The one thing they didn't talk about was Pablo. Pablo and his broken back.

They talked about what they were going to do when they finally managed to return to their hotel, the very first thing, debating the merits of their various choices, until it became too painful to think about any longer-the meals they both dreamed of eating made them feel too hungry; the icy beer made them feel too thirsty, the shower too dirty.

The cold draft came and went, yet it did nothing to clear the shaft of the smell of Pablo's shit. Amy had to breathe through her mouth, but even so, the stench managed to reach her; she began to feel as if it were some sort of paint into which she'd been dipped, as if she'd never be free of it. Eric asked her if she could see things in the darkness, floating lights, bobbing slowly toward them. "Over there," he said, and his hand fumbled for her chin, turned her head to her left, held it still. "A bluish sphere, like a balloon. Can't you see it?" But she couldn't; there was nothing there.

Jeff yelled down that they were back. All they had to do was knot together a sling, and then they'd pull them up.

Amy and Eric discussed who should go first, both of them offering this opportunity to the other. Amy insisted that Eric should be the one. He was wounded, after all, and he'd already spent so many hours alone in the hole. She swore she wasn't frightened, said it would only be a minute or two, that she didn't mind at all. But Eric wouldn't hear of it; he refused outright, and, finally, with secret relief-because she was frightened, because she did mind-Amy accepted his decision.

The windlass started to squeak. Jeff and Mathias were lowering the rope.

It was too dark to make out the sling's approach. They sat staring upward, seeing nothing, and then the creaking stopped. "Got it?" Jeff yelled.

Eric and Amy stood up, still clasping hands, and held their free arms out, swinging them slowly to and fro until Amy felt the cool nylon of the sling; it seemed to materialize out of the darkness at her touch. "Here it is," she said, and she guided Eric to it. They stood for a moment, both of them gripping the sling. Amy shouted upward, "Got it!"

"Tell us when," Jeff called back.

Amy could hear Eric breathing beside her. "Are you sure?" she asked.

"Definitely," he said. And then he laughed, or pretended to. "Just don't forget to send it back down."

"How do I do it?"

"Pull it over your head. Tuck it under your arms."

She let go of his hand, pushed her arms through the sling's opening, her head. Eric helped her, adjusting it beneath her armpits.

"You're sure it's okay?" she asked again.

Somehow, she could sense him nodding in the darkness, cutting her off. "Want me to shout?"

"I can," she said. Eric didn't respond. He stood beside her, with one hand resting lightly on her shoulder, waiting for her to call out. She craned back her head, yelled, "Ready!"

And then the windlass began its squeaking, and suddenly she was rising into the air, her feet dangling free, Eric's hand falling from her shoulder, vanishing into the darkness behind her.

The chirping began again. At first, it seemed to be coming from above Eric; then it was right in front of him, nearly at his feet. He reached toward the sound, patting with his hands, but found only more of the vine, its leaves slick to his touch, slimy even, like the skin of some dark-dwelling amphibian.

The windlass paused in its creaking, leaving Amy dangling somewhere up above him.

"Can you see it?" Jeff yelled.

Eric didn't answer. The chiming had moved away now, toward the open shaft in front of him, then into it, down it, growing fainter.

"Eric?" Amy called.

There was a pale yellow balloon bobbing to his left. It wasn't real, of course, just a trick of his eyes, and he knew this. So why should the chirping be real? He wasn't going to follow the sound down the shaft, wasn't going to move, was determined to keep crouching here, with one hand on the oilless lamp, the other on the box of matches, waiting for the sling to come dropping back toward him.

"I can't see it," he shouted up at them.

The windlass resumed its creaking.

The wound on his knee throbbed steadily. He had a headache-he was hungry, thirsty. And tired now, too. He was trying not to think about everything he and Amy had discussed, trying to fill his mind with static, because it was so much harder now, all alone down here, to keep believing in the hopeful scenarios they'd created. The Mayans weren't going to leave-which of them had been the one to propose such a foolish idea? And how did they imagine they'd ever be able to signal a plane for help, it flying so far above them, so quickly, so tiny in the sky? Chiropractor, he thought, struggling to mute these questions. Credentials. Collision. Celestial. Cadaver. Circumstantial. Curvaceous. Cumulative. Cavalier. Circumnavigate.

The chirping stopped. And then, a moment later, so did the windlass. Eric could hear them helping Amy out of the sling.

What if the Greeks didn't come? Or, having come, were simply trapped here on the hill with them? Derisive, he thought. Dilapidated. Decadent. And what if it didn't rain? What would they do then for water? Delectable, he thought Divinity. Druid. Jeff had told him that he had to wash the cut on his elbow, that even something as small as that could get infected very quickly in this climate, and now he had a much deeper wound on his knee, with no chance of cleaning it. It could become gangrenous. He could lose his leg. Dovetail, he thought. Disastrous. Devious.

And Pablo…what about Pablo and his broken back?

The creaking resumed, and Eric stood up. Effervescent, he was thinking. Eunuch. He had the matches in one hand, the lamp in the other, and he lifted his arms, held them blindly out before him, waiting to receive the sling.

Stacy and Amy sat next to each other on the ground, a few feet away from Pablo's backboard. They were holding hands, watching Jeff examine Eric's knee. Eric had gingerly lowered his pants, grimacing as he pulled them free of his wound, the fabric tearing at the dried blood. Jeff crouched over him, struggling unsuccessfully in the darkness to get a sense of how badly Eric had been injured. Finally, he gave up; it would have to wait till morning. All that mattered for now was that it had stopped bleeding.

Mathias was building a shelter for Pablo, using the duct tape to fashion a flimsy-looking lean-to from what remained of the blue tent's nylon and aluminum poles.

"One of us should probably stay on watch while the others sleep," Jeff said.

"Why do we need someone on watch?" Amy asked.

Jeff nodded toward Pablo. They'd removed the belts, and he was lying on the backboard, eyes shut. "In case he wants something," Jeff said. "Or…" He shrugged, glanced across the clearing, toward the trail that led down the hill. The Mayans, he was thinking, but he didn't want to say it. "I don't know. It just seems smarter."

Everyone was silent. Mathias tore off a strip of tape, using his teeth.

"Two-hour shifts," Jeff said. "Eric can skip his." Eric was sitting there, looking dazed, his pants bunched around his ankles. Jeff couldn't tell if he was listening. "I'm thinking we should probably start collecting our urine, too. Just to be safe."

"Our urine?" Amy asked.

Jeff nodded. "In case we run out of water before it rains. We can hold ourselves over for a little while by-"

"I'm not going to drink my urine, Jeff."

Stacy nodded in agreement. "There's no way," she said.

"If we reach the point where it's either drinking urine or dying of-"