The Ruins

by Scott Smith

  Eric removed his shoes, and then Stacy helped him pull his pants the rest of the way off. She and Amy remained fully clothed. Stacy didn't feel safe enough to disrobe; she wanted to be ready to run. She assumed Amy felt the same way, though neither of them admitted to it.

  Not that there would be anywhere to run, of course.

  Stacy lay very still, listening to the other two breathe, trying to guess if they were close to sleep. She wasn't; she was tired to the point of tears, but she didn't believe she'd ever be able to find any rest here. She could hear Jeff and Mathias talking softly outside the tent, without being able to tell what they were saying. After awhile, Amy let go of her hand, rolling away from her, onto her side, and Stacy almost cried out, calling her back. Instead, she shifted closer to Eric, pressing against him. He turned his head toward her, started to speak, but she put a finger to his lips, silencing him. She laid her head on his shoulder, snuggling. She could smell his sweat, and she stuck out her tongue, licked his skin, tasted the salt. Her hand was resting on his stomach, and without really thinking, she slid it down his body, slipping beneath the waistband on his boxers. She touched his penis, tentatively, the sleepy softness of it, let her fingers rest on top of it. She wasn't thinking of sex-she was too tired, too frightened for this to be any sort of motivation. What she was searching for was reassurance. She was fumbling for it, not knowing how to find it, trying this particular route only because she couldn't think of any other. She wanted to make him hard, wanted to jerk him off, wanted to feel his body arch as the sperm spurted out of him. She believed she'd find some comfort in this, some illusory sense of safety.

  So that was what she did. It didn't take long. His penis slowly stiffened beneath her touch, and then she began to stroke him, fast, grimacing with the effort. His breath deepened, with a rasp hiding in it, and then-just as her arm was beginning to ache with the exertion-rose to a moan as he climaxed. Stacy heard the first, thick shot of semen splatter wetly to the tent's floor beside him. She could feel his body relax in the aftermath, could even feel the moment when he fell asleep, the tension easing from his muscles. It was infectious, that abrupt sense of relief, that sudden abatement, like an emptiness sweeping through her, and in the face of it, her fear seemed, if only temporarily, to retreat a step. That was enough, though; it was all she needed. Because in that brief moment-somehow, miraculously-with her hand still clasping Eric's sticky, slackening penis, Stacy, too, slipped into sleep.

  Amy heard the whole thing. She lay there listening to Stacy's furtive rustling, its rhythmic push and pull, growing faster and faster, tugging Eric's breathing along behind it, the steady climb in volume, the suppressed moan, the silence that followed. In another context, she would've found the whole thing funny, would've teased Stacy in the morning, maybe even said something at the moment of climax, clapped, shouting, "Bravo! Bravo!" But here, in the stuffy darkness of the tent, she simply lay on her side with her eyes shut, enduring it. She could tell when they fell asleep, and she felt a moment's envy, a yearning for Jeff to be here, holding her, soothing her out of consciousness. Then the flap zippered open, and Mathias entered in his stocking feet. He stepped over her body and lowered himself into the empty space beside her. It was startling, how rapidly he joined the other two in sleep, as if it were a shirt he'd pulled over his head, adjusting it, tucking it into his pants, brushing out the wrinkles, before, his eyes drifting shut, he began to snore. Amy counted his snores. Some were so deep, they echoed in the air above her, while others were like whispers she had to strain to hear. When she reached one hundred, she sat up, crawled to the tent's flap, unzipped it, and slipped out into the night.

  It wasn't as dark outside as in; Amy could see Jeff's shape beside the longer shadow of the lean-to, could sense him lifting his head to look at her. He didn't say anything; she assumed he didn't want to wake Pablo. She picked up the plastic bottle, unbuttoned her pants, and-crouching right there in front of the tent, with Jeff watching her through the darkness-started to urinate. It took her a moment to guide the mouth of the bottle beneath her stream, and she peed on her hand in the process. The bottle was already bottom-heavy with someone else's piss-Mathias's, Amy guessed-and there was something disturbing about this, the sound of her urine spurting into his, sloshing and spattering and merging. She wasn't going to drink it, she assured herself; it would never come to that. She was just humoring Jeff, showing him what a good sport she could be. If he wanted her to pee in the bottle, that was what she'd do, but in the morning the Greeks would arrive, and none of it would matter anymore. They'd send them off to get help, and by nightfall everything would be resolved. She capped the bottle, returned it to its spot beside the doorway, then pulled her pants back up, buttoning them as she moved toward Jeff.

  The moon had risen, finally, but it was tiny, a faint silver sliver hanging just above the horizon. It didn't give off much light; she could make out the shapes of things, but not their details. Jeff was sitting cross-legged, looking oddly at peace-content, even. Amy dropped to the ground beside him, reached out and took his hand, as if she hoped by touching him she might claim some of his calm for herself. She was making a conscious effort not to glance beneath the lean-to. He's asleep, she told herself. He's fine.

  "What are you doing?" she whispered.

  "Thinking," Jeff answered.

  "About?"

  "I'm trying to remember things."

  Amy felt a catch at this, a dropping sensation inside her chest, as if she'd reached for a light switch in a darkened room and encountered someone's face instead. She remembered visiting her mother's father, an old man with a smoker's cough, as he lay on his deathbed, tubed and monitored, clear fluids dripping into him, dark ones dripping out. Amy was six, maybe seven; she didn't let go of her mother's hand, not once, not even when she was prodded forward to kiss the dying man good-bye on his stubbled cheek.

  "What are you doing, Dad?" her mother had asked the old man when they'd first arrived.

  And he'd said, "Trying to remember things."

  It was what people did, Amy had decided, as they waited for death; they lay there struggling to remember the details of their lives, all the events that had seemed so impossible to forget while they were being suffered through, the things tasted and smelled and heard, the thoughts that had felt like revelations, and now Jeff was doing this, too. He'd given up. They weren't going to survive this place; they were going to end just like Henrich, shot full of arrows, the vines coiling and flowering around their bones.

  But no: it wasn't like that, not for Jeff. She should've known better.

  "There's a way to distill urine," he said. "You dig a hole. You put the urine in it, in an open container. You cover the hole with a waterproof tarp, weigh it down to hold it in place. In its center you place a stone, so that the tarp droops there. And beneath that spot, in the hole, you leave an empty cup. The sun heats the hole. The urine evaporates, then condenses against the tarp. The water droplets slide down to the center and drip into the cup. Does that sound right to you?"

  Amy just stared at him. She'd stopped following almost from the start.

  It didn't matter, though; she knew Jeff wasn't really talking to her. He was thinking out loud, and might not even have heard her if she'd bothered to answer. "I'm pretty sure it's right," he said. "But I feel like I'm forgetting something." He fell silent again, considering this. She couldn't make out his face in the dim light, but she could picture it easily enough. There'd be a slight frown, a wrinkling of his forehead. His eyes would appear to be squinting at her, intensely, but this would be an illusion. He'd be looking through her, past her. "It doesn't have to be urine," he said finally. "We could cut the vine, too. Place it in the hole. The heat will suck the moisture right out of it."

  Amy didn't know what to say to this. Ever since their arrival here, there'd been a jitteriness to Jeff, a heightened quality to his voice, his gestures. She'd assumed it was merely a symptom of anxiety, the same fear, the same nervousness the rest of them were
feeling. But maybe it wasn't, she realized now; maybe it was something more unexpected. Maybe it was excitement. Amy had the sudden sense that Jeff had been preparing for something like this all his life-some crisis, some disaster-studying for it, training, reading his books, memorizing his facts. Trailing along behind this thought was the realization that if anyone was going to get them out of here, it would be Jeff. She knew this ought to have made her feel more safe rather than less, but it didn't. It unsettled her; she wanted to pull away from him, creep back into the tent. He seemed happy; he seemed glad to be here. And the possibility of this made her feel like weeping.

  I'm not going to drink the urine, she wanted to say. Even distilled, I'm not going to drink it.

  Instead, she lifted her head, sniffed the air. There was the faint, slightly musky scent of wood burning, a campfire smell, and she felt her stomach stir in response to it. She was hungry, she realized; they hadn't eaten since the morning. "Is that smoke?" she whispered.

  "They've built fires," Jeff said. He lifted his arm, made a circular motion, encompassing them within it. "All around the base of the hill."

  "To cook with?" she asked

  He shook his head. "So they can see us. Make sure we don't try to sneak past in the dark."

  Amy took this in, along with all its implications, the sense of being under siege. There were questions she knew she should be asking him, doors opening off of this particular hallway, leading to rooms that needed to be explored, but she didn't think she had the courage for his answers. So she kept silent, her fear chasing off her hunger, her stomach going tight and fluttery.

  "There'll be dew in the morning," Jeff said. "We can tie rags to our ankles, walk through the vines, and the rags'll pick up the moisture. We can squeeze it out of them. Not much, but if-"

  "Stop it," she said. She couldn't help herself. "Please, Jeff."

  He fell silent, staring at her through the darkness.

  "You told us the Greeks will come," she said.

  He hesitated, as if choosing between different possible responses. Then, very quietly, he said, "That's right."

  "So it doesn't matter."

  "I guess not."

  "And it'll rain, too. It always rains."

  Jeff nodded, without saying anything. He was humoring her, Amy knew. And that was okay; she wanted him to humor her, wanted him to tell her it was all right, that they'd be rescued tomorrow, that they'd never have to dig a hole to distill their urine, never have to tie rags to their ankles and shuffle up and down the hillside collecting dew. A mouthful of dew, squeezed from dirty rags-how could they possibly have reached the point where this was a topic of conversation?

  They sat in silence, still holding hands, her right clasped in his left. She remembered walking out of a movie once, their second date, how Jeff had reached to slide his arm through hers. It had been raining; they'd shared an umbrella, pressing close together as they walked. He was shier than she would've guessed; even that evening, standing so near, the rain spattering against the taut fabric only inches above their heads, he hadn't dared to kiss her good night. This was still to come, another week or so in the future, and it was nice that way; it gave weight to the other things, the smaller gestures, his arm hooking hers as they stepped out from beneath the brightly lighted marquee onto the rain-slick streets. She almost spoke of it now, but then stopped herself, worried he might not have any memory of the moment, that what had felt so touching to her, so joyous, had been an idle gesture on his part, a response to the inclement weather rather than a timid advance toward her heart.

  A wind came up, briefly, and for a moment Amy felt almost chilly. But then it stopped, and the heat returned. She was sweating; she'd been sweating since she'd stepped off the bus, so many hours ago now, a different epoch altogether. Pablo shifted his head, muttered something, then fell silent. It took effort not to look at him; she had to shut her eyes.

  "You should be sleeping," Jeff said.

  "I can't."

  "You're going to need it."

  "I said I can't." Amy knew she sounded angry, peevish-she was doing it again, complaining, ruining everything, spoiling this moment of quiet they'd managed to forge together, this false sense of peace-and she wished she could take back the words, soften them somehow, then lie down with her head in Jeff's lap so that he might soothe her into sleep. Her left hand was sticky with urine. She lifted it to her nose, sniffed. Then she opened her eyes and, without meaning to, looked at Pablo. They'd taken the sleeping bag off him. He was lying on his back beneath the little lean-to, his arms folded across his chest. His eyes were closed. Sleeping, she reassured herself. Resting. You couldn't see the damage-it was inside him, his shattered vertebrae, his crushed spinal cord-but it was easy enough to imagine. He looked shrunken, aged. He looked withered and diminished. Amy couldn't understand how this transformation could have happened so rapidly. She remembered him standing beside the hole, holding that imaginary phone to his ear, waving for them to approach; it seemed impossible that this ragged figure could belong to the same person. His pants were gone; he was naked from the waist down, and his legs looked wrong, askew somehow, as if he'd been carelessly dropped here. Amy could see his penis, nearly hidden in the darkly shadowed growth of his pubic hair. She looked away.

  "You took off his pants," she said.

  "We cut them off."

  Amy pictured the two of them, Jeff and Mathias, leaning over the backboard with the knife, one of them cutting, the other holding Pablo's legs still. But no: Pablo's legs wouldn't have needed to be held still, of course-that was the whole point. Mathias was like Jeff, Amy supposed: head down, eyes focused, a survivor. His brother was dead, but he was far too disciplined to grieve. He would've been the one to wield the knife, she decided, while Jeff crouched beside him, setting the strips of denim aside, already imagining how he could use them, the ones that weren't too soiled, how they could tie them to their ankles in the morning and gather the dew to drink. She knew that if she were Mathias, she'd still be at the bottom of the hill, clutching her brother's rotting body, sobbing, screaming. And what good would this do any of them?

  "We have to be able to keep him clean," Jeff said. "That's how it will happen, I think. If it does."

  There was that breeze again, chilling her. Amy shivered. She was breathing through her mouth, trying not to smell the fires burning at the base of the hill. "If what does?" she asked.

  "If he dies here. It'll be an infection, I'm guessing. Septicemia, maybe-something like that. There's nothing, really, we can do to stop it."

  Amy shifted slightly, her hand slipping free of Jeff's grasp. You weren't supposed to speak the words, but he'd gone and done it anyway, so casually, a man flicking his hand at a fly. If he dies here. Amy felt the need to say something, to assert some other reality-more benign, more hopeful. The Greeks were going to arrive in the morning, she wanted to tell him. By this time tomorrow, they'd all be saved. No one was going to have to drink any urine, any dew. And Pablo wasn't going to die. But she remained silent, and she knew why, too. She was afraid Jeff might contradict her.

  Jeff yawned, stretching, his arms rising over his head.

  "Are you tired?" she asked.

  He made a vague gesture in the darkness.

  Amy waved toward the tent. "Why don't you go to sleep? I can sit with him. I don't mind."

  Jeff glanced at his watch, pushing a button to make it glow, briefly. Pale green: if she'd blinked, she would've missed it. He didn't speak.

  "How much longer do you have?" she asked.

  "Forty minutes."

  "I'll add it to mine. I can't sleep anyway."

  "That's all right."

  "Seriously," she persisted. "Why should we both be up?"

  He looked at his watch again, that green luminescence; she could almost see his face in its glow, the jut of his chin. He turned toward her. "I'm thinking of going down the hill," he said.

  Amy knew what he was saying, but she didn't allow herself to admit it. "Why?"r />
  He waved beyond her, past the tent. "There's a spot where the fires are a little farther apart. It might be possible to sneak by."

  She pictured Mathias's brother, the arrows in his body. No, she thought. Don't. But she didn't speak. She wanted to believe that he could do it, that he could move, ghostlike, across the clearing, creeping slowly, silently, invisibly past the Mayans standing guard there. Then into the jungle, through the trees-running.

  "I figure they're watching the trails. If I make my way straight down through the vines…" He fell silent, waiting for Amy's reaction.

  "You have to be careful," she said. It was the best she could do.

  "I'm just gonna check it out. I'll only try it if it seems clear."

  She nodded, not certain if he could see her. He stood up, then bent to tie one of his shoelaces.

  "If I don't come back," he said. "You'll know where I am."

  Running, he meant. Heading for help. But what she pictured was Henrich's corpse again, the bones showing through on his face. "Okay," she said, thinking, No. Thinking, Don't . Thinking, Stop.