Jon Evans - Swarm

A burbling sound grew suddenly louder, and we hit a standing wave. I gasped as the raft rocked, but we did not overturn or begin to break apart. A flickering light appeared in the distance, a fire in the jungle, not far away. The foliage silhouetted in that dim light looked like the outline of an HP Lovecraft nightmare, a dark mass covered with waving tentacles.

“That must be them,” Lisa murmured. “The narcos.”

We passed within a few hundred feet of their campfire. I didn’t see the riverbank trailhead, but it must have been near. The river widened again, and I began to breathe easier, until we bumped into a rock or deadhead log lurking just below the surface, which nearly knocked me into the water, and sent us into a slow spin.

“Just stay low,” Lisa said. “We’re going to be OK.”

I had my doubts. My teeth were beginning to chatter, my fingertips were growing numb, and I didn’t dare move for fear of falling off or overturning the raft. “Lisa, just for the record, this is without question the stupidest fucking thing I have ever done.”

“And you’re not even getting paid for it. At least I’m on duty here.”

I forced a chortle. “Exactly.”

“Remember the Stoics. Try to enjoy the moment.”

“Fuck the Stoics.” But I tried anyways, and almost succeeded. I was miserable, but I was still breathing, still alive, and that was still cause for celebration.

We both fell silent as a rushing sound began to grow in the distance. It sounded almost like cars on a distant highway, but we knew it was whitewater. We were about to join the big river, the one that had already nearly killed me.

The noise swelled in volume. Even in the near-total darkness we could see the pale froth of the rapids ahead, glistening in starlight. It was even worse than I had feared. I heard a whimpering noise and realized a moment later it had come from my own throat. My heart sank and my stomach writhed as if I was falling.

“Hang on,” she muttered, unnecessarily.

Then we hit the whitewater mainstream, and the raft immediately overturned.

I somehow held on to the vine as I bounced off one rock and was scraped against the length of another. The raft hit a boulder with an audible clunk and something relatively soft plunged into my midsection. It wasn’t until I came up gasping for air until I realized that it had been one of Lisa’s limbs. I managed to grab the raft and steer myself behind it, so it would take the brunt of any new impact. I didn’t know where Lisa was, but there was no time to worry, another stretch of violent whitewater lay just ahead.

Those rapids began with a sheer ten-foot drop. As I whirled in the churning waters of the pool beneath, buffeted on all sides, the loop of vine slipped from my hand. I was dragged underwater and held for several long seconds, trapped between two irresistible currents, until in my panicked thrashing I kicked a rock, shattered the equilibrium, and popped like a cork back into the main flow. The river flung me downstream and suddenly I was drifting in smooth deep water again.

“Lisa!” I called out hoarsely, treading water. “Lisa!”

I barely heard her voice over the rushing water: “James! Are you OK?”

“More or less! Where are you?”

“This way!”

“I lost the raft!” I shouted, splashing my way in the general direction of her voice.

“I’ve got it!”

“I can’t see anything!”

For a moment she didn’t answer. Then, with an edge of near-hysterical laughter in her voice, she shouted out, “Marco!”

I couldn’t help but smile. “Polo!”

“Marco!”

“Polo!”

The ancient game led me to her. It was so dark that I touched the raft before I saw it, the found her in the water behind it.

“You think we should get on?” I asked.

“I think we’ll be safer and warmer staying in and kicking.”

She had a point; my recent frenzied struggle to stay alive had at least defeated the creeping cold preying on my bones. And the water was arguably warmer than the air.

My shoes dragged my feet downwards, and I soon gave up, contorted myself while hanging onto the raft with one hand, and peeled them off. The river swallowed my tears of agony.

We drifted half-submersed for a long time. Slowly the water leeched the heat from our bodies despite our attempts to keep kicking. I almost didn’t mind, numbness dulled the pain from my feet, but I knew intellectually that this was a bad sign. A memory leapt into my mind, something I had seen on TV when I was a kid, a special program about some girl who had swum across Lake Ontario. I thought dizzily, If she can make it, I can make it, redoubled the pace of my weary legs, and concentrated on breathing deeply like Lisa had told me. It seemed to help a little. I told myself that I had it easy compared to Lake Ontario, I didn’t have lampreys attacking me and sucking my blood. Although Colombia had alligators. And maybe piranha. I froze for a second, then reassured myself that there would be no predators in water moving this fast.

“How are you doing?” I muttered, realizing dimly that we hadn’t spoken in a while. There had been no rapids since the rivers had joined, and it was hard to tell, but I thought the river was widening and the water slowing. I wondered how deep it was.

“About as well as you might expect.”

We drifted onwards.

“Try to enjoy the moment.” It was growing hard to decipher her words. “The Stoics say it’s possible to be happy even as you are stretched upon the rack.”

“They are of course full of shit.”

She didn’t answer. I feared she didn’t remember having quoted the Stoics to me before. Not a good sign. Delirium and confusion were signs of hypothermia.

“Penny for your thoughts,” I said, hoping that talking might keep up her strength.

For a second I was worried she couldn’t answer, but she took a deep breath and said, “You know when I was in the army I tried to join the Special Forces?”

“Of course. Everyone knows that. I read it in People magazine.”

I could almost feel her glare through the darkness. “Less sarcasm, more listening, Kowalski.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said, glad to have irritated her. Anger made you warm.

“I thought I was some kind of badass. So I signed up. As part of the training they taught us mental techniques for how to endure physical strain. They did this thing where we had to stand holding our rifle above our heads for, I don’t know, forever. You ever try to hold something above your head for a long time?”

“No.”

“It’s fucking awful. The Stoics never tried to join the Special Forces, I’ll tell you that much. Anyway. One of the other tricks is to think of what you win if you endure. Something concrete. That’s why I dropped out. You were supposed to think about joining the Special Forces, that was what you won. But I realized, I didn’t actually want to be a Green Beret, I just wanted to have been a Green Beret. Not the same thing.” She sucked in a harsh breath. Her voice was growing increasingly slurred. “Sorry. Babbling. My point is. You keep thinking about your girlfriend. You get through this, you get her.”

I realized that Lisa was near the end of her considerable strength.

“What are you thinking about?” I asked, hoping to help her tap into a new reserve.

For some time she didn’t answer. I was about to repeat myself when she said, in an uncertain voice unlike any I’d heard before from her, “That’s the fucking question, isn’t it? I got no one waiting for me back home. Between you and me and the big guy, all I got right now is the rosary.”

“The rosary?”

“In my head. Except I can’t remember the fucking Apostle’s Creed.”

After a second I began to recite, “I believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth. I believe in Jesus Christ, his only son, our Lord. He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried… “