Then he took a deep breath.
And started to run.
He hadn’t gone five steps before he sensed motion to his left, one of the Mayans rising to his feet, his bow before him. Even then, Jeff might’ve still had a chance. He could’ve stopped, could’ve turned back, smiling ruefully at the man, hands high over his head. The bow had to be raised, remember—it had to be drawn and aimed—so there ought to have been plenty of time for Jeff to demonstrate how harmless he was, how acquiescent. But it was too much to ask of him. He was in motion now, and he wasn’t going to stop.
He heard the man shout.
He’ll miss,Jeff thought.He’ll—
The arrow hit him just below his chin, piercing his throat, entering on the left side, exiting on the right, passing completely through his body. Jeff fell to his knees, but he was instantly back up on his feet, thinking,I’m okay; I’m not hurt, while his mouth rapidly filled with blood. He managed three more steps before the next arrow struck him. This one entered his chest, a few inches beneath his armpit, burying itself almost to its fletches. Jeff felt as if he’d been hit with a hammer. His breath left him, and he could sense that he wasn’t going to get it back. He fell again, harder this time. He opened his mouth, and blood poured forth from it, a great surging gush splattering down into the mud beneath him. He tried to rise, but he didn’t have the strength. His legs wouldn’t move; they felt cold and far away, somewhere behind him in the darkness. Everything was becoming increasingly blurry—not just his vision but his thoughts, too. It took him a moment to understand what was grabbing at him. He thought it was one of the Mayans.
But of course that wasn’t it at all.
The tendrils had reached out into the clearing and were wrapping themselves around his limbs now, dragging him backward through the mud. He tried to rise once more, managed an awkward sort of push-up before the vine jerked his left arm out from under him. He fell onto the arrow still protruding from his chest, the weight of his body pushing it deeper into himself. The tendrils kept tugging him toward the hillside. The mud beneath him felt oddly warm. It was his blood, Jeff knew. He could hear the vine sucking noisily at it, siphoning it up with its leaves. There were figures looming on the far periphery of his vision, a handful of Mayans, staring down at him, bows still drawn. “Help me,” he begged, his voice making a gurgling sound as it passed through the blood, which continued to fill his mouth. His words were inaudible, he knew, yet he kept struggling to speak. “Please…help…me.”
That was all he could manage. Then a tendril covered his lips. Another slipped wetly across his eyes, his ears, and the world seemed to shift back a step—the Mayans peering down at him, the rain, the warmth of his blood—one step and then another, everything retreating, everything but the agony of his wounds, until finally, in the last long moment before the end, all that remained was darkness: darkness and silence and pain.
The rain continued into the night, unabated. The tent’s walls became saturated with it; the dripping leaks steadily multiplied. A puddle of water soon covered the entire floor, nearly an inch deep. The three of them sat in it together, in the dark. It was impossible to sleep, of course, so Stacy and Eric passed the time talking.
Eric begged her forgiveness, and she gave it to him. They leaned against each other, embracing. Stacy slid her hand down to his groin, but he couldn’t seem to get an erection, and after awhile she gave up. It was warmth she wanted anyway—figurative and literal—not sex. His skin seemed colder than hers, though, markedly so, and the longer they embraced, the more it began to feel as if he were draining the heat from her own flesh, chilling her. When he coughed suddenly, hunching forward, she used it as an excuse to pull away from him.
She tried not to think about Pablo, but she couldn’t stop herself. It felt strange to sit there, knowing that the vine was stripping the flesh from his bones, that he’d be a skeleton before morning. Off and on, as the night progressed, Stacy started to weep over this—over her part in it, her failure to protect him. Eric comforted her as best he could, assuring her that it wasn’t her fault, that the Greek’s death had been a given from the moment he fell down the shaft, that it was a mercy for it finally to be over.
They spoke of Jeff, too, of course, pondering his absence, probing at the various possibilities it presented, returning obsessively to the prospect of his having found a way to flee. And the more they discussed it, the more obvious it began to seem to Stacy. Where else could he possibly be? He was making his way back to Cobá even now; before the sun set tomorrow, they’d be rescued. Yes. They weren’t going to die here after all.
Mathias remained quiet through all of this. Stacy could sense him in the darkness, four feet away from them; she could tell he was awake. She wanted him to speak, wanted him to join in the construction of their fantasy. His silence seemed to imply doubt, and Stacy felt threatened by this, as if his skepticism might somehow have the power to alter what was happening. She needed him to believe in Jeff’s flight, too, needed his help to make it true. It was absurd, she knew, childish and superstitious, but she couldn’t shake the feeling, was growing slightly panicky in the face of it.
“Mathias?” she whispered. “Are you asleep?”
“No,” he replied.
“What do you think? Could he have escaped?”
There was the sound of the rain falling upon the tent, the steady dripping from the nylon above them. Eric kept shifting restlessly about, creating ripples in their little puddle. Stacy wished he would stop. The seconds were ticking past, one after another, and Mathias wasn’t answering.
“Mathias?”
“All I know is that he’s not here,” he said.
“So he might’ve run, then. Right? He might’ve—”
“Don’t, Stacy.”
This caught her by surprise. She peered toward him. “Don’t what?”
“If you let yourself hope, and then you’re wrong, think how terrible you’ll feel. We can’t afford that.”
“But if—”
“We’ll see in the morning.”
“See what?”
“Whatever there is to see.”
“You mean, you think he might be—”
“Shh. Just wait. It’ll be light in a few more hours.”
It was shortly after this that they heard Pablo’s breathing start up again. There was that ragged intake of air, that whistling exhalation, then the pause before it all recommenced. Despite herself, knowing better even as she did so, Stacy sprang to her feet. Mathias had also risen; they brushed against each other as they both made their way toward the tent flap. He grabbed at her, holding her wrist, stopping her.
“It’s the vine,” he whispered.
“I know,” she said. “But I want to make sure.”
“I’ll do it. You wait here.”
“Why?”
“It wants us to see something, don’t you think? Something it’s done to him. It’s hoping to upset us.”
Outside, there was another rasping inhalation. It sounded exactly like Pablo; even after all she’d witnessed here, it was hard to believe that it wasn’t him. But she knew Mathias was right, and knew, too, that she didn’t want to glimpse whatever it was the vine had prepared for them out there beneath the lean-to. “Are you sure?” she asked.
She sensed him nod. He let go of her wrist, moved to the flap, bent to zip it open.
Almost instantly, as soon as he stooped out into the rain, the breathing stopped. Then a man’s voice began to shout. He was speaking in a foreign language; it sounded like German to Stacy.Wo ist dein Bruder? Wo ist dein Bruder?
Stacy sat back down. She reached for Eric’s hand, found it in the dark, clasped it tightly. “It’s talking about his brother,” she said.
“How can you tell?” Eric asked.
“Listen.”
Dein Bruder ist da. Dein Bruder ist da.
Mathias reappeared, the rain running off him, audibly dripping to the tent’s puddled floor. He zipped the flap shut, returned t
o his spot beside them.
“What happened?” Stacy asked.
He didn’t answer.
“Tell me,” she said.
“It’s eating him. His face—all the flesh is gone.”
Stacy could sense him hesitating.There’s something else, she thought, and she waited for it.
Finally, very softly, Mathias said, “This was on his head. On his skull.”
He held something up in the darkness, extended it toward her. Stacy reached out, warily took it from him. She moved her hands over it, tracing its shape. “A hat?” she asked.
“It’s Jeff’s, I think.”
Stacy knew he was right—immediately—yet didn’t want to believe him. She searched for another possibility, but nothing came. The hat was saturated with water; it felt heavy. She had to resist the temptation to throw it aside. She leaned forward, handed it back to Mathias. “How did it get there?” she asked.
“The vine must’ve, you know…”
“What?”
“It must’ve taken it and passed it up the hill from tendril to tendril, then set it there, and called us out to find it.”
“But how did it get it? In the first place, I mean. How did it—” She stopped, the answer coming to her even as she asked the question—so obvious, actually. She didn’t want to hear Mathias say the words, though, so she veered in a new direction, straining to assert a different possibility. “Maybe he dropped it. Maybe as he was running across toward the trees, he—”
The voice from the clearing interrupted her, calling out again:Dein Bruder ist gestorben. Dein Bruder ist gestorben.
“What’s it saying?” Eric asked.
“First, it asked where Henrich is,” Mathias replied. “Then it said he’s here. Now it’s saying he’s dead.”
Wo ist Jeff? Wo ist Jeff?
“And that?”
Mathias was silent.
Jeff ist da. Jeff ist da.
Stacy knew what it was saying—it was easy enough to guess—but Eric hadn’t made the leap. “It’s something about Jeff?” he asked.
Jeff ist gestorben. Jeff ist gestorben.
Eric squeezed her hand, tugging at it. “Why won’t he tell me?”
“It’s the same thing, Eric,” Stacy whispered.
“The same thing?”
“It’s asking where Jeff is. Then saying that he’s here. Saying that he’s dead.”
Outside, the voice multiplied suddenly, surrounding them, spreading itself across the hilltop. It became a chorus, which steadily rose in volume, chanting:Jeff ist gestorben…. Jeff ist gestorben…. Jeff ist gestorben….
The rain stopped just before dawn. By the time the sun began to rise, the clouds had already started to thin and part. Eric and Stacy and Mathias emerged from the tent at the first hint of light—hesitantly, stiffly—surveying the night’s damage.
The vine had spread over the backboard, covering it, completely burying Pablo’s remains. Half a dozen tendrils had pushed their way into the blue pouch, draining whatever water it had managed to capture during the storm. And Amy’s bones had been dragged free of the sleeping bag, scattered haphazardly across the clearing. Eric watched Stacy move about with a dazed expression, stooping to collect them. She laid them in a small pile beside the tent.
Eric had developed a cough during the night, a deep-chested, hacking sort of bark. His head ached; his clothes were wet, his skin chapped from sitting in the puddle. He was hungry, exhausted, cold, and found it hard to believe that any of this would ever change.
Mathias crouched beside the backboard, started to pull the vines from Pablo’s corpse. Eric was tired enough that he didn’t feel quite awake; everything had once again taken on that faraway quality, both comforting and frightening. So when he idly scratched at his chest and felt the bulge there, lurking just beneath his skin, he reacted with a remarkable air of calm. “Where’s the knife?” he asked.
Mathias turned to glance at him. “Why?”
Eric lifted his shirt. It looked much worse than it had felt, as if a large starfish had somehow surfaced between his rib cage and his skin. And it was moving, too, inching slowly but visibly downward, toward his stomach.
“Oh my God,” Stacy said. She turned away, covering her mouth with her hand.
Mathias rose to his feet, stepped toward him. “Does it hurt?”
Eric shook his head. “It’s numb. I can’t feel it.” He showed him, pushing at the bulge with his finger.
Mathias scanned the clearing, searching for the knife. He found it lying near the tent, half-buried in the mud. He picked it up, tried to wipe some of the dirt off its blade, rubbing it against his jeans. They were still wet, and the knife left a long brown streak across them.
“It’s down there, too,” Stacy said. She was pointing at his right leg, but with her gaze squeamishly averted.
Eric bent to look. And it was true: there was a snakelike lump winding its way upward from the top of his shin to his inner thigh. He touched it hesitantly; it also felt numb. The swelling coiled almost completely around his leg, starting in front, then angling up behind his knee, before stopping just short of his groin.I should be screaming, Eric thought, but for some reason he maintained that lofty sense of distance. Stacy was the one who appeared most upset; she couldn’t seem to meet his eyes.
Eric held out his hand for the knife. “Give it to me.”
Mathias didn’t move. “We have to sterilize it,” he said.
Eric shook his head. “No way. I’m not waiting for you to—”
“It’s dirty, Eric.”
“I don’t care.”
“You can’t cut into yourself with something this—”
“Jesus Christ, Mathias. Would you fucking look at me? Do you really think it’s an infection I have to worry about? Or gangrene? Either somebody comes and rescues us within the next day or two or this shit’s gonna kill me. Can’t you see that?”
Mathias was silent.
Eric held out his hand again. “Now give me the fucking knife.”
Jeff wouldn’t have done it, Eric knew. Jeff would’ve gone by the book, would’ve gotten out the soap and water, would’ve built the fire, heated the blade. But Jeff wasn’t there any longer, and it was Mathias’s decision now. The German hesitated, staring at the starfish in Eric’s chest, the snake coiled around his leg. Eric could see him making his choice, and he knew what it would be.
“All right,” Mathias said. “But let me do it.”
Eric took off his shirt.
Mathias glanced about, appraising the muddy clearing. “Do you want to lie down?”
Eric shook his head. “I’ll stand.”
“It’s going to hurt. It might be easier if you—”
“I’m okay. Just do it.”
Mathias started with his chest. He made five quick incisions, in the shape of an asterisk, directly above the starfish-shaped bulge, then reached inside and slowly pulled the vine from Eric’s body. There was an astonishing amount of it; Mathias had to tuck the knife in his back pocket, then use both hands to drag the slimy mass free. It emerged thrashing, covered in half-clotted blood. The pain was intense—not the cutting, but the drawing forth—it felt as if Mathias were ripping out some essential part of Eric’s body, a vital organ. Eric thought of those images from Jeff’s guidebook, the Aztecs with their long knives, yanking the still-beating hearts from their captives’ bodies, and his legs almost buckled. He had to grab Mathias’s shoulder to keep from falling.
Mathias tossed the writhing mass aside; it landed with a wet sound in the mud, coiling and uncoiling. “Are you okay?” he asked.
Eric nodded, let go of Mathias’s shoulder. Blood was streaming down his torso, running into the waistband of his shorts. He balled up his T-shirt, pressed it to his wound. “Keep going,” he said.
Mathias lowered himself into a crouch, drew the knife in one smooth movement up and around Eric’s leg. Again, it wasn’t the incision that hurt; it was when Mathias reached in and pried the vine from his
flesh. Eric cried out: a moan, a howl. It felt as if he were being flayed. He dropped heavily to the ground, landing on his rear end. Blood was pumping thickly from his leg.
Mathias held the tendril up for him to see. This one was much longer, its leaves and flowers more developed, almost full-sized. It twisted in the air, seemed to lift toward Eric, reaching for him. Mathias threw it into the mud, stepped on it, crushing it—the first one, too.
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