The Ruins

by Scott Smith

  Stop, he told himself. Just get everyone out. Into the tent. And then to sleep.

  "I see him," Stacy whispered.

  "When he clears the hole," Jeff said, "you'll have to grab the backboard, guide it toward the ground."

  They kept working at the crank.

  "Okay," Stacy said, and they paused, turning to look. The backboard was hanging above the shaft, just beneath the sawhorse, Pablo a dark form upon it, perfectly still, like a mummy. Stacy was gripping the sleeping bag, one of the aluminum poles. "Lower it a little," she told them.

  They reversed the crank, and as the backboard began to descend again, Stacy pulled at it, guiding it toward the edge of the hole.

  "Careful," she said. "Slow."

  They eased him down onto the ground, then Mathias and Jeff stepped toward him, everyone crouching beside the backboard. Maybe it was just the darkness, or his own fatigue, but Pablo looked even worse than Jeff had feared. His cheeks were sunken, his face gaunt and strikingly pale, almost luminescent in the darkness. And his body seemed smaller, as if his injury had somehow diminished him, atrophy already setting in. His eyes were shut.

  "Pablo?" Jeff said, touching his shoulder.

  The Greek's eyelids fluttered open, and he stared up at Jeff, then at Stacy and Mathias. He didn't say anything. After a moment, he closed his eyes again.

  "It's bad, isn't it?" Stacy asked.

  "I don't know," Jeff said. "It's hard to tell." And then, because this seemed like a lie: "I think so."

  Mathias remained silent, staring down at Pablo, his face somber. A breeze had come up, and with the sun gone, the night was starting to grow cooler. Jeff's sweat was drying, goose bumps rising on his arms.

  "Now what?" Stacy asked.

  "We'll put him in the tent. You can sit with him while we pull the others out." Jeff glanced at her, wondering if she was going to protest, but she didn't. She was still staring down at Pablo. Jeff leaned over the hole, shouted into it: "We're carrying him to the tent. Then we'll come back. Okay?"

  "Hurry," Amy yelled.

  They had trouble untying the knots connecting the backboard to the nylon braids, and finally Mathias just took the knife and cut it free. Then he and Jeff carried Pablo across the hilltop toward the orange tent, moving slowly, trying not to jostle him, while Stacy followed behind them, whispering, "Careful…careful…careful."

  They set him down outside the tent, and Jeff unzipped the flap. He pushed his way inside to clear a space for the backboard, but instantly-as soon as he breathed in the stale air-he knew it was the wrong idea. He turned, stepped back outside. "We can't put him there," he said. "His bladder-he's gonna keep leaking urine."

  Mathias and Stacy stared down at Pablo. "But we can't just leave him out here," Stacy said.

  "We'll have to rig up some sort of shelter." Jeff waved back across the hilltop. "We can use what's left of the blue tent."

  The other two considered this, silent. Pablo's eyes were shut; his breathing had developed a burr, a phlegmy roughness.

  "We'll pull Amy and Eric up, then figure it out. Okay?"

  Stacy nodded. Then Jeff and Mathias ran back toward the shaft.

  Pablo started to shiver. One moment, he was just lying there, eyes shut-not sleeping, Stacy could tell, but quiet-and the next, he was trembling so violently that she began to wonder if he was having some sort of seizure. She didn't know what to do. She wanted to call out for Jeff, but she could hear the windlass creaking. They were pulling Amy or Eric up from the hole, and she knew she couldn't interrupt them. The belts were still buckled tightly around Pablo's body-at his thighs, his chest, his forehead-and she wished she could loosen them, yet she wasn't certain if this were allowed. She touched Pablo's hand, and he opened his eyes, stared at her. He said something in Greek, his voice sounding hoarse, weak. He was still trembling; struggling against it, she could tell, but unable to stop.

  "Are you cold?" Stacy asked. She hugged herself, tucked her head into her shoulders, mimed a shiver.

  Pablo shut his eyes.

  Stacy stood up, darted into the tent. It was even darker inside than out, but-groping on her hands and knees-she managed to find one of the sleeping bags. She rose with it, intending to hurry back outside and drape it across Pablo's body, then felt a sudden hesitation, the temptation to lie down instead, curl into herself here in this musty stillness, hide. It lasted only an instant, this temptation. Stacy knew it was pointless-there'd be no hiding here-and she pushed past the moment. When she stepped back outside, the Greek was still shivering. Stacy laid the sleeping bag across his body, then sat down next to him, reaching to take his hand. She felt she ought to speak, ought to find some words to soothe him, but she couldn't think of a single thing to say. He was lying with a broken back in his own shit and urine, surrounded by strangers who didn't speak his language. How could she possibly hope to make this better?

  There was a slight breeze, and the tent billowed in it. The vines seemed to be moving, too: shifting, whispering. It was too dark to see anything; there was just her and Pablo and the tent, and-somewhere out of sight across the hilltop-the creak, creak, creak of the windlass. Soon Amy or Eric would appear out of the shadows, coming to sit with her and Pablo, and then things would be easier. That was what Stacy told herself: This is the hardest moment, right here, all alone with him.

  She didn't like the rustling sounds. It seemed as if more were happening out there than the wind could account for. Things were moving about; things were creeping closer. Stacy thought of the Mayans, with their bows and arrows, and had to repress the urge to flee, to drop Pablo's hand and sprint across the hilltop, toward Jeff and the others. But this was silly, of course, as silly as her fantasy of hiding in the tent. There was nowhere for her to run. If the sounds were what she feared, then attempting to flee would only prolong her terror, draw out her suffering. Better to end it now, swiftly, with an arrow from the darkness. She sat clenched, waiting for it, listening for the soft twang of the bowstring, while that furtive rustling among the vines continued, but the arrow didn't arrive. Finally, Stacy couldn't bear it any longer-the suspense, the anticipation. "Hello?" she called.

  Jeff's voice came toward her from across the hilltop: "What?" The windlass had stopped its squeaking.

  "Nothing," she yelled. And then, as the windlass resumed its turning, she repeated the word, in a whisper now: "Nothing, nothing, nothing."

  Pablo stirred, stared up at her. His hand felt cold to her, oddly damp, like something found rotting in a cellar. He licked his lips. "Nottin?" he said with a rasp.

  Stacy nodded, smiled. "That's right," she said. "It's nothing." And then she sat there, waiting for the others to join her, struggling to believe it was true, that it was nothing-the wind, her imagination-that she was pulling monsters out of the night. "It's nothing," she kept whispering. "It's nothing. It's nothing. It's nothing."

  Amy had asked Eric if she could hold his hand. She wasn't frightened, she'd explained; it was just so dark down there in the hole, and she needed some sort of contact, needed more than the sound of his voice to reassure her of his presence beside her. He'd agreed, of course, and though at first it had felt a little awkward, sitting on the rocky floor of the shaft, holding hands with her best friend's boyfriend, she'd soon grown comfortable with it.

  This was while they were waiting for Jeff and Mathias to return from the orange tent and lower the rope back into the hole. She and Eric spent the whole time talking-assiduously-as if they sensed some danger in even the briefest silence. The danger of thinking, Amy supposed, of stopping and assessing where they were, what they were dealing with. She felt as if they were sitting on some perilously high cliff, sensing the earth so far beneath them but trying not to look down and see it. Talking felt safer than thinking, even if they ended up talking about precisely what would've occupied their thoughts, because with talking there was at least the chance for reassurance, for them to bolster and encourage each other in a way that was impossible to do on one's own. And t
here was the chance to lie, too, if this were necessary. They talked about Eric's knee (it hurt when he put any weight on it, but it had stopped bleeding again, and Amy assured him it was going to be okay). They talked about how thirsty they were and how long their water would last (very thirsty, and only another day or so, though they both agreed that they'd probably be able to catch enough rain to tide them over). They talked about whether the other Greeks would come in the morning (probably, Eric said, and Amy seconded this, though she knew they were only hoping it was true). They talked about the possibility of their signaling a passing plane, or of one of them sneaking past the Mayans in the middle of the night, or of the Mayans simply losing interest at some point, vanishing back into the jungle, leaving the path open for their departure.

  The one thing they didn't talk about was Pablo. Pablo and his broken back.

  They talked about what they were going to do when they finally managed to return to their hotel, the very first thing, debating the merits of their various choices, until it became too painful to think about any longer-the meals they both dreamed of eating made them feel too hungry; the icy beer made them feel too thirsty, the shower too dirty.

  The cold draft came and went, yet it did nothing to clear the shaft of the smell of Pablo's shit. Amy had to breathe through her mouth, but even so, the stench managed to reach her; she began to feel as if it were some sort of paint into which she'd been dipped, as if she'd never be free of it. Eric asked her if she could see things in the darkness, floating lights, bobbing slowly toward them. "Over there," he said, and his hand fumbled for her chin, turned her head to her left, held it still. "A bluish sphere, like a balloon. Can't you see it?" But she couldn't; there was nothing there.

  Jeff yelled down that they were back. All they had to do was knot together a sling, and then they'd pull them up.

  Amy and Eric discussed who should go first, both of them offering this opportunity to the other. Amy insisted that Eric should be the one. He was wounded, after all, and he'd already spent so many hours alone in the hole. She swore she wasn't frightened, said it would only be a minute or two, that she didn't mind at all. But Eric wouldn't hear of it; he refused outright, and, finally, with secret relief-because she was frightened, because she did mind-Amy accepted his decision.

  The windlass started to squeak. Jeff and Mathias were lowering the rope.

  It was too dark to make out the sling's approach. They sat staring upward, seeing nothing, and then the creaking stopped. "Got it?" Jeff yelled.

  Eric and Amy stood up, still clasping hands, and held their free arms out, swinging them slowly to and fro until Amy felt the cool nylon of the sling; it seemed to materialize out of the darkness at her touch. "Here it is," she said, and she guided Eric to it. They stood for a moment, both of them gripping the sling. Amy shouted upward, "Got it!"

  "Tell us when," Jeff called back.

  Amy could hear Eric breathing beside her. "Are you sure?" she asked.

  "Definitely," he said. And then he laughed, or pretended to. "Just don't forget to send it back down."

  "How do I do it?"

  "Pull it over your head. Tuck it under your arms."

  She let go of his hand, pushed her arms through the sling's opening, her head. Eric helped her, adjusting it beneath her armpits.

  "You're sure it's okay?" she asked again.

  Somehow, she could sense him nodding in the darkness, cutting her off. "Want me to shout?"

  "I can," she said. Eric didn't respond. He stood beside her, with one hand resting lightly on her shoulder, waiting for her to call out. She craned back her head, yelled, "Ready!"

  And then the windlass began its squeaking, and suddenly she was rising into the air, her feet dangling free, Eric's hand falling from her shoulder, vanishing into the darkness behind her.

  The chirping began again. At first, it seemed to be coming from above Eric; then it was right in front of him, nearly at his feet. He reached toward the sound, patting with his hands, but found only more of the vine, its leaves slick to his touch, slimy even, like the skin of some dark-dwelling amphibian.

  The windlass paused in its creaking, leaving Amy dangling somewhere up above him.

  "Can you see it?" Jeff yelled.

  Eric didn't answer. The chiming had moved away now, toward the open shaft in front of him, then into it, down it, growing fainter.

  "Eric?" Amy called.

  There was a pale yellow balloon bobbing to his left. It wasn't real, of course, just a trick of his eyes, and he knew this. So why should the chirping be real? He wasn't going to follow the sound down the shaft, wasn't going to move, was determined to keep crouching here, with one hand on the oilless lamp, the other on the box of matches, waiting for the sling to come dropping back toward him.

  "I can't see it," he shouted up at them.

  The windlass resumed its creaking.

  The wound on his knee throbbed steadily. He had a headache-he was hungry, thirsty. And tired now, too. He was trying not to think about everything he and Amy had discussed, trying to fill his mind with static, because it was so much harder now, all alone down here, to keep believing in the hopeful scenarios they'd created. The Mayans weren't going to leave-which of them had been the one to propose such a foolish idea? And how did they imagine they'd ever be able to signal a plane for help, it flying so far above them, so quickly, so tiny in the sky? Chiropractor, he thought, struggling to mute these questions. Credentials. Collision. Celestial. Cadaver. Circumstantial. Curvaceous. Cumulative. Cavalier. Circumnavigate.

  The chirping stopped. And then, a moment later, so did the windlass. Eric could hear them helping Amy out of the sling.

  What if the Greeks didn't come? Or, having come, were simply trapped here on the hill with them? Derisive, he thought. Dilapidated. Decadent. And what if it didn't rain? What would they do then for water? Delectable, he thought Divinity. Druid. Jeff had told him that he had to wash the cut on his elbow, that even something as small as that could get infected very quickly in this climate, and now he had a much deeper wound on his knee, with no chance of cleaning it. It could become gangrenous. He could lose his leg. Dovetail, he thought. Disastrous. Devious.

  And Pablo…what about Pablo and his broken back?

  The creaking resumed, and Eric stood up. Effervescent, he was thinking. Eunuch. He had the matches in one hand, the lamp in the other, and he lifted his arms, held them blindly out before him, waiting to receive the sling.

  Stacy and Amy sat next to each other on the ground, a few feet away from Pablo's backboard. They were holding hands, watching Jeff examine Eric's knee. Eric had gingerly lowered his pants, grimacing as he pulled them free of his wound, the fabric tearing at the dried blood. Jeff crouched over him, struggling unsuccessfully in the darkness to get a sense of how badly Eric had been injured. Finally, he gave up; it would have to wait till morning. All that mattered for now was that it had stopped bleeding.

  Mathias was building a shelter for Pablo, using the duct tape to fashion a flimsy-looking lean-to from what remained of the blue tent's nylon and aluminum poles.

  "One of us should probably stay on watch while the others sleep," Jeff said.

  "Why do we need someone on watch?" Amy asked.

  Jeff nodded toward Pablo. They'd removed the belts, and he was lying on the backboard, eyes shut. "In case he wants something," Jeff said. "Or…" He shrugged, glanced across the clearing, toward the trail that led down the hill. The Mayans, he was thinking, but he didn't want to say it. "I don't know. It just seems smarter."

  Everyone was silent. Mathias tore off a strip of tape, using his teeth.

  "Two-hour shifts," Jeff said. "Eric can skip his." Eric was sitting there, looking dazed, his pants bunched around his ankles. Jeff couldn't tell if he was listening. "I'm thinking we should probably start collecting our urine, too. Just to be safe."

  "Our urine?" Amy asked.

  Jeff nodded. "In case we run out of water before it rains. We can hold ourselves over for a little
while by-"

  "I'm not going to drink my urine, Jeff."

  Stacy nodded in agreement. "There's no way," she said.

  "If we reach the point where it's either drinking urine or dying of-"

  "You said the Greeks would come tomorrow," Amy protested. "You said-"

  "I'm only trying to be careful, Amy. To be smart. And part of being smart is thinking about the worst-case scenario. Because if it comes to that, we'll wish we'd planned for it. Right?"

  She didn't answer.

  "Our urine's only going to get more and more concentrated as we become dehydrated," Jeff continued. "So now's the time to start saving it."

  Eric shook his head, rubbed tiredly at his face. "Jesus," he said. "Jesus fucking Christ."

  Jeff ignored him. "Tomorrow, once it's light, we'll figure out how much water we have and how we should go about rationing it. Food, too. For now, I think we should each just take a single swig and then try our best to get some sleep." He turned to Mathias, who was still working on the lean-to. "You have that empty bottle?"

  Mathias stepped toward the orange tent. His pack was lying in the dirt beside it. He unzipped it, rummaged about for a moment, then pulled out his empty water bottle. He handed it to Jeff.

  Jeff held it up before the others; it was a two-liter bottle. "If you have to pee, use this. Okay?"

  Nobody said anything.

  Jeff placed the bottle beside the doorway to the tent. "Mathias and I will finish Pablo's shelter. Then I'll take the first watch. The rest of you should try to get some sleep."

  They talked only long enough to agree that they shouldn't talk, that they'd just end up agitating themselves, lying in the darkened tent, whispering back and forth. Stacy was in the middle, between Eric and Amy, on her back, holding hands with both of them. They'd left enough space for Mathias on the far side of Amy. There were two sleeping bags remaining in the tent, but it was too hot to think of using them. They'd pushed them and everything else-the backpacks, the plastic toolbox, the hiking boots, the jug of water-into a pile against the tent's rear wall. They'd talked, briefly, about drinking some of the water, whispering conspiratorially, hunched over the plastic jug. Amy was the one who'd suggested it, saying it as if it were a joke, her hand poised above the cap. It was hard to tell if she'd meant it-maybe she would've taken a long, gulping swallow if they'd agreed-but when they'd shaken their heads, insisting it wouldn't be fair to the others, she'd set the jug quickly aside, laughing. Stacy and Eric had laughed, too, but it had sounded odd in the darkness, the musty closeness of the tent, and they'd quickly fallen silent.