Sweet

by Emmy Laybourne

  It’s eerie, with the engine dead quiet like this.

  “It stinks out here,” Milo says.

  “Toilets backing up,” Kiniana notes. “Do we know how long the engine’s been cut for?”

  “No,” I tell her. “It was out when we all woke up.”

  Me, Laurel, Kiniana, Milo, and Anna. Not much of a team, here. Milo is built solidly, but he’s still losing his fight with a hangover. Kiniana is strong and angry. That’s good. Anna is a little hummingbird of a thing. Laurel is … tough. Tougher than I thought. And I wouldn’t care if she was weak, anyway.

  Laurel is my girl and I’m going to keep her safe.

  Milo, ahead of us, groans and squats down unsteadily.

  “Come on, Milo,” Kiniana snaps. “We don’t have time for this nonsense.”

  “I need a toilet,” he says.

  “Aaugh!” Kiniana grumbles.

  “Hey,” I say to Laurel. “Do you want to go check on Viv?”

  “God, yes!” Laurel says. “That would make me feel so much better.”

  I walk up to Kiniana and Anna. I press my key card into Kiniana’s hand.

  “Would you two take Milo back to my room? Laurel and I are going to check on her friend and we’ll meet you up on Deck Eleven.”

  “Fine,” Kiniana says. She nudges Milo’s thigh with her sneaker. “Come on, party boy.”

  “Milo, you should drink a Pipop,” Laurel says. “My friend Viv swears by them for hangovers.”

  * * *

  We head quickly to Laurel and Viv’s room. We haven’t seen anyone yet, any addicts, and it’s starting to freak me out.

  There’s some weird stuff in the hallway—suitcases dragged out into the hall. A torn and bloodied tuxedo shirt. A brass plaque that seems to have been ripped off a wall. A lady’s shoe with a gold stiletto heel that’s got a crust of dried blood on it. Creepy.

  “Oh NO!” Laurel exclaims when we get to her hall. She rushes forward.

  The door to their room is open, propped ajar by one of Laurel’s motorcycle boots.

  The room has been tossed and trashed.

  “Viv!” Laurel shouts. But Viv’s not there.

  Laurel checks the bathroom, the balcony, the closet.

  She stops in the closet.

  “What is it?” I ask. “Did you find—”

  Laurel’s staring at their wall safe.

  The drywall around it has been chipped away frantically. The face of the safe has been battered, but not very effectively.

  There’s blood there, on the keypad.

  On the floor is the body of Laurel’s guitar. It’s been smashed to hell. Probably against the wall safe.

  “Oh, Laurel, I’m so sorry,” I say. “We should have gone back for the guitar.”

  She turns to me.

  “There are ten packs of Solu in that safe. Inside a sealed airsickness bag.”

  She swallows.

  “Do you think … do you think Viv smelled it through the wall? Through the metal?”

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  But we both know the answer is yes.

  As we’re leaving, Laurel stops.

  She unlaces her boots and steps into the motorcycle boot at the door. She hop-steps into the closet and finds the other.

  “I need these boots,” she says as an explanation, but I don’t need one.

  I take her hand in mine as we go back into the hall. I squeeze her hand and she gives it a weak pulse back.

  In the middle of the staircase leading to the upper decks, there’s a woman. She’s seated and she’s digging around in her mouth with bony fingers.

  She is so thin I can make out her skeleton. Her eyes are like giant marbles in their sockets, the skin drawn tightly away. She is wearing an orange sequined evening gown. It hangs off one shoulder.

  The woman sees us. She holds out two spitty, bloody fingers. On the fingers sits one of her molars.

  She grunts at us. Her expression is one of grief and loss and confusion.

  “I’m sorry,” Laurel says. “I’m so sorry.”

  I hug Laurel against me and we skirt around the woman.

  I’m ready for her to lunge at us. I’m ready for anything. But she just sits there as we pass by, and I’m careful not to step on the small pile of teeth she’s collecting.

  “It’s okay. It’s okay,” I tell Laurel.

  Inside, I’m thinking—if all the addicts are like this woman—quiet and comatose—we’ll be all right. But I know that’s not how this is going to play out.

  Because we can hear them up top. Voices harsh and low. Agitated and morose.

  We step up onto the deck.

  To get to the hallway outside the bridge, we need to cross the pool deck.

  I pull Laurel into the shadows next to the stairwell. The less we’re noticed, the better. At least until we see what they’re like.

  * * *

  There’s no sign of Milo, Kiniana, or any of the others.

  There are people milling around. There are people lying on the deck, scuttled up to the wall that borders the deck like blown debris. There are people arguing and people whaling on one another and people chattering and screaming at no one.

  These people are revoltingly thin.

  Their heads are big. Eyes protruding. Cheeks sunken so you can make out the structure of their molars underneath.

  Some of them wear clothes, looking like walking hangers—the clothes just draped over shoulders. Belts drawn to the smallest hole or just tied off to hold up baggy pants.

  Some are naked and that seems fine. Maybe because they look like cadavers. They look medical, somehow. Inhuman and surreal—why should they bother with clothes?

  A small group has surrounded a man and they are screaming at him: “You were the last one to see it, Paul. You tell us where it is or else!”

  “I lost it, I lost the packet,” he cries. “I swear it.”

  “Bullshit!” one of them hollers and they push him onto his knees.

  A skeletal woman with great folds of drooping skin blocks my eye line. She slowly draws close to a man lying in the fetal position on a lounge chair right in front of Laurel and me.

  He’s asleep or unconscious and doesn’t notice the woman sniffing him. Stalking him with her nose.

  She lowers herself onto all fours next to him. And starts licking the back of his neck.

  “Tom, what’s she doing?” Laurel asks, a tremor in her voice.

  The man raises a sleepy hand and tries to shoo her away, like she’s a housefly disturbing his nap.

  The woman licks his neck, his collarbone, the hair at his neckline.

  “I think … I think she smells Solu in his sweat,” I say.

  We have to get off this boat.

  * * *

  Something swaying catches my eye and I look up.

  My grasp on Laurel’s shoulders must tighten because she says, “What?”

  I don’t want her to see, but she follows my eye line.

  There’s a body hanging down from the observation deck.

  Laurel staggers forward.

  “It’s … It’s…” She gasps.

  I know who it is. Elise Zhang.

  She’s wearing her Day 1 suit. Her glasses are off and her face is purple.

  Her small body rotates, banging against the rail.

  Laurel and I are clutching each other in horror.

  She turns her face and buries it against my shoulder.

  “We have to get across the deck,” I say. “Stay calm. We’re just walking across.”

  “Tom, I see Viv,” Laurel says. Her voice comes out a dry whisper.

  She nods with her head, and I see Viv, up on the observation deck. The deck must be Sabbi’s territory, in the new, psychotic world order of the ship.

  I see Sabbi up there, talking to her followers, who are clustered around her.

  Viv is standing at Sabbi’s side, transfixed by her words.

  Laurel starts for them.

  “Wait!
” I say. “We have to go meet the others, Laurel.”

  “She’s my best friend!” Laurel says. “I have to see if she’s okay.”

  But we know she’s not, I want to shout. I’m not sure Laurel understands the kind of danger we’re in.

  As we cross the deck, a man wearing a Yankees baseball cap sidles up next to me. “This is your fault,” he hisses. “You! Baby Tom-Tom!”

  He gets in front of me, blocking my way.

  “Leave me alone,” I tell him.

  “You did this! You were a part of this! You stood there, taping your pieces, ‘I’m Tom Fiorelli, jerking off on the deck of the Extravagance, poisoning all of America with my evil SWEETENER!’”

  “I had nothing to do with it, man!” I yell.

  Laurel squeezes my hand, telling me to let it go.

  But the guy won’t get out of my face and his breath smells like the slop in a port-a-potty.

  “YOU DID THIS TO ME!” he screams. He pokes me in the chest. He’s stronger than I thought he’d be.

  “BACK OFF!” I shout and I push him off me. He tumbles over a lounge chair and clatters to the deck.

  He looks at me like he hates me and I guess he does.

  “Come on,” Laurel says, pulling me toward Viv, Sabbi, and the upper deck.

  LAUREL

  DAY SIX

  “VIVIKA,” I SAY stumbling up the stairs. “Sweetie, are you okay?”

  Vivvy turns and looks at me.

  Her face is blank for a moment, and then it hardens. Like I’m an old enemy of hers she wasn’t expecting to see again.

  She is still wearing Tom’s T-shirt and her bikini bottoms. The T-shirt has blood on it, looks almost like some wayward pseudo-rough design. (Only it’s real blood. Real rough.)

  Viv looks like the other people.

  Sick. Near dead of thinness.

  And Sabbi does, too.

  Like all the Teens of New York, there’s a Barbie version of Sabbi Ribiero. I remember there was a fuss made over it because it featured a plump rear end, something not done in the world of plastic dolls before.

  There’s a Prom Sabbi and an Executive Sabbi and even a Veterinarian Sabbi, which they came out with after she announced on one episode that she always wanted to work with animals.

  Well, this is Deathbed Sabbi.

  The famous ass is gone.

  She’s wearing a bikini made of gold metal mesh. And the material on the seat of the bottoms is saggy and empty. Her butt is flat. It was the last deposit of fat and it’s all gone.

  She has the behind of a ninety-year-old woman.

  I feel bad for her. But then I tune in to what Sabbi is saying. She’s talking fast, in that same weird run-on chant-talk that Viv was using before.

  “If we are a family, a true family, then we sacrifice for the family. Do you see? Do you see this truth? Do you?”

  Sabbi turns from facing the deck below to facing her own people.

  “Do you see this, my darlings?”

  They nod, Viv along with them.

  “Viv, it’s me, Laurel. And I want you to come with me. You’re not well.”

  Viv shakes me off.

  “We’re sick. We NEED more juice. We must have more Solu. Is this right?” Sabbi asks.

  They nod.

  “Vivika, Tom and I are going to take you off the ship and go get help. Okay? Okay, sweetie?” I say. “Can you hear me, Vivika?”

  “SHHHHH!” Vivika shushes me, her eyes ferocious.

  “Vem, Juliana. Venha aqui. Me dê sua mão.” Sabbi holds her hand out to a thin girl with caramel-colored skin.

  “You had a lot of Solu, meu querida. More than those people.” She nods over her shoulder toward the people on deck below. “That’s because of me. I got it for you. Really, when you think about it, then, it’s mine.”

  Then I see Sabbi Ribiero has a corkscrew in her fist.

  Juliana puts her hand in Sabbi’s left and Sabbi brings her fist across Juliana’s in a slash.

  “NO!” I scream and Tom lunges forward, but it’s too late.

  Blood sprays up, hitting Sabbi’s face. Splashing over the clamoring clique of skeletons.

  And they descend on the screaming girl and her fountain of a wrist.

  “No, no, no, NO, VIVIKA!” I scream. I try to pull her off the bleeding girl, but Vivika turns, her muzzle red, and snarls at me.

  Tom pulls me into his arms and away from them.

  “We’re getting off the boat now, Laurel,” he whispers into my hair. “It’s over. We’re leaving.”

  “She’s my best friend!” I cry. “She’s my sister.”

  “No,” he says. “She’s a monster now.”

  “I can’t leave her. I can’t,” I say, pleading. I have my hands on his shirtfront.

  Vivika Hallerton is my best friend. I’ve known her since we were two years old. We played boyfriend/girlfriend as eight-year-olds. We have eaten ice cream together twenty thousand times. We’ve peeled sunburned skin off each other’s backs.

  I cannot leave her behind.

  “LAUREL, we have no choice!”

  It hurts like I’ve cut out a piece of my own heart, but I know he’s right.

  Tom leads the way, holding my hand. We weave through the addicts.

  The smell of blood seems to be agitating them. I see a man with shining black eyes biting a woman on the neck.

  The woman, gaunt and crusty mouthed, moans in pleasure.

  I realize he’s the dad from my dinner table. The woman is not his wife. I don’t know why my brain makes a note of that. (Hey, that man is either making out with or about to eat a woman who is NOT HIS WIFE!)

  “Tom, look!!” I shout.

  There’s a woman standing on the other side of the rail, about to jump into the water.

  It’s Tom’s producer.

  Tom wheels around.

  “Tamara!” he hollers. “Don’t!”

  She looks around, her face drawn and pinched.

  She takes one hand off the rail and wags her finger at him, saying, “No, no, no!”

  And then she jumps.

  “Jesus!” Tom howls. “Tamara!”

  But she’s gone.

  “There he is!” shouts a dry, bitter voice and I see it’s the man with the too-big baseball cap.

  He has assembled a small crowd of skeletons and he points at Tom.

  “He knew what would happen to us! He’s one of them! And LOOK AT HIM!”

  They do.

  There’s a glittering hatred in their eyes that makes my arms and legs cold all of a sudden.

  “Baby Tom-Tom,” a woman says, saying his name like it’s a gutter curse. “You sold us out!”

  “String him up!” someone shouts. “Right beside Zhang!”

  They cheer.

  The monsters surge forward and Tom pushes me toward the stairs.

  “Find the others,” he shouts.

  Then he’s fighting.

  He punches the baseball-hat guy and kicks out at another, but they’re jumping on him. Whaling on him. Biting and clawing.

  “Help!” I scream. “Jaideep! Milo! Somebody help me!”

  I try to pull one of them off him and whack. Someone hits me on the head with their elbow or their fist or, I don’t know.

  “HELP ME!” I scream again.

  A waif with stringy blond hair and giant blue eyes laughs at me. Cackles.

  I run.

  Because I have a dumb idea.

  * * *

  I run into my room, my lungs burning.

  The combination, the combination.

  2-6-6-8-7.

  B-O-O-T-S.

  The Laurel who entered that combination was an infant, a toddler. She knew nothing.

  I’m shaking and sobbing and my fingers futz it. But then I get it and the red light switches to green.

  My vomit bag with ten packets (ten packets) of Solu. There are two more packets lying there. I’d forgotten I’d tucked them aside.

  I grab them, too.

&n
bsp; I race back to the deck.

  Stupid idea, stupid idea.

  I round a corner headed upstairs and I run into a tiny Latino man. He’s emaciated and wearing a chef’s white uniform.

  He snarls at me, then he … he smells it.

  Teeth bared, he lunges at the bag.

  “No!” I shout. “It’s not for you.”

  I take the two loose packets and throw them away from me, down the hall.

  The man shoves me aside and leaps after them.

  I take the stairs to the deck two at a time and burst out onto the deck.

  Every one. Every addict on the deck turns their head toward me and sniffs.

  Tom is down on the ground. He’s curled into a ball, hands over his head.

  The addicts who were beating him up just a second ago are now frozen. The man with the baseball cap has a rope in his hands.

  Every addict eye is on me.

  I figure I have about two seconds before they all swarm me.

  I throw the whole bag. Away, away, away from me.

  I throw the Solu into the pool.

  With a shriek the addicts all scramble, scuttle, dive to the bag of Solu packets floating in the pool. I’m knocked down as some of them trample me from behind.

  Head dizzy now, I crawl my way over to Tom.

  He’s bruised and battered, but he’s alive and trying to get to his feet.

  “Tom,” I cry. “Are you okay?”

  Horrible gurgling and splashing, wailing, cursing come from the pool behind me.

  “Laurel!” he shouts.

  He staggers to me.

  “Laurel. How did you get them off me?”

  “I threw some Solu in the pool.”

  The water is churning with deranged skeletons, fighting it out for ten packets of poison.

  “What do we do?” I ask him. “Should we try to get them out?”

  Some of them are dragging themselves out, but more are still fighting in the water. I don’t want to be responsible for (seventy-five? one hundred?) human beings drowning (as deranged and violent as they may be).

  Like he’s reading my thoughts, Tom says, “Laurel. I think you need to stop thinking of them as…”

  “As what?”

  “As people.”

  “If they’re not people, what are they?” I ask. My voice breaks. I feel like I’m losing it.

  “Monsters?” Tom says. “I don’t know—cannibals? Zombies?!”

  “Viv is not a zombie,” I protest.