by Peter Parken
She managed a thin smile and nodded once more.
“Okay, here we go. Do it!”
She made a swift move with her arm and he felt the pressure of it wrapping around his neck.
“Now, let go of your legs from around the bar!”
She did and he could feel the instant weight transfer. She was heavier than he figured. Nate didn’t waste a second—he began to climb, one bar at a time. It was slow going, but he was confident they were going to make it.
At about forty feet from the top, he could feel her arm begin to loosen around his neck. He ignored it and kept going. Her weight was beginning to slow him down—each move of his feet to the next rung caused her body to swing, making him feel the weight even more.
Suddenly, her arm slipped from his neck completely! Nate held on tight to the rung with his right hand and whirled his body outward. She was falling! Left arm reaching up to him in desperation. Her beautiful blue eyes were wide with fear, her mouth a chasm trying to find the energy to scream.
Nate panicked. He swung his left hand down and was just able to catch her forearm before she disappeared from his reach. Using all of the strength he had left, he yanked her upward, violently, twisting her body so it would slam backwards against the trestle. Then he quickly slid his body in front of hers, feet planted on either side. His body was now pinning her to the superstructure, and they were face to face for the first time.
Nate caught his breath and eased his head back so he could see her more clearly.
Her eyes were closed. He checked the pulse in her neck. Strong. She was unconscious, but seemed fine otherwise.
Nate held on tight to the trestle and pressed his body forward as hard as he could, moving one knee over until it was positioned in her crotch. His strength was the only thing keeping both of them from certain death.
More sirens. Praying that one of those sirens was from a ladder truck.
Chapter 4
Voices were hushed. She could hear them, but knew that they were deliberately keeping their conversations on the down-low for her benefit. And she knew all the people who were talking. She just couldn’t see them yet, because for some reason her eyes refused to open. She tried hard, but to no avail.
There were other sounds, too; sounds that were all too familiar to her. Beeping noises and the clang of metal objects. The squeaking of rubber soled shoes on tile. Announcements over a PA system. The steady drone of carts and beds being pushed down a hallway.
Shelby parted her lips to speak, but nothing happened. Her mouth was painfully dry and it felt like her tongue was stuck against her teeth. Suddenly, she felt something being shoved between her lips followed by a refreshing and welcome rush of ice water. A soft hand was on her forehead. She knew it was her mother’s hand, knew just from the touch. A touch that hadn’t changed its sensation since she’d been a child.
An excited whisper. “She’s waking up!”
Another one. “Thank God!”
Shelby motioned towards her eyes with her left hand, and someone immediately responded by dabbing at them with a wet cloth. Her eyelids cooperated—they felt sticky, but they finally opened. Her mother rubbed gently around the rims of her eyes with the same wet cloth, wiping away the puss.
Shelby managed a smile. “You’d make a great nurse, Mom.”
Her mother smiled back. “No, one nurse in the family’s enough, I think.”
She noticed that her younger sister, Laura, was standing behind their mom. She was smiling, too, but also crying. Shelby hoped she was crying out of joy and not about something she hadn’t been told yet. She knew she was in a hospital and she recognized several décor items that told her it was her very own hospital. Shelby was a surgical nurse at Inova Alexandria Hospital, one of the finest care facilities in the entire country.
But what Shelby couldn’t remember was what had happened to put her here. “Mom, why am I here?” She struggled with her right arm and tried to move it. She couldn’t. She could tell that it was taped tightly to her body; she could feel the tape wrapped completely around her. “Why is my arm immobilized?”
“You were in an accident. Don’t you remember?”
Shelby shook her head, while noticing her sister opening the door and motioning to someone.
One of the doctors rushed in—she recognized him as the senior orthopedic resident, Bill Butler.
His face was beaming. “So nice to see you awake! How is our special guest doing?”
Shelby didn’t smile back. “Bill, why am I here? And what’s wrong with me?”
“You’re going to be just fine, don’t you worry.” He had a clipboard in his hand and glanced down at it as he was speaking to her. “We did x-rays—nothing’s broken. We were worried about your shoulder, but all you have is a real bad bruise—some serious internal bleeding in the joint area and it’s very swollen. Looks like a watermelon. You’ll have very little movement for a while, so we immobilized it for you. Best you not move it for a couple of days—let the swelling come down. I’ve prescribed some anti-inflammatories for you.”
Shelby was paying close attention. “Okay, what about the rest of me?”
“Lots of cuts and bruises, pretty much all over. You got banged up pretty good. We’ve treated all of the cuts and none of them needed stitches. Overall, you’re very lucky.”
“When did this happen?” She wasn’t ready yet to ask what happened.
“This afternoon. It’s 8:00 at night now.”
“Why was I unconscious?”
“You came into the hospital that way. You fainted at the scene and didn’t start to show signs of coming around until after the ambulance dropped you off.” Bill paused. “You woke up and were quite distraught, so we gave you a strong sedative to put you to sleep and just calm you down. Looks like it worked.”
Shelby braced herself, took a deep breath and then asked the question she’d been putting off. “What happened?”
Bill stepped forward at the same time as her mother and sister backed up. He sat on the edge of the bed and held onto her left hand, squeezing it gently. He lowered his voice to just above a whisper. “You were on a rollercoaster.”
Shelby blinked twice—Bill was starting to look blurry. Then she felt her feet start to tingle, followed by a violent tremor that reverberated up her back and into the back of her head. The lightheadedness started to return—that familiar feeling again. She shook her head and then let out a scream—a scream that scared even her.
A nurse rushed into the room with a crash cart. Bill reached his hand out and pulled a needle off the top shelf. Held it up in the air and tested it. Then he clenched Shelby’s forearm and pulled up her sleeve.
Shelby shoved his hand away. “No! Don’t you dare drug me again!”
Bill’s face bore a look of shock. “It’s for your own good, Shelby.”
“It’s not! It’s for your own good, so you people don’t have to see or deal with me upset. I need to be upset! And…let me tell you this…I am recalling some images now. And one thing I recall is that I discovered on that damned ride that screaming stops the rush in my head—stops the dizziness. And I never knew that before. I know it now. So…leave me alone. I’m stronger than you think.”
There was stunned silence for a good thirty seconds. It seemed like everyone in the room was afraid to even breathe. Then Bill slowly put the needle back into the tray on the crash cart, and motioned for the nurse to leave. She didn’t need a second invitation—she was out of the room in a flash.
Bill turned his attention back to Shelby. “You may think you’re strong, and I know you well enough to know that’s partly true. On the other hand, you’re a human being with real emotions—and what you’ve endured can only be described as a tremendous shock to the psyche. Memories are going to be painful as hell.”
“Who else survived?”
“No one. You’re it.”
Shelby nodded her understanding and tears started rolling down her cheeks. She began twirling the bed sheet
with her left hand and looked up at her mother, who at that moment was looking very “motherly.” Laura was rubbing their mother’s back while looking quizzically at Shelby. Everyone was awaiting her next words.
Shelby closed her eyes and summoned the images. She wanted those images, wanted to get them over with.
The first one came to her clearly: she could see her hands pulling up on the lap bar as the train approached the top of the second hill. She felt her body shudder as she re-lived the feeling of knowing the bar wouldn’t hold her, and then the horror of watching the front of the train going airborne, knowing it was pulling the rear with it. A feeling of utter loneliness came over her as she recalled glancing to her right and seeing an empty seat where her friend Cheryl had been sitting only seconds before.
Then she was airborne herself, pushing herself up and out of the crippled Black Mamba. Spinning, smashing into metal bars—she could feel the pain all over again. Then Shelby saw herself go into a somersault, failing and then trying again in final desperation, knowing that the steel wall was coming up fast and she would no longer have anything to grab onto.
She shuddered again and felt Bill’s strong hand on her left shoulder, squeezing it gently. Shelby screamed and could feel Bill’s hand pull back fast. She kept her eyes closed as she summoned the next images. Crashing into the trestle with her legs outstretched. Grabbing on and squeezing her thighs together around the cruel hot steel as tightly as she could. Shelby screamed again.
Then she saw an image that warmed her heart: two men climbing up to her. Watching one of them stop and lie down on the track. Worried that the one in front would change his mind. But he hadn’t. He kept coming, brave and fast. Talked to her from above, instructed her. Then flung himself over the edge and climbed down to her. Lifted her upside down body up and back into a sitting position.
Shelby smiled now and she could hear a gasp of relief from her mother and sister. But she didn’t dare open her eyes yet—afraid the images would stop. She had to watch this through to the end. As a nurse, she knew how difficult and lengthy a process it was for people suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Locking away memories merely made it worse in the long run—and she was determined, after having survived this accident, not to prolong the pain. She wanted it over with and was determined to face her memories head-on, not lock them away for endless therapy to deal with.
The man was well dressed; she remembered that. That seemed out of place. And yet he was barefoot; she’d watched him remove his shoes on the way up and toss them to the ground. Remembered hearing him curse a couple of times about the hot metal on his feet when he was beside her on the trestle.
Then he was carrying her up. Her left arm clinging for life around his neck, her body swinging carelessly behind. Step by painful step, curse by ugly curse, the well-dressed man was climbing her to safety. She smiled again and heard another happy gasp from her mother.
The lightheadedness started returning again. Shelby screamed. It cleared. Then something horrifying replaced it. She could feel her left arm slipping from around the stranger’s neck. The helpless feeling of having absolutely nothing to hang on to. The memory of this kicked her in the gut—it was even scarier than when she saw the train leaving the track. Because she’d had the chance to enjoy the feeling of being saved, only to have it stripped away.
She was falling now—away from him. Opened her mouth to scream, but nothing came out. Then one strong arm from above swung down at lightning speed. She could see the look of determination on his face as his big hand clasped onto her thin forearm.
She saw him grimace as he flung her upwards, towards him. Shelby felt herself twisting in the air. Astonished—not only had he pulled her up to safety, but he’d had the presence of mind to spin her backwards in mid-air so her face wouldn’t smash into the trestle.
The last thing she remembered in her vision was the violent collision of the back of her head with the trestle. Then everything went black, blacker than the Black Mamba. The monster that had tried to kill her.
She opened her eyes. And all eyes were on her.
She said one thing and only one thing. “Find him.”
Chapter 5
He’d endured two days of hell. There’d been no escape, and neither had Nate expected there would be. The media, the police, the amusement park operators, and the insurance companies—he’d spent time with them all and virtually everyone was puzzled over the horrifying accident. It didn’t make sense.
The track at the top of the second hill had split clean through. And the lap bars had unlocked—although that was immaterial to the accident of course. But in Nate’s mind it added to the puzzle. Two things went wrong at exactly the same time. And for the track to split like that—it was unthinkable. The engineering specs were extremely high on his coasters—the steel used was the strongest possible, going well beyond code requirements.
The Adventureland amusement park was closed indefinitely. And no access was being permitted to anyone unless authorized. Even Nate couldn’t get in, couldn’t get a look at his own structure. He and his team weren’t allowed anywhere near the site. Which Nate found very frustrating—he felt responsible for what had happened and the guilt was eating him up. What had he missed? What had gone wrong?
The only survivor was that woman he’d saved. Nate had kept her pinned to the trestle until an aerial ladder was able to pluck them from their twelve storey perch. The woman had been unconscious the entire time; Nate assumed that the collision of her head with the trestle had knocked her out cold.
Once on the ground, the paramedics did a quick check of her vitals; then an ambulance rushed her to the hospital. Nate warned them to be careful with her shoulder; that it seemed to be broken. He was relieved when the paramedics gave him the thumbs up sign—indicating that her vitals all seemed strong. Nate desperately needed the woman to be okay.
Nate felt lost. He was accustomed to being able to take action, and it was his creation that had caused such a horrible massacre. ‘Massacre’ was the only word he could think of to describe the carnage. His rollercoaster had turned into a death machine—left its secure track and tumbled end over end in a 250-foot drop of doom. And he wasn’t even being allowed to examine the track or the train.
Other experts had been called in to do that. And he understood this to a certain extent—that it needed objective analysis. No one could expect him or the amusement park operators to be totally objective. He understood that. But he’d expected to be consulted, to at least be there when the outside experts began their investigation.
There was one thing he didn’t understand though.
As Nate pondered that one thing, he stood up and started pacing the floor of his massive main living room. The scene of the accident had been cordoned off as if it was a crime scene. And he was told that the lead investigators of the accident were the National Transportation Safety Board. That didn’t make any sense at all. The NTSB had no jurisdiction whatsoever with amusement parks. Their mandate was primarily trucking, highways, bridges, shipping, and aviation.
It had been a point of controversy for years that there was no federal body responsible for the safety of amusement parks in the United States. Everyone wanted it, including even coaster designers like Nate, but the Feds ignored it. They left it to the States and municipalities to self-govern and set their own standards. Whenever an accident happened at an amusement park it was the local police, fire department or state/municipal safety board that investigated.
So why in this case was the NTSB involved? It was now a federal government investigation, but there was no reason in the world why this would be different than any other accident. Sure, it was more severe than anything that had ever happened before, but despite that, there was just simply no jurisdiction for the Feds.
Nate wondered if it was because Alexandria was only six miles from Washington, D.C. And…he wondered if it was because the NTSB actually had their training facility right in Virginia—in a town called Ash
burn. Nate knew that it famously housed the reconstructed 747 fuselage of TWA 800, which went down in the Atlantic in 1996. One of the most controversial plane crashes of all time—it just fell from the sky in flames. Witnesses vowed that they’d seen a missile rising up towards it from the surface of the sea shortly before it burst into flames. But, those accounts were debunked and basically ignored. The final ‘official’ cause of the crash was an exploding fuel tank, although there seemed to be little evidence to indicate that. Nate figured that was just a safer conclusion than the missile one.
Maybe his reconstructed rollercoaster would now be side by side with TWA 800 in the NTSB training facility?
He turned on the TV for a distraction. He didn’t watch the local news because he knew what the headlines would be. Instead, he tuned in to CNN and watched the ongoing coverage of the conflict in Ukraine. The Americans accusing the Russians of imperialism after their annexation of the Crimea, and the Russians complaining about the usual U.S. interference in matters that didn’t concern them. Nate chuckled to himself—how could the Russians be that naïve? The billions of dollars that had been invested by U.S. oil companies in the Ukraine certainly gave the Americans a right to care what was going on. But—the name calling from both sides was getting ridiculous and dangerous. They were like a bunch of kids in a playground. The latest warnings now in the headlines hinted that the Ukraine was ready to explode into a full-fledged civil war.
That caused Nate to reflect on the similarities with his own country, and in particular where he lived. The American Civil War had torn the country apart for four years in the 1800s, and in his view it still hadn’t recovered. That war killed over 600,000 soldiers, and caused divisions in families that took generations to heal. And all over something that could have been resolved by clear heads. Clear heads that could have just sat down and talked to each other. That’s what worried him about Ukraine. The only talking that was going on was through the biased media.
And Nate thought that even though the American Civil War happened more than 160 years ago, it had a remarkable parallel to the events of today. The civil war in Syria had the rebels there hoping that the United States and other foreign powers would help them topple the Assad regime. That didn’t happen.