Stacy didn't want to do this. Yet even as she sat there searching for a reason to refuse him, she knew she had no choice. Amy was gone, and it seemed like this ought to change everything. But the world was carrying on, and Jeff was moving with it, worrying about sunscreen and the Greeks-planning, always planning-because that was what it meant to be alive.

Am I alive? she wondered.

Jeff picked up the water, held it out to her. "Hydrate first."

She took the jug from him, uncapped it, drank. It helped her nausea enough for her to stand.

Jeff handed her the sunshade. "Three hours," he said. "Okay? Then Mathias will relieve you."

Stacy nodded, and then he was turning away, already moving on to his next task. There was nothing left for her to do but leave. So that was what she did, the sunscreen making her feet feel slippery in her sandals, that humming sound rising and falling in her head. I'm okay, she said to herself. I can do this. I'm alive. And she kept repeating the words, mantra-like, as she made her way slowly down the trail. I'm alive. I'm alive. I'm alive…

Eric was lying on his back in the center of the clearing. He could feel the sun against his body-his face, his arms, his legs-hot enough to carry a trace of pain. There was pleasure in it, too, though-pleasure not despite the pain but because of it. He was getting a sunburn, and what could be so terrible about that? It was normal; it could happen to anyone-lying beside a pool, napping on a beach-and Eric found a definite measure of reassurance in this. Yes, he wanted to be sunburned, wanted to be in the grip of that mundane discomfort, believing that it might somehow obscure the far more extraordinary stirrings of his body, the sense that his wounds would rip open if he were to move too suddenly, the suspicion-no, the certainty-that the vine was still lurking within his body, sewed up tight by Jeff's stitches, interred but not dead, merely dormant, seedlike, biding its time. With his eyes shut, his mind focused on the surface of his body, the burning tautness of his skin, Eric had stumbled upon a temporary refuge, all the more alluring for its tenuousness. But he knew he couldn't take it too far. There was an element of balance to the process, a tipping point he had to avoid. He was exhausted-he kept having to resist the urge to yawn-he was certain that if he relaxed even slightly, he'd drop into sleep. And sleep was his enemy here; sleep was when the vine laid claim to him.

He forced open his eyes, rose onto his elbow. Jeff and Mathias were tending to Pablo's stumps. They used water from the jug to flush the seared tissue; then Jeff threaded a needle, sterilized it with a match. Pablo still had half a dozen blood vessels leaking their tiny rivulets of red. Jeff was bending now to stitch them shut. Eric couldn't bear to watch; he lowered himself onto his back again. The smell of the match alone was too much for him, bringing back as it did the previous day's horror-Jeff pressing that heated pan against the Greek's flesh, the aroma of cooking spreading across the hilltop.

He should go into the tent, he knew; he should get out of the sun. But even as he thought this, he was shutting his eyes. He heard his own voice inside his head: I'll be okay. Jeff is right there. He'll watch over me. He'll keep me safe. The words just came; Eric wasn't conscious of forming them. It was as if he were overhearing someone else.

He could feel himself falling asleep, and he didn't fight it.

He awoke to find that the day had shifted forward-dramatically so. The sun was already beginning its long descent toward evening. There were clouds, too. They covered more than half the sky and were visibly advancing westward. These obviously weren't the usual afternoon thunderheads Eric and the others had witnessed here thus far, with their abrupt appearance and equally rapid dispersal. No, this seemed to be some sort of storm front sweeping down upon them. For the moment, the sun remained unobscured, but Eric could tell this wouldn't be true much longer. He could've sensed it even without glancing upward: the light had a feeling of foreboding to it.

He turned his head, stared about the clearing, still feeling sleep-dazed. Stacy had returned from the bottom of the hill; she was sitting beside Pablo, holding his hand. The Greek appeared to have lost consciousness again. His respiration had continued to deteriorate. Eric lay there listening to it-the watery inhalation, the wheezing discharge, that frightening, far too long pause between breaths. Amy's corpse was resting in the dirt to his left, enveloped in its dark blue sleeping bag. Jeff was on the far side of the clearing, bent over something, in obvious concentration. It took Eric a moment to grasp what it was. Jeff had sewn a large bucketlike pouch out of the scraps of blue nylon to collect the coming rain. Now he was using some of the leftover aluminum poles to build a frame for it, taping them together, so that the pouch's sides wouldn't collapse as it filled.

There was no sign of Mathias. He was guarding the trail, Eric assumed.

He sat up. His body felt stiff, hollowed out, strangely chilled. He was just bending to examine his wounds, probing at the surrounding skin, searching for signs of the vine's growth within him-bumps, puffiness, swelling-when Jeff rose to his feet, moved past him without a word, and disappeared inside the tent.

Why am I so cold?

Eric could tell that it wasn't a matter of the temperature having dropped. He could see the damp circles of sweat on Stacy's shirt; he could even sense the heat himself, but at an odd remove, as if he were in an air-conditioned room, staring through a window at a sunbaked landscape. No, that wasn't it; it was as if his body were the air-conditioned room, as if his skin were the windowpane, hot on the surface, cold underneath. This must be an effect of his hunger, he supposed, or his fatigue or loss of blood, or even the plant inside him, parasitically sucking the warmth from his body. There was no way to say for certain. All he knew was that it was a bad sign. He felt like lying down again, and would've if Jeff hadn't reappeared then, carrying the two bananas.

Eric watched him retrieve the knife from the dirt, wipe it on his shirt in a halfhearted effort to clean the blade, then crouch and cut each of the bananas in half, with their peels still on. He waved for Eric and Stacy to approach. "Choose," he said.

Stacy leaned forward to lay Pablo's hand gently across his chest, then came and stooped beside Jeff, peering down at the proffered food. The bananas' peels were almost completely black now; Eric could tell how soft they must be just by looking at them. Stacy picked one up, cradling it in her palm. "Do we eat the peel?" she asked.

Jeff shrugged. "It might be hard to chew. But you can try." He turned toward Eric, who hadn't stirred. "Pick one," he said.

"What about Mathias?" Eric asked.

"I'm going to go relieve him now. I'll take it down."

Eric kept feeling as if he were about to shiver. He didn't trust himself to stand up. It wasn't only his wounds, which felt so vulnerable, so easily reopened; he was worried his legs might not hold him. He held out his hand. "Just toss it."

"Which?"

"There." He pointed to the one closest to him. Jeff threw it underhand; it landed in Eric's lap.

They ate in silence. The banana was far too ripe: it tasted as if it had already begun to ferment, a mush of tangy sweetness that, even in his hunger, Eric found difficult to swallow. He ate quickly, first the fruit, then the skin. It was impossible to chew the skin more than partially; it was too fibrous. Eric gnawed and gnawed, until his jaw began to ache, then forced himself to swallow the clotted mass. Jeff had already finished, but Stacy was taking her time with her own ration, still nibbling at the little nub of fruit, its skin resting on her knee.