"Are you okay?"

Amy turned, and there Stacy was, standing over her, with that makeshift umbrella on her shoulder. She looked wretched-gaunt and greasy-haired. Her mouth was trembling, and her hands, too, making the umbrella rattle softly, as if in a slight breeze.

Am I okay? Amythought, struggling for an honest answer. Her dizziness had been followed by an odd sense of calm, a feeling of resignation. She wasn't like Jeff, wasn't a fighter. Or maybe she simply couldn't fool herself as easily as he did. The threat of dying here didn't fill her with an urgency to be up and doing; it made her tired, made her feel like lying down, as if to hurry the process along. "I guess so," she said. And then, because Stacy looked so much worse than she herself felt: "Are you?"

Stacy shook her head. She gestured behind her, up the hill. "They're…you know…" She trailed off, as if unable to find the words. She licked her lips, which had become deeply cracked in the past twenty-four hours-chapped, rawly split-a castaway's lips. When she tried again, her voice was a whisper. "They've started."

"Started what?"

"Cutting off his legs."

"What're you talking about?" Amy asked. Though she knew, of course.

"Pablo's," Stacy whispered, lifting her eyebrows very high, as if this news were a surprise to her, too. "They're using the knife."

Amy stood up without knowing what she intended to do. She didn't feel herself reacting yet, was numb to the news. But she must've been feeling something, because her expression changed in some way. She could see Stacy reacting to it, stepping back from her, looking scared.

"I shouldn't have said yes, should I?" Stacy asked.

"Yes to what?"

"We voted on it, and I-"

"Why didn't anyone tell me?"

"You were down here. Jeff said it only mattered if there was a tie. But there wasn't. Eric said yes, and then I…" There was that same frightened expression again. She stepped forward now, reached out to clutch Amy's forearm. "I shouldn't have, should I? You and Mathias and I-we could've stopped them."

Amy couldn't bring herself to accept that this was happening. She didn't believe that it was possible to cut someone's legs off with a knife, didn't believe that Jeff would ever attempt such a thing. Perhaps they'd only been talking about it, were still talking about it now; perhaps she could stop them if she hurried. She pulled herself free of Stacy's grip. "Stay here," she said. "Watch for the Greeks. Okay?"

Stacy nodded, still with that fear in her face, that trembling coming and going in the muscles around her mouth. She sat down, dropping awkwardly in the center of the path, as if some supporting string had been cut.

Amy waited another moment, watching her, making sure she was all right. Then she started hurriedly up the hill.

Jeff and Mathias were the ones who did it. They didn't ask Eric to help, which was a good thing, because he knew he wouldn't have been able to. He kept pacing about the clearing while they worked, pausing to watch and then turning quickly away, finding both states unbearable, the seeing and the not seeing.

First, they put the belts back on. They found them lying in the dirt beside the backboard, three tangled snakes, abandoned there the night before. Jeff and Mathias needed only two of them; they bound the Greek at his chest and waist. Pablo's eyes remained shut through all this jostling; he hadn't opened them, not once, since he'd stopped screaming earlier that morning. Even when Jeff prodded him now, calling his name, wanting to mime out what they were about to attempt, the Greek refused to respond. He lay there with a clenched expression on his face, everything-his mouth, his eyes-closed against the world. He seemed beyond their reach somehow, not quite present any longer. Past caring, Eric supposed, long past.

Next, they built a fire, a small one-it was all they could manage. They used three of the archaeologists' notebooks, a shirt, a pair of pants. They crumpled two sheets of paper for kindling, then added the notebooks whole. The clothing, they doused with tequila. The fire was almost smokeless; it burned with a low blue flame. Jeff set the knife in its midst, along with a large rock, shaped like an ax head. While these heated-the stone making a snapping sound as it took on a deep reddish glow-Jeff and Mathias crouched over Pablo, murmuring back and forth, pointing first at one leg, then the other, planning their operation. Jeff looked grim and downcast suddenly, as though he'd been coerced into this undertaking despite his better intentions, but if he was having any second thoughts, he wasn't allowing them to slow the procedure down.

Eric was standing right over them when they started. Jeff used a small towel he'd found in one of the backpacks to pull the stone from the fire; he wrapped it around his hand, glovelike, to protect himself from the heat. Moving quickly, in one fluid motion, he scooped up the stone, raised it over his head, turned toward the backboard. Then he slammed it down with all his strength against the Greek's lower leg.

Pablo's eyes jerked open; he began to scream again, writhing and bucking beneath his bonds. Jeff seemed hardly to notice; his face showed no reaction. He was already dropping the stone back into the fire, reaching for the knife. Mathias, too, remained expressionless, focused on his task. It was his job to keep the fire burning hot, to feed in new notebooks if they were needed, to sprinkle more alcohol, to stir and blow upon the embers.

Jeff was hunched over the backboard, muscles taut with the strain of his labor, sawing and chopping. There was the stench of the hot knife against Pablo's flesh, a cooking smell, meat burning. Eric glimpsed the shattered bone below the Greek's left knee, the bloody marrow spilling out, Jeff's knife pushing and cutting and prying. He saw the bottom half of Pablo's leg come free, the foot and ankle and shin bones a separate thing now, cut off, gone forever. Jeff sat back on his haunches, catching his breath. Pablo continued to scream and writhe, his eyes rolling, flashing white. Mathias took the knife from Jeff, returned it to the fire. Jeff picked up the little towel, started to wrap it around his hand again. As he reached for the glowing stone, Eric turned quickly away, started off across the clearing. He couldn't watch any longer, had to flee.

But there was nowhere to go, of course. Even on the far side of the clearing, with his back turned to the scene, he could still hear what was happening, the crunch of the stone slamming into Pablo's other leg, and the screaming-louder now, it seemed, higher-pitched.

Eric glanced over his shoulder-he couldn't stop himself.

Mathias was holding the black pan, the one Jeff had brought back from the bottom of the hill, with that word carved across its bottom-peligro. Eric watched him place it in the fire. They were going to use it to cauterize the Greek's wounds, pressing it flat across his stumps, one after the other.

Jeff was bent low over the backboard, working with the knife, a steady sawing motion, his shirt soaked through with sweat.

Pablo was still screaming. And there were words now, too. They were impossible to understand, of course, but Eric could hear the pleading in them, the begging. He remembered how he'd fallen on the Greek when he'd jumped down into the shaft, that feeling of his body bucking beneath him. And he thought of how Amy and he had thrown Pablo onto the backboard, that clumsy, lurching, panic-filled toss. He could feel the vine moving inside him, in his leg, and his chest, too-that insistent pressure at the base of his rib cage, pushing outward. It was all wrong; everything here was wrong, and there was no way to stop it, no way to escape.

Eric turned away again, but he couldn't maintain it. He had to glance back almost immediately.