Three Shirt Deal

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.