Children of Paranoia

  Avoiding the swimmers would have been easy if the leader hadn’t kept moving the beams from his flashlight over the water. He was using all three flashlights. He held two of the flashlights in his left hand, and the other flashlight in his right. So I had to stay quiet, avoid the beams of light, and also keep my eye on the cabdriver all at once. Every so often, as a beam of light approached me, I would slip quietly under the water and into the darkness. I tried staying submerged for as short an interval as possible because I didn’t want to lose sight of the cabbie’s eyes. The cabbie would take three strokes and then he would stop and look around him. I didn’t want to move too quickly for fear that he might hear me. I just floated, shifting my movement ever so slightly so that I would stay clear of his line of sight.

  The cabbie quickly closed to within about twenty feet of me. As he swam, I moved farther off to one side of him. I soon realized that I was actually moving back in toward the beach. A beam of light began to move toward me, so I quietly ducked back underwater. When I pulled my head out of the darkness, only seconds later, I was only about ten feet from the cabbie, floating directly behind him. I wanted to create more distance and began to slowly and quietly swim backward away from his bulking figure. Moving closer into shore was a mistake. I was moving back into the breaking waves. In all my effort to watch the cabbie and the moving lights, I neglected the most powerful thing of all, the ocean. Suddenly, a wave came from out of the blackness. It knocked me over and sucked me down into the depths of the darkness. I completely lost my bearings once I was under the water. The wave flipped me over at least once. For a few seconds at least, I didn’t know which direction to go in to get back to the surface. I just struggled against the currents. Finally, I was able to figure out which way was up and pulled my head back up into the night air. I gasped for breath as I surfaced. The cabbie heard me. He quickly turned toward me. I don’t think that he was sure of what he heard. He just knew that he heard something. I caught a quick glimpse of the whites of his eyes. I saw confusion in them. I ducked my head back under the water and swam off to one side, trying to lose him again. I took two or three strong pulls with my arms and lifted my head for a breath. That’s when another wave came out of the darkness.

  I managed to keep my head above it this time, but there was no way to do that and stay hidden. I was giving myself away. My heart started beating fast. I couldn’t see the waves until they were nearly on top of me. I tried ducking my head back under the water to hide but I had no breath left. I had to get to the surface of the water. I had to breathe. I pulled my head above the water again and gasped loudly for air.

  The cabbie heard my gasp again and this time, he was sure of what it was. He turned toward me in the water. There was about fifteen feet between us. “Got him!” he shouted as loudly as he could manage, his voice full of a hunter’s excitement. Within seconds one of the flashlight beams was shining directly on the cabbie while another moved along the surface of the surrounding water, searching for me. The cabbie’s eyes became large as he lifted his arms to start swimming toward me. The blade of a knife he was holding in his hand glimmered in the light of the flashlight. I was too out of breath to go back under the water, breathing deeply and trying to get air back in my system before another wave pulled me down. The cabbie just kept coming toward me, swimming in the middle of the beam of light. Just then there was another rumble. It came from directly behind the cabbie. He had swum right into the breakers too. This time, with the light shining on him, I could see the wave. It was moving toward us quickly. The cabbie heard it and turned toward the oncoming wave. It struck him and pulled him under. I was able to duck the wave, having seen it coming. That’s when I saw my opening. I had one chance and I wasn’t going to miss it. I waited for the cabbie to pull his head back out of the water. I knew he’d be disoriented and out of breath. I took three strong strokes toward him, entering the beam of light from the flashlight for a moment. Then I grabbed him around his neck from behind with my right arm, and dragged him under the water.

  It was eerie, being weightless, wrestling in the darkness. All the sounds that I heard earlier were gone, replaced only with the sounds of our own thrashing. I squeezed around the cabbie’s neck with my arm, trying to choke him before we both drowned. I pushed everything else from my mind. I forgot where I was. I forgot that I was floating in darkness. I forgot about the waves rolling above us. I concentrated every bit of energy I had into squeezing the life out of the man who had come hunting for me. “It’s either us or them,” I remembered Jared saying; only, this time it wasn’t about right and wrong. I didn’t have time for considerations of good and evil. This time it was about survival. It was instinct. At that moment, I knew for sure that I wanted to live even though, for the life of me, I couldn’t think of a single reason why. The cabbie was trying to pull my arm away from his neck, so I grabbed my arm with my free hand and pulled it even tighter across his throat. I was sure I had more air in my lungs than the cabbie. I was sure that, if I could keep him underwater, I could outlast him. I could feel him getting weaker with each passing moment. He took his knife and began to stab at my right forearm. I could feel the tip of the knife piercing the skin on my arm. The cabbie couldn’t move the knife fast enough through the water to do too much damage. He soon realized that stabbing wasn’t working, so he began to saw into the back of my hand with the knife. The pain was intense, the newly opened wound immediately becoming flush with salt water. After only a few strokes over the skin on my hand, I could feel the knife scraping against bone. Unfortunately for the cabbie, the pain helped to keep me focused. As the pain increased, I simply pulled my arm in tighter, knowing that the sooner the cabbie died, the sooner the pain would stop. I closed my eyes as tight as I could and bit down on the inside of my cheek. The sawing became less intense. Then it stopped altogether. The body in my arms went limp under the water. The cabbie was dead.

  I let the body go and it began to float away from me in the darkness. In a heartbeat or two, the body vanished in the blackness as if it had never existed. Then everything came back to me and I remembered where I was. I was underwater. I had been underwater for a few minutes now and I needed to breathe. There were still two people above the surface trying to kill me. I was bleeding and tired.

  During our struggle, the waves had pushed me and the cabbie even closer to the shoreline. When I kicked my feet to try to swim to the surface, they began knocking against the ocean’s sandy bottom. I pushed myself up off the sand and headed toward the water’s surface. When my head cracked through the surface, I took a deep gasp of the cool night air. I was spent. I breathed in and then I simply leaned back and floated for a moment in the water. I had floated to within twenty feet of the beach, to within twenty feet of the man on the beach with the gun who wanted to kill me. I couldn’t move. After only a second’s respite, I felt a hand grab my hair. The hand began pulling me toward the shore. I was glad to get away from the dark water, glad to get away from the waves. Dying on the beach seemed pleasant by comparison.

  The dark-haired agent stopped swimming after a few minutes and began walking in the shallow water. I was still too tired to budge. I simply floated on my back as he dragged me along the surface of the water by my hair. It didn’t hurt until my body hit the beach. When we got to the beach, he just continued to drag me along the sand by the clump of my hair that he held in his fists. Now there was pain. The pain helped me to regain consciousness. Still, I didn’t fight. It was pointless now. I was trying to conserve energy. I was hoping there would be one last chance for survival. I just needed an opening.

  Eventually, the dark-haired agent let go of my hair and dropped me back down onto the sand. A moment later, the gray-haired leader was shining a flashlight in my face with one hand and pointing his gun at me with the other. The light from the flashlight was blinding. My eyes had gotten used to the darkness. “Where’s Trevor?” I heard a voice behind the light say to me. I assumed Trevor was the cabdriver.

  “Shark food,?
?? I mumbled.

  “Yeah?” the leader spoke, barely acknowledging that his colleague was dead. “Well, you’re next.” Then I saw a shadow move quickly into the light. It was the heel of a shoe. Before I even had time to process the information, it smashed hard into my nose. I was dazed for a second. They flipped me over. Someone pushed my face into the sand, pulled my hands behind my back, and tethered my wrists together with a plastic ring. This was all done in one motion, in about five seconds. They had done this before.

  Once my hands were secured behind my back, the gray-haired man flipped me over again. I spit the sand out of my mouth and tried to get a good look at him. I’d never seen him before, not in person. Maybe I’d seen a picture. I couldn’t remember. He glared into my face as if he were trying to read something.

  “You killed my wife, you son of bitch.” I had seen a picture. It was in the profile of my last hit. I remembered what Jared had told me. I had killed that woman in Brooklyn to send a message to her husband. He was one of their top soldiers. He’d killed eight of our men last year alone—eight that we knew of. My name was about to be added to a very distinguished list.

  I began to regain my breath, and with it some of my composure. “How many people have you killed?” I asked him.

  He thought for a moment. “More than you.” He glared at me, his face full of venom. “I’m sure of that.” He gazed down at the gun in his hand. “I don’t remember exactly how many.” I could see his chest moving up and down as he breathed. His body was full of adrenaline. “Eventually, they all just start to run into one another. I do remember some of them, though.” He stared at me with a sick glint in his eye. “And I’m definitely going to remember you.” Then he turned to the dark-haired agent, who was standing next to him, dripping wet. “Steve, give me your knife.” Steve held the knife out in front of him. The leader took it and handed Steve the gun. Then he turned back to me. “I’d tell you to say your prayers, kid, but five minutes into this, and you won’t need me to remind you. Stand up,” he ordered. I struggled to my feet. He took a step toward me. I closed my eyes to prepare myself for the pain. I didn’t know what he had planned. I only knew that this was going to hurt and that it wasn’t going to be quick. I took one last deep breath of air, knowing that it might be the last pain-free breath I ever took. I didn’t think about death, just pain. I could feel the ocean breeze brush by my face. I could smell the scent of the salt water blowing in from the sea. Then, from somewhere, wafting through the salty air, I could make out another scent. It was the smell of cheap cologne.

  My eyes still closed, I heard a shout come from off in the distance, a maniacal, madman’s yell. It got closer with each passing second. I opened my eyes and looked just in time to see Michael flying through the air, his arms stretched out in front of him like Superman in flight. He’d come back for me. I told you he didn’t like to run. He tackled the dark-haired agent and wrestled him to the ground. Michael had his scuba knife in his hand. The gray-haired man looked toward them for a second, and as he did, I dug my toes into the sand. When he turned to look back at me, I could see in his eyes that he still meant to kill me, even if it was the last thing he ever did. I was supposed to have sent him a message by killing his wife. Apparently, he had gotten the message. He lunged toward me with the knife. Right at that moment, I kicked up my leg and flung a footful of sand in his face. He flinched back as the sand hit him in both of his eyes. Then, before he could open his eyes again I kicked him as hard as I could in the groin, sending him crouching down on his hands and knees in pain. With my hands tied behind my back, I wasn’t able to keep my balance. I fell back into the sand.

  Suddenly, the gun went off, a loud bang echoing through the quiet island night. I looked over to see Michael standing over the dark-haired agent’s lifeless body. My friend had won. Just then, our last remaining enemy, the leader, leapt on top of me, full of rage. With my hands tied behind my back, I had only my feet to defend myself. I was somehow able to flip him over me once with my legs. In seconds, he was back on top of me, swinging wildly at me with his knife. Michael had the gun now but he couldn’t pull the trigger without risking shooting me. Instead, Michael rushed over, grabbed the man with the gray hair by the shoulder, and, using all the strength he could muster, pulled him away from me, gun drawn the whole time. The leader’s body twisted as Michael pulled him off me and he swung his right hand around and plunged his knife deep into Michael abdomen. While the leader’s body was turned away from me, I planted a foot in his ribs, sending him sprawling down into the sand. Now that the leader and I were separated, Michael lifted the gun. He aimed. Then he fired, sending the sound of another gunshot crackling through the air, shooting the gray-haired man in the head.

  So there we were, a bloody mess, with two dead bodies on the beach and one floating not far off in the water. Our more immediate problem, however, was jammed deep into Michael’s stomach. I rolled over toward the dark-haired agent’s body, found Michael’s scuba knife, and managed to use it to cut through the plastic that had bound my wrists.

  Once free, I looked up at Michael to assess the damage. He was still standing there, arm outstretched, gun in his hand. He was breathing heavily and with each breath the handle of the knife bobbed up and down. The knife had pierced through his Hawaiian shirt, pinning it to his side, and the blood was creating a dark circle among the palm trees and red flowers. I looked up at Michael’s face. He smiled at me. “And Jared didn’t think we could take them.”

  “We’ve got to get you to a hospital.”

  “I think that’s a good idea.”

  “Was their car still parked along the road?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Was it a cab?”

  “No.” I got up quickly and went over to the body of the gray-haired man. I knew that Steve wouldn’t have the keys, since he had been chasing me down the street on foot. I had to hope that the gray-haired man had the car keys, because if the cabbie was carrying them, we were in trouble. I checked the pockets of his shorts and felt a jingle in his right-hand pocket. Bingo. We had our ride.

  I had to help Michael to the car. He was losing blood fast. I threw him in the backseat and began to drive. “You know where the hospital is?” I asked Michael, looking at him slumped in the backseat through the rearview mirror. The whole left-hand side of his shirt was now a dark red color.

  “I told you we could fight them,” Michael slurred. He sounded drunk.

  “I’ll take that as a no.” As I looked back toward the road, I caught a glimpse of myself in the rearview mirror. I was already developing a black eye and there were streams of dried blood coming out of my nose. I looked at my right arm. I could see red marks on my forearm from where the cabbie had stabbed me. Then I looked at the back of my hand. The skin was virtually falling off it. All I could see was a mixture of bone and blood. We were an ugly pair, Michael and I, but at least I knew my wounds would heal.

  I pressed down on the gas pedal, moving as fast as I could along the narrow road. I drove toward the only bridge leading off the island. I had to find a hospital.

  “Jared’s a fucking punk,” Michael mumbled from the backseat. “He didn’t think we could fight ’em. But we beat the four of them without him.”

  “Relax, Michael. Don’t waste your energy. You’re losing blood.” I pushed further down on the gas. It wasn’t long before we started to hit traffic. I flew past the other cars, passing them on the left and the right. I hit a red light and pulled up to the car next to me. I rolled down the window and yelled over to them. “Hospital!” I shouted. They took one look at my blood-splattered face and yelled back the name of a town just off the island. Manahawkin. I heard the word and ran through the red light. It was about a twenty-minute drive. I didn’t know if I had that sort of time. When I got to Manahawkin, I saw signs for the hospital and followed them until I was able to pull up to the emergency room entrance.

  “Let’s get you inside,” I turned and said to Michael.

  “No,” he s
aid. He had regained some of the life in his eyes. “You can’t come in.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You go in there with me and neither of us is getting away. Drop me at the door and go.”

  “I can’t leave you. You’ll be arrested, at best. I’ve got to stay with you. You can’t protect yourself now. You came back for me. I can’t desert you.”

  “I didn’t come back for you.” Michael actually strained a smile. I could see a hint of blood on his lips. “I wasn’t trying to help you.” His voice was weak. Each word was strained. “I get my kicks out of this shit. Go. Go away and try to get in touch with people who can get me out of here. It’s what Jared would tell us to do.” He was right. It is what Jared would tell us to do. If Michael had listened to Jared, however, I’d be dead.

  What he said made sense, though. I told myself that I could help Michael more if I left than I could if I stayed. So that’s what I did. I dumped my friend, who had just risked his life to save mine, in the lobby of the hospital with a knife sticking out of his abdomen and I ran. I drove to the highway and headed south toward Atlantic City. I thought about pulling over and calling the Intelligence guys to let them know about Michael’s situation, but I knew that it was useless. We weren’t even supposed to be there. I didn’t have enough clout to get anything done. I got to the casino twenty minutes late. I had pulled over at a rest stop on the highway to try to clean myself up at least enough that they would let me into the casino. I wiped the blood off of my face and did my best to bandage my hand. I had to hope Jared hadn’t left yet. When I got the blackjack tables, I saw Jared sitting there, a stack of about a thousand dollars in chips in front of him. He looked almost dapper. As soon as he saw me, he cashed in, tipping the dealer with a hundred-dollar chip.