Read Online The Ruins by Scott Smith - Free Book Online

be a difficult hike. The dirt seemed
to have been worked with a harrow in the recent past. It was
uneven—turned and furrowed—with sudden,
inexplicable patches of mud. The mud stuck to their shoes, gradually
accumulating, and they kept having to stop to scrape it off. Eric
wasn't in any shape for this sort of adventure. He was hungover , weary from lack of
sleep, and beginning to feel the day's heat in an unpleasant
way. His heart was racing; his head ached. Waves of nausea came and
went. He was just beginning to realize that he wasn't going
to make it much farther, and was deciding how he ought to announce this
revelation, when Pablo saved him from the indignity by stopping
suddenly. The mud had sucked his right shoe straight off his foot. He
stood there in the field, balanced, cranelike ,
on one foot, and started swearing. Eric recognized many of the
obscenities from the lessons the Greeks had given him.
     Jeff
and Mathias and Amy had already pulled ahead—they were
walking with what appeared to be a baffling effortlessness along the
jungle's margin—but Stacy had tarried alongside
Pablo and Eric. She stopped with Eric now to aid the Greek, holding him
by the elbow, helping him keep his balance, while Eric crouched to free
his shoe from the field's grasp. It emerged, finally, after
several strenuous pulls, with a suctioned popping sound, making them
all laugh. Pablo put the shoe back on. Then, without a word, he began
walking back toward the trail. Stacy and Eric glanced toward the
others, who were a good fifty feet ahead now, moving methodically along
the tree line. A silent debate followed, very brief, and then Eric held
his hand out to Stacy. She took it, smiling, and the two of them
started back across the field, following in Pablo's
footsteps.
     Jeff
shouted something to them, but Eric and Stacy just waved and kept
walking. Pablo was waiting for them on the trail. He'd opened
his pack, taken out the tequila. The cap was off; he offered the bottle
to Eric, who—despite himself, knowing better—took a
long, wincing swallow and then passed it on to Stacy. Stacy could be an
impressive drinker when she put her mind to it, as she did now. She
threw her head back, the bottle tilted at a perfect vertical, the
tequila going blub-blub , blub-blub as
it poured straight down her throat. She surfaced for air with a cough
that became a laugh, her face flushed. Pablo applauded, slapped her on
the shoulder, took back the bottle.
     The
two Mayan boys were still with them. They'd approached a
little closer but hadn't yet left the jungle's
shade. They'd climbed off their bike and were standing side
by side, the larger of the two holding it by its handlebars. Pablo
raised the bottle toward them, calling in Greek, but they
didn't move; they just stood, staring. The dog was right
beside them, also watching.
     Jeff
and Mathias and Amy had reached the far wall of the jungle, directly
across the field from them. They were just beginning to move along it
now, parallel to the trail, searching for the mysterious path. Pablo
returned the bottle to his pack, and the three of them stood for a
while, watching the others make their way along the muddy field. Eric
didn't believe they were going to find the ruins. He
didn't, in fact, believe that the ruins even existed. Someone
was lying to them, or playing a prank, but whether it was Mathias or
Mathias's brother or Mathias's brother's
perhaps imaginary girlfriend, he couldn't decide. It
didn't matter. He'd been having fun for a while,
but now he wanted it to be over, wanted to be safely back on an
air-conditioned bus to Cancún ,
drifting into sleep. He wasn't certain how he was going to
accomplish this; all he knew was that he wanted to get there, and that
the first thing he had to do was finish walking back to the road on the
shortest route possible. This didn't involve tramping through
a muddy field.
     Eric
started forward along the path. They could wait for the others in the
shade on the