by Peter Parken
Tom laughed. “Isn’t that the ultimate test? The rollercoaster junkies get to ride first!”
Nate ran his fingers through his thick brown hair. It was June and already well into the warm Virginia weather. He needed a haircut badly. His hair always grew fast and it got so hot sometimes it was unbearable. But he hated having to sit still to get his hair cut. Nate wasn’t one to sit still for very long.
Nate’s company was based in Alexandria—he thought it was ironic that his very own city was the last to finally get one of his coasters. Well, better late than never. Hometown boy makes good and all that crap.
He watched as the red-jacketed riders moved through the turnstiles. And the Press crowded as close as they could get to the fenced perimeter, cameras clicking away at the people in line.
The red jackets were members of the world’s most notorious rollercoaster maniacs: The Coaster Crazies. There were a total of 5,000 members, but usually only twenty or so toured at a time—taking in as many rollercoasters as they could in a two-week stretch. Some members actually never rode at all, but merely scared themselves silly, vicariously, by reading and watching online accounts of the ordeals of their fellow members.
Nate counted twenty-six in this particular group—and that was all his coaster could hold. A lot of coasters were set up with two separate trains running the same track—staggered by a safe distance. But Nate’s designs were far too fast to allow that—he never succumbed to the pressure to incorporate two trains in his designs. The speeds and stress on the coaster superstructure were far too severe to take that chance. Also, the sporadic triggering of the electromagnets put incredible pressure on the integrity of the complicated edifice. Nate was a structural engineer—he knew these things.
So the Coaster Crazies had been granted the honor of being the sole initiators of the world’s newest and most daring rollercoaster. This had been arranged months in advance, with a considerable amount of media hype. Good publicity—Nate had encouraged it. The media had interviewed each of the brave club members and some had even been invited on to late night talk shows. There was a certain fascination with people who stared death in the face. And there was always publicity when a new Flying Machines coaster opened up. These red jackets were the new media darlings.
It was quite the event. The governor of the state of Virginia was there, as was the mayor of Alexandria. It was a big thing for a relatively small city like Alexandria. Nate directed his blue eyes over in the direction of the VIP tent—he could see the various dignitaries already seated. He and Tom were supposed to be seated over there at this very moment, but Nate didn’t pay much attention to ceremony.
Tom shook his shoulder again. “Hey, are we gonna grab a seat and a beer?”
“No, Tom, you go ahead without me. I have to be close by to watch this thing. It’s like the birth of a child for me—although I don’t know what that feels like yet.”
Tom smiled knowingly. It was like this at every opening. He looked his friend in the eyes—eyes that were mesmerizingly blue, but also disarmingly weird. He knew that Nate had the ability, when he wanted to use it, of having each eye concentrate on two different things at once. He could read two pages of a book simultaneously. He could watch Tom with one eye and the rollercoaster with the other. Which was exactly what he was doing right then.
“Okay, buddy. We’ll celebrate after the red jackets disembark. Maybe then you can relax.”
Nate laughed and shuffled his feet nervously. “I don’t know if I can ever really relax. You know me well enough by now. This stuff is exciting—but also nerve-wracking as hell.”
“Hey, that’s why you have me. I can do the relaxing for you!”
Nate punched him in the shoulder. “Yes, you are indeed good at that, you lazy bum! See ya later.”
Tom walked off to the tent. Nate watched him longingly—wishing he could be more like him; if truth were told, he was salivating for a cold beer. But he just couldn’t allow himself. Not yet. There was more watching to do, and one intense eye was on the coaster that was now filled to capacity.
*****
Shelby Sutcliffe settled into her seat—the back seat, of course. Always the back seat for Shelby. She loved the whiplash effect and got high just watching the people in front of her experiencing the thrills milliseconds before she would experience them. Her seatmate, Cheryl Sanders, had ridden with her many times before. They both enjoyed the rear of the train and had become accustomed to each other as seat partners. They wore their red jackets proudly: ten-year members of the Coaster Crazies.
Shelby was pumped over this one. The most heralded coaster in the world by the most famous designers, Flying Machines. She couldn’t believe her luck being chosen to be one of the twenty-six members to initiate this already infamous ride; infamous even before it had hosted a single paying customer. She was thrilled.
Shelby tucked her long blonde hair down into the back of her blouse and then she braced herself. She smiled over at Cheryl. “Are you ready, girl?”
“Gawd, yes! Hey, how come you still look so pretty even though you’re about to be scared out of your mind?”
Shelby blushed. “I think being scared makes me look pretty. Otherwise, I’d probably just wither up.”
Cheryl grinned. “Yeah, you may be right. It brings the life out in us. But…how come the prettiness only happens with you?”
Shelby leaned in closer to Cheryl, giggled, and whispered, “Don’t tell anyone, but I think it’s simply a dead giveaway that I’m about to have an orgasm.”
“What?!” Cheryl shrieked.
Shelby couldn’t hide her excitement. “It’s true! I have one every time! Every time I go over the first hill it happens.” She put her hands up to her mouth, slightly ashamed about what she’d just confessed. “Forgive me, Cheryl. I’m sorry if I’ve embarrassed you.”
“Embarrassed me? Hell, no! It reminds me of that line from When Harry Met Sally. Something like, ‘I’ll have what she’s having!’”
Both ladies laughed hard and Shelby could feel some of the tension release.
She was just about to say something else when they were shaken out of their nervous giggles. The train shuddered, groaned and began its journey down the track. They both grabbed onto the lap bar as tight as they could and grinned at each other. This was it, the initiation of the most famous new ride in the world.
Even something simple like the lap bar was one of the things they were both looking forward to about riding the Black Mamba. It was much more of a thrill than being shrouded by a shoulder harness, and neither of them really cared about being upside down anyway. They were both purists.
As she always did before an inaugural ride, Shelby whispered a silent prayer.
*****
Nate moved up closer to the fenced perimeter as the train left the station. He smiled as he watched the red jackets waving to the media, family and friends. There was a round of applause, laughter, and the sound of a cannon booming from the adjacent field. He felt proud. This was his baby. His best baby yet.
The train began its laborious climb to its first hill height of 400 feet. He knew that the drop sensation experienced by the riders was going to be an almost vertical one—the scariest drop ever designed. He’d experienced it already and he knew that the thrill would be beyond compare. Until, of course, they entered the tunnel. That was the ultimate.
Both his eyes were focused on the train, but his left eye suddenly picked up something unusual and it began to wander. A well-dressed man’s outstretched arm. At first, Nate thought the guy was waving, but his eye picked up an anomaly. It looked like his hand was formed in a fist. Aiming upwards at the second hill of the track. Then the man turned and walked away.
Nate shrugged and focused both eyes back on the train, which was still in the early stages of its climb.
*****
Shelby held on tight as they reached the top of the hill. She looked over at Cheryl, who was as ashen as she always was on these junkets. Shelby took one
hand off the bar and squeezed her friend’s. “Don’t worry. This is going to be a blast!”
Cheryl nodded without taking her eyes off the horror in front of them. Shelby looked straight ahead now herself and saw the front portion of the train disappear from view as it plummeted off the top of the first hill.
She could feel the pull as gravity began its dastardly deed. There was also a familiar flip in her stomach and dizziness in her head. Her cheeks suddenly felt flush—that was the final sign to her that the orgasm had started its incredible rush.
At that point in the ride she always felt the most vulnerable. There was nothing but openness on each side, and the train was still going slow enough to experience the unsettling feeling of having no protection whatsoever. At least when the ride sped up, her focus went off the scary open space surrounding her and concentrated more on the speed terror.
She held her breath as their rear portion of the car reached the precipice. Then the rush came quickly—earlier this time than usual—in waves that enveloped her entire body. Just as suddenly as it had happened, the orgasm was over. It was a short one. Now all that was left was fear.
The monster dove. Pulled over the edge and down into the abyss by unseen forces. In that instant, Shelby was taken by the fact that she had never, ever, in all of her hundreds of coaster rides, felt like she was going to fall straight down to her death.
But on this ride, on the edge of this hill, that was exactly what she was experiencing. She was scared out of her mind by how vertical the fall was—it took her breath away. She screamed. Then she laughed—a forced laugh, not a voluntary one. A laugh that was intended to make her feel better, feel safe, make her feel like she was just being silly being scared like this.
Her heart was pounding through her chest as the train, within just a couple of seconds, hit the bottom of the hill and shot back upwards at a speed that Shelby couldn’t even imagine in her worst nightmares.
They were still climbing to the top of the second hill at a breakneck speed when Shelby was finally able to glance over at Cheryl. She was screaming—her mouth was wide open and her cheeks were glistening from tears.
Shelby didn’t dare take her hand off the bar. She wanted so much to caress the back of Cheryl’s head and say, “It’s okay. We’ll be fine.”
She wanted so much to ask, “Isn’t this fun?” But she couldn’t do either of those things. Her hands felt like they were glued to the bar and, for the first time in her coastering career, she didn’t believe this to be fun at all.
Shelby squeezed the protective foam of the bar as hard as she could, trying desperately to release the tension from the rest of her body.
She pulled on it. It moved! Up! The damn thing was unlocked!
Shelby raised her head, locking her eyes in stunned terror on the front section of the train as it careened now to the top of the second hill. She knew that after this hill they would plummet into the two-mile tunnel—the thing she’d been looking forward to the most. But not anymore. Shelby knew for a fact that she wouldn’t survive this hill—the lap bar wouldn’t hold her.
She screamed to no one in particular, “Stop the ride!” But she knew in her heart that what she was demanding was impossible, not just at this moment but at any moment in a coaster ride. Once you started, you were on until the end. And the end was coming, just not the one she’d planned.
She was so scared now that she wasn’t sure her body could survive the fear itself, let alone the plummet. In an insane instant, she regretted being a daredevil. She’d finally pushed the envelope too far and the envelope was now pushing back.
Shelby shook her head to clear her eyes. They seemed to have turned kind of blurry all of a sudden because the people in the seats in front of her looked to be sliding sideways.
She shook her head again as their section of the train reached the top of the second hill. She heard screams from the people in the seats ahead of her. But not the usual screams of gleeful thrills—these were different screams.
Then the entire train lurched as the front of it appeared to jackknife.
The beast had a mind of its own. It had no choice, as it no longer seemed to have a track to ride on. It was airborne and all Shelby could see was space. Unprotected space. She glanced over at Cheryl, but instead of her friend there was just an empty forlorn seat, with its lap bar in the ‘up’ position.
Acting on pure survival instinct, Shelby pulled up hard on the useless lap bar. Then she placed both hands on the seat cushion and shoved herself up and out of the crippled train. She was free of the doomed machine, but all she could do was blindly reach out and flail around desperately with both arms. Hoping for something, anything that she could wrap her sweaty hands around.
Chapter 2
For just an instant, Nate thought his eyes were playing tricks on him. But he had uncanny vision, so he knew that that was highly unlikely.
So, was it perhaps the sun reflecting off the metal track?
Something else?
Or just his imagination?
He stared hard. The spot his eyes had picked up was right at the top of hill number two. It looked like a flash—a steady flash. Almost like the traditional sparklers set off on the fourth of July.
He walked closer to the perimeter fence, keeping his left eye focused on that spot, while his right eye watched the train swoop up from the bottom of the first hill. It was racing fast, powered by the energy from its steep descent, and would reach the top in about five seconds. The red jackets had their arms up in the air and he could hear their screams of joy as the Mamba swept them skyward.
The closer he got to the fence the less pronounced the flash was. He sighed with relief; convinced that it was indeed just the sun’s reflection. The different angle he was positioned at must have changed his view.
The press people were in front of him, snapping and videotaping the ascent of The Black Mamba. Chattering excitedly, clearly blown away from witnessing the steep drop the machine had taken on the first hill. Nate looked around—pleased at the reaction of the crowd. The line-up for the next runs was already the length of a city block. He glanced back at the VIP tent and saw Tom raise his beer mug in a toast. Nate smiled. He was proud.
Then there was a gasp. Amidst all the laughter and the noise, Nate was still able to hear it. It was a soft gasp, probably from just one person, but different enough from the excited laughter that Nate could discern it quickly.
He whirled his head around to once again face the track. He saw it. So did everyone else. There was a collective gasp now, the most horrifying noise Nate had ever heard. Screams of terror didn’t come close to scaring the shit out of him the way this gasp en masse did.
The train was airborne. It had left the track at the top of the second hill and was now beginning its death spiral. He could see that most people were still in the train, arms waving hopelessly in the air. But some of the seats were empty, and it looked as if those lap bars were in the up position.
Nate didn’t know why in God’s name a certain thought came into his mind at that moment, but it did—maybe because he had such an analytical brain. ‘How could those bars be up? How is that possible?’ He realized how silly the question was—passengers in a coaster plummeting to the ground from a height of 250 feet weren’t going to be saved by lap bars.
From the initial gasps there was now a profound silence in the crowd. Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion. The train tumbling through the air, bouncing off metal trestles, heads bobbing in their seats as the train somersaulted end over end—each collision with a trestle changing its direction.
There were no screams from the crowd—just a horrible silence. Nate just stood and stared, not quite believing what he was seeing. His feet seemed frozen to the ground as his eyes took in the macabre scene. No commands were coming from his brain—it was as if his mind had accepted that it was hopeless, that there was nothing to do.
His eyes followed the train right to the ground. When it hit the pavement o
f the inner concourse of the midway, it bounced and split into grotesque mangled fragments. Several bodies flew out of their seats on impact. Some were whole, while others were severed into pieces from the impacts with the trestles and the pavement. And others remained in their seats, contained by the twisted metal. Another thought entered Nate’s mind: ‘The lap bars were useless, but some of these people still held themselves in all the way down.’
The shiny steel of the Black Mamba was mangled beyond recognition. It no longer resembled anything close to the sleek train that it had been just a few seconds ago. It was littered with red jackets—jackets that held the remnants of once living, breathing, happy people who were probably also beyond recognition.
The Black Mamba and The Coaster Crazies were joined forever as one.
Nate shook himself out of his trance. People were screaming and running in all directions. He whirled around to see if he could see any emergency personnel. There wasn’t a white coat in sight. He could see an ambulance parked beside the VIP tent, but it seemed unmanned. He yelled, “We need help!”
He ran to the ambulance, jumped up on the running board and peered inside the cab. It was empty. Then he heard his name being called.
He jumped off the side of the ambulance and saw Tom running toward him. “Tom, where are the emergency people?”
Tom was breathing hard, sweat dripping down his face. “I don’t know! This is terrible!”
“Yes, it is—but we have to do something! C’mon, jump in on the passenger side!”
Nate slid behind the wheel of the ambulance and sighed with relief when he saw the keys dangling. He cranked the engine and turned on the siren. Then he gunned the vehicle in the direction of The Black Mamba. He deftly wheeled around clusters of people who were staggering in shock at what they’d just seen. He crashed the ambulance through the perimeter fence, blasting it into pieces, and sped towards the rollercoaster superstructure, his eyes focused on what used to be the second hill.