These toxic thoughts were shunted as an unseen force drove us bow-first into the river bed. I heard Ming cry out as the sub’s tail rose behind us, the river pinning us upside-down at a nauseating angle for untold torturous minutes.

Locating our exterior lights, I powered them on to reveal our bow now wedged tightly in an underpinning of rock and held fast by the force of the current. Through my moans and the thunderous current, I heard Ben yell, then felt his grip on my shoulder. “Release your harness and climb up here with me and Ming.”

With trembling fingers I pried open the latch to my harness and tumbled out of my seat onto the now-slanted roof of the acrylic pod. Crawling on my belly, I made my way into Ben’s cockpit.

Ming remained suspended upside down in her seat, her wavy brown hair dangling from her scalp.

“Zach, we’re caught in a sieve. There’s a hole in the rock where the river flows through. The sub’s pinned by the current. We’ll die down here unless we can free ourselves.”

“How?”

“I shifted the prop’s gear into reverse. I’ll gun the engine and try to rock the sub enough to catch the main current with our tailfin. Climb back into Ming’s cockpit. Use your weight to help sway us back and forth. If that’s not enough, be prepared to slam your body against the highest point of the sub.”

I nodded and then crawled into the rear compartment. “Ming, you okay?”

“My head hurts. Please hurry.”

Ben reached up to his command console’s joystick and revved the propeller in reverse, pressing foot pedals with his free hand to get the sub to rock. I tried to shift my weight with each roll, but it wasn’t enough to free the bow.

“Zach, when I say jump, jump up and grab hold of the back of Ming’s chair. On three. One… two… three!”

Reaching high overhead, I slid my hands along the base of Ming’s chair and jumped just as Ben rocked the sub in the same direction. For a surreal moment I seemed to defy gravity as the Barracuda’s tail caught the current, which pried the bow free and flipped us into the river’s powerful vortex.

Flung head-first into darkness, I slipped into its warm embrace.

15

“I’m not strange, weird, off, nor crazy; my reality is just different from yours.”

—Lewis Carroll

I opened my eyes and was surrounded by darkness. The heavy rush of the river was gone, replaced by the pitter-patter of raindrops splattering across a metal surface somewhere above my head. My skull throbbed in pain. Reaching for the source, I felt blood pooling behind my neck.