Free Where the Ships Die by William C. Dietz

slowed his reflexes. The bouncers moved with practiced ease, lifted the youngster off the floor, and elbow-carried him toward the kitchen. Hot, steamy air parted in front of his face as people in white turned to stare. A door opened, and he saw lights on the far side of the river. He barely had time to shout "No!" before being lifted into the air and thrown over the railing.
    Time seemed to slow. Dorn remembered his previous visit, the river, and the exposed mud flats. Was the tide out or in? Would he land in mud or in the water? And what about pilings?
    The fall ended. Shockingly cold water enveloped him and filled his boots. The boots, plus the water that soaked the teenager's clothes, weighted him down. Precious moments passed while the current pulled Dorn along. Curiously enough it was his old nemesis, Coach Mahowski, who intervened to save him. The voice, clipped and gruff, sounded in his head.
    "This is a swimming pool, Mr. Voss, the purpose of which is not to provide you with entertainment, or provide the skills necessary to impress members of the opposite sex, but to help you survive in the element from which your ancestors crawled millions of years ago. The first rule to remember is that similar to most forms of excrement, underclassmen float, and that being the case, are equipped to survive in the water. What they lack, during the earlier years anyway, is brains—those amazing organs of thought, which, if employed properly, enable young men them to think their way out of most emergencies, or better yet, prevent them from happening in the first place."
    Well, it was way too late to prevent the situation that Dorn found himself in, but it wasn't too late to think, and that meant losing some weight.
    It was pitch black beneath the surface of the river, the current spun Dorn in circles, and his lungs were about to burst. It took a true act of will to bend over, pull his boots off, rip the buttons from his water logged jacket, and work his way out of it. The results were nearly instantaneous.
    The clothing fell away and Dorn rose, propelled by Mahowski's flutter kick and the strength of his arms. They broke the surface first followed by his head and shoulders. Dorn spit foul-tasting water out of his mouth, inhaled great draughts of air, and kicked to keep his head up. He fought to get his bearings while an eddy spun him around. A long line of lights wobbled downstream, but before he could speculate on what they were, the river, working in concert with the outgoing tide, pulled the teenager over a series of rock ledges and into the blackness below.
    The water stung as it made its way into countless cuts and scratches. His shoulder hurt where a rock had banged into it. Dorn ignored the pain, headed for the eastern shore, but didn't make much headway. He went ten feet downstream for each foot of lateral progress. The lights grew brighter and were overhead when the youngster hit the fishing net.
    Later he would learn that silvers, a species of ocean-dwelling eel, liked to ride the incoming tide upriver to feed on the tiny organisms that flourished where fresh water mixed with salt—until the flow reversed itself, and the silvers were carried downstream. It was a cycle the locals took full advantage of by stretching nets across the river and harvesting as many of the eels as they could. But that knowledge would come later. This was now ... and Dorn was in trouble.
    Eels thumped into the boy's back, then pinned him against the net. Most of the silvers were one or two feet long and packed a wallop. He wondered what they ate and hoped it wasn't flesh. Dorn grabbed double handfuls of the net, looked upward, and saw a rickety bridge. The scrap lumber groaned under the force of the water and vibrated like a tuning fork. The teenager pushed his toes through the open mesh and tried to climb. He heard voices and shouted at the top of his lungs. "Help! I'm down here! Pull me up!"
    There was a good deal of excited yelling