Children of Paranoia by Trevor Shane Page A

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