3. Her First Cruise Ship #2
There was a man at the front, around her father’s age, overweight in the way so many American men of his generation were—the large, round belly leading in front like a basketball hidden beneath his striped, button-down shirt.
His face was red and his nose enlarged, and Ileana could picture him in a recliner, yelling at a football game on the television, beer in hand.
A typical American tourist, but… he kept stumbling.
Not like he was drunk, but more as if he were falling forward, up the hill.
A taxi swerved to avoid him as he stepped into the street without looking, and he didn’t even seem to notice the cacophony when the driver leaned on his horn.
As he rounded the curved street and passed the Starbucks, he lifted his head, and his eyes caught Ileana’s.
Locked onto hers. They were red-rimmed and huge, almost…
hungry. Then a smile snaked across his lips, his mouth opened into a round, black void, and he let out a guttural moan that echoed against the sixteenth-century buildings on either side.
Not long after, the other passengers behind him seemed to notice her, too… and they all picked up speed.
“Jesus Christ!” Ileana screamed, then took off up Fortaleza and back toward the store.
Her heart threatened to beat its way out of her chest. She risked a look back over her shoulder as she tore across La Tanca.
An absolute herd of passengers spilled up the street behind her like a spreading bloodstain, their clothes a riot of tropical colors, arms waving in a macabre form of semaphore, the rising scent of decay announcing their arrival.
The chorus of moans grew louder and louder as more of them turned the corner and onto Fortaleza.
As they marched, some broke off and stumbled into open doorways of shops and bars along the way.
Others headed straight for her, limbs jerking them forward.
Terror wrapped itself around Ileana’s chest like a tourniquet, her sneakered feet pounding the sidewalk beneath her in retreat. She literally threw herself through the doors of the store. All the employees looked up as she stood, breathing heavy, eyes wild.
“Are you okay, honey?” Sol asked as they rubbed their hands up and down Ileana’s arms as if she were cold.
Ileana struggled to get words out of her mouth as panic tightened around her throat. “No!” She pushed their hands away. Couldn’t they hear the moans? “Sol! We have to close the doors! There’s something… wrong with the people on that boat!”
They coughed out a bitter laugh. “You’re telling me, girl?” Then they sighed and looked at the other staff members, clapping their hands. “Places, bitches! It’s showtime!”
Ileana stood, sputtering. “What the fuck?” How could they be so nonchalant?
The moans were getting louder, closer, and she felt like screaming.
She grabbed Carmen as she walked by, the keys on the spiral stretchy around her upper arm stabbing Ileana’s palms. “Carmen! Listen to me! We have to lock the doors! Put bookcases in front of the windows, anything to keep them out! Those things aren’t human!
” Tears filled her eyes, but Ileana ignored them.
She didn’t have time to cry; monsters were loose in the city!
“Sure they’re human! Or were… Besides, either way”—Carmen patted her on the cheek—“you’ll be fine.
” She stepped away toward her usual position near the door, pausing to whisper back, “But whatever you do, don’t piss them off.
” The last word was still hanging in the air as the first cruise passenger shambled through the front door, the tree frog song mockingly innocent beneath the man’s strangled groans.
Ileana jumped over the counter and ducked behind the glass case, bashing her knee against the top in the process.
She dropped low to the floor, ignoring the pain in her leg, breathing heavy.
But she still felt vulnerable. She needed to see what was happening.
She shimmied forward, grabbed the counter’s edge with her fingers, and inched up, peeking over the glass top.
The red-faced man dragged his legs forward, flanked by two women, one painfully thin, her bright orange resort-wear garish against her brown wrinkly tan.
The other one, closest to Ileana, was plump and squeezed into a tight-knit dress, her face pale with two pink splotches painted on either cheek.
Ileana stared, fear paralyzing her limbs, as the plump woman turned and looked straight at her, though only her eyes were above the counter.
Ileana couldn’t move other than to tremble.
The cruise woman leaned over the counter, bending at the waist like a doughy Barbie doll, and her thick-lipped, over-Botoxed mouth fell open as if the hinges on her jaw suddenly gave way. A creaking sound emerged, then Ileana could discern words among her moans…
“C-c-c… cruis-uh disssss… count.”
The last t was percussive, like an arrow hitting its mark, and she slammed her pale, bloodless hand on the glass counter.
Ileana jolted and jumped to her feet, stepping just out of reach.
The woman’s fingers, plumping around her gaudy rings like rising bread dough, clasped a bright green piece of paper with a drawing of a cruise ship and 20% discount written on the corners as if it were currency.
The woman just stood there, fetid, ragged breath steaming up the counter.
She smelled like rotting meat and… sunblock.
Ileana knew this creature was waiting for something, but her desire to run was overwhelming.
There were more of them in the store now, the aisles bustling with shambling figures.
Maybe she could make it to the door, she estimated, but then she looked out the front window.
Among the moving mass of passengers stalked a man in a bright Hawaiian shirt, awkwardly juggling a bunch of Polo Ralph Lauren shopping bags and waving what looked like a dismembered human arm, torn flesh waving at its end like the casing on a just-bit sausage. Was that… his arm? Or someone else’s?
Ileana put her hands on either side of her head and tightened them, as if she could squeeze it all away.
This is a nightmare; it has to be! The voice in her head was more confident than she was.
But she used the analytical mind, the only good thing she inherited from her father, assessed her situation, and determined—absurd as it was—that the only choice was to go along with this.
Ileana swallowed through her tightened throat and took one step forward. “Y-y-es, we accept those vouchers.” Her voice croaked, not unlike her customer’s.
The woman’s round face lit up in a weird, lopsided smile, and she began to point, seemingly at random, to things in the case, indicating individual pieces of jewelry with a simian grunt.
Moving as if underwater, Ileana grabbed each item, scanned them, and shoved them into a store-branded shopping bag while the woman muttered words among the noises, “daughter-in-law,” “niece,” and “dog sitter.”
When the bag was full, Ileana said in a small, choked voice, “That will be three hundred and twenty-six dollars with your discount.”
The woman smiled—it was actually more of a grimace—and Ileana realized her teeth were broken off and covered with muck. She dug through her filthy straw purse, pulled out a Coach wallet, extracted a credit card, and held it out.
Ileana took it, wishing she didn’t have to touch it.
Couldn’t the woman just use the tap function?
Well, Ileana certainly wasn’t going to suggest it: the sooner the woman left, the better.
Ileana ran the card through before handing it back.
“Th-thank you for shopping at Artisan Puerto R-rico…” Her voice went up at the end, as if she were asking a question.
The woman grunted and shambled out and onto the crowded street.
As soon as she left, Ileana took a deep, shaky breath, her eyes filling with relief. Although it didn’t last long.
A young, blonde woman in a sheer pink cover-up over a bikini appeared in front of her and slammed a hand-carved wooden Don Quixote sculpture onto the counter.
Ileana jumped at the sound, wondering if it had cracked the glass.
That’s when she noticed that the long metal sword the Cervantes character held was impaled through the woman’s hand.
Dumbfounded, Ileana could only stare as the woman awkwardly shook the statue, trying to fling it free, but all it did was tear a larger hole in the center of her palm.
Shaking herself out of her stupor, Ileana reached out and held the base of the sculpture down on the counter as the cruise passenger ripped her hand free with a wet, popping sound.
“Ra… raaaa… puh…” The newly freed woman struggled to get sounds out, the muscles around her mouth seemingly not working.
Through her terror, Ileana struggled to discern meaning, while the woman’s cloying scent of tuberose fought with her base note of rotting flesh. “I’m sorry?” She asked it gently, afraid to anger the woman.
“Rah… puh…” the woman said again, frustration twisting her face into a caricature of a Karen-can-I-speak-to-your-manager expression.
What is she trying to say, damn it? Sweat broke out on Ileana’s forehead as she felt the woman’s anger growing.
Shit! Shit! Shit! She glanced around, desperately wanting to buy time and figure out what she wanted, when her eyes fell on the roll of palm tree wrapping paper. “Wrapped? You want it wrapped?”
“Yuh,” the blonde woman muttered, nodding.
Ileana let out a long breath. “Of course! I’ll do that right away.”
It was unsurprisingly hard to wrap neatly when your hands are shaking, but after a few missteps with the tape dispenser, Ileana finally finished, tucked the package into some bubble wrap, and into a shopping bag with the store logo embossed on it.
She placed it in front of the customer. “That’ll be one hundred and seventy-eight forty with your discount. ”