Swim till you die.

Swimming to Death

By Scott D. Zachary

 

It was a dark, overcast night; the sun had faded into oblivion hours ago. Brad’s wife, Suzanne, was sound asleep in the cabin of his 35-foot sports cruiser, "The Solar Wind," which was anchored near the mouth of Smith Bay. Just before sundown, Brad had watched eleven sailboats pass by and congregate side-by-side along the shore, perhaps a mile further into the bay. He had been drinking beer for several hours and yearned for a party atmosphere. The distant sparkle of lights from those boats enticed him.

Brad opened the cabin door; Suzanne was out cold. "I could swim there in an hour," he thought, "party for an hour, and swim back. Why disturb her? I’ll be back before she wakes." He chugged his beer. Dressed only in his swim trunks, Brad dove off the side of the boat toward the distant twinkling lights. An accomplished swimmer, Brad paced himself. He swam, reveling in the darkness as the cool water swirled over his shoulders. The water was unusually calm. No wind. No speedboat wakes. Nothing—just placid water. Arm over arm, he swam. Brad rolled onto his back and looked toward his boat, the lights of which had become faint.

Feeling strong, Brad twirled around and settled into a steady side-stroke. He had no doubt that he could and would make it to those sailboats. It was only a mile or so. As he swam, Brad remembered the first long swim of his life when he and a friend, Sam, swam across the Portage River. Half-way across, Sam panicked and went under. Brad dove down repeatedly trying to find his friend, but to no avail. Sam washed up on the shore of Lake Erie a week later. Brad had always felt guilty about Sam’s death, but that didn’t dilute Brad’s love of the water. For a moment, Brad empathized so thoroughly with his youthful friend that he began to panic. "Next thought, Brad!" he bellowed.

Brad swam. Gradually, the lights of the sailboats appeared closer than the lights of his boat. "Time to party!" Still feeling confident, he broke into a free-style sprint for several minutes. Winded, he realized that if a speedboat burst into the bay, he’d only be able to dive down and hold his breath for a few seconds at best to allow it to pass overhead. Brad slowed his pace to regain his wind.

Tiring slightly, Brad rolled onto his back and back-paddled. He estimated that he was three-fourths of the way to his goal. Backstroking, Brad’s arm thumped against something that felt like an extremely large, dead fish floating in the water. Whatever it was stunk like week-old roadkill. He spun around and dog-paddled to avoid the hindrance. Brad shivered, imagining what it could have been. He swam harder toward the sailboats with renewed energy.

Music floated over the water from the sailboats. "Party time!" he thought. As Brad breast-stroked the remaining hundred yards toward the boats, a vision came into his sight that frightened him. A man with a rope around his neck was being raised off the deck of the last sailboat on the right. The man frantically grabbed at the rope and grabbed at the air. Then the man slumped into death, his feet hanging inches above the deck.

Brad lowered himself deeper into the water with only his forehead and nose exposed. Watching. Waiting. Muffled screams emanated from the fourth or fifth boat from the right. The smelly fish back there reverberated in his mind. "What was it? Was it really a dead fish?" he questioned. Brad floated in the water, waiting for further clues. Paddling closer like a star being sucked into a black hole, Brad heard a man on the sixth boat yell, "Hell no!" and an instant later, the sound of a shotgun thrust that man into the water.

Brad breast-stroked ever so slowly toward the boats. As he swam up to the diving platform of the third boat, he watched a burly man wrap his meaty right hand around the neck of a slender, brunette woman, his left hand unzipping his pants. Brad slowly climbed the ladder onto that boat. Tired as he was, adrenaline spurred his righteous mission. He grabbed the man’s legs and summersaulted him into the water. Brad filled his lungs and dove after him. They struggled violently. Brad held him under the water until the man stopped fighting and became limp. Surfacing, another being wrapped her arms around Brad’s neck. He prepared for another aqua battle, but instead, received a kiss on his cheek.

"They’re killing everyone. Help us. Please, help us!" She was delirious.

"Do you see that light at the mouth of the bay? Swim there. Go!" demanded Brad.

"I don’t know if I can."

"Do it. If you can’t, swim far away to the shore. Just go!"

"Save them, please." The brunette swam away toward "The Solar Wind."

Brad looked around, climbed the boat’s ladder, and lowered himself into the boat, listening intently. A redheaded man jumped from the next boat into this one, declaring, "This is easier than ducks in a barrel!" Brad kicked the redheaded man solidly between his legs. He doubled over and whimpered like a small child. Like a lion, Brad leapt, biting into the nape of his neck, while wrapping his arms into a sleeper-hold on his target. The redheaded man lashed at the air, writhed, and then slowly accepted death. Brad pushed the cumbersome weight off of his body. "How many more killing machines do I have to overcome?" he thought.

Brad lay there in that boat for eternity, it seemed, before he regained courage enough to raise his head up. Women were screaming two or three boats down. He summoned all his inner strength and climbed over the edge of this boat into the next, and then the next one. Slowly, he snaked his way onto the boat, adjacent to the one which seemed to be a torture chamber. Women screamed. A black-haired, stern, over-confident man stepped out of the cabin of screams, stretched and yawned. Brad hit him with the force of a missile, grabbing his hair and twisting his head unnaturally. The black-haired man slumped—dead.

The screams below deck persisted. "How many killers are there in the cabin of that boat?" Brad wondered. "Are there others around? What am I going to do?" He spotted a fire extinguisher, ripped it from its lashings, pulled the safety, and set out to overcome Hell’s demons. Scared senseless, Brad opened the cabin door and prepared to meet Satan himself. No one was in sight. He stepped down, adrenaline spurring him on. His right jaw suddenly became numb. Brad’s mind reeled. His head whacked against a pointed surface. His thoughts became muddled. Brad heard distant yelps, and then he lost consciousness.

A lifetime later, five women coddled Brad, holding his hands, stroking his face, and pleading for him to open his eyes. As his eyelids fluttered, the room filled with a chorus of cheers. Suzanne leaned over and kissed his lips. Four other women in turn kissed him on the forehead.

"Wow! Did I die and go to heaven?"

"No, hon," said Suzanne, "you’re still stuck with me here on earth."

"What happened? Where am I?" asked Brad.

"You took a pretty nasty bump on your head. You’ve been in a coma for almost a week. These ladies were afraid you were going to die, but I knew you were too hardheaded for that." Suzanne punctuated the end of her sentence by giving Brad another kiss.

Brad squinted his eyes and looked around at the other four women around his bed. He recognized the brunette whom he had instructed to swim across the bay to his boat.

"Yes, I made it," said the Brunette. "Your lovely wife, Suzanne, and I radioed the Coast Guard."

"It’s starting to come back to me," said Brad. "What happened out there?"

"What happened?" exclaimed the petite blonde who was holding his left hand. "You single-handedly busted up one of the largest drug rings in the country, and in the process, saved our lives. That’s what happened."

"Who? Me?"

"Yes, you, sweetheart. Next time, let me know when you take off for a midnight swim."