Jeff crouched over the body, examining the passport. It belonged to a Dutchman named Cees Steenkamp. Inside, his picture revealed him to be broad-browed, with thinning blond hair and an expression that could either be read as aloof or melancholic. He'd been born on November 11, 1951, in a town named Lochem. When Jeff looked up, he found the three Mayans watching him. It was possible, of course, that they were the ones who'd killed this man, shooting him with their arrows. Jeff felt the urge to extend the man's passport toward them, to show them the photo of Cees Steenkamp, his large, slightly bovine eyes staring so sadly out at the world: dead now, murdered. But he knew it wouldn't matter, wouldn't change anything. He was beginning to grasp what was happening here, the whys and wherefores, the forces at play. Guilt, empathy, mercy: these weren't what this was about. The photo would mean nothing to these men, and Jeff, increasingly, could understand this-even sympathize, perhaps. Half a dozen yards beyond the Mayans, there was a cloud of gnats swirling in the air, hovering over the jungle's edge, as if held back from approaching any nearer by some invisible force. And this, too, made sense to Jeff.
He slid the passport into his pocket, continued walking, the three Mayans mutely accompanying him. They passed other watch fires, everyone pausing at Jeff's approach, staring at him as he shuffled by. It took him nearly an hour to make his way around the base of the hill, and he found another five mounds before he was through. More of the same: bones, buttons, zippers. Two pairs of glasses. Three passports-an American's, a Spaniard's, a Belgian's. Four wedding rings, some earrings, a necklace. More arrowheads, and a handful of bullets, flattened from striking bone. And then, of course, there was Henrich, though at first Jeff had difficulty recognizing him. His body was in the right location, but it had changed dramatically overnight. The flesh was completely gone, as was most of his clothing, eaten by the vine.
Yes, Jeff understood now, or was beginning to understand. But it wasn't until he completed the circle, returning to his starting point at the base of the trail, that the true depths of their situation began to open before him.
His signs had vanished.
At first, Jeff assumed the Mayans must've taken them down, but this didn't fit into the picture he was forming in his mind, and he stood for a long moment, staring about, searching for some other possibility. He could see the hole where he'd pounded the pole into the dirt; he could see the stone he'd used as an improvised mallet, the notebook, the pen, the roll of tape. But the signs were nowhere to be found.
Just as he was about to give up, he noticed a glint of metal beside the trail, three feet from its margin, buried under the vines. He stepped toward it, crouched, began probing with his hands beneath the knee-high vegetation. It was the aluminum pole, still warm to the touch from its time in the sun. The vines had wrapped themselves so tightly around it that Jeff had to strain to tug it free. The signs he'd drawn had been torn from their duct tape; the plants were already starting to dissolve the paper, eating away at it. Yet even now, having glimpsed this, Jeff still couldn't stop himself from clinging to the old logic, the ways of the world beyond this vine-covered hilclass="underline" perhaps the Mayans had thrown stones at the pole, he thought, knocking it off the trail. Then he noticed something else beneath the thickly coiled vegetation, a blackened sheet of metal. He kicked the vines clear of it, reached to drag the thing out into the open. It was a baking pan, a foot square, three inches deep. Someone had scratched a single word onto its soot-encrusted bottom, gouging deeply, cutting a groove into the metal.
¡PELIGRO!
Jeff stood for a long moment, contemplating this.
Danger.
The day was growing steadily warmer. He'd left his hat behind in the tent, and he could feel the sun beginning to scorch his neck, his face. His thirst had climbed to a new level. It was no longer simply a desire for water; there was pain involved now, a sense of damage being done to his body. The pebble he'd been sucking was proving useless to combat this, and he spit it out, only to be startled by a leap of movement amid the vegetation as the tiny stone dropped into the vines. Something had seemed to dart, snakelike, at the pebble, too quickly for Jeff to see it clearly, just the abrupt blur of motion.
The birds, he thought.
But no, of course not, it wasn't the birds-and he knew this. Because though he'd yet to understand where the noise had come from last night, he'd already realized that there weren't any birds on the hillside. No birds, no flies, no mosquitoes, no gnats. He bent, picked up another pebble, tossed it into the profusion of vines beside him. Once more, there was that jump of movement, nearly too fast to glimpse, and Jeff knew what it was now-knew what had pulled down his sign, too-and felt almost sickened by the knowledge.
He threw another pebble. This time there was no movement, and that made sense to Jeff, too. It was exactly what he'd expected. If it had kept happening, it would've simply been a reflex, and that wasn't what this was about.
He turned, stared toward the Mayans, who were standing in the center of the cleared ground, watching him, their weapons lowered finally. They seemed slightly bored by what they were seeing, and Jeff supposed he could understand this also. After all, he'd done nothing here that they hadn't witnessed on other occasions. The posting of the sign, the circumnavigation of the hill, the discovery of the bodies, the slowly dawning awareness of what sort of world he'd become trapped in: they'd seen it all before. And not only that; they could probably guess what was still to come, too, could've told Jeff, if they'd only shared a language, how the approaching days would unfold, how they'd begin and how they'd end. It was with these thoughts in his head that Jeff returned to the trail and began his slow climb up it to tell the others of all he'd discovered.
Stacy had opened her eyes to the sound of screaming. Eric was writhing about beside her, obviously in some sort of distress, and it took her a moment to realize that it wasn't his cries that were filling the tent. The noise was coming from outside. It was Pablo. Pablo was screaming. And yet something was wrong with Eric, too. He was leaning on his elbow, staring toward his legs, kicking them, saying, "Oh fuck, oh my God, oh Christ." He kept repeating the words, and Pablo kept screaming, and Stacy couldn't understand what was happening. Amy was on the other side of her, just coming awake, looking even more confused, even more lost than Stacy felt herself.
The three of them were alone in the tent; there was no sign of Jeff or Mathias.
Eric's left leg was covered with the vine.
"What is it?" Stacy said. "What's going on?"
Eric didn't seem to hear her. He sat up, leaning forward, and began to yank at the vine, struggling to pull it free from his body. The plant's leaves ripped and crumpled as he tugged at them, sap oozing out, beginning to burn him, to burn her, too, when she reached to help him. The vine had wound itself around his left leg, climbing all the way to his groin. His sperm, Stacy thought, remembering the hand job she'd given him the night before. It was drawn to his sperm. Because it was true: the vine had wrapped itself not only around Eric's leg but also his penis, his testicles. Eric was struggling to free himself from its hold, pulling gingerly now, still repeating that string of words: "Oh fuck, oh my God, oh Christ…"