"What're you talking about?" Amy asked, as if affronted by Jeff's words. Or scared, maybe-there was an edge to her voice.
"It pulled down my sign."
"You're saying it can read?"
"I'm saying it knew what I was doing. Knew that if it wanted to succeed in killing us-and maybe others, too, whoever else might come along-it had to get rid of the sign. Just like it had gotten rid of this one." He kicked at the metal pan with that single Spanish word scraped across its bottom.
Amy laughed. No one else did. Stacy had heard everything Jeff was saying, but she wasn't following his words, wasn't grasping that he meant them literally. Plants bend toward the light: that was what she was thinking. She even, miraculously, remembered the word for this reflex-a darting glance back toward high school biology, the smell of chalk dust and formaldehyde, sticky bumps of dried gum hanging off the underside of her desk-a little bubble rising toward the surface of her mind, breaking with a popping sound: phototropism. Flowers open in the morning and shut at night; roots reach toward water. It was weird and creepy and uncanny, but it wasn't the same as thinking.
"That's absurd," Amy said. "Plants don't have brains; they can't think."
"It grows on almost everything, doesn't it? Everything organic?" Jeff gestured at his jeans, the pale green fuzz sprouting there.
Amy nodded.
"Then why was the rope so clear?" Jeff asked.
"It wasn't. That's the reason it broke. The vine-"
"But why was there any rope left at all? This thing stripped the flesh off Pablo's legs in a single night. Why wouldn't it have eaten the rope clean, too?"
Amy frowned at him; she clearly didn't have an answer.
"It was a trap," Jeff said. "Can't you see that? It left the rope because it knew whoever came along would eventually decide to look in the hole. And then it could burn through, and-"
Amy threw up her hands in disbelief. "It's a plant, Jeff. Plants aren't conscious. They don't-"
"Here," Jeff said. He reached into his pockets, emptied them one after another onto the dirt at his feet. There were four passports, two pairs of glasses, wedding rings, earrings, a necklace. "They're all dead. These are the only things left. These and their bones. And I'm telling you that the vine did this. It killed them. And right now, even as we're speaking, it's planning to kill us, too."
Amy shook her head, vehement. "The vine didn't kill them. The Mayans did. They tried to flee and the Mayans shot them. The vine just claimed their bodies once they'd been shot. There's no thought involved in that. No-"
"Look around you, Amy."
Amy turned, glanced about the clearing. Everyone did, even Eric. Amy lifted her hands: "What?"
Jeff started across the clearing, stepped into the surrounding vegetation. Half a dozen strides and he reached one of those odd waist-high mounds. He crouched beside it, began yanking at the vines. He's going to get burned, Stacy thought, but she could tell he didn't care. As he pulled at the plants, she began to glimpse bits of yellowish white beneath the mass of green. Stones, she thought, knowing better even as she fashioned the word in her head. Jeff reached into the center of the mound, pulled out something vaguely spherelike, held it toward them. Stacy didn't want to see what it was; that was the only explanation she could devise for how long it took her to recognize the object, which was otherwise so instantly identifiable, that smiling Halloween image, that pirate flag flapping from the mast of Jeff's arm, poor Yorick of infinite jest. He was holding a skull toward them. She had to repeat the word inside her head before she could fully absorb it, believe in it. A skull, a skull, a skull…
Then Jeff waved across the hilltop, and all their heads swiveled in unison to follow the gesture. Those mounds were everywhere, Stacy realized. She started to count them, reached nine, with many more still to number, and flinched away from the task.
"It's killed them all," Jeff said. He strode back toward them, wiping his hands on his pants. "Thevine, not the Mayans. One by one, it's killed them all."
Eric had finally stopped pacing. "We have to break out," he said.
Everyone turned to stare at him. He was flipping his hand quickly back and forth at his side, as if he'd just caught it in a drawer and was trying to shake the pain out. That was how jumpy he'd become, how anxious.
"We can make shields. Spears, maybe. And charge them. All at once. We can-"
Jeff cut him off, almost disdainfully. "They have guns," he said. "At least two, maybe more. And there are only five of us. With what? Thirteen miles to safety? And Pablo-"
Eric's hand started to go faster, blurring, making a snapping sound. He shouted, "We can't just sit here doing nothing!"
"Eric-"
"It's inside me!"
Jeff shook his head, very firmly. His voice, too, was firm, startlingly so. "That's not true. It might feel like it is, but it's not. I promise you."
There was no reason for Eric to believe this, of course. Jeff was simply asserting it-even Stacy could see that. But it seemed to work nonetheless. She watched Eric surrender, watched the tension ease from his muscles. He lowered himself to the ground, sat with his knees hugged to his chest, shut his eyes. Stacy knew it wasn't going to last, though; she could tell he'd soon be back up on his feet, pacing the length of the clearing. Because even as Jeff turned away, thinking that he'd solved this one problem and could now move on to the next, she saw Eric's hand drifting down toward his shin again, toward the wound there, toward the subtle swelling around its margins.
They each took a swig of water. They sat in the clearing beside Pablo's lean-to, in a loose circle, and passed the plastic jug from hand to hand. Amy didn't think of her vow from the night before-her intention to confess her midnight theft and refuse the morning's ration-she accepted her allotted swallow without the slightest sense of guilt. She was too thirsty to do otherwise, too eager to wash the sour taste of vomit from her mouth.
The Greeks are coming : this was what she kept telling herself, imagining their progress with each passing moment, the two of them laughing and capering in the Cancún bus station, buying the tickets with their names printed on them-Juan and Don Quixote-the delight they'd feel at this, slapping each other's shoulders, grinning in that impish way of theirs. Then the bus ride, the haggling for the taxi, the long walk along the trail through the jungle to the first clearing. They'd skip the Mayan village, Amy decided-somehow they'd know better-they'd find the second trail, and hurry down it, singing, perhaps. Amy could picture their faces, their utter astonishment, when they emerged from the trees and glimpsed the vine-covered hill before them, with her or Jeff or Stacy or Eric standing at its base, waving them away, miming out their predicament, their peril. And the Greeks would understand, too. They'd turn, rush back into the jungle, go for help. All this was hours away, Amy knew. It was still so early. Juan and Don Quixote weren't even at the bus station yet; maybe they weren't even awake. But they were going to come. She couldn't allow herself to believe otherwise. Yes, it didn't matter if the vine was malevolent, if-as Jeff asserted-it could think and was plotting their destruction, because the Greeks were hurrying to their rescue. Any moment now they'd be rousing themselves, showering and breakfasting and studying Pablo's map…
Jeff had them empty their packs so they could inventory the food they'd brought.
Stacy produced her and Eric's supplies: two rotten-looking bananas, a liter bottle of water, a bag of pretzels, a small can of mixed nuts.