by Akart, Bobby
The gang of four burst out in drunken laughter. “Look at this freak show, man. This ain’t a Megadeth concert. You’ve come to the wrong place, punk.”
The men began to kick Ethan, who’d curled into a fetal position to avoid the onslaught.
“Leave him alone!” shouted Skylar, which only drew more laughter and ridicule.
“Oh, baby sister gotta take care of you?”
“Or maybe that’s his girlfriend?”
“She’s a little young for you, man!”
The men kicked Ethan again until they abruptly stopped—when the lights went out.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Six Flags Great Adventure
Jackson, New Jersey
Many of the riders on Kingda Ka at that moment were unaware that the power had been lost to Six Flags and the surrounding area, as they had their eyes clenched shut from fear. They didn’t realize anything was wrong until the forward momentum of the roller coaster cars designed to carry them up and over the curved top came to a sudden, bone-jarring stop before it entered the two-hundred-seventy-degree spiral to the bottom of the ride.
That was when the sincerely terrified screams filled the air, not the ones that were adrenaline-driven just seconds before. The eighteen-passenger coaster was stuck, pointed straight down, forty-five stories in the sky.
The sense of fear was as old as life on Earth. It was a fundamental, deeply wired reaction that evolved into a complex, existential anxiety in humans. There was a big difference between a high arousal state during a daring task, such as the rush of the passengers on Kingda Ka that New Year’s Eve, and primal terror as one realistically fears their death.
The fear that overtook those eighteen passengers started in the brain and spread throughout their bodies in the blink of an eye. Their brains became hyperalert, and their breathing accelerated. Heart rates reached dangerous levels, and blood flow increased to the bodies’ muscles. All of these physiological effects occurred much faster than the brain was able to communicate the ramifications of what caused the fear.
That fact had now hit the group of riders nearly simultaneously. Some continuously screamed at the top of their lungs while others broke down in fits of sobs and wails. Others went into shock, their bodies’ response to the fear preventing them from rationally comprehending their fate.
Then there were two people who had lived through a traumatic experience already, and whose bodies understood catastrophic events as a result. Further, they had seen death in their jobs and were fully aware of when their lives were at risk.
Angela and Tyler, like the others, were frightened as the coaster came to a halt, but then their minds processed the situation, drawing from their past experiences. They were not falling, and they assumed safety measures were put into place that prevented them from detaching from the rails.
The worst case, in Tyler’s mind, was that the coaster’s brakes would fail, and they’d go sailing downward until it ran out of steam or ran into other parked coaster cars at the ride’s station. Not good, but better than falling forty-five stories to their deaths.
First, he comforted his wife. “Angela, don’t worry. We’re gonna be all right. They have safety measures in place.”
She nodded and managed a smile. “Let’s help the kids.”
Kaycee was already in the process of calming her brother down when both Tyler and Angela reached forward to touch their children’s shoulders. The heavy restraints kept them pressed against the back of their seats for safety reasons, but the ability to make contact with their kids helped both parents and children cope with the danger.
“Kids,” began Tyler in the calmest voice he could muster under the circumstances, “listen to me. It’s going to be okay. We’re secure in our seats, and the coaster is just temporarily stuck. They’ll have the power back on soon.”
Tyler had to raise his voice over the screaming passengers behind them and the people on the ground, too. The reality of the power outage was beginning to set in.
Angela continued to comfort the kids while Tyler looked around Six Flags and beyond. The power was out as far as he could see. He then remembered his cell phone going blank. He looked down to the ground, where he could barely make out a crowd below them. At over four hundred feet above ground, they looked like ants, perhaps smaller.
What immediately struck him was the lack of illuminated cell phones recording the event for YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram. That was impossible, he thought to himself. Today, people recorded a dying man in the street before they thought to call 9-1-1 to get help.
“Angela, can you reach your cell phone?” he asked, interrupting her conversation with their children. Between her soothing tone and Kaycee’s big-sister approach, J.C. had relaxed and was sitting calmly in their front-row seat.
“Yeah, hold on,” she replied casually.
“Um, no problem there,” Tyler quipped.
Angela reached into her hip pocket and pulled out her iPhone. She pressed her thumb to the screen to unlock the display.
Nothing.
She tried it again, this time attempting to press buttons on the side of the device to elicit a response.
It was still not turning on.
“Here, but it’s not working. Tyler, it was fully charged when we left the truck, and I’ve barely used it except to FaceTime Brett.”
Tyler tried to turn around and look to the coaster passengers behind him. Some had stopped screaming and turned their cries of despair to shouts of help. None, however, were using their cell phones to place calls.
“Dad, why aren’t they helping us?” asked Kaycee.
“There’s more to this, Peanut. Somehow, I think our ride isn’t the only problem. The power is out everywhere.”
Angela leaned over to Tyler and whispered, “EMP?”
“It has to be,” he replied. “The first thing I look at in a power outage is my phone. It’s not just ours. Plus, look around. Do you see any lights anywhere? I mean in the buildings, the cars, anything?”
“No,” replied Angela despondently. “How the hell are we gonna get off this thing?”
Tyler closed his eyes and answered the question honestly, “I really have no idea.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Six Flags Great Adventure
Jackson, New Jersey
“We have to get off here!” a man shouted from the back of the coaster. “This thing could fall off any minute!”
“Yeah, nobody is coming to help us. I think they forgot we’re up here!” a younger man added to the panicked situation.
“Why aren’t they helping us?” a woman wailed her question in response.
Tyler hesitated to respond at first, and then he felt the coaster cars begin to wiggle as the panicked passengers became agitated. He needed to calm them down.
“No, it won’t fall off!” he yelled. “Everyone, please listen to me. I’m a firefighter and I’ve been trained for these situations. The roller coaster is safe, and the cars are firmly attached to the rails. They are not going to fall off.”
“I don’t believe you!” one of the men shouted back. “If it was safe, we would never have gotten stuck in the first place.”
“I agree,” said the other man. “Plus, the power is down everywhere. It’s freezing cold up here. We can’t wait forever!”
Tyler was growing frustrated because the other passengers were buying into their hysteria. “There’s nothing we can do but wait.” He paused and then asked sarcastically, “Do you see a ladder anywhere?”
One of the know-it-all men quickly responded, “Yeah, over there in the middle of the rails. If we could make it to the platforms, then we could climb down.”
“You ain’t Spiderman, mister,” said one of the teenage girls behind Tyler.
“Well, I think I can make it. What about you, buddy?” the mouthy know-it-all said to the younger man who had agreed with him previously.
“Um, I can wait for a little while, I think,” the young man responde
d after taking a look at the risky option.
The group quietened down for a moment, bringing a sense of relief to Tyler. The coaster was no longer being jostled, giving the other passengers and his children an opportunity to calm down as well.
Angela leaned in to him. “Do they make a ladder truck that will reach up here?”
Tyler grimaced and shook his head. “The longest I’ve heard about exists in New York City, and they’re only ten stories. I saw a video of some passengers being rescued from a coaster in Japan once, but that was only ninety feet off the ground. We’re four times that, at least.”
“Chopper?” asked Angela.
“Most likely. Probably a Coast Guard rescue unit with a basket. They’re equipped to handle two people—the rescuer and the rescued.”
They paused their conversation for a moment as the men in the back continued to discuss their bail-out options.
“They’re idiots,” said Angela as they eavesdropped on the conversation. “They might be drunk too.”
“It’s New Year’s, wouldn’t surprise me at all,” added Tyler.
“Ty, why wouldn’t they have a means to release the emergency brake so we can just coast to the bottom?”
“I thought about that. First, there are probably additional braking mechanisms at the end of the ride to bring us slowly into the ride’s station. They may not be working because of the power outage. If they’re not, the other cars would be in the way. We’d come around the last bend and crash into them at Lord knows how fast. Fifty, sixty miles per hour? We’d be killed.”
Angela nodded and gave his hand a squeeze. “Maybe they’re in the process of moving the cars off the track. But there is still the matter of releasing the emergency brake. If it’s electronic, it won’t respond. If it’s manual, somebody’s got to climb up here to do it. These rails are built like ladders, but that’s a heckuva climb. I couldn’t do it.”
“Me either,” agreed Tyler. “My guess is that the Coast Guard will be brought in at some point. Keep in mind, we’re not the only people stranded on a ride in this park. And, depending on how widespread this outage is, they may have bigger problems.”
“Agreed,” said Angela. “What do you think we’re looking at?”
“Several hours, maybe more,” replied Tyler.
The words were barely out of his mouth when one of the teen girls behind him started yelling. “Hey, everybody! The fireman said it may take hours until they rescue us. We have to wait on a helicopter from the Navy or something.”
“That’s not what I said!” shouted Tyler. “We need to remain—”
“Well, that’s all I need to hear,” said one of the men at the rear of the coaster. “I’m not sitting up here all night. We’re gonna use these pipes to make our way over to those platforms. It’s like shimmying down a pole. No problem, right, mister firefighter? You guys do that in the firehall all the time.”
“No!” shouted Tyler. “It’s not like that at all. Just wait. We can sit here as long as it takes, right?”
The coaster started rocking back and forth, causing several of the passengers to scream. The man didn’t respond to Tyler but instead began pushing against the U-shaped safety bar, which held his torso against the seat.
“Push, honey!” he shouted to his female companion.
Tyler couldn’t turn to see what they were doing because of the restraints and the high-back seat.
“Stop it!” he shouted, to no avail. The man kept pushing the bar forward. As it snapped back, he’d push even harder, and eventually, it gave way, as did all four safety restraints in his car.
A bone-chilling scream filled the air as the two passengers in the car with the man panicked in terror. They were dropped forward toward the car in front of them until they crashed into the back of the seats.
“Hey, sorry about that,” the man began to apologize. “I didn’t know …” His voice trailed off as the two college-age kids yelled for help. They were holding onto the restraints of the other car in an effort to avoid falling over the top of the inverted coaster.
“Jim! You have to help them get back in the car!” a woman hollered at the man.
“I can’t reach them without crawling around the side,” he immediately responded.
“Then I’ll do it!” she yelled back at him.
That was when the weight of the coaster began to shift. The machine was designed to remain on a certain balance. The weight of the riders was not relevant so much as the distribution. If a passenger stepped outside the ride’s protective compartment, it caused the ride to lean on the rails to one side or the other. The woman must have been heavyset, because the cars tilted slightly to the right on the rails.
“Stop! Now!” yelled Tyler. He was beginning to question his theory on whether the coaster could derail. “You can’t exit the car like that. Just sit down!”
“We need help!” yelled one of the college kids.
“You’ll be okay,” said Tyler. “Just find a comfortable grip and hold on. Let the weight of your body push you against the back of the seats in front of you.”
The cars started to sway again, and this time the lean was more pronounced to the right.
Now what?
“Jim, are you sure?” the woman asked her husband.
“Yeah, I’m sure,” he replied defensively. “I wouldn’t be doing this if I wasn’t. Do you think I wanna die? Just follow my lead.”
The coaster listed farther to the right as the man leaned over the side of the car and stepped onto the rail. Using the now broken safety bar to balance, he walked over to the blue pipes and support until he could reach them both at once. With a slight push off, he grasped the pipes and held on. For a moment, he stood there, maintaining his balance and gathering his courage. Then he addressed his wife. “See, baby? Piece of cake. Now, we bear-hug this support pipe and slide down toward that platform. It’s only about thirty feet. Heck, we could drop the last fifteen feet and make it just fine.”
“Um, okay,” the woman replied.
Tyler desperately wanted to see what they were doing, but his view was obscured. Looking to his left, he could see the support pipes as they stretched toward the platform.
The man was growing more confident. “Okay! See. We can do this.”
Tyler looked over the side of his car. The man was bear-hugging the pipe and inching downward.
“Look, it’s working!” shouted the younger man from earlier.
“Yeah, come on!” shouted another.
Soon, the coaster was shaking again as some of the other passengers were trying to force their safety bars open.
“Mom!” screamed J.C. as he began to cry.
“Everybody, stop!” shouted Angela as she became instinctively protective of her frightened child.
“Push harder!” was the response she received.
Tyler saw the man in full view now, and the legs of his wife were slowly descending into his field of vision.
The shaking continued until a loud crack occurred.
“We’re free!” shouted the young man. And then it happened.
The jostling of the cars caused him to lose his grip and fall over the top of the coaster. Instinctively, Tyler reached up to grab the young man’s arm as his body tumbled past, but it would’ve been impossible to save him
Sixty feet below them, where the track began its two-hundred-seventy-degree turn, a blue support crossed the track, which momentarily broke his fall, and his back. By the time his body flattened onto the concrete amidst the onlookers below, he was already dead.
That was just the beginning.
All the passengers screamed. Angela tried to calm her children but could only do so much with the safety bar restraining her.
The woman who’d followed her husband onto the pipe panicked. “My hands are slippery, Jim. I can’t hold on!”
“We’re almost there!” This grabbed Tyler’s attention as he looked over the side of the car.
The woman’s nervousness caused
her palms to moisten and she was unable to hold onto the slick steel pipe. She began to slide and scream.
“Jim, catch me! I can’t—arrrggghhh!”
Her body suddenly twisted on the pipe and she sailed downward. Her husband grabbed for her leg, causing him to lose his grip, and he spun around on the pipe before dropping too.
The two bodies sailed helplessly through the air, periodically bouncing off the steel supports and platforms, breaking bones and rupturing internal organs. Unlike the first passenger, who fell already dead, these two were fully conscious when their faces met the pavement.
Everyone was crying now, including Tyler. It was so senseless. One man’s ignorant, misguided attempt to be the big shot caused his death and took the lives of two others. Tyler wiped the tears off his face and closed his eyes.
There was a lesson to be learned in all of this. He just didn’t know what it was.
Chapter Forty
Metrorail System
Washington, DC
Hayden found herself in a vulnerable position. She moved toward the open doors and stood, somewhat shaky, in the center of the aisle. Listening in the pitch darkness. Outside the train, passengers were scurrying along the gravel bed that flanked the rails, some insisting it was quicker to return to the Navy Yard station while others were pushing forward toward the Anacostia station and Congress Heights beyond that.
A sigh escaped her as she held a metal pole in her left hand and the mace in her right. She switched the mace to her left hand as she sought her cell phone to provide some light inside the car. She powered up the display, revealing a picture of Prowler partially covered by her phone app icons. A slight smile came over her face as the familiarity of her best friend’s steely gray eyes fixed on her, encouraging her to be strong.
Hayden looked up and turned her phone around to illuminate the dark rail car. That was when she saw the man staring at her from the car behind hers, looking through the glass doors. His eyes narrowed as he turned the latch to open the door to his train car.