wrapped themselves so tightly around it that Jeff had to strain to tug it free. The signs he’d drawn had been torn from their duct tape; the plants were already starting to dissolve the paper, eating away at it. Yet even now, having glimpsed this, Jeff still couldn’t stop himself from clinging to the old logic, the ways of the world beyond this vine-covered hill: perhaps the Mayans had thrown stones at the pole, he thought, knocking it off the trail. Then he noticed something else beneath the thickly coiled vegetation, a blackened sheet of metal. He kicked the vines clear of it, reached to drag the thing out into the open. It was a baking pan, a foot square, three inches deep. Someone had scratched a single word onto its soot-encrusted bottom, gouging deeply, cutting a groove into the metal.