But there was nowhere to go, of course. Even on the far side of the clearing, with his back turned to the scene, he could still hear what was happening, the crunch of the stone slamming into Pablo's other leg, and the screaming-louder now, it seemed, higher-pitched.
Eric glanced over his shoulder-he couldn't stop himself.
Mathias was holding the black pan, the one Jeff had brought back from the bottom of the hill, with that word carved across its bottom-peligro. Eric watched him place it in the fire. They were going to use it to cauterize the Greek's wounds, pressing it flat across his stumps, one after the other.
Jeff was bent low over the backboard, working with the knife, a steady sawing motion, his shirt soaked through with sweat.
Pablo was still screaming. And there were words now, too. They were impossible to understand, of course, but Eric could hear the pleading in them, the begging. He remembered how he'd fallen on the Greek when he'd jumped down into the shaft, that feeling of his body bucking beneath him. And he thought of how Amy and he had thrown Pablo onto the backboard, that clumsy, lurching, panic-filled toss. He could feel the vine moving inside him, in his leg, and his chest, too-that insistent pressure at the base of his rib cage, pushing outward. It was all wrong; everything here was wrong, and there was no way to stop it, no way to escape.
Eric turned away again, but he couldn't maintain it. He had to glance back almost immediately.
Jeff finished with the knife, dropped it into the dirt at his side. Eric watched him pick up the towel; he wrapped it around his hand, turned to pull the pan from the fire. Mathias had to help him now. He squatted beside the backboard, bent to lift Pablo's left leg, what remained of it, grasping it with both hands just above the knee. Pablo was crying, talking to the two of them, Mathias and Jeff both, using their names. Neither of them showed any sign of hearing, though; they wouldn't look at him. The pan was glowing orange now, and the letters scratched into its bottom were a deeper color, almost red, so that Eric could still read the word they spelled there, even as Jeff swung it free of the flames. He watched Jeff spin, place the pan against the base of Pablo's stump, holding it in place, pressing hard, using all his weight. Eric could hear the flesh burning, a spitting, snapping sound. He could smell it, too, and was appalled to feel his stomach stirring in response-not in nausea, either, but, shockingly, in hunger.
He turned away, dropped into a crouch, shutting his eyes, pressing his hands to his ears, breathing through his mouth. He remained like this for what seemed like an impossibly long time, concentrating on the sensation of the vine inside his body, that insistently probing spasm in his leg, that pressure in his chest, trying to feel them as something else, something benign, some trick of perception, as Stacy kept insisting they must be: his heartbeat, his overtired muscles, his fear. He couldn't do it, though, and he couldn't wait any longer, either; yet again, he had to look.
When he turned, he found Jeff and Mathias still crouched over the backboard. Jeff was pressing the pan into Pablo's right stump now. There was that same sickeningly enticing smell in the air. But silence now-Pablo had gone still, stopped screaming. He seemed to have lost consciousness.
Then there was the sound of footsteps approaching. Amy was coming up the path. She entered the clearing at a run, out of breath, her skin shining with sweat.
Too late, Eric thought, watching her stagger to a stop, staring-seeing-a look of horror on her face. She's come too late.
Jeff didn't know what to feel. Or no: He knew what he thought, and then he knew what he felt, and he couldn't seem to bring the two into line. It had gone well, maybe even better than he'd expected-this was what he thought. They'd gotten the legs off fairly quickly, each of them a few inches below the knee, saving the joint. They'd cauterized the stumps thoroughly enough so that when they removed the tourniquets, there was only a minimal amount of bleeding. Seepage, really, would be the word for it, nothing too serious. Pablo had lost consciousness toward the end, more from shock, it seemed, than anything else. It wasn't pain-Jeff was almost certain of this-he shouldn't have been able to feel a thing. But he'd been awake; he'd been able to lift his head and see what they were doing, and that must've counted as its own sort of anguish. He was safer now, Jeff believed, though still in peril. All they'd done was buy him some time-not much, maybe another day or two. But it was something, and Jeff believed that he ought to feel proud of himself, that he'd done a brave deed. So he couldn't understand why he felt so sick at heart, almost breathless with it, as if holding back the threat of tears.
Amy wasn't helping much. None of them were. Mathias seemed reluctant to look at him, was hunched into himself beside the remains of their little fire, completely withdrawn. Eric had resumed his pacing, his fretful probing at his leg and chest. And Amy, without even bothering to take the time to understand what he'd accomplished-while they were still removing the tourniquets, carefully smearing Neosporin on the seared stumps-had immediately begun to attack him.
"Oh Jesus," she'd said, startling him. He hadn't heard her approach. "Jesus fucking Christ. What've you done?"
Jeff didn't bother to answer. It seemed clear enough.
"You cut off his legs. How could you fucking-"
"We didn't have a choice," Jeff said. He was bent over the second stump, spreading the gel across it. "He was going to die."
"And you think this will save him? Chopping off his legs with a dirty knife?"
"We sterilized it."
"Come on, Jeff. Look what he's lying on."
It was true, of course: The sleeping bag they'd used to cushion the backboard was soaked through with the leakage from Pablo's bladder. Jeff shrugged it away. "We've bought him some time. If we're rescued tomorrow, or even the next day, he'll-"
"You cut off his legs, " Amy said, almost shouting.
Jeff finally turned to look at her. She was standing over him, sunburned, her face smudged with dirt, a half-inch-deep layer of green fuzz growing across her pants. She didn't look like herself anymore; she looked too ragged, too frantic. He supposed it must be true for all of them, in one way or another. He certainly had stopped feeling like himself at some point in the past twenty-four hours. He'd just used a knife and a stone to cut off a man's legs-a friend's, a stranger's, it was hard to say any longer. He didn't even know Pablo's real name. "What chance do you think he would've had, Amy?" he asked. "With his bones exposed like that?"
She didn't answer; she was staring to his right, at the ground, with an odd expression on her face.
"Answer me," he said.
Was she starting to cry? Her chin was trembling; she reached up, touched it with her hand. "Oh God," she whispered. "Oh Christ."
Jeff followed her gaze. She was peering down at Pablo's severed limbs, the remains of his feet and ankles and shins, the bloodstained bones held together with a few remaining cords of flesh. Jeff had dropped them beside the backboard, carelessly, planning to bury them when he was through cauterizing Pablo's stumps. But it wasn't going to come to that, apparently. The vine had sent another long tendril snaking out into the clearing. It had wrapped itself around one of Pablo's severed feet and was dragging the bones away now, back through the dirt. As Jeff watched, a second tendril slithered forward, more quickly than the first, and laid claim to the other foot.