“You see?” Jeff asked. “No vine.”
Eric was sweating, his hair clinging to his forehead. It was the pain, Stacy assumed. “Deeper,” he said.
“No way.” Jeff shook his head. “There’s nothing there.”
“It’s hiding. You have to—”
“If I go deeper, I’ll hit bone. Know what that’ll feel like?”
“But it’sin there. I can feel it.”
Jeff was using the towel to blot at the blood. “It’s just swelling, Eric.”
“Maybe it’s under the bone. Can you—”
“We’re done. I’m stitching you up.” Jeff handed the knife back to Mathias, took the needle from him.
“It’ll start to eat me. Like Pablo.”
Jeff ignored him. He kept swiping the blood away with his towel. Then he bent close, started to stitch.
Eric winced, shutting his eyes. “It hurts.”
Jeff was hunched low over Eric’s body, stitching and blotting, stitching and blotting, tugging at the thread to tighten it, drawing the wound closed. Very quietly, so softly that Stacy had to lean forward to hear him, he said, “You’ve gotta get ahold of yourself.”
Eric was silent, his eyes still closed. He took a deep breath, held it, then let it out slowly. “I just…I don’t want to die here.”
“Of course not. None of us do.”
“But I might—don’t you think? All of us might.”
Jeff didn’t answer. He finished with the cut on Eric’s sternum, knotted it off, then returned to the wound at the base of Eric’s rib cage.
Eric opened his eyes. “Jeff?”
“What?”
“Do you think we’ll die here?”
Jeff was starting to stitch, concentrating on the task, squinting. “I think we’re in a hard place. I think we have to be really, really careful. And smart. And alert.”
“You’re not answering me.”
Jeff considered this, then nodded. “I know.” It seemed like he might add something further, but he didn’t. He stitched and blotted, stitched and blotted, and when he finished with Eric’s abdomen, he reached for the knife once more, shifting downward to the wounds on Eric’s leg.
When it was over, Jeff let him drink some more tequila. Not much, not enough, but some. And he gave him aspirin, too, which seemed almost like a joke. Eric laughed when Jeff held out the bottle. Not Jeff, though, not the Eagle Scout—he didn’t even smile. “Take three,” he said. “It’s better than nothing.”
The stitches hurt; everything did. Eric’s skin felt too tight for his body, as if it might begin to tear at any moment. It scared him to move, to try to sit up or stand, so he didn’t attempt either. He lay on his back in the clearing, staring up at the sky, which was a startling blue, not a cloud in sight.A perfect day for the beach, he thought, then tried to imagine their hotel back in Cancún, the bustle going on there, how he and the others would’ve occupied themselves on a morning like this. An early swim, perhaps, before breakfast on the veranda. And then, in the afternoon, if it hadn’t rained, maybe they’d have gone horseback riding: Stacy had said she’d wanted to try it before they left. Amy, too. Thinking this, Eric turned to look at them. Stacy kept pushing Amy’s eyes shut, but each time she did it, they eased back open. Amy’s mouth was hanging open, too. The vine’s sap had burned the skin on her face; it looked like a birthmark. They’d have to bury her, Eric supposed, and he wondered how they’d manage to dig a hole big enough to accommodate her body.
It was his hunger he noticed first, not the smell that aroused it. He had a tight, crampy feeling in his stomach; his mouth was pooling with saliva. Reflexively, he inhaled.Bread, he thought.
At the same moment, Stacy said, “You smell that?”
“It’s bread,” Eric replied. “Someone’s baking bread.”
The others were lifting their heads, sniffing at the air. “The Mayans?” Stacy asked.
Jeff was on his feet, trying to track the scent, which was growing stronger and stronger, a bakery smell. He moved slowly along the periphery of the clearing, inhaling deeply.
“Maybe they’ve brought us bread,” Stacy said. She was smiling, almost giddy with the idea; she actually seemed to believe it. “One of us should go down and—”
“It’s not the Mayans.” Jeff was crouching now at the very edge of the clearing, with his back to them.
“But—”
He turned toward Stacy, gestured for her to come and see for herself. “It’s the vine,” he said.
Mathias and Stacy both got up and went to sniff at the plants’ tiny red flowers; Eric didn’t need to. He could tell just from their expressions that Jeff was right, that, somehow, the vine had begun to give off the odor of freshly baked bread. Stacy returned to Amy’s body, sat beside it. She pressed her hand over her mouth and nose, trying to block the smell. “I can’t handle this, Jeff. I really can’t.”
“We’ll eat some,” Jeff said. “We’ll split the orange.”
Stacy was shaking her head. “It’s not going to help.”
Jeff didn’t answer. He vanished into the tent.
“How can itdo that?” Stacy asked. She glanced from Eric to Mathias and then back again, as if expecting one of them to have some explanation. Neither of them did, of course. She seemed like she was about to cry; she was pinching her nose shut, breathing through her mouth, panting slightly.
After a moment, Jeff reappeared.
“It’s doing it on purpose, isn’t it?” Stacy asked.
No one answered her. Jeff sat down, started to work on the orange. Eric and Mathias watched him, the fruit slowly emerging from beneath its peel.
“Why now?” Stacy persisted. “Why didn’t it—”
“It wanted to wait until we were hungry,” Jeff said. “Until our defenses were low.” He sectioned the fruit, counting out the segments; there were ten of them. “If it had started earlier, it wouldn’t have bothered us as much. We would’ve gotten used to it. But now…” He shrugged. “It’s the same reason it waited to start mimicking our voices. It waits till we’re weak before it reveals its strength.”
“Why bread?” Stacy asked.
“It must’ve smelled it at some point. Someone must’ve baked bread here, or heated it at least. Because it imitates things—things it’s heard, things it’s smelled. Like a chameleon. A mockingbird.”
“But it’s aplant. ”
Jeff glanced up at her. “How do you know that?”
“What do you mean?”
“How do you know it’s a plant?”
“What else would it be? It’s got leaves, and flowers, and—”
“But it moves. And it thinks. So maybe it just looks like a plant.” He smiled at her, as if pleased, once again, with the vine’s many accomplishments. “There’s no way for us to know, is there?”
The smell changed, grew sharper, more intense. Eric was reaching for the word inside his head when Mathias said it: “Meat.”
Stacy lifted her face skyward, sniffing. “Steak.”
Mathias shook his head. “Hamburgers.”
“Pork chops,” Eric countered.
Jeff waved them into silence. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?” Stacy asked.
“Talk about it. It’ll only make it worse.”
They fell silent.Not pork chops, Eric thought.Hot dogs. The plant was still inside him; he was certain of this. Stitched inside him, biding its time. But maybe it didn’t matter. It could mimic sounds and smells; it could think, and it could move. Inside his body or outside, the vine was going to triumph.
Jeff divided the orange into four equal piles, two and a half segments apiece. “We should eat the peel, too,” he said. And then he portioned that out also. He gestured at Stacy. “You choose first.”
Stacy stood up, approached the little mounds of fruit. She crouched over them, appraising each ration, measuring with her eyes. Finally, she reached down and scooped one up.
“Eric?” Jeff said.
Eric he
ld out his hand. “I don’t care. Just give me one.”
Jeff shook his head. “Point.”
Eric pointed at a pile, and Jeff picked it up, carried it to him. Two and a half slices of orange, a small handful of peels. If there’d been five of them still, there’d only be two segments apiece. That Amy’s absence could be measured in such a paltry manner, half a slice of orange, seemed terribly sad to Eric. He put one of the sections into his mouth and shut his eyes, not chewing yet, just holding it on his tongue.
“Mathias?” Jeff said.
Eric heard the German stand up, go to claim his ration. Then everything was silent, each of them retreating to some inner place as they savored what would have to pass for their breakfast this morning.
The smell changed again.Apple pie, Eric thought, still not chewing, and struggling suddenly, inexplicably, against the threat of tears.How does it know what apple pie smells like? He could hear the others beginning to eat, the wet sound of their mouths working. He pulled his hat down over his eyes.
A hint of cinnamon, too.
Eric chewed, swallowed, then placed a piece of orange peel in his mouth. He wasn’t crying; he’d fought off the impulse. But it was still there—he could feel it.
Whipped cream, even.
He chewed the tiny strip of peel, swallowed, slipped another one into his mouth. He could see the pie’s crust in his mind—slightly burned on the bottom. And it wasn’t whipped cream; it was ice cream. Vanilla ice cream, slowly melting across the plate—a small tin plate, with a mug of black coffee sitting beside it. Imagining this, Eric felt that urge to weep again. He had to squeeze his eyes shut, hold his breath, wait for it to recede, while the same four words kept running through his head.
How does it know? How does it know? How does it know?
There are some things we need to figure out,” Jeff said.
The orange had been divided, then eaten, peel and all. Afterward, they’d passed the jug of water around their little circle, and he’d told the others to drink their fill. Water wasn’t his chief concern anymore; after the previous night’s downpour, he felt confident it would rain again—almost daily, he believed. And he knew it would help morale if they could manage to eliminate at least that one discomfort. So they ate their meager breakfast, then drank water until their stomachs swelled.
Later, they could try to sew a pouch out of the leftover blue nylon. Maybe they’d even manage to collect enough rain to wash themselves. That, too, would help lift their spirits.
They weren’t sated, of course. How could they be? An orange, split between the four of them. Jeff tried to think of it as fasting, a hunger strike: how long could these last? In his head, he had a picture, a newspaper photograph, black and white, of three young men staring defiantly from their cots—weak, emaciated, but undeniably alive, their eyes ablaze with it. Jeff struggled to see the headline, to remember the story that went with the picture. Why couldn’t he do this? He wanted a number, wanted to know how long. Weeks, certainly—weeks with nothing but water.
Fifty days?
Sixty?
Seventy?
But eventually, there had to come a moment past which fasting blurred into starving, and in Jeff’s mind this was connected in some way to their meager store of provisions, to its continued existence, no matter how little they might actually be consuming. He’d convinced himself that as long as some small scrap of food remained for them to portion out, they’d be okay; they’d be in control. Because they were rationing, not starving.
Denial. A fairy tale.
And then there were the things he knew and couldn’t hide from, the things he’d read about over the years, the details he’d absorbed. At some point, their hunger pangs would disappear. Their bodies would start to break down muscle tissue, start to digest the fatty acids in their livers, the machine consuming itself for fuel. Their metabolic rates would fall, their pulses slow, their blood pressures drop. They’d feel cold even in the sun, lethargic. And all this would happen relatively quickly, too. Two weeks, three at the most. Then things would rapidly get worse: arrhythmia, eye problems, anemia, mouth ulcers—on and on and on until there were no moreand s for them to claim. It didn’t matter if he couldn’t remember whether it was fifty or sixty or seventy days; what mattered was that it was finite. There was a line drawn across their path—a wall, a chasm—and with each passing hour they edged one step closer to it.
After bread had come meat and after meat apple pie and after apple pie strawberries and after strawberries chocolate, and then it had stopped. “It’s so we don’t get used to it,” Jeff had told the others. “So it catches us off guard each time it comes.”
There was something they could do, of course, a resource at their disposal, but Jeff doubted the others would accept it.Unpalatable was the word that came to mind, actually—They’ll find the idea unpalatable—and, even in his present extremity, he saw the humor in this.
Gallows humor.
There are some things we need to figure out.That was how he phrased it, the words sounding so misleading in their banality, so falsely benign. But how else was he to begin?
Eric was still lying on his back, his hat covering his face. He showed no sign of having heard.
“Eric?” Jeff said. “You awake?”
Eric lifted his hand, removed the hat, nodded. The skin was puckered around his wounds, drawn tight by the stitches, still oozing blood in places. Ugly-looking—raw and painful. Mathias was to Jeff’s left, the water jug in his lap. Stacy was sitting beside Amy’s body.
Amy’s body.
“You need some sunblock on your feet, Stacy,” Jeff said, pointing.
She peered down at her feet, as if not quite seeing them; they were bright pink, slightly swollen.
“And take Amy’s hat. Her sunglasses.”
Stacy shifted her gaze toward Amy. The sunglasses were hooked into the collar of Amy’s T-shirt. Her hat had fallen off, was lying a few feet away—mud-stained and misshapen and still damp from the rain. Stacy didn’t move; she just sat there staring, and finally Jeff rose to his feet. He stepped forward, picked up the hat, carefully plucked the sunglasses from Amy’s shirt. He offered them to Stacy. She hesitated, seemed about to refuse, but then slowly reached to take them.
Jeff watched her put on the glasses, adjust the hat on her head. He was pleased; it seemed like a good sign, a first step. He returned to his spot, sat down again. “One of us ought to go and watch the trail soon. In case the Greeks—”
Mathias stood up. “I’ll go.”
Jeff shook his head, waved him back down. “In a minute. First we need to—”
“Shouldn’t we, you know…” Stacy pointed at Amy’s body.
Amy’s body.
Jeff turned to her, startled. Despite himself, he felt a strange mix of hope and relief.She’s going to say it for me. “What?” he asked.
“You know…” She pointed again.
Jeff waited her out, wanting her to be the one, not him. Why did it always have to be him? He sat watching her, willing her to speak, to say the words.
But she failed him. “I guess…I don’t know….” She shrugged. “Bury her or something?”
No, that wasn’t it, was it? That missed the point entirely. It would have to be him; he’d been a fool to imagine any other possibility. He inclined his head, as if nodding, though it wasn’t a nod at all. “Well, that’s the thing,” he said. “Sort of. The thing we need to talk about.”
The others were silent. No one was going to help him here, he realized; no one but him had made the leap.Like cows, he thought, examining their faces. Perhaps the orange had been a bad idea—maybe he should’ve waited, should’ve spoken at the height of their hunger, with the smell of bread in the air, or meat.
Yes,meat.
“I think we’re okay,” he began. “Waterwise, I mean. I think we can count on the rain coming often enough to keep us alive. We can maybe sew a big pouch even, out of the nylon.” He waved across the clearing, toward the s
craps from the blue tent. The others followed his gesture, stared for a moment, then turned back to him.
Like sheep,he thought. He was waiting for the right words to arrive, but they weren’t coming.
Stacy shifted, reached, picked up Amy’s hand again, held it in her own, as if for reassurance.
There were no right words, of course.
“It’s all about waiting, you know,” he said. “That’s what we’re doing here. Waiting for someone to come and find us—the Greeks, maybe, or someone our parents might send.” He was having trouble holding their eyes, and he felt ashamed of this. It would be better if he could look one of them in the face, he knew, but somehow it didn’t seem possible. His gaze drifted from his lap to Stacy’s sunburned feet to the puckered wounds on Eric’s leg, then back again. “Waiting. And surviving through the waiting. If we can maintain a supply of water, that’ll help, of course. But then it becomes a question of food, doesn’t it? Because we don’t have that much. And we don’t know…I mean, if it’s not the Greeks, if we have to wait for our parents, it could be weeks we’re talking about, weeks before someone comes and rescues us from this place. And the food we have, even if we ration it, it’s not going to last more than a couple days. If we could hunt, or snare things, or catch fish, or dig up roots, or search for berries…” He trailed off, shrugged. “The only thing besides us on this hill is the vine, and obviously we can’t eat that. We’ve got our belts, I guess—and we could figure out a way to boil them, maybe. People have done that sort of thing, people lost in the desert, or adrift at sea. But it wouldn’t really change much, would it? Not when we’re talking weeks.”
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