by Scott Smith
They moved along the base of the hill, keeping close to the vines, trudging through the mud. They didn't talk. The bald Mayan followed them, accompanied by the two young bowmen. It wasn't very far; it didn't take long to get there.
Mathias crouched beside the little mound, started to pull the tendrils from it, slowly revealing Jeff's body. He was still recognizable, only partially eaten, as if the vine had curbed its hunger, wanting them to know, without any doubt, that Jeff was dead. He was lying on his stomach, stretched out, his arms above his head; it looked like he'd been dragged there by his feet. Mathias rolled him over. There were wounds on his throat, one on either side, and his shirt was completely saturated with blood. The flesh had been stripped from the bottom half of his face, revealing his teeth and jawbone, but his eyes were untouched. They were open, staring cloudily up at them. Stacy had to look away.
She was startled by how calm she was acting; it frightened her. Who am I? she thought. Am I still me?
Mathias unbuckled Jeff's watch from his wrist. Then he reached into his pocket, removed his wallet. There was a silver ring on Jeff's right hand, and Mathias retrieved this, too. He had to work at it-tugging-before it finally slipped free.
Stacy could remember going with Amy to buy the ring. They'd found it in a pawnshop in Boston. Amy had presented it to Jeff on the anniversary of their first date. Over the years that followed, Stacy and she had spent many hours trying to imagine its original owner-what he'd been like, how he'd ever managed to reach the point where he'd needed to pawn such a beautiful object. They'd created a whole character out of this fantasy, a failed musician, a sometimes junkie, sometimes pusher, whose great, perhaps apocryphal claim to fame was that he'd once sold Miles Davis an ounce of heroin. They'd given him a name, Thaddeus Fremont, and whenever they glimpsed an older, downtrodden man shuffling through the world, they'd nudge each other and whisper, "Look-there's Thaddeus. He's searching for his ring."
Mathias held out Jeff's things to her, and she took them from him.
"I should've gotten Henrich's, too," he said. "He wore a pendant-a good-luck charm." He touched his chest, showing her where it had hung. Then he spent a moment staring along the clearing, as if he were thinking of going to fetch it now. But when he stood up, it was to turn back toward the trail.
They set off together, walking side by side-once more, in silence. Stacy's feet were caked in mud; it felt as if she were wearing a pair of heavy boots.
"Not that it worked," Mathias said.
She turned, glanced at him. "Not that what worked?"
"His good-luck charm."
Stacy couldn't think how to react to this. She knew it was a joke, or an attempt at one, but the idea of laughing, or even smiling, in response to it seemed abominable. The humming had returned inside her skull; she was having trouble suddenly keeping her eyes open. For some reason, talking made them ache. She kept walking, her arms folded across her chest, hugging herself, Jeff's watch gripped in one hand, his wallet and ring in the other. She waited for enough time to pass so that it could seem as if Mathias hadn't spoken-until they were nearly at the trail again-and then she said, "What do we do now?"
"Go back to the tent, I guess. Try to rest."
"Shouldn't one of us watch for the Greeks?"
Mathias shook his head. "Not for another hour or so."
Stacy's mind shifted toward the tent, the little clearing. She thought of Pablo on his backboard, the agony he'd suffered there. She thought of herself, how she'd bent to collect Amy's scattered bones that morning, so casually, as if she were tidying up after a party.
Those words were inside her head again: Am I still me?
Without any warning, she started to cry. It was like a coughing fit-two dozen full-bodied sobs-they came and went in less than a minute. Mathias waited beside her till they passed. Then he rested his hand on her shoulder.
"Do you want to sit for a moment?" he asked.
Stacy lifted her eyes, looked about them. They were standing in four inches of mud. To their right, the hillside climbed steeply upward, swathed in its vine. To their left, midway across the clearing, stood the three Mayans, watching them. She shook her head, wiped at her face. "Eric's dying, isn't he?" she said. "It's inside him, and he's going to die."
Her hands had opened as she'd sobbed; she'd dropped Jeff's watch, his wallet and ring. Mathias crouched to retrieve them. They were muddy now, and he tried to wipe them clean on his pants.
"I don't know if I can handle it, Mathias. Watching him die."
Mathias slid Jeff's ring into the wallet. His hands were bleeding, she noticed, the skin cracked and scored from the vine's sap. His clothes were hanging off him in shreds. His stubble was thickening into a beard, and it made him seem older. He nodded. "No," he said. "Of course not."
Stacy turned, stared toward the three Mayans. They had a way of watching her without ever meeting her gaze. She assumed this was something they'd consciously learned to do, a trick to make their duty here less arduous on themselves. It seemed to her that it would have to be much harder to kill someone once you'd looked them in the eyes. "What do you think they'd do if we stepped forward now?" she asked. "If we just kept walking, right at them?"
Mathias shrugged. The answer was obvious, of course. "Shoot us."
"Maybe we should do it. Maybe we should just get it over with."
Mathias watched her; he seemed to be giving the idea serious consideration. But then he shook his head. "Someone's going to come, Stacy. Eventually. How can we say for certain that it won't be today?"
"But it might not be. Right? It might not be for weeks. Or months. Or ever."
Mathias didn't answer; he just stared at her. From the first moment they'd met, she'd found his gaze-so somber, so unflinching-a little frightening. After a few seconds, she had to look away. He reached and took her hand then, and, still not speaking, led her back along the clearing to the trail.
Eric could feel the vine moving about inside his body. It was in the small of his back, his left armpit, his right shoulder. The knife lay ten feet away from him-mud-stained, still damp with his own blood. He'd assumed that he'd immediately begin to cut himself, as soon as Stacy and Mathias left the clearing, but then the moment arrived and he'd discovered he was too scared to do it. He'd already spilled a terrifying amount of blood-he could just look at his body and see this-and he wasn't certain how much more he could afford to lose.
He sat up, took a deep breath, then folded into himself, coughing dryly. There was no phlegm, just the sense of something residing in his chest that shouldn't be there, something his body was trying, unsuccessfully, to expel. Eric had been battling this cough all night; it seemed strange to him that he shouldn't have realized earlier what its source was. It was the vine, of course-he was certain of this. Yes, there was a tendril growing inside his lungs.
I should go into the tent, he thought. I should lie down. It doesn't matter if it's wet. But he didn't move.
He coughed again.
It would've been easier, he believed, if Stacy had stayed with him. She could've talked to him, argued. He might've listened-who could say? And if he hadn't, she could've always grabbed at his arm, held him back. But she wasn't there-she'd abandoned him-so there was no one to stop him now when he stood up and retrieved the knife.
He sat back down, holding it in his lap.
He tried his word games again, his imaginary vocabulary test, but he couldn't remember what letter he'd reached last. The shiftings inside his body made it hard to concentrate. It seemed important that he keep track of them. The top of my right foot…the nape of my neck…
Eric leaned forward, scratched at his left calf, felt a lump there. He stared down at it, watching it flatten itself out, then bunch together again slightly lower on his leg. It was nearly the size of a golf ball. When he probed at it with his finger, there was that familiar sense of numbness.
The incision wouldn't hurt, he knew; it was the pulling forth that would make him cry out. As he sat t
hinking this, he noticed another bulge. This one was on his left forearm, much smaller than the others, about three inches long and thin as a worm. He touched it, and it vanished, burrowing down into his flesh.
All this was too much for Eric, of course: he couldn't just sit quietly, watching these things appear and disappear across his body. Something needed to be done, and there was really only one solution, wasn't there?
He lifted the knife from his lap, leaned forward, began to cut.
Somehow, the trail up the hill seemed to have grown much steeper since Stacy'd last climbed it. As they made their way ever higher, she started to pant, her clothes clinging to her sweaty body. She had a cramp in her side. Mathias appeared to sense her distress, and-even though they were nearly to the top-he stopped so she could rest. He stood beside her, staring off across the hillside while Stacy struggled to catch her breath.
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 noisily 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.
