Catch up!

“Maybe you’ll be able to answer that yourself after you see it. I know it’s human-made and must have floated at some point. Anyway, go straight ahead. You won’t miss the floater. GO!” Ramata stuck out a hand for each of them to grab hold of.

“Stay close.” And then Ramata kicked.

They swam in and out of steel beams, concrete pilings, and the occasional rusted light post. At first, Adam thought that Ramata was leading them by some uncanny sense of direction but he soon realized that the water-folk was winging it. Ramata’s main concern seemed only to keep moving and to keep moving erratically. They all knew the direction to go, but how to get there best seemed anyone’s guess.

Ramata zigged left and zagged right, swam up, down, and around whatever happened to wind up in their path. They let go of each other’s hands to increase their pace and Adam and Spot stayed as close to Ramata as they could. Spot was much better than Adam at keeping up. At times, Spot actually swam ahead of Ramata. The distance between the two natural born swimmers and Adam became more and more pronounced. So did Adam’s breathing. Two zags, an upswim, a zig, another up, and Ramata and Spot pulled too far ahead of Adam for him to follow. He watched them continue on through the maze of concrete and steel, then disappear altogether.

Forget it, he thought. I gotta catch my breath. So he swam down to the ocean floor and leaned against one of the old skyscrapers’ massive, steel beams. The beams sprung up around him like a forest of metal. Adam closed his eyes and took slow, deep breaths to calm his pounding heart.

With his eyes closed, Adam didn’t notice the dark shadows that passed over him. First one, then two, then five oval shadows crawled over and circled around his resting body. When his eyes opened, the shadows disappeared into ripples of sunlight on the sandy bottom.