"I am NOT going on that fucking.....THING!" AJ screamed at me, wildly waving his arms in the air. 

"AJ. dude, come on! This will be fun!  Where's your sense of adventure?" I said back to him. 

"Nick, I'm not too keen on this either" Brian piped up behind AJ.

Howie just stood there staring at the object in question.

I had came up with the idea of us all, including Kevin, to go white water rafting.  Some of the group, I guess, weren't too thrilled with the idea. 

"Come on guys.  This is something we've never done before! Just have fun with it" I told them, then giving my best puppy dog face.

I heard a collective groan.  I knew I had won.  Just then, the instuctor walked up carrying  life vests and helmets. As he approached, 2 more men joined our group.  They introduced themselves to us as Gary and Patrick.  Yeah, I giggled like mad cuz I was totally thinking of Sponge Bob at this point.  "Who lives in a pineapple under the sea" I sang.  Kevin elbowed me in the side to shut up.  Guess he caught it too.

"Hey fellas, my name is Mike and I will be your guide and instructor for your white water adventure today" he said as he passed out the equipment.  We all put the gear on as we listened to Mike give us instructions. Mike then lead us down to the river, wehre the raft awaited us.  Mike then went about placing us in the raft where he wanted us.  Then he instucted us to all push off without our oars.  Soon we were floating down the river.

As aprehensive as the fellas were, we all caught on fast and were growing confindant now with our ability to handle our craft.  We were floating down the river at a pretty fast clip now, just enjoying the ride and the beautiful view nature was providing us.

"This isen't too bad.  I think I can handle this" AJ commented.

"Yeah, I gotta admit Nick, this turned out to be one of your better ideas" Howie said.

At first, I took offence to Howie's remark, then I smiled, pleased with myself.

"Just wait" Mike said, pointing downstream.  We all turned to look where Mike was pointing.  The raging rapids that were coming into view were coming up fast and even scared ME a little bit.  We hit the rapids with force and we started paddling like crazy, remembering the instructions Mike had given us earlier.  It was a wild ride, better than any rollercoaster I'd ever been on.  We made it through and coasted into smooth water once again without a hitch. 

"WOOOHOOOOO!!!" I screamed.  "That was fuckin GREAT!"

The others looked kinda green around the gills, but no one lost their lunch over the side of the raft.

We all had grown pretty quite again, when Kevin broke the silence.  He had been staring at Gary and Patrick for a long time now.  I thought he was gonna stare a hole right in their heads. 

"You two look familiar to me" he told them. 

"Really?" I've never seen you before in my life" Gary answered. 

It was pretty quite again, a little bit of conversation going on between us all as we as concentrated on our paddling.  Then Kevin's head snapped up.  He snapped his fingers, as if coming to a revolation. 

"You two were on the news last night!  You robbed a bank and killed two of the tellers and some of the customers!" Kevin yelled. 

Kevin quickly realized his mistake in letting the two know he knew who they were.  Plus, he knew he'd just send his younger brothers into a panic.

It was then Patrick seemed to have produced a gun out of thin air.  I just stared at it trying to figure out if it was real or not.

"You all do what we say and no one gets hurt" Patrick said.  "We are gonna ride these rapids all the way across the border and then you all can walk free."

Kevin went to get up to protest but we hit a wave and he stumbled towards Patrick.  The next thing we heard was a gunshot.  Kevin fell down in the middle of the raft, with blood quickly soaking his shirt around the top of his arm. 

Brian shuffled over to his cousin, ripped his shirt open to access the wound.  Luckily, it had just grazed him, but it was a pretty deep wound. 

"You Prick!! You SHOT him!" Brian yelled at Patrick.

Patrick then trained his gun on Brian.  "If you don't shut up and sit down, the same will happen to you ALL" he screamed at the goup. 

We all sat back in our spots on the raft and were quite.  Brian finished dressing Kevin's wound the best he could then slid back to his spot. 

The raft had been floating down the river for a couple of hours, well past the point where we were supposed to have stopped.  Mike mentioned, he'd never been this far downriver.  He was promptly told to "shut the fuck up". 

It was so quite except for the sound of the water's gentle swishing sounds and a few birds chirping in the sky.  Gradually, the sound of the water's roar began to intensify.  The unmistakable sounds of rapids was burning in our ears.  We looked ahead and saw the rapids starting, then they just.....stopped. 

Realizing we were headed straight for a waterfall, we all started paddling like crazy men.  Kevin even tried even though I knew it had have hurt like a bitch.  But the water was pulling us faster and faster toward the mouth of the cliff.  As hard as we tried, it was all in vain. 

All I heard were blood-curdling screams coming from 8 men in midair as we began to freefall over the side of the waterfall and the loud roar of the water angrily hitting the pool of water below.