¡PELIGRO!
Jeff stood for a long moment, contemplating this.
Danger.
The day was growing steadily warmer. He’d left his hat behind in the tent, and he could feel the sun beginning to scorch his neck, his face. His thirst had climbed to a new level. It was no longer simply a desire for water; there was pain involved now, a sense of damage being done to his body. The pebble he’d been sucking was proving useless to combat this, and he spit it out, only to be startled by a leap of movement amid the vegetation as the tiny stone dropped into the vines. Something had seemed to dart, snakelike, at the pebble, too quickly for Jeff to see it clearly, just the abrupt blur of motion.
The birds,he thought.
But no, of course not, it wasn’t the birds—and he knew this. Because though he’d yet to understand where the noise had come from last night, he’d already realized that there weren’t any birds on the hillside. No birds, no flies, no mosquitoes, no gnats. He bent, picked up another pebble, tossed it into the profusion of vines beside him. Once more, there was that jump of movement, nearly too fast to glimpse, and Jeff knew what it was now—knew what had pulled down his sign, too—and felt almost sickened by the knowledge.
He threw another pebble. This time there was no movement, and that made sense to Jeff, too. It was exactly what he’d expected. If it had kept happening, it would’ve simply been a reflex, and that wasn’t what this was about.
He turned, stared toward the Mayans, who were standing in the center of the cleared ground, watching him, their weapons lowered finally. They seemed slightly bored by what they were seeing, and Jeff supposed he could understand this also. After all, he’d done nothing here that they hadn’t witnessed on other occasions. The posting of the sign, the circumnavigation of the hill, the discovery of the bodies, the slowly dawning awareness of what sort of world he’d become trapped in: they’d seen it all before. And not only that; they could probably guess what was still to come, too, could’ve told Jeff, if they’d only shared a language, how the approaching days would unfold, how they’d begin and how they’d end. It was with these thoughts in his head that Jeff returned to the trail and began his slow climb up it to tell the others of all he’d discovered.
Stacy had opened her eyes to the sound of screaming. Eric was writhing about beside her, obviously in some sort of distress, and it took her a moment to realize that it wasn’t his cries that were filling the tent. The noise was coming from outside. It was Pablo. Pablo was screaming. And yet something was wrong with Eric, too. He was leaning on his elbow, staring toward his legs, kicking them, saying, “Oh fuck, oh my God, oh Christ.” He kept repeating the words, and Pablo kept screaming, and Stacy couldn’t understand what was happening. Amy was on the other side of her, just coming awake, looking even more confused, even more lost than Stacy felt herself.
The three of them were alone in the tent; there was no sign of Jeff or Mathias.
Eric’s left leg was covered with the vine.
“What is it?” Stacy said. “What’s going on?”
Eric didn’t seem to hear her. He sat up, leaning forward, and began to yank at the vine, struggling to pull it free from his body. The plant’s leaves ripped and crumpled as he tugged at them, sap oozing out, beginning to burn him, to burn her, too, when she reached to help him. The vine had wound itself around his left leg, climbing all the way to his groin.His sperm, Stacy thought, remembering the hand job she’d given him the night before.It was drawn to his sperm . Because it was true: the vine had wrapped itself not only around Eric’s leg but also his penis, his testicles. Eric was struggling to free himself from its hold, pulling gingerly now, still repeating that string of words: “Oh fuck, oh my God, oh Christ…”
Pablo’s screaming grew louder, if this were possible; the tent seemed to be shaking beneath it. Stacy could hear Mathias yelling now, too. Calling for them, she thought, but she couldn’t focus on this, was simply aware of it in a distant way while she continued to yank at the vine, her hands not merely burning but feeling abraded, lacerated; the tips of her fingers had begun to bleed. Amy was getting up, hurrying toward the flap, unzipping it, stepping out. She left the flap hanging open behind her, and sunlight poured through the opening, flooding the tent, the heat entering, too, making Stacy, even in the midst of all this chaos, abruptly aware of her thirst. Her mouth was webbed with it; her throat felt swollen, cracked.
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 thi
nk 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.
Tosee.
She was in the center 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 wideS -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 h
e 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.
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