The Ruins

by Scott Smith

  Nazi.

  Slut.

  Nazi.

  Bitch.

  Nazi.

  They watched Mathias turn, walk out of the clearing.

  The voices continued for some time yet-Amy's and Stacy's and Eric's, coming from all different directions, talking one over the other, occasionally rising to a shout-and then, just as abruptly as they'd begun, they stopped. The silence wasn't as much of a relief as Eric would've expected, though; there was a tension to it, everything freighted with the knowledge that the vine could start again at any moment. And also the sense of being listened to, spied upon. It took awhile for them to gather the courage to speak, and when Stacy finally did, it was in a whisper.

  "I'm sorry," she said.

  Amy waved this aside.

  "I wasn't thinking," Stacy persisted. "I just…I had pee on my foot."

  "It doesn't matter." Amy gestured upward, toward the clouds. "We'll be fine."

  "You're not a bitch."

  "I know, honey. Let's just…let's forget it, okay? Let's pretend it didn't happen. We're both tired."

  "Scared."

  "That's right. Tired and scared."

  Stacy shifted a little, edging toward her. She held out her hand, and Amy took it, clasped it.

  Eric wanted to get up, follow Mathias down the hill, make everything clear to him. It had been his own voice shouting that word over and over again-Nazi-and he couldn't imagine what Mathias must be thinking now, didn't want to consider it, yet he kept probing at it, despite himself. I should've explained, he thought with a growing sense of panic. I should've told him it was a joke. He was in too much pain to pursue him, though, still bleeding heavily from his wound-at this rate, he didn't see how it would ever stop. But somebody had to go; somebody had to make it right. "Go tell him," he said to Stacy.

  She gave him a blank look. "Tell who?"

  "Mathias. That it was a joke."

  "What was a joke?"

  "Nazi-tell him we were just playing around."

  Before Stacy could answer, Pablo startled them by speaking. It was in Greek, of course: a single word, surprisingly loud. They all turned to stare at him. His eyes were open, his head lifted off the backboard, the muscles in his neck standing taut, trembling slightly. He repeated the word-potato, absurdly, was what it sounded like to Eric. He lifted his right hand, made a beckoning motion. He seemed to be gesturing toward the plastic jug.

  That rasping voice: "Po-ta-to."

  "I think he wants some water," Stacy said.

  Amy picked up the jug, carried it to the backboard, crouched beside Pablo. "Water?" she asked.

  Pablo nodded. He opened and closed his mouth, like someone mimicking a fish. "Po-ta-to…po-ta-to…po-ta-to …"

  Amy uncapped the jug, poured some of the water into his mouth. Her hands were shaking, though, and it came out too quickly, nearly choking him. He coughed, sputtering, turned his head away.

  "Maybe you should give him a grape," Stacy said. She picked up the plastic bag, held it toward Amy.

  "You think so?"

  "He hasn't eaten-not since yesterday."

  "But can he-"

  "Just try it."

  Pablo had stopped coughing. Amy waited till he turned back toward her, then took out one of the grapes, held it up for him to see, raising her eyebrows. "Hungry?" she asked.

  Pablo just stared at her. He seemed to be fading, sinking inward. For a moment, there'd been something like color in his face, but now it had gone gray again. His neck went slack; his head fell heavily against the backboard.

  "Put it in his mouth and see what happens," Stacy said.

  Amy slid the grape between Pablo's lips, pushing at it until it disappeared. Pablo shut his eyes; his jaw didn't move.

  "Use your hand," Stacy said. "Help him chew it."

  Amy grasped the Greek by his chin, pulling his mouth open, then pushing it shut. Eric heard the wet sound of the grape popping, and then Pablo was gagging again, turning his head to the side, retching. The squashed fruit spilled out, followed by a surprising amount of liquid. Black liquid, full of stringy clots. It was blood, Eric knew. Oh Jesus, he thought. What the fuck are we doing?

  And then, making him jump, nearly the exact same words sounded in the air behind him: "What the fuck are you doing?"

  Eric turned, astonished, and found Jeff standing above them, staring at Amy with a look of fury.

  Sitting at the bottom of the hill, watching for the Greeks, Jeff had felt as if he were entering a slower, thicker version of time. The seconds had dragged themselves into minutes, the minutes had accumulated into hours, and nothing happened, nothing of note, nothing whatsoever-certainly not the thing he was there to stop from happening, the Greeks arriving, bumbling their way across the clearing, entering that forbidden zone into which Jeff and the others had fallen captive. He sat, the sun drawing precious moisture from his skin, adding its heat to the other discomforts of his body-his thirst and hunger, his fatigue, his growing sense of failure here, of doing and acting, only to inflict as much harm as he was attempting to prevent.

  There was too much to think about, and none of it good.

  There was Pablo, of course-how could Jeff help but think of Pablo? He could still feel the weight of the stone in his hand, the heat coming through that towel, could still hear the sound of bone shattering as he'd hammered at Pablo's tibia and fibula, could still smell the acrid stench of his burning flesh. What choice did I have? he kept asking himself, knowing even as he did so that this was a bad sign, this impulse to justify, to explain, as if he were fending off some accusation. I was trying to save his life. And these, too, were the wrong words to have echoing through his head-the trying to implying a failure, a thing hoped for, striven toward, but nonetheless unattained. Because it was true: Jeff was giving up on Pablo. Maybe, if rescue arrived in the coming hours, or even sometime tomorrow, he still might be saved. Was this going to happen, though? That was the question upon which everything hinged-the coming hours, the coming day-and Jeff was losing faith in it, relinquishing hope. He'd believed that by taking off the legs, or what remained of the legs, he might buy the Greek time-not much, but some-enough, maybe, just enough. But it wasn't going to end like that. He had to admit this to himself now. Pablo was going to linger for another day, or two, or three at best, and then die.

  In great pain, no doubt.

  There was always the chance that the Greeks might come, of course, but the more Jeff considered this possibility, the less likely it seemed. The Mayans knew exactly what they were doing here; they'd done it before, would almost certainly have to do it again. Jeff assumed that they must've stationed someone to guard the far end of the trail, someone to turn any potential rescuers aside, to divert and mislead them. Don Quixote and Juan would never be equal to this; even if they were coming, which Jeff doubted, they'd be easily deflected. No, if rescue were to arrive, it would be much later-too late, probably-weeks from now, after their parents realized that they'd failed to return and began to probe at this development, to worry and to act. Jeff didn't want to guess how long this might take-the calls that would have to be placed, the questions asked-before the necessary gears would start to turn. And, even then, would the search ever proceed beyond Cancún? Their bus tickets had been printed with their names on them, but were records kept of this? And, if that hurdle were somehow cleared, and the hunt shifted to Cobá, how would it ever proceed the extra thirteen miles into the jungle? Whoever it was who might be pursuing the case would be given photographs, Jeff assumed; he'd show these to the taxi drivers in Cobá, the street vendors, the waiters in the cafés. And perhaps the man with the yellow pickup would recognize them; perhaps he'd be willing to share what he knew. And then what? The policeman or detective would follow the trail, walk it to the Mayan village, bearing those four or five or six photographs-depending on whether he'd already managed to find out about Mathias and Pablo and connect them all together-and what would the Mayans offer him? Blank faces, certainly. A ruminative scr
atching of the chin, a slow shake of the head. And even if, by some miracle of persistence and shrewdness, this perhaps mythical policeman or detective managed to make his way past these assertions of ignorance, how long would it take? All those steps to labor his way through, with the potential for detours and dead ends at every stage-how long? Too long, Jeff guessed. Too long for Pablo. There was no question of this. And too long, he supposed, for the rest of them also.

  They needed it to rain. That was the first thing, the most crucial. Without water, they weren't going to last much longer than Pablo.

  And then there was the question of food. They had the small amount they'd brought with them-snacks, really-which might, through aggressive rationing, sustain them for two or three more days. But after that?

  Nothing. Fasting. Starving.

  Eric was in trouble, Jeff knew. The cutting, the pacing, the muttering-bad signs, all of them. And his wounds would become infected soon; there was no way Jeff could think of to prevent this. Time, once more, would come into play here. Gangrene, septicemia-they'd be slower than thirst, probably, but far faster than starving.

  Jeff didn't think about the vines-didn't want to, wouldn't have known how to. They moved, made sounds; they thought and planned. And worse was to come, he suspected, though what this might entail, he couldn't begin to guess.

  He sat. He watched the Mayans watching him. He waited for the Greeks to arrive, believing even as he did so that this wasn't going to happen. He thought about water and food and Pablo and Eric. When clouds began to build to the south, he peered toward them, willing them to grow, to darken, to drift ever northward. Rain. They would have to gather it. They hadn't spoken of this. He ought to have made some plan with the others, left directions for them to follow, but he was tired, had too much to think about; he'd forgotten. He rose to his feet now, stared back up the trail. Why wasn't someone coming to relieve him? This, too, they should've spoken of, should've planned, yet hadn't.

  The clouds continued to build. There was that plastic toolbox from the blue tent. They could empty it, use it to collect some of the rain. There had to be other things they could adapt for this purpose, too, but he needed to be up on the hilltop to think of them, needed to see what was available.

  He paced. He sat again. He watched the Mayans, the clouds, the trail behind him. The Mayans stared back, mute and impassive. The clouds continued to build. The trail behind him remained empty. Jeff stood and stretched, then paced some more. The sky had clouded over completely now; rain was imminent, he could tell, and he was just beginning to toy with the idea of turning, hurrying up the hill, balancing the risk of leaving the path unguarded against that of the rain coming while they were still unprepared for its arrival-brief and intense, as all such storms in this part of the world appeared to be-when he heard footsteps approaching down the trail.

  It was Mathias.

  Something was wrong; Jeff could see this just in the way Mathias moved. There was a taut quality to his walk; he was hurrying and holding himself back all at once. His face retained its usual expression of guardedness, but with a slight shift to it, almost indiscernible. It was the eyes, Jeff thought: a sense of wariness in them, even alarm. He stopped a few yards short of Jeff, out of breath.

  "What is it?" Jeff asked.

  Mathias waved behind him, up the hill. "You didn't hear?"

  "Hear what?"

  "They were talking."

  "Who?"

  "The vines."

  Jeff stared at him-not disbelieving, exactly, but too startled to speak.

  "Mimicking us," Mathias said. "Stacy and Amy and Eric-mimicking their voices."

  Jeff considered this. He didn't believe it was enough to explain Mathias's agitation; there had to be something more. "Saying what?" he asked.

  "I fell asleep, in the tent. And when I woke up…" Mathias trailed off, as if uncertain how to proceed. Then, finally: "They were fighting."

  "Fighting?"

  "The girls. Shouting things at each other."

  "Oh Christ." Jeff sighed.

  "They've been drinking. The tequila. Quite a bit, I think."

  "All of them?"

  Mathias nodded.

  "They're drunk?"

  Again, Mathias nodded. "They called me a Nazi."

  "What?"

  "The vines. Or Eric, I guess. It was his voice, but the vines were shouting it."

  Jeff watched him. This was it, he realized; this was what had upset him. And why not? He had to feel alone here among them-he hardly knew them. He was an outsider, easily scapegoated. Jeff struggled to reassure him. "It was a joke, I'm sure. Eric, you know-that's what he's like."

  Mathias remained silent, neither confirming nor denying this.

  "I should get up there," Jeff said. "You'll watch for the Greeks?"

  Mathias nodded.

  Jeff started to leave, then caught himself. "What about Pablo?"

  Mathias made a vague gesture, throwing out his hand. "The same," he said. "Not good."

  With that, Jeff started quickly up the hill, running on the flatter stretches, slowing to a walk whenever it grew steep. He seemed to be losing his breath far more easily than he ought to have. It had only been a day since they'd arrived here, and already he could feel himself growing weaker. He had the sense that this physical decline somehow mirrored a more general deterioration: everything was slipping beyond his control. Stacy and Amy and Eric had spent the afternoon drinking tequila. How stupid could they be? Myopic, impulsive, irresponsible-three fools flirting with their own destruction. Then, of course, they'd turned on one another; they'd fought, shouting insults. And Eric, for some unknown reason, had called Mathias a Nazi. Jeff's disbelief in this tangle of events slowly surrendered to a building sense of rage. This was its own folly, he knew, and yet he couldn't resist its pull, couldn't quell the desire to punish the three of them in some way, to slap them back into a proper sense of gravity. He was still riding this wave of emotion when he finally reached the hilltop, stepped into the little clearing, and glimpsed Amy force-feeding a grape to the barely conscious Pablo.

  "What the fuck are you doing?" he said, and they all turned to stare at him, startled by his presence there, the fury in his voice.

  Pablo was vomiting, though that seemed the wrong word for it. Vomiting implied something dynamic and forceful; what Pablo was doing was much more passive. His head rolled to the side, his mouth opened, and a stream of black liquid spilled out. Blood, bile-it was hard to tell what it was. There was too much of it, though, more than Jeff would've thought possible. Black liquid with thicker skeins running through it, like clots. It formed a shallow pool alongside the backboard, too jellylike, it seemed, for the dirt to absorb. Jeff was four yards away, but even at that distance he could smell it-putridly sweet.

  "He was hungry," Amy said. Jeff could hear in her voice how drunk she was, the threat of a slur haunting each of her words. In her left hand, she was clenching the plastic bag that had once held their supply of grapes; there were three left now. The nearly empty tequila bottle was lying in the dirt beside Stacy. Eric was pressing a bloody T-shirt to his side.

  Jeff felt his rage begin to expand inside his body, filling him, pressing outward against his skin, as if searching for an exit. "You're drunk. Aren't you?"

  Amy looked away. Pablo had stopped vomiting; his eyes were shut now.

  "All of you," Jeff persisted, surprising himself by how quiet he was managing to keep his voice. "Am I right?"

  "I'm not," Eric said.

  Jeff turned on him, almost lunging. Stop, he thought. Don't. But it was too late; he'd already begun to speak, his voice rising with each successive word, coming faster, harder, propelled by his anger. "You're not drunk?"

  Eric shook his head, but it didn't matter, because Jeff hardly noticed the gesture. He hadn't paused for a response; no, he just kept talking, knowing he was handling this in the worst possible manner, but no longer able to stop himself, and not wanting to, either, because there was joy in it, too
: the relief of speaking, of shouting. The release felt physical, almost sexual in its intensity.

  "Because being drunk is really your only defense here, Eric-you understand? You fucking cut yourself again, didn't you? You cut your fucking chest. You have any idea what you're doing-how profoundly stupid you're being? You're sticking a dirty knife into your body every few hours, and we're trapped here, with a tiny fucking tube of Neosporin, whose shelf date has already expired. You think that's smart? You think that makes the slightest fucking sense? Keep it up and you're gonna die here. You're not gonna make it-"

  "Jeff-" Amy began.

  "Shut up, Amy. You're just as bad." He turned on her. It didn't matter whom he was yelling at; any of them would do. "I would've expected you, at least, to know better. Alcohol is a diuretic-it dehydrates you. You know that. So how the fuck could you-"

  You think that's smart? It was his own voice, coming from somewhere to his left, jarring him into silence. You think that makes the slightest fucking sense? He turned, stared, knowing what it was but still half-expecting to see a person standing there, mimicking him. A wind had come up; it pulled at the vines, making their hand-shaped leaves sway and bob, as if in mockery.

  Now it was Amy's voice: Slut!

  And then Stacy's: Bitch!

  "It's because you're yelling," Stacy said, her voice almost a whisper. "It does it when we yell."

  Boy Scout, Eric's voice called. Nazi!

  The clouds had thickened almost to the point of dusk; it was hard to tell what time it was. The storm was upon them, clearly, but night, too, seemed close at hand. And they weren't ready for it, not nearly, not any of it.

  "Look," Amy said, gesturing skyward. She was trying very hard not to slur, he could tell, yet without much effect. "It doesn't matter-we'll get our water."

  "But have you prepared for it?" Jeff asked. "It'll come and go, and you'll just be sitting here, watching it, won't you? Watching it run down into the soil, vanishing, wasted." Jeff could feel his anger dissipating, not in a satisfying way, either, not in a rush or a jolt, but in a slow, implacable seepage. He didn't want it to go, felt abandoned by its departure, as if it were a form of strength that was leaving him; his body seemed weaker for its withdrawal. "You're pathetic," he said, turning away from them. "All of you-fucking pathetic. You don't need the vine to kill you. You're gonna make that happen all on your own."