The Ruins (33 page)

 She
shut her eyes.

 Somehow,
the feeling passed.

 The
air was growing cooler and cooler, cold even. Amy had forgotten about
this, would've worn something warmer had she remembered,
plundering a sweater from one of the archaeologists'
backpacks. She began to shiver, even as she continued to sweat. Nerves,
she knew: fear.

 By
the time she opened her eyes again, Jeff had come into view. Murkily:
He was there, and not there. It was like seeing him underwater, or
through smoke. He had his head tilted back. Amy couldn't make
out his face, but there was something about his posture that made her
certain he was smiling up at her. Despite herself—despite her
fear, despite her sweating and shivering and general sense of
discomfort—she smiled back.

 Her
feet touched the floor of the shaft. The sling went slack; the creaking
stopped. And it was odd, because the sudden silence gave her a panicky
sensation, a tightness in her chest. "Well," she
said, just for the sound of the words, to break that eerie quiet. "Here we are."

 Jeff
was helping her out of the sling. "It's
incredible," he said. "Isn't it? How far
down do you think we are?"

 Amy
was too startled by the obvious excitement in his voice, the pleasure,
to answer him. He was enjoying this, she realized. Even with everything
that had happened in the past twenty-four hours, somehow he was
managing to find pleasure in this. He was like a little boy, with a
little boy's passions: the illicit joys of things
underground—caves and hideouts and secret tunnels.

 "Farther
than I've ever been," he said. "No doubt
about that. You think it could be a hundred feet?"

 "
Jeff,
"
she said. It was strange: they were in darkness, but there was light,
too. Or some hint of it, some residue dropping toward them from above.
As her eyes kept adjusting, she could see more and more, the walls and
floor of the shaft, and Jeff, too—his face. She could see him
peering at her, his puzzled expression.

 "What?"
he asked.

 "Let's
just find the phone, okay?"

 He
nodded. "Right. The phone."

 Amy
watched him crouch, begin to prepare his torch. He uncapped the
tequila, started to sprinkle the liquor over the knot of clothing,
slowly, letting it soak in. He took his time, pouring a small trickle,
then pausing, then pouring some more. Amy could smell the tequila; she
was so emptied out—hungry, thirsty, tired—that the
scent alone made her feel slightly drunk. She could see a sock and a
shoe lying on the floor of the shaft, a few feet to Jeff's
right, and it took a long moment to realize that they were
Pablo's. They were the ones Eric had removed yesterday so
that he could scrape the bottom of Pablo's foot to see if his
spine was broken. They'd forgotten them in the flurry of
their departure last night, and now they were already covered with a
thin growth of vine. Amy almost bent to retrieve them, thinking Pablo
would want them, but then she caught herself, feeling stupid. And
wretched, too, because—morbidly—she'd
started to smile. No need for socks and shoes anymore, of course, not
for Pablo, not ever again.

 "There
was a shovel there last night," she said, surprising herself
with the words. She hadn't thought them out first,
hadn't even been conscious of noticing the shovel's
absence until she'd heard herself remark upon it. She pointed
toward the far wall of the shaft, where the shovel had been leaning. It
wasn't there anymore.

 Jeff
turned, followed her gesture. "Are you sure?" he
asked.

 She
nodded. "It was the kind you can fold up."

 Jeff
stared for another moment, then returned to his torch, dribbling more
tequila across it. "Maybe they took it," he said.

 "They?"

 "The
vines."

 "Why
would they do that?"

 "Mathias
and I were trying to dig a hole earlier, using a rock and a tent
stake—for a latrine, and to distill our urine. Maybe they
don't want us to be able to do that."

 Amy
was silent. There was so much to contest in this that she felt
something like panic in the face of it, a buzzing sensation rising in
her head. She didn't know where to begin. "You're saying they can see? They
could
see
you
digging?"

 Jeff
shrugged. "They have to have some way of sensing things. How
else would they be able to reach out and take Pablo's feet
like that?"

 
Pheromones,
Amy
was
thinking.
Reflexes
.
She didn't want the vine to be able to see, was horrified by
the prospect of this, wanted its actions to be automatic, preconscious. "And it can communicate?" she said.

 Jeff
stopped with the bottle, capped it; the clothes were thoroughly
saturated now. "What do you mean?"

 "They
saw you digging up there, and then they told the ones down here to hide
the shovel." She wanted to laugh, the idea seemed so absurd.
But something was keeping her from laughing, that buzzing in her head.

 "I
guess," Jeff said.

 "And
they
think
?
"

 "Definitely."

 "But—"

 "They
dragged down my sign. How could they have known to do that
without—"

 "
They're
plants
,
Jeff. Plants don't see. They don't communicate.
They don't think. They—"

 "Was
there a shovel there last night?" He gestured toward the
shaft's far wall.

 "I
think so. I—"

 "Then
where is it now?"

 Amy
was silent. She couldn't answer this.

 "If
something moved it," Jeff said, "don't
you think it makes sense to assume it was the vine?"

 Before
she could respond, the chirping resumed. It was coming from her left,
down the open shaft. Jeff fumbled quickly with the box of matches,
plucked one out, struck it into flame, held it to the knot of clothing.
The alcohol seemed to grab at the match, sucking its light into itself
with a fluttering sound, a cloud of pale blue fire materializing around
the torch. Jeff lifted it up, held it before them; it gave off a weak,
tenuous glow, which seemed constantly on the verge of going out. Amy
could tell it wouldn't last long.

 "Quick,"
he said, waving her toward the open shaft.

 The
chirping continued—it was up to three rings now—and
the two of them rushed forward, hurrying to find it before it fell
silent again. Five rapid strides and they were into the shaft, a steady
stream of cold air pushing against them, making the torch in
Jeff's hand shudder weakly. Amy felt a moment's
terror, leaving that small square of open sky behind, the ceiling
dropping low enough for Jeff to have to crouch as he moved forward. The
darkness seemed to press in on them, to constrict somehow with each
step they took, as if the walls and ceiling of the shaft were shifting
inward. The vine, oddly, in such a lightless place, appeared to be
growing in great profusion here, covering every available surface. They
were wading through it, knee-deep, and it was hanging toward them from
above, too, brushing against Amy's face; if she
hadn't been so desperate to find the phone, she
would've immediately turned and fled.

 There
came a fourth chirp, still in front of them, drawing them more deeply
into the shaft. Amy could sense a wall somewhere ahead—even
in the darkness, even without being able to glimpse it
yet—somehow she knew that the shaft came to an end in another
thirty feet or so. The chirping had an echo to it, but it still seemed
clear to her that the phone was by this far wall, lying on the floor,
buried beneath the vines. They'd need to get on their hands
and knees to search for it. She was nearly running now, her eagerness
to find the phone before it stopped ringing combining with her terror
of this place, both of them working together to push her onward.

 Jeff
was moving more cautiously, hanging back. She was leaving him and his
torch behind her, the vine brushing against her body, but softly,
caressingly, seeming almost to part to allow her passage.

 "Wait,"
Jeff said, and then he stopped altogether, holding the flickering torch
out before him, trying to see more clearly.

 Amy
ignored him; all she wanted was to get there, to find it, to leave. She
could see the wall now, or something like it: a shadow materializing in
front of her, a blockage.

 "Amy,"
Jeff said, louder now, his voice echoing back at her from the
approaching wall. She hesitated, slowing, half-turning, and it came to
her suddenly that the vine was moving, that this was the sense of
constriction she was feeling; it wasn't simply the darkness
deepening, the shaft narrowing. No, it was the flowers. Hanging from
the ceiling, the walls, rising toward her from the floor, the flowers
on the vine were moving, opening and closing like so many tiny mouths.
Realizing this, she nearly stopped altogether. But then the phone
chirped a fifth time, drawing her on; she knew there wouldn't
be many more rings. And it was close now, too—right against
the wall, she guessed. All she had to do was drop onto her—

 "Amy!"
Jeff yelled, startling her. He was moving again, hurrying toward her,
the torch held up before him. "Don't—"

 "It's
right here," she said. She took another step. It was silly,
but she wanted to be the one to find it. "It's—"

 "
Stop!
"
he shouted. And then, before she could respond, he was right beside
her, grabbing her arm, jerking her back a step, pulling her close to
him. She sensed his face beside her own, felt its warmth, heard him
whisper, "There's no phone."

 "What?"
she asked, confused. A sixth chirp sounded right then, seeming to
emerge from the vines directly in front of them. Amy tried to pull
free. "It's—"

 Jeff
yanked her back, his grip tight, hurting her. He bent, whispered again,
right into her ear. "It's the vine," he
said. "The flowers. They're making the
noise."

 She
shook her head, not believing, not wanting to believe. "No.
It's right—"

 Jeff
leaned forward with the torch, shoving it down toward the floor of the
shaft, into the mass of vines a few feet in front of them. The vines
flinched away from the fire, parting as the torch approached, creating
an opening in their midst. They moved so quickly, they seemed to hiss.
Jeff crouched, pushing the flames downward into what ought to have been
the floor but was open darkness instead, the draft increasing suddenly,
stirring Amy's hair, disorienting her. Jeff was waving the
torch back and forth now, widening the hole he'd created, and
it took Amy several seconds to realize what she was seeing, what this
darkness was, why there was no floor here. It was the mouth of another
shaft, dropping straight down; the vines had been growing across it,
hiding it from
sight.
A
trap,
she realized. They'd been luring her and Jeff
forward, hoping they'd step into open air here, fall into the
darkness.

 There
was a sharp whistling sound, like a whip might make, and one of the
vines lashed out, wrapped itself around the aluminum handle of
Jeff's torch, yanked it from his grip. Amy watched it fall,
its light fluttering, almost failing, but still burning even as it hit
bottom, thirty feet beneath them. She had a glimpse of white—
bones,
she
thought—and what might've been a skull staring up
at her. The shovel was there, too, and more of the vine, a writhing,
snakelike mass of it, recoiling from the little knot of fire burning in
its midst. Then the flames flickered, dimmed, went out.

 It
was dark after this, terribly dark, darker than Amy would've
thought possible. For a moment, all she could hear was Jeff's
breathing beside her, and the faint thump of her own heartbeat in her
ears, but then that whistling sound came again, louder this time,
denser, and she knew even before they began to grab at her that it was
the vines she was hearing. They seemed to come from every direction at
once, from the walls and the floor and the ceiling, smacking against
her body, wrapping themselves around her arms and legs—even
her neck—pulling her toward the open shaft.

 Amy
screamed, scrambling backward, tearing at them with her hands, yanking
free one limb, only to feel another immediately become ensnared. The
vine wasn't strong enough to overpower her in this
manner—it tore too easily, its sap bleeding across her skin,
burning her—but it kept coming, more and more of it. She spun
and kicked and continued to scream, panicking now, losing her sense of
direction, until finally, in the darkness, she could no longer tell
which way led to safety, which to the shaft's open mouth.

 "Jeff?"
she called, and then she felt his hand grasping her, pulling her, and
she surrendered, following him, the vines thrashing at both of them,
grabbing and tearing and burning.

 Jeff
shouted something, but she couldn't understand it. He was
dragging her backward, the two of them stumbling, falling over each
other, onto their hands and knees amid the vines, which caught at them,
trying to hold them down, and then they were up again, and there was a
faint hint of light in front of them, and they were sprinting for it,
Jeff pulling Amy by her arm, the vines falling away behind them, going
still again, motionless, silent.

 Amy
saw the sling hanging from its rope. And then, up above, that little
window of sky. When she craned backward, peering toward it, she could
see Eric and Mathias, the shadowed outline of their two heads, staring
down at her.

 "Jeff?"
Mathias called.

 Jeff
didn't bother answering. He was looking back toward the open
shaft behind them. It was just darkness there now, with that steady
push of cold air, but he seemed reluctant to take his eyes from it. "Get in the sling," he said to her.