Sweet (18 page)

“Hi, I'm Cubby and I'm a grateful, recovering alcoholic and narcotics addict.” He doesn't wait for anyone to say hi.

“We are here to tell you that there is a higher power you can turn to for help when you are powerless over a substance.”

“Viv,” I say, shaking her a bit. “Wake up!”

“The first step in AA is saying I am powerless over alcohol and I must rely on a power higher than myself for guidance. Narcotics addicts like myself say we're powerless over drugs and compulsive eaters say they're powerless over food.”

More than one person is shouting now, but Cubby soldiers on, speaking louder.

“You all have a problem with Solu, which seems to be more addictive than booze, or sugar or heroin, from what I can see. You're in deep shit! So say it with me: I am powerless over Solu, and I must turn to a power greater than myself for help!”

Someone throws a drink (whiskey?) at Cubby and the liquor splashes all over his face. He brushes it away with the back of his arm.

“Say it! I AM POWERLESS OVER SOLU!” he shouts.

There are some men at the back of the room who boil forward, trying to get to Cubby, to make him shut up.

“We gotta get out of here,” Tom says.

“Viv!” I say. “WAKE UP!”

And suddenly she does.

Her eyes open. Wide-open. Bloodshot.

At that moment everyone in the room freezes.

Viv sits up straight.

And she sniffs.

All the addicts' heads go up. They smell the air.

And then they lurch up, scrambling, moving fast.

Viv breaks away from us, climbing over the back of her chair.

They all head for the door, for the door, for the door.

Howling, bellowing, screaming.

Their sounds—they make my flesh crawl.

They crawl over one another, all of them headed for the large stairway that leads down to the dining hall.

“Solu,” Tom says. “It's gotta be.”

We watch as the addicts stream down the stairs. They move forward in one giant, reaching, screeching mass. And fast.

The AA people step toward us.

“We'd better see what's going on,” Patricia says.

I don't want to.

I want to go back to my suite and get in bed and not come out until we dock in Fort Lauderdale.

But Tom holds my arm and we wind through the overturned leather club chairs and toppled coffee tables.

The grand staircase sweeps down into the Aurora Restaurant.

As we come down the stairs we hear crashing and squabbling. Glass smashing.

Most of the activity is down at the galley end of the giant room.

Steel food-prep tables have been dragged out from the kitchen and there's blood on the doors and walls!

“There's bodies!” I scream. “On the ground!”

Addicts are trampling over people on the ground. They're swarming into the galley, at the far end of the restaurant. We can hear the sounds of them ripping it apart.

“Jesus, we have to help!” Tom shouts. He surges forward but Patricia pulls him back.

“You go down there, you're getting killed!” she says.

A man shouts in victory. He comes out of the galley holding a sack over his head, and everyone screams and cheers.

He rips it open and the powder falls and wafts out in a cloud and it's insanity. People diving and shoveling it into their mouths and licking the floor and scraping it out of the carpet with their fingernails.

A bone-thin woman with dark circles under her eyes and greasy hair comes racing to Tom and Cubby and pushes a padded duffel bag into Cubby's arms.

I remember her, she's Tom's producer.

“We need to get this,” she tells them. “Screw Almstead. You were right, Tom…”

She clutches Tom's wrists desperately. It's like she's afraid to let go.

“Tamara, we need to get you out of here!”

“You were right. Get the footage.”

“Tamara, let's go back to your room,” Tom tells her. She releases his wrists and backs away. Tom darts forward and grabs her hand.

“Come on!” Tom says. “I'm taking you to your room!”

Cubby has taken the camera from the duffel bag and is recording the chaos. He walks away from us and gets up on a table toward the middle of the room.

“Tamara, listen to me. It's not too late for you,” Tom says.

She's straining at him.

“Let me go. Let me go!”

Two bone-skinny women come out trying to hide a crate of packets between them and they're tackled by other addicts. Some of the people coming out of the kitchen are brandishing knives. Butcher knives!

The packets go everywhere and people fly and skid over one another, trying to grab them up.

Then I see Vivika. My sweet Vivika, and she's in the melee, snatching packets as fast as she can.

People are jamming the packets into their mouths, and I see Viv do the same.

Her eyes shut in ecstasy as the Solu hits her mouth, but then they pop open again. She wants more.

She turns and pulls someone out of her way and dives down into a clutch of fighting bodies.

I lose sight of her.

“Viv!” I shout. “Vivika!!!”

Tom's still struggling with Tamara. I head for the crowd. I can't let Vivvy get hurt. She could be trampled or stabbed or worse.

But I feel Tom's hands on me. And I see Tamara shoot past.

He let her go to keep me back.

“It's Viv,” I sob. “She's over there.”

Tom lifts me up as easily as you would a child and puts me on the table with Cubby.

“Stay here,” he says. “I'll go for her.”

 

TOM

DAY FIVE

I'M FULLY ADRENALIZED
and entirely terrified.

The addicts are all over one another. There's Solu everywhere and they're desperate to get it in their mouths.

People on the floor are snorting and licking. Other people step on them, kicking their bodies, their heads, as they scramble up and over, and the ones on the ground don't even care.

“Gimme that,” I hear one guy say. He's holding a knife on another guy, who has a fistful of packets and is trying to steal away. “Don't make me hurt you. I don't want to hurt you!”

I see Viv. She's under a serving table, scraping at some Solu on the floor with her fingernails.

“Vivika!” I yell. “Come over here!”

There are probably thirty people between me and her, and all of them are on the warpath. They're scratching one another, stabbing, biting, clawing.

My only advantage is that I'm not going after the same thing they are.

I push and fight my way to her.

“Vivika!” I shout.

She's sucking the carpet now. I grab her leg and pull.

She screeches, trying to hold on to the carpet.

“Laurel wants you!” I shout.

Her eyes are blank. There's no recognition. None.

She twists and squirms, trying to get away.

“You have to come!” I shout. I have my hands on her thighs now and I'm pulling her toward my body.

She slaps my face and kicks free of me, crawling back into the snarl of addicts.

Then I hear a blast from a megaphone.

“Attention! Everyone is to report to their cabin RIGHT NOW!”

It's a security officer with ten other crewmen. They're all carrying batons.

“BREAK IT UP!” he shouts.

The crewmen start wading into the fight, pulling people apart and propelling them toward the exits.

The lead security officer shouts into the megaphone: “Dr. Zhang has pinpointed the cause of the reaction you are all having and if you will just get to your rooms, Dr. Zhang can reverse it—”

As the addicts realize who is being spoken of, a collective growl of anger and hatred seethes up.

A man grabs the security officer. He fights back, but the other addicts pile on—kicking and punching the officer.

His body goes down in the center of the mob and I hear his scream, but only for an anguished, bloody moment.

I turn from the sight.

It's maybe fifty feet away from me and the stench of blood and bowels and guts hits me.

Thank God Zhang isn't here. Or Almstead. Not even his armed bodyguards could fight this mob.

I look at Cubby on his table and he's taping. Even as people brush and bang against the table, he's taping.

But Laurel's not by his side, where I put her.

And my heart freezes.

Then I feel her arms around me from behind. She's come up behind me.

She's shaking, her eyes dilated in terror.

She clings to me.

I gather her up and just start plowing through the addicts.

Screw Viv. And Laurel can be mad at me, but I'm just one guy.

I have her in my arms and we're getting the hell out of there.

I can't get an addict away from Solu. It can't be done.

It cannot be done.

And that scares me.

 

LAUREL

DAY FIVE

I'M SHAKING AND CRYING
and who even cares?

Tom carries me out of the dining hall.

“Jesus, Tom,” I say. “That was … that was…”

He goes to set me down, but I'm all tangled up with him and we crumple down onto the floor in the hallway.

“Unreal,” he says. “Terrifying. Are you okay?”

“I'm fine. I'm fine! I mean, nothing happened to me, not like…! Did you see those—” I gulp.

“Those people crushed by the kitchen doors and that security guy—”

We're kneeling together, clutching each other.

I kiss him. His mouth and then his face, his cheeks, his forehead. I'm desperate to kiss him, suddenly. And I'm crying all over him.

“We're okay,” he tells me.

He takes my hands in his.

“When the Solu's gone, that's when we're gonna go get Viv. And we'll lock her in your room until we dock. But before we do that, we've got to get the word out. To the mainland. We've got to warn people about Solu.”

“But Almstead said they're recalling it,” I stutter.

“Yeah, but the fact that it makes people kill?! It's huge. People have to know.”

“You're right,” I say. “Of course you are.”

Tom stands up and hauls me up with him like I weigh nothing at all.

Maybe it sounds silly, but I'm very, very happy that I've suddenly found myself with a strong boyfriend. What would have been a superficial issue (his strength) is now really, really important. Like, to my survival.

“Cubby's got the camera,” he says. “I've got to go back in there. You wait here.”

“No way,” I say. “I'm staying with you.”

As we go in, people come careening out, some of them with Solu packets stashed in their pockets or clutched in their hands. They couldn't guard the packets more zealously if they were carrying thousand-dollar bills.

Just inside the door we pass Maroon-Hair Lady who weighed me at the clinic. She's sitting on the floor, licking her hands, her legs splayed out straight, like a toddler.

“There he is!” I shout. Cubby is lying on the floor near the table.

“Cubby! Are you okay?” Tom shouts.

We help him sit up, then stand. There's blood soaking the side of Cubby's shirt.

“Grab the camera,” Tom tells me. “And the kit.”

I see the camera, lying where Cubby dropped it. I guess the kit is the duffel bag. I take them both.

Tom is supporting Cubby's weight. I brace myself under Cubby's other side. It's the bloody side and I feel wet warmth seep into my T-shirt.

“I'm okay,” he says. “I'm okay.”

(He's totally not okay.)

*   *   *

Out on the deck, Cubby insists on taping Tom before he goes to the medical center.

He waves me away. “It's a flesh wound. It's a flesh wound.”

Tom stands at the side of the deck. The sky behind him is cloudless.

(How can the day be so beautiful—the sky be so aqua-cobalt blue—when there's such evil and violence happening on the boat? It seems like there should be a typhoon or a hurricane outside.)

Tom runs his hand through his hair. Then laughs in self-deprecation.

“How's my hair?” he mocks himself.

“Perfect,” I tell him.

“Rolling,” Cubby says.

“I'm Tom Fiorelli, reporting from the deck of the
Extravagance
where we are witnessing one of the most horrifying catastrophes imaginable. The sweetener Solu is highly, highly addictive and is causing the passengers on this ship to behave like vicious, violent animals.”

A small crowd of addicts is gathering near Tom as he speaks.

I can't help but flash back to the pleased, giggly groups of fans surrounding him the first day of the cruise.

Now they look like wild, dirty zombies—only zombies that think and act and scheme. Zombies—only
real.

“A riot has just taken place in the dining hall and the chief security officer of the
Extravagance
was murdered before my own eyes.”

Here a skeletal man stalks into the shot, photo-bombing it.

“You don't know what you're talking about!” the man shouts. “You're judging us and you don't know what it's like!”

The rest of the crowd chimes in.

Cubby reaches forward and hauls the guy roughly out of the frame.

“Solu is a dangerous drug that causes psychotic violent behavior. DO NOT USE IT under any circumstances,” Tom says. “We are going to do our best to get this tape broadcast immediately. I don't know what is going to happen here on the
Extravagance.
We need rescue.”

The heckler dodges into the shot again. He starts miming like he's humping Tom.

Tom turns around and coldcocks him.

The photo-bomber goes down hard.

Tom just looks down at him, shaking out his hand.

“I've always wanted to do that.”

The crowd screeches and laughs and skitters away.