Jeff stopped at the mouth of the trail, set everything down. He crouched with his back to the Mayans. It filled him with a fluttery sense of panic-he kept imagining the bows being raised, the arrows pulled taut-but he thought it might make him appear less threatening. He tore a blank page out of the rear of the notebook, uncapped the pen, and began to draw the first of his signs, a skull and crossbones, stark and simple, appropriately ominous. He went over and over it with his pen, making the drawing as dark as possible.
He tore off another page, wrote "SOS" on it.
Then a third page: "HELP."
And a fourth: "DANGER."
He pried up a softball-size stone, used it to pound the aluminum pole into the dirt, right at the edge of the clearing, blocking the trail. Then he duct-taped his signs to the pole, one beneath another. He turned finally, as if to see the Mayans' reaction. The two along the tree line had lain down again, their hats over their faces, and the woman by the fire had her back to him now. She was stirring the embers with her left hand, setting a small pot onto an iron tripod with her right: breakfast, Jeff assumed. The other three were still watching him, but with a much more casual air. They almost seemed to be smiling-good-humoredly, he thought. Or was there an air of mockery, too? Jeff turned, banged at the pole a few more times with his stone. Someone would have to come and sit by it later in the day, after the bus arrived in Cobá, but for now this ought to suffice. Just as a precaution, in case the Greeks somehow managed to appear earlier than expected. If they'd hitchhiked, say. Or rented a car.
Jeff retrieved the pen and the notebook and the roll of tape and was just about to start back up the trail, when he changed his mind. He set everything down again and-very hesitantly, very carefully-stepped out into the clearing, lifting his hands, patting at the air. The Mayans raised their weapons. Jeff pointed to his right, trying to show them that he just wanted to walk along the clearing's margin, keeping close to the vines: he wasn't going to try to flee. The Mayans kept staring at him, the bows drawn, the pistol aimed at his chest, but they didn't say anything, made no overt attempt to stop him, so Jeff took this as permission. He started slowly along the base of the hill.
The Mayans followed him, leaving the trail momentarily unguarded. Then, after about a dozen yards, the man with the pistol shouted something to the woman behind them, and she rose from her cooking, kicked at one of the sleeping men along the tree line. He pushed himself into a sitting position, rubbing his eyes. He stared after Jeff for a long moment, then roused one of his companions. They reached for their bows, stood up, shuffled sleepily toward the watch fire.
Jeff continued along the edge of the clearing, the Mayans keeping pace with him, their weapons raised. His mind was jumping again-the latrine, the hole to distill their urine, Amy stealing the water. He wondered if the signs would have any meaning to the Greeks, if they'd just walk right past them. He checked the sky-a pale blue now, perfectly clear-and wondered if it would darken later in the afternoon, if the customary showers would sweep over them, brief but intense, so inexplicably absent yesterday. He tried to think how they ought to go about collecting the rain if it did fall-they could use the remains of the blue tent, maybe, fashion it into a giant nylon funnel, but leading into what? There was no point gathering the water if they couldn't store it; they needed containers, bottles, urns. And this was the problem that was occupying Jeff when he glimpsed the first waist-high mound of vines and finally realized why he'd set off along the clearing, what he was looking for here, what-without admitting it to himself-he'd known that he'd eventually find.
The mound lay ten feet out into the clearing, a small island of green amid the dark, barren soil. Jeff stopped while he was still a few yards short of it, feeling a little frightened, almost turning back. But no, though he knew what it was-he was sure he knew-he still had to see for certain. He stepped toward it, dropped into a crouch, started to tear at the vines, forgetting the danger of their sap until he felt his palms begin to burn. By then, he already had the thing half uncovered; he could stop, wiping his hands in the dirt.
It was another body.
Jeff stood up, used his foot to part the remaining vines. It was a woman, perhaps even the one Henrich had met on the beach, the one whose beauty had enticed him here, luring him to his death. She had dark blond hair, shoulder-length, but beyond that it was difficult to say, as most of her flesh had already been eaten away. Her face was a blankly staring skull. Her clothes were gone, too; she was just a skeleton and hair, some mummified strips of meat, a tarnished silver bracelet still encircling her bony wrist, a belt buckle, zipper, and copper button resting in the otherwise-empty hollow of her pelvis. She couldn't be Henrich's love, of course; she was too far gone. Such a degree of dissolution had to have taken months to accomplish, even in this climate. Or maybe not, Jeff realized, bending to remove more of the vine, carefully this time, gently. Maybe it was the plant that had done it, eaten away at the flesh, fed off its nutrients.
The Mayans stood twenty feet away, watching him.
Jeff pulled more of the vine free, and the skeleton's left arm came loose, fell from its socket, dropped with a clatter to the ground. The vine wasn't growing out of the soil, he noticed; it was clinging directly to the bones. Jeff considered this for a moment, his mind jumping to the mystery of the clearing itself: how had the Mayans managed to keep it free of vegetation? The vine sprouted so quickly; in a single night it had taken root on his clothing, his shoes. And yet the earth he was standing upon was utterly barren. He scooped up a handful of dirt, examined it closely. Dark, rich-looking soil, flecked with white crystals. Salt, he thought, touching it with the tip of his tongue to make sure. They've sowed it with salt.
It was at this instant, up on the hill, that Pablo began to scream. Far away-too far away-Jeff didn't hear a thing.
He stood, dropped the handful of dirt, continued walking. His three companions followed, keeping themselves between him and the far tree line. He passed another watch fire, seven Mayans clustered around it, eating their morning meal. They paused as he approached, lowering their tin plates into their laps. He could smell the food, see it. It was some sort of stew-chicken, tomatoes, rice-perhaps left over from the night before, and Jeff's stomach clenched hungrily. He had the urge to beg from them, to drop to his knees and extend his open palms in supplication, but he resisted it, sensing the futility of such a gesture. He kept moving forward, sucking dryly on the pebble in his mouth.
He could already see the next mound.
When he reached it, he crouched, carefully pulled some of the vines away.
Another corpse.
This one seemed to belong to a man, though it was hard to tell, since it was even more reduced than the blond woman's. The bones had collapsed in a loose pile; they no longer bore any obvious relationship to a skeleton. Jeff guessed at the corpse's gender more from the size of its skull than anything else-it was large, almost boxlike. One of the flowering vines had pushed its way into the eye sockets, entering the right one, emerging from the left. There were buttons again, and a thin wormlike length of zipper from the man's pants. A pair of wire-rimmed glasses, a plastic comb, a ring of keys. Jeff counted three small arrowheads, stripped of their shafts. And then, lying in the dirt, nearly hidden beneath the tangle of bones, there was a scramble of credit cards, a passport. It was the contents of a wallet, of course. Which must've been made of leather, Jeff guessed, since there was no sign of it now. What remained was the inorganic, the synthetic-the metal and plastic and glass-everything else had been eaten. And that was the right word for it, too: eaten. Because it was the flowering vine that had done this, Jeff realized, not a passive force-not rot or dissolution-but an active one.