plan was instantly rendered useless as Mike Church ran along the landing beside the track, grabbed the rail of the cart and jumped over the side, easing his huge frame down, filling the space beside me.
'Ready to go coastering, homes?' he grinned.
Diego and Cisneros continued to push the car along the track that led to the staging area. The giant scaffolding loomed above me. As we neared the boarding platform the crowd noise grew, merging with the occasional roar from the streaking Goliath coaster a few yards off to our left. We were buffeted by the slipstream as it passed.
Suddenly, I started to convulse. I couldn't control my lower body. My legs cramped and I spasmed violently.
'Cono! Que te pasa?' Church blurted. 'Do that again, I'm gonna slit you right here.' He flipped open a four-inch serrated blade and stuck it in a spot between my ribs on the left side right next to my heart. I could feel the sharp point poking my skin.
Our car was pushed in front of a line of empty carts. Diego and Cisneros hooked us to the next empty train, which would soon be filled with waiting passengers. We were in the first car. Church yanked a knit watch cap from his pocket and pulled it low above his eyes. Then he donned a pair of dark glasses and settled back in the seat, the knife still poking between my ribs. I felt the hooks under the roller-coaster suddenly engage the car and we began to click forward toward the loading ramp.
When the car reached the white boarding line, the train stopped. One of the ride captains came up and frowned down at us. 'How'd you get in there, man? You gotta board through the load line.'
'We work the refit shed, dude. Makin' a test run. Gotta make sure this car don't still have no brake drag.' Church showed the man his old, plastic maintenance badge. The loader barely glanced at it before he turned to check the other passengers who were now climbing into the cars.
I suddenly realized that his might actually work. Then, before I could come up with any kind of new escape plan, a loud bell rang and the cars were again engaged from below and clicked up the wooden scaffold, pulled up by a chain toward the first drop on the ride.
As we ascended the wall of white scaffolding Church used the serrated pocketknife to cut off the plastic ties binding my wrists, then put the knife back between my ribs. I reached out with white knuckles and gripped the useless safety bar that rattled uselessly in front of me. There was nothing I could do now-nowhere I could go. I was too high to jump. If I yelled out, I knew he would shove that knife into my side, piercing my heart. As the cars inched up the near vertical incline, the park fell away below us. Masses of people swarmed like ants at the base of the ride. Then we were at the summit of the first drop.
'Man, I love this fucking coaster!' Church said, his face an ugly mask of perverse delight.
Another loud bell rang.
Then the car launched forward and locked into place at the top of the ride. I was suddenly looking over the edge, straight down the track, at the pavement over ninety feet below.
Chapter 53
The brakes released and the ground rushed up at us. I could barely keep from flying out of the coach and desperately gripped the safety bar clattering in its metal housing. Church sat beside me grinning as the train plummeted straight down toward the ground. I tried to use my knees to wedge myself tighter into the car, but could get very little purchase. We hit the bottom of the first dip and the car lurched dangerously into a right turn going over sixty miles per hour. The jolt almost threw me out of the coach. We were pulling at least two G's as we whipped through the first turn.
Mike Church craned around theatrically and shouted at the people in the car behind us. 'Hey! This safety bar is loose!'
The guy riding behind us yelled, 'Huh?'
The car began to bank left, gathering speed heading into a looping turn along the wooden track approaching the double bumps.
'This bar is out! It's out!' Church screamed. Then, to prove it, he picked it out of its housing and it flew from his hands, falling to the ground below us.
I looked frantically around the inside the coach for something to hold on to and spotted a place where the metal frame had separated from the fuselage. Just then, the coaster whipped around another curve going at least sixty, rocketing toward the double bumps ahead. I was vibrating so hard in the seat, I was barely able to focus on the track. That's when the airbrakes whooshed loudly and the train suddenly slowed.
'Adios, motherfucker,' Church said and hit me with a powerful right hand to the ribcage.
I doubled over, gasping for air. The coaster continued to slow as he leapt out of the car and hit the little guardrail on the side of the track. He held on as the car rumbled past, then released and dropped about twelve feet to the pavement below.
I fought to catch my breath as the coaster traveled over the double bumps and began the steep ascent to the top of the next huge scaffolding heading for the final, gut-churning drop.
We were almost forty feet up before I got my head out from between my knees. I'd been so busy gasping for air, I'd missed my chance to bail. I pulled off my belt and managed to loop it through the separation I'd spotted between the fuselage and the metal frame. But by then, Colossus had reached the peak of the scaffold and was cresting toward the big drop. It lurched and stopped at the very top and I was looking down twelve stories.
'Oh, shit,' I muttered as I wrapped my belt around my right wrist and gripped it tight.
The airbrakes whooshed off and we catapulted straight down the vertical track toward the ground. My body became weightless and for a few seconds I was floating freely around inside the car tethered only by my belt. We hit the bottom of the drop and banked violently to the right. I was sucked suddenly over the side of the car and was hanging on outside, being pulled at breakneck speed, perilously close to death.
'The fuck?' the guy in the car behind me gasped as he watched me dangling outside the car.
I held on to my belt in a death grip as the train lurched into a tight left-hand turn. Centrifugal force pinned me hard against the outside of the car's fuselage. My feet banged into the face of the guy behind as I struggled desperately to hang on. Then I saw a metal superstructure coming up at seventy miles an hour. In seconds, I was going to be cut in two by the support beam. I lunged for the car, pulling with all my strength, and tumbled inside as the scaffolding flashed by an instant later.
In another forty or fifty seconds the airbrakes hissed and we began to slow until we were back at the staging area where it had all started.
'You alright, man?' the guy behind me shouted.
Fuck no, I thought but didn't answer.
My forehead was split open and fluid was oozing from all of my broken blisters. I had a half-inch-deep knife wound in my left side and it felt as if Church had broken a couple of ribs.
Aside from that, I was peachy, but boy was I pissed.
Chapter 54
The next thing I knew, I was up to my ass in Park Emergency staff.
'LAPD. There's just been an attempt on my life,' I said, but nobody responded.
'The bar arm was broken,' the guy who'd been in the car behind me contributed. He had been less than three feet away but because of the wild ride had misread the entire murder attempt.
'Get me some park police officers,' I ordered.
But then I saw Brian Devine sprinting between Colossus and Goliath, heading toward the main gate. I felt like hell, but anger and adrenaline formed some kind of ungodly cocktail in my brain. I found myself pushing the park medic aside and struggling to my feet.
'You've got to lie down, sir. You're gonna go into shock,' he said.
