Matt de la Peña - The Living

The raft slammed headfirst against the surface of the water, Shy’s grip ripped away from the handle and he was thrown into the freezing black ocean. He kicked and reached frantically with his hands, choking on salt water, coughing out the last of his air as he was completely submerged.

Soon as his head poked back through the surface, he gulped in a desperate breath and coughed and looked all around in a panic. Heavy swells rolling past like moving mountains, lifting him, then dropping him, then lifting him again. Thunder pounded in the distance. A small wave broke over his head and he swallowed more salt water and gagged.

He wiped his stinging eyes with the back of his wrist and spotted the raft floating upside down, half a football field away, a handful of life-jacketed people already swimming for it. He’d turned to look back at the sinking ship when someone grabbed on to the back of his jacket and started pulling him toward the raft.

Shy spun his head back around, found Christian.

He couldn’t process anything except that he was in the massive ocean now, freezing-cold, whitecapped waves cresting all around him.

Lightning lit up the night sky and for a fraction of a second he saw all the survivors thrashing around in the water near the ship.

Shy shook free of Christian’s grip, turned onto his stomach and started swimming for the raft himself, fast as he could, thrusting hand after hand into the furious water in front of his face, ignoring the pain in his ribs.

Kevin was the first one to the raft.

Then Paolo and Marcus.

Shy saw them right the raft and begin pulling themselves up by the handles, heaving their waterlogged bodies over the sides. Kevin reached out a hand, pulled in Christian, then he reached for Shy, and Shy fell into the raft on his back and lay there, staring up at the smoke-filled sky and sucking in breaths and listening to the voices all around him.

“Which way are the islands?”

“We have to move away from the ship! There’s fuel all around us!”

“Look! That woman’s alive!”

“Grab the oars!”

Shy told himself what was happening. They were lost at sea, and nobody was coming to their rescue. Carmen flashed through his thoughts, and he pulled himself up to a sitting position and scanned the water, but it was too dark to make out faces.

Kevin was in the raft with him. Paolo. Marcus and Christian. Several passengers he vaguely recognized. The bodies floating near the raft were mostly on their stomachs, facedown, but a few held up their heads and beat the water with flailing arms and shouted for help.

Two jagged fingers of lightning lit up the sky.

Marcus and Christian were on opposite sides of the raft, digging oars into the choppy sea, propelling the boat toward a screaming woman. Paolo grabbed her by the arm, pulled her into the raft. Shy watched her curl into a fetal position in the water sloshing around at their feet. She looked up at him in shock.

Shy turned back to the rolling ocean, looking for someone else to help, looking for Carmen, Rodney. He saw mostly lifeless bodies and ship debris. Three lifeboats in the distance. He saw pieces of the shattered lifeboat, the bottom half still floating near the ship, which was now mostly underwater, the front end lit up in flames.

A passenger suddenly stood in the middle of the raft and shouted: “Row faster, goddamn it!”

Shy spun around, saw another huge wave roaring toward them, at least as big as the one that slammed the lifeboat against the ship. And all they had to withstand it was a wide-open twelve-man raft.

He started hyperventilating again.

“The other way!” Paolo shouted. “Turn it around! We have to make it over!”

Kevin and Christian spun the raft around, started rowing directly toward the rising wave, fast as they could, Shy gripping the raft handle, unable to take his eyes off the towering wall as it rose higher and higher before them, Paolo now shouting it down: “Come on, you son of a bitch!”

Kevin and Christian rowed and rowed until the colossal wave was directly in front of them, carrying their tiny raft up its steep, roaring face, Shy leaning forward with everyone else, clutching the raft handle, clenching every muscle in his body.

At the last minute, Kevin and Christian pulled in their oars and leaned forward, too, everyone yelling and Shy losing control of his bladder as the raft went nearly vertical with the cresting wave, spray battering his face.

They were suspended like that for what seemed like forever, all gravity vanishing and sounds disappearing, Shy holding his breath and trembling—then the raft slipped over the thick lip and rocketed down the other side, dropping into what seemed like a hole in the ocean and at such speed Shy’s whole body vibrated and he ducked his head down inside the raft to avoid being blown back into the growling giant.

When they made it to the bottom, they all turned and watched the wave explode into whitewash behind them, barreling over debris and life-jacketed bodies, colliding with the sinking ship, momentarily quieting the flames.

Shy’s eyes darted around the raft as he sucked in desperate breaths. Everyone still there. Looking at each other. White-knuckled on all the raft handles.

But then several of them were screaming again, and Shy turned and saw a second rise in the distance, this one building farther out and already more massive, and he knew immediately they wouldn’t make it over.

Kevin and Christian dug their oars back into the ocean and rowed as fast as they could, but it was pointless. Paolo yanked the oar from Christian’s grip, tossed it into the ocean, did the same with Kevin’s. He dug into the raft’s emergency pouch and pulled out everything he could and shoved it into a dry pack, shouting: “Everyone off the raft! Diving under is our only chance!”

But for Shy this was impossible.

He stared at the cresting wave, a few hundred feet away, and then he stared at the water underneath them pulling back.

Paolo strapped the dry pack on his back and dove overboard and started swimming directly at the wave.

Kevin dove in, too.

Christian.

But everyone else continued gripping the raft handles like Shy, unable to let go, their faces all frozen in terror.

Then the wave was in front of them.

At the last second, and against every instinct he had, Shy pried his hand from the handle and rolled over the side of the raft, into the ocean, the current sucking him toward the roaring wave. He watched it stand on its toes, a dozen stories high, the thick lip curling over, slicing down toward him.

Shy pulled in one last painful breath and closed his eyes and dove underneath, far as he could.

The violent undercurrent snatched him up immediately, sucking his now powerless body deep below, into blackness, thrashing him and his life jacket every which way like a washing machine, until he had no idea what was up and his lungs burned and still the ocean kept twisting his body until he lost consciousness.

Shy’s eyes popped open.

He was bobbing on the surface of the black ocean in his life jacket, retching uncontrollably—warm salt water and bile flooding back over his tongue and teeth, fanning out in the water in front of his face, the awful taste of his own sick making him vomit again.

He heaved for several minutes, until there was nothing left to purge, and still his stomach convulsed and his eyes stung and the world was blurry.

He spit and looked all around the darkness, shivering.

He was alone.

No idea how long he’d been floating here or how long he’d been drowned. His life jacket must’ve brought him back up, saved his life.