SSmith - Ruins

by The Ruins (v1. 0) [lit]

  Her heart had just begun to slow, when the voices started.

  Wo ist Eric? Wo ist Eric?

  They turned, looked at each other.

  Eric ist da. Eric ist da.

  “Oh Jesus,” Stacy said. “No.”

  Eric ist gestorben. Eric ist gestorben.

  They both began to run, but Mathias was faster. He was already in the clearing by the time she reached it. She found him there, gesturing, speaking the same word over and over again with great sternness. In his fatigue and distress, he’d fallen back upon his native language.“Genug,” he kept saying.“Genug.”

  It took Stacy a moment to understand that he was addressing Eric. There was a ghoul in the clearing—that was what she first thought—some new horror spawned from the mine’s mouth: blood-streaked, naked, wild-eyed, with a knife in its hand. But no, it was Eric. He appeared to have stripped much of his skin off his body. It was hanging from him in shreds; Stacy could see his leg muscles, his abdominals, a glint of bone at his left elbow. His hair was matted along the right side of his head, and she realized he’d cut off his ear.

  Mathias’s voice rose toward a yell: “Genug,Eric!Genug! ” He was gesturing for Eric to set down the knife, yet it seemed clear to Stacy that Eric wasn’t going to do this. He looked terrified, savage with it, as if it were some stranger who’d been attacking him.

  “Eric,” Stacy called. “Please, sweetie. Just—”

  Then Mathias was stepping forward, reaching to yank the knife from Eric’s hand.

  Stacy knew what was going to happen next. “No!” she shouted.

  But it was already too late.

  Once Eric started, it had been impossible to stop.

  First there’d been that bulge in his calf, and that was easy: he’d made a single short cut with the knife, and there it was, right beneath his skin, a tightly coiled ball of vine, no bigger than a walnut. He’d pulled it from his body, tossed it aside. Then he’d started in on his forearm. This was when things became a bit more complicated. He made a small incision where he’d glimpsed the wormlike bulge, and found…nothing. He probed with the tip of the knife, then enlarged the bloody slit, drawing the blade in a smooth line from wrist to elbow. The pain was intense—he was having a hard time maintaining his grip on the knife—but his fear was worse. He knew the vine was in there, and he had to find it. He kept cutting, digging deeper, then moving laterally, pushing the knife beneath the skin on either side of the incision, prying it upward, peeling it back, until he’d managed to expose his entire forearm. There was more and more blood—too much of it—he could no longer see what he was doing. He tried to wipe it away with his hand, but it just kept coming. His skin was hanging from his elbow like a torn sleeve.

  There was an abrupt clenching in his right buttock, as if a hand had grabbed him there, and he pushed himself to his feet, dropping his shorts and underwear, twisting to stare. He couldn’t discern anything, though, and was about to begin probing with the blade, when he felt movement in his torso, just above his belly button, something shifting slowly upward. He quickly switched his attention to this spot, slashing at it with the knife. The vine was right beneath the surface here; a long tendril tumbled forth, more than a foot of it, dangling from his wound, twisting and turning in the air, blood running down it, spattering into the dirt. The tendril was still attached to him, rooted somewhere higher in his body. He had to draw the knife nearly to his right nipple before the thing slipped free of him.

  Then it was his left thigh.

  His right elbow.

  The back of his neck.

  There was blood everywhere. He could smell it—a metallic, coppery odor—and knew that he was getting weaker, moment by moment, with its loss. Part of him understood this was a disaster, that he needed to stop, needed never to have begun. But another part was aware only that the vine was inside his body, that he had to get it out, no matter what the cost. They could sew him up when they returned; they could wrap him in bandages, tie tourniquets around his limbs. The important thing was not to stop before he was through, because then all this pain would be for nothing. He had to keep cutting and slicing and probing until he was certain he’d gotten every last tendril.

  The vine was in his right ear. This seemed impossible, but when he reached up and touched the lumpy mass of cartilage, he could feel it there, just beneath the skin. He wasn’t thinking anymore; he was simply acting. He began to saw at the ear, keeping the knife flat against the side of his head. He’d started to moan, to cry. It wasn’t the pain—though that was nearly unbearable—it was how loud it sounded, the blade tearing its way through his flesh.

  Next came his left shin.

  His right knee.

  He was peeling the skin back from his lower rib cage when Mathias reappeared in the clearing. Time had started to move in a strange manner, both very slow and very fast at once. Mathias was yelling, but Eric couldn’t grasp what he was saying. He wanted to explain what he was doing to the German, wanted to show him the logic of his actions, yet he knew that it was impossible, that it would take too long, that Mathias would never understand. He had to hurry—that was the thing—he had to get it out of him before he lost consciousness, and he could sense that this terminus was fast approaching.

  Then Stacy was in the clearing, too. She said something, called his name, but he hardly heard. He had to keep cutting—that was what mattered—and it was as he was bending to do this that Mathias rushed toward him, reaching for the knife.

  Eric heard Stacy shout, “No!”

  He was shaky—he didn’t feel entirely in control of his body—he was reacting by reflex. All he intended to do was fend Mathias off, push him away, clear enough space to finish what he’d begun. But when he threw out his hands to do this, one of them was still holding the knife. It came as a shock, how easily the blade punched into the German’s chest, slipping between two of his ribs, just to the right of his sternum, sticking there.

  Mathias’s legs gave out on him. He fell backward, away from Eric, and the knife went with him.

  Stacy started to scream.

  “Warum?”Mathias said, staring up at Eric.“Warum?”

  Eric could hear blood in Mathias’s voice, could see it spreading across his shirt. The knife’s handle was moving back and forth, jerking, metronomelike. This was from Mathias’s heart, Eric knew. He’d shoved the knife straight into it.

  Mathias tried to rise. He managed to sit up, leaning back on one hand, but it was obvious that this was as far as he was ever going to get.

  “Warum?”he said again.

  Then the vines were in motion once more, snaking quickly into the clearing, grabbing at the German, coiling around his body. Stacy jumped forward. She struggled to free him—she did her best—but there were far too many of them.

  Eric could feel himself fading. He had to sit, and he did so clumsily, half-falling, dropping into a large puddle of blood—his own and Mathias’s. It was absurd, but he still wanted the knife, would’ve crawled forward and pulled it from the German’s chest if only he’d had the strength. He watched it jerk back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

  More and more tendrils kept coming. Stacy was yanking at them, sobbing now.

  Soon they’d be reaching for him, too, Eric knew.

  He shut his eyes, only for an instant, but it was long enough. By the time he opened them again, the knife had ceased its fretful twitching.

  Stacy sat with Eric, his head resting on her lap. The vine had claimed Mathias’s corpse, dragging it away. She could still see his right shoe protruding from the mass of green, but otherwise he lay completely covered. The tendrils were quiet, motionless, just the occasional soft rustling as they worked to consume his body.

  Stacy couldn’t understand why the vine wasn’t slithering forth to capture Eric, too. She wouldn’t be able to defend him—just as she hadn’t been able to defend Mathias—and she was certain the plant must know this. But all it sent out was a single long tendril, which sucked noisil
y at the immense puddle of blood that surrounded them, slowly draining it.

  It left Eric be.

  Not that there was any doubt as to where this would end: Stacy could see he was dying. At first, it seemed as if it might be over in a matter of minutes. Blood was seeping and dripping and running in thin strings off him, pooling in the hollows around his clavicles, welling upward from his deeper wounds. There was a strong smell coming off him, vaguely metallic, which, for some reason, reminded Stacy of collecting coins as a child, polishing pennies, sorting them by date.

  She stroked his head, and he moaned. “I’m right here,” she said. “I’m right here.”

  He startled her by opening his eyes: he peered up at her, looking scared. When he tried to speak, it came out as a whisper, very hoarse, too soft to hear.

  She leaned close. “What?”

  Once more, there was that faint whisper. It sounded as if he were saying someone’s name.

  “Billy?” she asked.

  He closed his eyes, dragged them open again.

  “Who’s Billy, Eric?”

  She saw him swallow, and it looked painful. Breathing looked painful, too. Everything did.

  “I don’t know a Billy.”

  He gave a slow shake of his head. He was concentrating, she could tell, working to articulate the words. “Kill…me,” he said.

  Stacy stared down at him.No, she was thinking.No, no, no. She was willing his eyes to drift shut again, willing him to slip back into unconsciousness.

  “It…hurts….”

  She nodded. “I know. But—”

  “Please…”

  “Eric—”

  “Please…”

  Stacy was starting to cry now. This was why the vine had left him untouched, she realized: it was to torment her with his passing. “You’ll be okay. I promise. You just have to rest.”

  Somehow, Eric managed a crooked smile. He reached, found her hand, squeezed. “Beg…ging…you.”

  That was too much for Stacy; it knocked her into silence.

  “The…knife…”

  She shook her head. “No, sweetie. Shh.”

  “Beg…ging…” he said. “Beg…ging…”

  He wasn’t going to stop, she could tell. He was going to lie there with his head in her lap, bleeding, suffering, beseeching her assistance, while the sun continued its slow climb above them. If she wanted this to end—his bleeding, his suffering, his beseeching—she would have to be the one to do it.

  “Beg…ging…”

  Stacy carefully shifted his head aside, stood up.I’ll get it for him, she was thinking.I’ll let him do it. She moved to the edge of the clearing, stepped into the vine; she crouched beside Mathias’s body, parted the tendrils. The plant had already stripped the flesh from his right arm, all the way to his shoulder. His face was untouched, though, his eyes open, staring at her. Stacy had to resist the urge to push them shut. The knife was still protruding from his chest. She grasped it, tugged, and it slipped free. She carried it back to Eric.

  “Here,” she said. She put it in his right hand, closed his fingers over it.

  He gave her that lopsided smile again, that slow shake of his head. “Too…weak,” he whispered.

  “Why don’t you rest, then? Just shut your eyes and—”

  “You…” He was shoving the knife back toward her. “You…”

  “I can’t, Eric.”

  “Please…” He had her hand, the knife; he was pressing them together. “Please…”

  It was over, Stacy knew—Eric’s life. All he had left here was torment. He wanted her help, was desperate for it. And to ignore his pleading, to sit back and let him suffer his way slowly into death, simply because she was too squeamish, too terrified to do what so clearly needed to be done, couldn’t this be seen as a sort of sin? She had it in her power to ease his distress, yet she was choosing not to. So, in some way, wasn’t she responsible for his agony?

  Who am I?she was thinking once again.Am I still me?

  “Where?” she asked.

  He took her hand, the one with the knife in it, brought it to his chest. “Here…” He set the tip of the blade so that it was resting next to his sternum. “Just…push…”

  It would’ve been so easy to pull the knife away, toss it aside, and Stacy was telling her body to do this, ordering it into motion. But it wasn’t listening; it wasn’t moving.

  “Please…” Eric whispered.

  She closed her eyes.Am I still me?

  “Please…”

  And then she did it: she leaned forward, shoving down upon the knife with all her weight.

  Pain.

  For an instant, that was all Eric was conscious of, as if something had exploded inside his chest. He could see Stacy above him, looking so frightened, so tearful. He was trying to speak, trying to sayThank you andI’m sorry andI love you, but the words weren’t coming.

  They’d gone to a roadside zoo in Cancún one afternoon, as a lark. It had held no more than a dozen animals, one of which was labeled a zebra, though it was clearly a donkey, with black stripes painted on its hide. Some of the stripes had drip marks. While the four of them stood staring at it, the animal had suddenly braced its legs and peed, a tremendous torrent. Amy and Stacy had both collapsed into giggles. For some reason, this was what came to Eric now—the donkey relieving itself, the girls grabbing at each other, the sound of their laughter.

  Thank you,he was still struggling to say.I’m sorry. I love you.

  And the pain was slowly easing…everything was…moving further away…further away…further away…

  The vine claimed his body. Stacy didn’t try to fight it; she knew there was no point.

  The sun was directly overhead; she guessed she had six more hours or so before it would begin to set. She remembered Mathias’s words—“How can we say for certain that it won’t be today?”—and tried to draw some hope from them. She’d be okay as long as it was light. It was the dark that frightened her, the prospect of lying alone in that tent, too terrified to sleep.

  She shouldn’t have been the one to survive, she knew; it should’ve been Jeff. He wouldn’t have been scared to watch the sun start its long journey westward. Food and water and shelter—he would’ve had a plan for all of these, different from hers, which wasn’t really a plan at all.

  She sat just outside the tent and ate the remaining supplies—the pretzels, the two protein bars, the raisins, the tiny packets of saltines—washing them down with the can of Coke, the bottles of iced tea.

  Everything—she finished everything.

  She stared out across the clearing and thought of the many others who’d died in this place, these strangers whose mounds of bones dotted the hillside. Each of them had gone through his or her own ordeal here. So much pain, so much desperation, so much death.

  Fleeing headlong from a burning building—could that be called a plan?

  Stacy could remember how they’d talked about suicide late one night, all four of them, more drunk than not, choosing prospective methods for themselves. She’d been slouched on her bed, leaning against Eric. Amy and Jeff had been on the floor, playing a halfhearted game of backgammon. Jeff, ever efficient, had told them about pills and a plastic bag—it was both painless and reliable, he claimed. Eric proposed a shotgun, its barrel in his mouth, a toe on the trigger. Amy had been drawn to the idea of falling from a great height, but rather than jumping, she wanted someone to push her, and they argued back and forth over whether this could count as suicide. Finally, she surrendered, choosing carbon monoxide instead, a car idling in an empty garage. Stacy’s fantasy was more elaborate: a rowboat, far out to sea, weights to bear her body down. It was the idea of vanishing she found so attractive, the mystery she’d leave behind.

  They’d been joking, of course. Playing.

  Stacy could feel the caffeine from the Coke, the iced tea; she was becoming jittery with it. She held her hands up before her face, and they were shaking.

  There was no rowboat he
re, of course, no idling car or shotgun or bottle of pills. She had the drop into the shaft. She had the rope hanging from the windlass. She had the Mayans waiting at the bottom of the hill with their arrows and their bullets.

  And then there was the knife, too.

  How can we say for certain that it won’t be today?