"All you have to do is get into the jungle-just a little ways. Then drop to the ground. It's thick enough that they probably wouldn't be able to find you. Wait awhile, and then make your way out. But carefully. It's when you move that they'll see you."
"I'm not going to run, Jeff."
"I'm just saying if you have the-"
"The Greeks are coming. Why would I try to run?"
Now it was Jeff who didn't say anything. He stared at her, expressionless.
"You act like they're not coming. You won't let us eat or drink or-"
"We don't know that they're coming."
"Of course they're coming."
"And if they do come, we can't be certain they won't just end up on the hill here with us."
Amy shook her head at that, as if the very idea were too outlandish to consider. "I wouldn't let them."
Again, Jeff didn't speak. There was the hint of a frown on his face now.
"I'll warn them away," Amy insisted.
Jeff continued to watch her in silence for a long moment, and she could sense him debating, toying with the idea of saying something further, setting it down, picking it back up again. When he finally spoke, his voice dropped even lower, almost to a whisper. "This is serious, Amy. You know that, don't you?"
"Yes," she said.
"If it was just a matter of waiting, I'd feel okay. As hard as it might be, I'm pretty sure we'd make it. Maybe not Pablo, but the rest of us. Sooner or later, someone would come-we'd just have to tough it out until then. And we would, too. We'd be hungry and thirsty, and maybe Eric's knee would get infected, but we'd be all right in the end, don't you think?"
She nodded.
"But it's not just waiting now."
Amy didn't respond. She knew what he was saying, but she couldn't bring herself to acknowledge it.
Jeff's gaze remained intent upon her, forcing eye contact. "You understand what I mean?"
"You mean the vine."
He nodded. "It's going to try to kill us. Like all these other people. And the longer we stay here, the better its chances."
Amy stared off across the hilltop. She'd seen what the vine could do. She'd seen it come squirming toward her across the clearing so that it could suck up her little puddle of vomit. She'd seen Pablo's legs stripped free of flesh. Yet all this was so far beyond what she took to be the immutable laws of nature, so far beyond what she knew a plant ought to be capable of, that she couldn't quite bring herself to accept it. Strange things had happened-dreadful things-and she'd witnessed them with her own eyes, but even so, she continued to doubt them. Looking at the vine now, tangled and coiled across the hill, its dark green leaves, its bloodred flowers, she could muster no dread of it. She was scared of the Mayans with their bows and guns; she was scared of not getting enough to eat or drink. But the vine remained just a plant in her mind, and she couldn't bring herself to fear it in the way she knew she ought to. She couldn't believe that it would kill her.
She fell back to her place of safety: "The Greeks will come," she said.
Jeff sighed. She could tell that she'd disappointed him, that she'd once again turned out to be less than he'd needed her to be. But it was all she could do-she couldn't be better or braver or smarter than she was-and she could see him thinking this, too, resigning himself to her failure. His hand dropped from her elbow.
"Just be careful, okay?" he said. "Stay alert. Scream if anything happens-loud as you can-and we'll come running."
With those parting words, he sent her down the hill.
Eric was back in the orange tent. It was a bad idea, he knew; it was the worst possible place for him to be, but he couldn't bring himself to leave. He felt passive and inert, and yet-within this outer shell of sluggishness-full of panic. Trapped, out of control, and being in the tent only made it worse. But Jeff had told him to get into the shade and try to rest, so that was what he was doing.
He sensed it wasn't the right thing, though.
It was growing hot, the sun climbing implacably upward, beating down on the tent's orange nylon, so that soon the cloth itself began to seem as if it were radiating light and heat, rather than merely filtering it. Eric lay on his back, sweaty, greasy-haired, trying to bring his breathing under control. It was too fast, too shallow, and he believed that if he could only quiet it down some, deepening his inhalations, letting the air fill his chest, everything else would follow-his heart would slow, and then maybe his thoughts would, too. Because that was the main problem just now: his thoughts were moving too fast, jumping and rearing. He knew that he was on the edge of hysteria-that he'd maybe even drifted over into the thing itself. He was having some sort of anxiety attack, and he couldn't seem to find a way back from it. There was his breathing and his heart and his thoughts, and all of them had inexplicably slipped beyond his control.
He kept sitting up to examine his wounded leg-bending close, squinting, pushing at the swollen tissue with his finger. The vine was inside him. Mathias had cut it out, but there was still some in there. Eric could feel it-he was certain of it-yet the others refused to listen. They were ignoring him, dismissing him, and the vine was starting to grow; it was starting to grow and eat, and when it was done, Eric would be just like Pablo, his legs stripped clean of flesh. He and the Greek weren't going to leave this place alive; they were going to end up as two more of those green mounds scattered across the hillside.
The tent was where it had happened-so why was he back in the tent? Jeff was the reason: he'd told him to come inside here, to rest, as if rest were still possible now. But that was because Jeff didn't believe him. He'd spent a few seconds looking at Eric's knee, and that wasn't long enough, not nearly; he hadn't seen it. Or maybe you couldn't see it, no matter how long you looked; maybe that was the problem. Eric knew the truth because he could feel it; there was something awry inside his leg, something moving that wasn't himself, but a thing foreign to him, with goals all its own. Eric wished he could see it, wished Jeff and the others could see it, too; everything would be better if they could only see it. He shouldn't be here in the tent, where it had happened, where it might happen again. He shouldn't be alone.
He surprised himself by standing up. He limped to the flap and stooped through it, into the sunlight. Stacy was beside the lean-to. They'd constructed a little sunshade for her, using some of the leftover poles and nylon from the other tent, fashioning this debris into a battered-looking sort of umbrella. She was sitting in the dirt beneath it, cross-legged, facing Pablo at an oblique angle, so that she could watch over him without actually having to look at him. No one wanted to look at Pablo anymore, and Eric understood this-he didn't want to look at the Greek, either. What troubled him was the sense that the others were beginning to include him, too, in their zone of not seeing. Even now, as he dropped to the ground beside her, Stacy's gaze remained averted.
Eric reached, took her hand, and she let him, but passively, her muscles limply inert, so that it felt as if he were holding an empty glove. They sat for a few moments without speaking, and in this brief silence Eric almost managed to achieve a sort of peace. They were just two people resting in the sun together-why shouldn't it be this simple? It didn't last, though, this momentary serenity; it fell away from him with the suddenness of something made of glass, shattering, and his heart leapt abruptly into his throat. He could feel the sweat rising on his skin, his grip on Stacy's hand becoming slippery with it. He had to resist the urge to jump up and begin to pace. He could hear Pablo's breathing-wet-sounding, unhealthy, like someone dragging a saw back and forth through a tin can-and he risked a quick glance at him, immediately regretting it. Pablo's face had taken on an odd grayness, his eyes were closed and deeply sunken, and there was a thin string of dark liquid draining from the corner of his mouth, vomit or bile or blood-Eric couldn't tell which. Someone should wipe it away, he thought, but he made no move to do this. And under the sleeping bag, of course, were Pablo's legs, or what was left of them-the bones, the thick clots of blood, the yellow tendons. Eric knew the Greek couldn't survive like this, stripped clean of flesh, knew Pablo was going to die, and wished only that it would happen sooner rather than later, now even-a blessing, a release, he thought-all the lies people utter around death in order to comfort themselves, to bury their grief with the body, but here, suddenly, they were true. Die, Eric said in his head. Do it now, just die. And all the while-yes, implacably, inexorably -the Greek's breathing continued its ragged course.