Scott Smith - The Ruins

Eric removed his shoes, and then Stacy helped him pull his pants the rest of the way off. She and Amy remained fully clothed. Stacy didn't feel safe enough to disrobe; she wanted to be ready to run. She assumed Amy felt the same way, though neither of them admitted to it.

Not that there would be anywhere to run, of course.

Stacy lay very still, listening to the other two breathe, trying to guess if they were close to sleep. She wasn't; she was tired to the point of tears, but she didn't believe she'd ever be able to find any rest here. She could hear Jeff and Mathias talking softly outside the tent, without being able to tell what they were saying. After awhile, Amy let go of her hand, rolling away from her, onto her side, and Stacy almost cried out, calling her back. Instead, she shifted closer to Eric, pressing against him. He turned his head toward her, started to speak, but she put a finger to his lips, silencing him. She laid her head on his shoulder, snuggling. She could smell his sweat, and she stuck out her tongue, licked his skin, tasted the salt. Her hand was resting on his stomach, and without really thinking, she slid it down his body, slipping beneath the waistband on his boxers. She touched his penis, tentatively, the sleepy softness of it, let her fingers rest on top of it. She wasn't thinking of sex-she was too tired, too frightened for this to be any sort of motivation. What she was searching for was reassurance. She was fumbling for it, not knowing how to find it, trying this particular route only because she couldn't think of any other. She wanted to make him hard, wanted to jerk him off, wanted to feel his body arch as the sperm spurted out of him. She believed she'd find some comfort in this, some illusory sense of safety.

So that was what she did. It didn't take long. His penis slowly stiffened beneath her touch, and then she began to stroke him, fast, grimacing with the effort. His breath deepened, with a rasp hiding in it, and then-just as her arm was beginning to ache with the exertion-rose to a moan as he climaxed. Stacy heard the first, thick shot of semen splatter wetly to the tent's floor beside him. She could feel his body relax in the aftermath, could even feel the moment when he fell asleep, the tension easing from his muscles. It was infectious, that abrupt sense of relief, that sudden abatement, like an emptiness sweeping through her, and in the face of it, her fear seemed, if only temporarily, to retreat a step. That was enough, though; it was all she needed. Because in that brief moment-somehow, miraculously-with her hand still clasping Eric's sticky, slackening penis, Stacy, too, slipped into sleep.

Amy heard the whole thing. She lay there listening to Stacy's furtive rustling, its rhythmic push and pull, growing faster and faster, tugging Eric's breathing along behind it, the steady climb in volume, the suppressed moan, the silence that followed. In another context, she would've found the whole thing funny, would've teased Stacy in the morning, maybe even said something at the moment of climax, clapped, shouting, "Bravo! Bravo!" But here, in the stuffy darkness of the tent, she simply lay on her side with her eyes shut, enduring it. She could tell when they fell asleep, and she felt a moment's envy, a yearning for Jeff to be here, holding her, soothing her out of consciousness. Then the flap zippered open, and Mathias entered in his stocking feet. He stepped over her body and lowered himself into the empty space beside her. It was startling, how rapidly he joined the other two in sleep, as if it were a shirt he'd pulled over his head, adjusting it, tucking it into his pants, brushing out the wrinkles, before, his eyes drifting shut, he began to snore. Amy counted his snores. Some were so deep, they echoed in the air above her, while others were like whispers she had to strain to hear. When she reached one hundred, she sat up, crawled to the tent's flap, unzipped it, and slipped out into the night.

It wasn't as dark outside as in; Amy could see Jeff's shape beside the longer shadow of the lean-to, could sense him lifting his head to look at her. He didn't say anything; she assumed he didn't want to wake Pablo. She picked up the plastic bottle, unbuttoned her pants, and-crouching right there in front of the tent, with Jeff watching her through the darkness-started to urinate. It took her a moment to guide the mouth of the bottle beneath her stream, and she peed on her hand in the process. The bottle was already bottom-heavy with someone else's piss-Mathias's, Amy guessed-and there was something disturbing about this, the sound of her urine spurting into his, sloshing and spattering and merging. She wasn't going to drink it, she assured herself; it would never come to that. She was just humoring Jeff, showing him what a good sport she could be. If he wanted her to pee in the bottle, that was what she'd do, but in the morning the Greeks would arrive, and none of it would matter anymore. They'd send them off to get help, and by nightfall everything would be resolved. She capped the bottle, returned it to its spot beside the doorway, then pulled her pants back up, buttoning them as she moved toward Jeff.

The moon had risen, finally, but it was tiny, a faint silver sliver hanging just above the horizon. It didn't give off much light; she could make out the shapes of things, but not their details. Jeff was sitting cross-legged, looking oddly at peace-content, even. Amy dropped to the ground beside him, reached out and took his hand, as if she hoped by touching him she might claim some of his calm for herself. She was making a conscious effort not to glance beneath the lean-to. He's asleep, she told herself. He's fine .

"What are you doing?" she whispered.

"Thinking," Jeff answered.

"About?"

"I'm trying to remember things."

Amy felt a catch at this, a dropping sensation inside her chest, as if she'd reached for a light switch in a darkened room and encountered someone's face instead. She remembered visiting her mother's father, an old man with a smoker's cough, as he lay on his deathbed, tubed and monitored, clear fluids dripping into him, dark ones dripping out. Amy was six, maybe seven; she didn't let go of her mother's hand, not once, not even when she was prodded forward to kiss the dying man good-bye on his stubbled cheek.

"What are you doing, Dad?" her mother had asked the old man when they'd first arrived.

And he'd said, "Trying to remember things."

It was what people did, Amy had decided, as they waited for death; they lay there struggling to remember the details of their lives, all the events that had seemed so impossible to forget while they were being suffered through, the things tasted and smelled and heard, the thoughts that had felt like revelations, and now Jeff was doing this, too. He'd given up. They weren't going to survive this place; they were going to end just like Henrich, shot full of arrows, the vines coiling and flowering around their bones.

But no: it wasn't like that, not for Jeff. She should've known better.

"There's a way to distill urine," he said. "You dig a hole. You put the urine in it, in an open container. You cover the hole with a waterproof tarp, weigh it down to hold it in place. In its center you place a stone, so that the tarp droops there. And beneath that spot, in the hole, you leave an empty cup. The sun heats the hole. The urine evaporates, then condenses against the tarp. The water droplets slide down to the center and drip into the cup. Does that sound right to you?"

Amy just stared at him. She'd stopped following almost from the start.

It didn't matter, though; she knew Jeff wasn't really talking to her. He was thinking out loud, and might not even have heard her if she'd bothered to answer. "I'm pretty sure it's right," he said. "But I feel like I'm forgetting something." He fell silent again, considering this. She couldn't make out his face in the dim light, but she could picture it easily enough. There'd be a slight frown, a wrinkling of his forehead. His eyes would appear to be squinting at her, intensely, but this would be an illusion. He'd be looking through her, past her. "It doesn't have to be urine," he said finally. "We could cut the vine, too. Place it in the hole. The heat will suck the moisture right out of it."