"Not that it worked," Mathias said.
She turned, glanced at him. "Not that what worked?"
"His good-luck charm."
Stacy couldn't think how to react to this. She knew it was a joke, or an attempt at one, but the idea of laughing, or even smiling, in response to it seemed abominable. The humming had returned inside her skull; she was having trouble suddenly keeping her eyes open. For some reason, talking made them ache. She kept walking, her arms folded across her chest, hugging herself, Jeff's watch gripped in one hand, his wallet and ring in the other. She waited for enough time to pass so that it could seem as if Mathias hadn't spoken-until they were nearly at the trail again-and then she said, "What do we do now?"
"Go back to the tent, I guess. Try to rest."
"Shouldn't one of us watch for the Greeks?"
Mathias shook his head. "Not for another hour or so."
Stacy's mind shifted toward the tent, the little clearing. She thought of Pablo on his backboard, the agony he'd suffered there. She thought of herself, how she'd bent to collect Amy's scattered bones that morning, so casually, as if she were tidying up after a party.
Those words were inside her head again: Am I still me?
Without any warning, she started to cry. It was like a coughing fit-two dozen full-bodied sobs-they came and went in less than a minute. Mathias waited beside her till they passed. Then he rested his hand on her shoulder.
"Do you want to sit for a moment?" he asked.
Stacy lifted her eyes, looked about them. They were standing in four inches of mud. To their right, the hillside climbed steeply upward, swathed in its vine. To their left, midway across the clearing, stood the three Mayans, watching them. She shook her head, wiped at her face. "Eric's dying, isn't he?" she said. "It's inside him, and he's going to die."
Her hands had opened as she'd sobbed; she'd dropped Jeff's watch, his wallet and ring. Mathias crouched to retrieve them. They were muddy now, and he tried to wipe them clean on his pants.
"I don't know if I can handle it, Mathias. Watching him die."
Mathias slid Jeff's ring into the wallet. His hands were bleeding, she noticed, the skin cracked and scored from the vine's sap. His clothes were hanging off him in shreds. His stubble was thickening into a beard, and it made him seem older. He nodded. "No," he said. "Of course not."
Stacy turned, stared toward the three Mayans. They had a way of watching her without ever meeting her gaze. She assumed this was something they'd consciously learned to do, a trick to make their duty here less arduous on themselves. It seemed to her that it would have to be much harder to kill someone once you'd looked them in the eyes. "What do you think they'd do if we stepped forward now?" she asked. "If we just kept walking, right at them?"
Mathias shrugged. The answer was obvious, of course. "Shoot us."
"Maybe we should do it. Maybe we should just get it over with."
Mathias watched her; he seemed to be giving the idea serious consideration. But then he shook his head. "Someone's going to come, Stacy. Eventually. How can we say for certain that it won't be today?"
"But it might not be. Right? It might not be for weeks. Or months. Or ever."
Mathias didn't answer; he just stared at her. From the first moment they'd met, she'd found his gaze-so somber, so unflinching-a little frightening. After a few seconds, she had to look away. He reached and took her hand then, and, still not speaking, led her back along the clearing to the trail.
Eric could feel the vine moving about inside his body. It was in the small of his back, his left armpit, his right shoulder. The knife lay ten feet away from him-mud-stained, still damp with his own blood. He'd assumed that he'd immediately begin to cut himself, as soon as Stacy and Mathias left the clearing, but then the moment arrived and he'd discovered he was too scared to do it. He'd already spilled a terrifying amount of blood-he could just look at his body and see this-and he wasn't certain how much more he could afford to lose.
He sat up, took a deep breath, then folded into himself, coughing dryly. There was no phlegm, just the sense of something residing in his chest that shouldn't be there, something his body was trying, unsuccessfully, to expel. Eric had been battling this cough all night; it seemed strange to him that he shouldn't have realized earlier what its source was. It was the vine, of course-he was certain of this. Yes, there was a tendril growing inside his lungs.
I should go into the tent, he thought. Ishould lie down. It doesn't matter if it's wet. But he didn't move.
He coughed again.
It would've been easier, he believed, if Stacy had stayed with him. She could've talked to him, argued. He might've listened-who could say? And if he hadn't, she could've always grabbed at his arm, held him back. But she wasn't there-she'd abandoned him-so there was no one to stop him now when he stood up and retrieved the knife.
He sat back down, holding it in his lap.
He tried his word games again, his imaginary vocabulary test, but he couldn't remember what letter he'd reached last. The shiftings inside his body made it hard to concentrate. It seemed important that he keep track of them. The top of my right foot…the nape of my neck…
Eric leaned forward, scratched at his left calf, felt a lump there. He stared down at it, watching it flatten itself out, then bunch together again slightly lower on his leg. It was nearly the size of a golf ball. When he probed at it with his finger, there was that familiar sense of numbness.
The incision wouldn't hurt, he knew; it was the pulling forth that would make him cry out. As he sat thinking this, he noticed another bulge. This one was on his left forearm, much smaller than the others, about three inches long and thin as a worm. He touched it, and it vanished, burrowing down into his flesh.
All this was too much for Eric, of course: he couldn't just sit quietly, watching these things appear and disappear across his body. Something needed to be done, and there was really only one solution, wasn't there?
He lifted the knife from his lap, leaned forward, began to cut.
Somehow, the trail up the hill seemed to have grown much steeper since Stacy'd last climbed it. As they made their way ever higher, she started to pant, her clothes clinging to her sweaty body. She had a cramp in her side. Mathias appeared to sense her distress, and-even though they were nearly to the top-he stopped so she could rest. He stood beside her, staring off across the hillside while Stacy struggled to catch her breath.
Her heart had just begun to slow, when the voices started.
Wo ist Eric? Wo ist Eric?
They turned, looked at each other.
Eric ist da. Eric ist da.
"Oh Jesus," Stacy said. "No."
Eric ist gestorben. Eric ist gestorben.
They both began to run, but Mathias was faster. He was already in the clearing by the time she reached it. She found him there, gesturing, speaking the same word over and over again with great sternness. In his fatigue and distress, he'd fallen back upon his native language."Genug," he kept saying." Genug."
It took Stacy a moment to understand that he was addressing Eric. There was a ghoul in the clearing-that was what she first thought-some new horror spawned from the mine's mouth: blood-streaked, naked, wild-eyed, with a knife in its hand. But no, it was Eric. He appeared to have stripped much of his skin off his body. It was hanging from him in shreds; Stacy could see his leg muscles, his abdominals, a glint of bone at his left elbow. His hair was matted along the right side of his head, and she realized he'd cut off his ear.
Mathias's voice rose toward a yelclass="underline" "Genug, Eric! Genug! " He was gesturing for Eric to set down the knife, yet it seemed clear to Stacy that Eric wasn't going to do this. He looked terrified, savage with it, as if it were some stranger who'd been attacking him.