"If I sleep, will you watch over me?" Eric asked.
Stacy's thoughts felt muddy from too much alcohol. Everything seemed to be moving a little more slowly than it ought to. She stared at Eric through the dimness, struggling to process his question. The rain continued, the tent sagging beneath it. Jeff and Amy had stopped their yelling. "All night?" she asked.
Eric shook his head. "An hour-can you stay up for an hour? I just need an hour."
She was tired, she realized, as if simply talking about it was making it so. Tired and hungry and very, very drunk. "Why can't we both sleep?"
Eric gestured toward the supplies piled against the tent's rear wall. "It'll come back. It'll push its way in again. One of us has to stay awake."
He means the vine, Stacy thought, and for a moment she seemed to sense it there, hidden in the shadows, listening, watching, waiting for them to fall asleep. "Okay," she said. "An hour, then I'll wake you."
Eric lay down on his back. He was still pressing the balled-up shirt to his side. It was too dark in the tent to tell if the bleeding had stopped. Stacy sat beside him, took his free hand; it was clammy to the touch. They should dry off, she knew; they should change out of their wet clothes. She was cold, still shivering, but she didn't say anything, made no move toward the backpacks. The archaeologists were all dead, along with whoever might've come before or after them, and-stupidly-their belongings felt contagious to Stacy. She didn't want to wear their clothes.
Eric fell asleep, his hand going slack in hers. Stacy was startled by the rapidity with which he managed it. He began to snore, and it sounded oddly like Pablo's watery rasp-frighteningly so. Stacy almost woke him, wanting him to roll over and fall silent, but then, abruptly, he stopped of his own accord. That was scary, too, in a different way, and she leaned down, her ear right above his face, to make sure he was breathing.
He was, of course.
Bent low like that, her head nearly at a horizontal, only a foot or so above the tent's floor, it seemed easier to keep dropping than to struggle upward again. She lay beside him, pressing close. The rain was passing-it was nothing but a drizzle now-and it felt almost peaceful in the tent. Stacy shut her eyes. She wasn't going to sleep-how could she have? It wasn't even night yet. Amy would be in soon, and they could sit up talking together, keeping their voices quiet, maybe even whispering, so that they wouldn't wake Eric. She was tired, it was true, but she'd given him her word, and she knew the vine was lurking all about them, just waiting for her to lower her guard. No, she wasn't going to sleep. All she was going to do was shut her eyes for a moment, so that she could listen to that soft pattering on the nylon above their heads, and perhaps daydream a little, imagining she was somewhere else.
When she opened her eyes again, it was very dark in the tent-pitch-dark, too dark to see. Someone was standing over her, shaking her shoulder. "Wake up, Stacy," this person kept saying. "It's your shift."
It was Jeff's voice, she realized. She didn't move, just lay on her back, peering up at him through the darkness. Things were returning to her, but too slowly to make much sense of them. The rain. Amy shouting "Slut" at her. Jeff and Amy arguing. Eric asking her to watch over him. She felt hungover, but still drunk, too-a painful combination. Her head not only ached; it felt spillable in some strange way, as if, were she to move too quickly in one direction or another, she might pour out of herself. It wasn't something she could think clearly about; she simply knew that she didn't want to stir, that it would be perilous to do so. Her bladder was full to the point of discomfort, but even that wasn't sufficient to impel her into motion. "No," she said.
She couldn't see Jeff, but somehow she sensed his surprise, a stiffening in the shadows above her. "No?" he asked.
"I can't."
"Because?"
"I just can't."
"But it's your turn."
"Ican't, Jeff."
He raised his voice, growing angry. "Cut the shit, Stacy. Get up."
He nudged her, and she almost screamed. Her entire body ached. She started to chant: "I can't, I can't, I can't, I can't-"
"I'll do it." It was Mathias's voice, coming from the far side of the tent.
She sensed Jeff lifting away from her, twisting to look. "It's her turn."
"It's okay. I'm awake."
Stacy could hear him getting up, rustling about, picking his way toward the tent's flap. He stopped just short of it, hesitating.
"Where's Amy?" he asked.
"Outside still," Jeff answered. "Sleeping it off."
"Should I-"
"Leave her be."
Stacy heard Mathias zipper open the flap, and something almost like light entered the tent. For a moment, she glimpsed all three of them: Eric lying motionless on his back, Jeff standing above her, Mathias stepping out into the clearing. Thank you, she thought, but she couldn't quite manage to push the words into speech. The flap closed, dropping them once more into darkness.
Without really meaning to, she was shutting her eyes again. Jeff was lying down a few feet to her left, mumbling to himself with an unmistakable air of complaint-about her, Stacy assumed. She didn't care. He was already mad at Amy, so why shouldn't he be angry with her, too? Later, the two of them could laugh about it; Stacy would mimic him, the way he continued to mutter even now, murmuring and sighing.
I should check on Eric, she thought.
She tried to remember what had happened before she fell asleep. Had she awakened him first, as she'd promised? The more she considered this, the less likely it began to seem, and she was just starting to rouse herself, laboring to open her eyes again, maybe even sit up and prod at him, when Mathias began to shout Jeff's name.
It was the same thing all over again: waking with that musty smell surrounding him, the vine growing across his legs. Inside me, Eric thought as he reached to touch it. My chest, too.
Mathias was yelling from the clearing. There was movement in the tent, someone else stirring. It was too dark to see who. Eric was trying to sit up, but the vine was on top of him; it seemed to be holding him down.
Inside me.
"Jeff…" Mathias was yelling. "Jeff…"
Something had happened, something bad; Eric could hear it in Mathias's voice. Pablo's died, he thought.
"Jeff…"
Someone was standing up, moving toward the tent's flap.
"Oh God," Eric said. He'd pushed his hand down through the vine, was pressing at his chest, just above his wound. He could feel the vine beneath the skin there, a spongy mass covering his rib cage, spreading upward to his sternum. "The knife!" he called. "Get me the knife!"
"What is it? What's happening?" It was Stacy, right beside Eric, her voice sounding sleep-fuzzed, frightened. She clutched at him grabbing his shoulder.
"I need the knife," he said.
"The knife?"
"Hurry!"
From the clearing, Mathias continued to shout. "Jeff…Jeff…"
Eric's hand had moved down to his leg, where it found that same padded growth, just under the skin, climbing over his knee, up his thigh. He heard the flap being zippered open, turned to look. It was still night, but somehow not as dark outside as in. He glimpsed Jeff stepping out into the clearing.
"Wait," he called, "I need-"
But Jeff was already gone.
Jeff knew.
As soon as he heard Mathias begin to shout, he knew. He was up and out into the clearing, everything happening very quickly-too quickly-but not quickly enough to keep the knowledge at bay. It was in Mathias's voice, in the panic he heard there, the urgency. That was all Jeff needed.