“He’s got a gun, Eric,” Stacy said.
Amy nodded. “And he could call the others.”
They were silent again, all of them staring down the hill, struggling to think, but if there was a solution to their present situation, no one could find it.
Mathias cupped his hands, shouted once more toward the tent: “Henrich!”
The tent continued to billow softly in the breeze. It wasn’t that far from the base of the hill to the top, a hundred and fifty yards, no farther, and they were more than halfway up it now. Close enough, certainly, for anyone who might be present there to hear them shouting. But no one appeared; no one responded. And, as the seconds slipped past and the silence prolonged itself, Eric had to admit to himself what everyone else was probably thinking, too, though none of them had yet found the courage to say it out loud: there wasn’t anyone there.
“Come on,” Jeff said, waving them forward.
And they resumed their upward march.
The hill grew flat at its top, forming a wide plateau, as if a giant hand had come down out of the sky and given it a gentle pat in those still-malleable moments following its creation. It was larger than Jeff had expected. The trail ran past the orange tent, and then, fifty feet farther along, it opened out into a small clearing of rocky ground. There was a second tent here, a blue one. It looked just as weathered as the orange one. There was no one about, of course, and Jeff had the sense, even in that first glimpse, that this had been true for some time.
“Hello?” he called again. And then the six of them stood there, just a few yards short of the orange tent, going through the motions of waiting for an answer without really expecting one to come.
It hadn’t been that arduous a climb, but they were all a little out of breath. Nobody spoke for a while, or moved; they were too hot, too sweaty, too frightened. Mathias got out his water bottle and they passed it around, finishing it off. Eric and Stacy and Amy sat down in the dirt, leaning against one another. Mathias stepped over to the tent. Its flap was zipped shut, and it took him a few moments to figure out how to open it. Jeff went over to help him.Zzzzzzzzzzip. Then they both stuck their heads inside. There were three sleeping bags unrolled on the floor. An oil lamp. Two backpacks. What looked like a plastic toolbox. A gallon jug of water, half-full. A pair of hiking boots. Despite this evidence of occupation, it was clear that no one had been here for quite some time. The musty air would’ve been evidence enough, but even more striking was the flowering vine. Somehow it had gotten inside the sealed tent and had taken root, growing on some things, leaving others untouched. The hiking boots were nearly covered in it. One of the backpacks was hanging open and the vine was spilling out of it.
Jeff and Mathias pulled their heads from the tent, looked at each other, didn’t speak.
“What’s inside?” Eric called.
“Nothing,” Jeff said. “Some sleeping bags.”
Mathias was starting off across the hilltop, heading for the blue tent, and Jeff followed him, struggling to make sense of their situation. Something, obviously, had happened to the archaeologists. Perhaps there’d been some sort of conflict with the Mayans, and the Mayans had attacked them. But then why would they have ordered them up the hill? Wouldn’t they have wanted to send them away? It was possible, of course, that the Mayans were worried they’d already seen too much, even from the base of the hill. But then why not kill them outright? It would’ve been relatively easy to cover this up, Jeff assumed. No one knew where they were. Just the Greeks, maybe, if Pablo had, in fact, written them a note before he left. But even so, it seemed simple enough. Kill them, bury them in the jungle. Feign ignorance if someone ever came searching. Jeff forced himself to remember his fears about their taxi driver, the same fears, unfounded, as it turned out. So why shouldn’t this present situation prove to be equally benign?
Mathias unzipped the flap to the blue tent, stuck his head inside. Jeff leaned forward to look, too. It was the same thing: sleeping bags, backpacks, camping equipment. Again, there was that musty smell, and the vines growing on some things but not on others. They pulled their heads out, zipped the flap shut.
Ten yards beyond the tent, there was a hole cut into the dirt. It had a makeshift windlass constructed beside it, a horizontal barrel with a hand crank welded to its base. Rope was coiled thickly around the barrel. From the barrel, it passed over a small wheel, which hung from a sort of sawhorse that straddled the hole’s mouth. Then it dropped straight down into the earth. Jeff and Mathias stepped warily to the hole, looked into it. The hole was rectangular—ten feet by six feet—and very deep; Jeff couldn’t see its bottom. The mine shaft, he supposed. There was a slight draft rising from it, an eerily chilly exhalation from the darkness.
The others had gotten to their feet now, followed them across the hilltop. Everyone took turns peering into the hole.
“There’s no one here,” Stacy said.
Jeff nodded. He was still thinking. Perhaps it was something with the ruins? Something religious? A tribal violation? But it wasn’t that sort of ruins, was it? It was an old mining camp, a shaft cut into the earth.
“I don’t think they’ve been here for a while,” Amy said.
“So what do we do?” Eric asked.
They all looked to Jeff, even Mathias. Jeff shrugged. “The trail keeps going.” He waved past the hole, and everyone turned to follow his gesture. The clearing ended just a few yards from them; then the vines resumed, and in the midst of the vines was the path. It wound its way to the edge of the hilltop, vanished over it.
“Should we take it?” Stacy asked.
“I’m not going back the way we came,” Amy said.
So they started along the path, single file again, with Jeff taking the lead. For a while, he couldn’t glimpse the base of the hill, but then the trail tilted downward, more precipitously here than on their route up, and Jeff saw exactly what he’d been fearing he would see. The others were startled; they stopped all at once, staring, and he stopped, too. But he wasn’t surprised. As soon as he’d heard the bald Mayan sending the bowmen running along the clearing, he’d known. One of them was standing at the bottom of the trail, staring up at them, awaiting their approach.
“Fuck,” Eric said.
“What do we do?” Stacy asked.
No one responded. It looked from here as if the jungle had been chopped down all the way around the base of the hill, isolating it in a ring of barren soil. The Mayans had spread themselves out along this ring, surrounding them. Jeff knew that there was no point continuing down the hill—the man obviously wasn’t going to let them pass—but he couldn’t think of any other course to pursue. So he shrugged and waved them forward. “We’ll see,” he said.
The trail was much steeper here; there were short stretches where they had to drop onto their rear ends and slide down, one after the other. It was going to be a hard climb back up, but Jeff tried not to think of this. As they got closer, the Mayan man slid the bow off his shoulder, nocked an arrow. He shouted toward them, shaking his head, waving them away. Then he called out to his left, yelling what sounded like someone’s name. A few seconds later, another one of the bowmen came jogging into view along the clearing.
The two men waited for them at the bottom of the hill, bows taut.
They all stopped on the edge of the clearing, wiping the sweat from their faces, and Pablo said something in Greek. It had the upward lilt of a question, but of course no one could understand him. He repeated it, the same phrase, then gave up.
“So,” Amy said.
Jeff didn’t know what to do. He believed there was a difference between aiming an arrow at someone and letting that arrow fly—a significant difference, he assumed—and he toyed briefly with the idea of exploring this distinction. He could take a step out into the clearing, and then another, and then another, and at some point the two men would either have to shoot him or let him pass. Perhaps it was merely a question of courage, and he tried to gird himself for the venturing of
it, was nearly there, he felt, but then another bowman came jogging toward them from their left, and the moment passed. Jeff took out his wallet, knowing it was pointless; he was simply going through the motions. He emptied it of bills and held the money toward the Mayans.
There was no reaction.
“Let’s rush them,” Eric suggested again. “All at once.”
“Shut up, Eric,” Stacy said.
But he didn’t listen. “Or go make shields. If we had some shields, we could—”
Another man came running toward them along the clearing, heavier than the others, bearded, someone they hadn’t seen before. He was carrying a rifle.
“Oh my God,” Amy said.
Jeff put the money back in his wallet, returned the wallet to his pocket. The vine had invaded the clearing here, formed an outpost in its midst. Ten feet in front of the path, there was one of those odd knob-like growths, this one a little smaller than the others, knee-high, thick with flowers. The Mayans had arranged themselves on the far side of it, with their drawn bows. And now the man with the rifle joined them.
“Let’s go back up the hill,” Stacy said.
But Jeff was staring at the vines, the isolated island, knowing already what it was, knowing it deep, without quite being conscious of this knowledge.
“I wanna go back,” Stacy said.
Jeff stepped forward. It was ten feet, and it took him four strides. He walked with his hands held up in front of him, calming the men, trying to show them that he meant no harm. They didn’t shoot; he’d known they wouldn’t, that they’d allow him to see what was beneath the vines, what he already knew but wasn’t letting himself know. Yes, they wanted him to see it.
“Jeff,” Amy called.
He ignored her, crouching beside the mound. He reached out, sinking his hand into the flowers, parting them. He grasped a stalk, tugged, pulled it free, glimpsed a tennis shoe, a sock, the lower part of a man’s shin.
“What is it?” Amy asked.
Jeff turned, stared at Mathias. Mathias knew, too; Jeff could see it in his eyes. The German stepped forward, crouched beside him, started to pull at the vines, gently at first, then more aggressively, tearing at them, a low moan beginning to rise from his chest. Twenty feet away, the Mayans watched. Another shoe was revealed, another leg. A pair of jeans, a belt buckle, a black T-shirt. And then, finally, a young man’s face. It was Mathias’s face, only different: it had the same features, the family resemblance vivid even now, with some of Henrich’s flesh oddly eaten away, so that his cheekbone was visible, the white socket of his left eye.
“Oh Jesus,” Amy said. “No.”
Jeff held up his hand, silencing her. Mathias crouched over his brother’s body, rocking slightly, that moaning coming and going. The T-shirt was only black, Jeff realized, because it had been stained that color: it was stiff with dried blood. And sticking out of Henrich’s chest, pointing up through the thick vines, were three slender arrows. Jeff rested his hand on Mathias’s shoulder. “Easy,” he whispered. “All right? Easy and slow. We’ll stand up and we’ll walk away. We’ll walk back up the hill.”
“It’s my brother,” Mathias said.
“I know.”
“They killed him.”
Jeff nodded. His hand was still on Mathias’s shoulder, and he could feel the German’s muscles clenching through his shirt. “Easy,” he said again.
“Why…”
“I don’t know.”
“He was—”
“Shh,” Jeff said. “Not here. Up the hill, okay?”
Mathias seemed to be having trouble breathing. He kept struggling to inhale, but nothing went very deep. Jeff didn’t let go of his shoulder. Finally, the German nodded, and then they both stood up. Stacy and Amy were holding hands, looking stricken, staring down at Henrich’s corpse. Stacy had started to cry, very softly. Eric had his arm around her.
The Mayans kept their weapons raised—arrows nocked, bows taut, rifle shouldered—and watched in silence as Jeff and the others turned to start back up the hill.
The climb helped some—the physical demands of it, the need to concentrate on the steeper stretches, where they almost had to crawl at times, pulling themselves forward with their hands—and as Stacy moved slowly up the hill, she gradually managed to stop crying. She kept glancing back down toward the clearing as she went; she tried not to, but she couldn’t help it. She was worried the men were going to come chasing after them. They’d killed Mathias’s brother, so it only seemed logical that they’d kill her, too. Kill all six of them, let the vines grow over their bodies. But the men just stood there in the center of the clearing, staring after them.
At the top, things got hard again. Amy started crying, and then Stacy had to, too. They sat on the ground and held hands and wept. Eric crouched beside Stacy. He said things like “It’s gonna be okay.” Or “We’ll be all right.” Or “Shh, now, shh.” Just words, nonsense really, little phrases to stroke and soothe her, and the fear in his face made her sob all the harder. But the sun burned down upon them and there was no shade to be found and she was worn-out from the climb, and after awhile she began to feel so stunned from it all that she couldn’t even cry anymore. When she stopped, Amy did, too.
Jeff and Mathias had wandered off across the hilltop. They were standing on the far side of it, staring down toward the clearing, talking together. Pablo had disappeared into the blue tent.
“Is there any water?” Amy asked.
Eric dug through his pack, pulled out a bottle. They took turns drinking from it.
“It’s gonna be okay,” he said again.
“How?” Stacy asked, hating herself for speaking. She knew she shouldn’t be asking questions like that. She needed to be quiet and let Eric build this dream for them.
Eric thought for a moment, struggling. “Maybe when the sun sets, we can go back down, sneak past them in the darkness.”
They drank some more water, considering this. It was too hot to think, and there was a persistent buzzing in Stacy’s ears, like static, but higher-pitched. She realized she should get out of the sun, crawl into one of the tents and lie down, but she was frightened of the tents. She knew that whoever had set them up so carefully here upon the hilltop was almost certainly dead now. If Henrich was dead, then the archaeologists must be, too. Stacy couldn’t see any way around this.
Eric tried again. “Or we can always just wait them out,” he said. “The Greeks will come sooner or later.”
“How do you know?” Amy asked.
“Pablo left them a note.”
“But how can you be sure?”
“He copied the map, didn’t he?”
Amy didn’t say anything. Stacy sat there, wishing she’d speak again, that she’d somehow manage to clarify this question, either refute Eric’s logic or accept it, but Amy remained silent, peering off across the hilltop at Jeff and Mathias. There was no way to tell, of course. Pablo might’ve left a note or he might not have. The only way they’d know for certain was if the Greeks were eventually to show up.
“I’ve never seen a dead body before,” Eric said.
Amy and Stacy were silent. How could they possibly respond to a statement like that?
“You’d think something would’ve eaten him, wouldn’t you? Come out of the jungle and—”
“Stop it,” Stacy said.
“But it seems odd, doesn’t it? He’s been there long enough for those vines to—”
“Please, Eric.”
“And where are the others? Where are the archaeologists?”
Stacy reached out and touched his knee. “Just stop, okay? Stop talking.”
Jeff and Mathias were coming back toward them. Mathias was holding his hands out in front of himself, as if they were covered in paint and he was trying not to get it on his clothes. As they came closer, Stacy saw that his hands and wrists had turned a deep raw-meat red; they look scarred.
“What happened?” Eric asked.
Jeff and Mathias crouched be
side them. Jeff reached for the water bottle, poured a tiny bit on Mathias’s hands; then Mathias rubbed at them with his shirt, grimacing.
“There’s something in the plants,” Jeff said. “When he tore them off his brother, he got their sap on his hands. It’s acidic. It’s burned his skin.”
They all peered down at Mathias’s hands. Jeff handed the water back to Stacy. She took off her bandanna, started to tilt the bottle over it, thinking the wet cloth might cool her head some, but Jeff stopped her.
“Don’t,” he said. “We need to save it.”
“Save it?” she asked. She felt stupid with the heat: she didn’t know what he meant.
He nodded. “We don’t have that much. We’ll each need a half gallon a day, at least. That’s three gallons total, every day. We’ll have to figure out a way to catch the rain.” He glanced up at the sky, as if searching for clouds, but there weren’t any. It had rained every afternoon since they’d arrived in Mexico, and now, when they needed it, the sky was perfectly clear. “We have to get organized,” Jeff said. “Now, while we’re still fresh.”
SSmith - Ruins Page 8
