Final Destination 3, page 6
part #1 of Final Destination Series
Jason and Carrie screamed, this time with real terror, as the car rocked back and forth and they were thrown against their shoulder restraints. Their screams turned to hysterical shrieks as the restraints, depressurized because of the broken hydraulic piston, released and rose up over their heads. And theirs weren't the only ones. All the shoulder restraints for the whole car released. The passengers grabbed desperately to pull them back down, but g-forces made it hard for them to raise their arms. Lewis, teeth bared and eyes huge with terror, held onto his broken shoulder restraint with one hand and the lap bar that had never locked with the other. He was praying furiously in Spanish.
The cars roared out of the loop and into a low bump. Wendy clung to the lap bar as she rose out of her seat. Kevin tried to hold her in with one arm as he held on with the other. Her eyes widened as she saw, rushing toward them, a twisting corkscrew turn.
"Oh…"
Before she could say no, they were barreling into the rifled loop. Without being held in place by the shoulder restraints, she and Kevin were thrown violently from side to side. Her elbow cracked him in the face. Blood spurted from his split lip, spattering her T-shirt. In front of them, Erin and Ian smashed together in a chaos of black-clad limbs. The hoody-clad girls bounced like ragdolls. Upside down again and dazed, Kevin tried to hold himself and Wendy in the car, as gravity, like the claw of some immensely strong demon, fought to pull him loose and hurl him to the ground below.
Under the train, the wobbling guide wheel finally gave up the ghost and flew off. The axel dropped onto the metal track pipe, a spray of white sparks bathing the undercarriage of the car. The track groaned and shuddered with the unaccustomed strain. All over the ride, the support posts and beams shifted and swayed. Further down the track a pipe weld cracked.
Ashley, her breasts suddenly exposed as her top flapped up around her chin, banged painfully against Ashlyn, and then away again as the train screamed into a swooping "S" turn. The track dipped. At the front of the cars, Jason and Carrie held their arms in front of their faces as a shower of hot sparks bounced off them.
The train shot up a steep incline, then whiplashed into a sharp turn. With the guide wheel gone, the centrifugal force was too much, and as the train pulled sideways, the end of the lead car's axel slipped off the rail and jammed into the ties that held the tracks together. The speed and mass of the train were too much for this to stop it entirely, but the first cars shimmied and bucked as the axel tore through tie after tie.
At last, the torque twisted the car too far, and it popped off the track, continuing straight, while the track slewed left. Jason and Carrie screamed in terror. The rest of the train began to follow suit, segmented cars popping off one by one and arcing after the first. As the rest of the train continued around the curve, and the derailed cars bent back on the others, the coupling between the eighth and ninth car snapped, ripping cables and hydraulic hoses. Lewis was slammed against the back of his seat, as the cars holding Frank Cheek and Ashley and Ashlyn plummeted off the right side of the rails, and headed for the ground.
The violence of the break caused Lewis to lose his grip on his loose restraints, and he bounced out of the car. Only a last second grab at the edge of the door saved him from falling. He clung to the outside of the car with all his strength, bellowing with terror. The sheet metal skin of the cab had torn when the coupling broke, and it was peeling back in the wind. It flapped violently, gashing Lewis's arms and face. Below him, the front eight cars smashed through support pipes and posts like they were twigs, and then piled into the ground and flattened, like an aluminium beer can being crushed on the forehead of a drunken jock.
The cars rocketed on, roaring up a low rise and the dropping suddenly. The force of the drop was too severe. Lewis lost his grip as the car jolted down, and he fell back as the remaining cars rushed by. Kevin saw Lewis's massive body flying toward him and instinctively let go of his restraints and reached out to catch him. He wrapped his arms around Lewis's body like he was sacking a quarterback, as the jock slammed into him with a bone-crunching impact. Kevin gasped, all the wind knocked out of him.
Lewis clutched desperately at Kevin, cursing and shuddering, but his grip was slipping. He fell out of Kevin's arms, but managed to catch the side of Kevin and Wendy's car. His fingers were torn and bloody, and he struggled to keep his grip. Kevin leaned out of the car and grabbed the back of Lewis's baggy shorts, trying to pull him back in. Wendy held on to Kevin's waist, bracing him. But even with her help, Kevin couldn't get enough leverage. Lewis outweighed him by a good fifty pounds. Kevin grunted and strained, but couldn't pull the massive jock back in. Lewis tried desperately to pull himself up, and after a second, he gained a little purchase.
"Keep pulling," he shouted. "I'm almost…"
Before he could finish the sentence, the ripped sheet metal cowling from the first cab finally tore free and flew back. Lewis heard it flapping through the air like some sinister bird of prey, and looked forward, just in time for it to smash into him, chopping into his arms and forehead like a cleaver. With a terrified shriek, Lewis was knocked from the car and ripped from Kevin's grip. He fell, flailing, before being folded in half by smashing into a support beam. His lifeless body tumbled limply downward, plummeting four stories to the ground.
The broken cowling spun away, trailing pieces of the coupling assembly, bouncing off supports and smashing into the previously weakened pipe weld. The crack widened, torn apart by the reverberations that rippled up and down the tracks from the impact of the cowling and the devastation of the first nine cars ripping through the coaster's superstructure. Unable to withstand the unforeseen stresses being placed upon it, the weld ruptured completely and dropped, pulling a section of rails down with it, creating a three-inch drop in the track at the break. Above, what remained of the train hurtled on, sparks flying from the damaged front. It angled into a curve, then began a five-story drop, straight for the broken rails and the last loop of the ride, just beyond.
As the car shot down the curving decline, a torn end of hydraulic hose whipped out of the hole in the front car and flapped around, spraying oil everywhere. All the lap restraints released at once, rising away from the passengers.
Wendy gasped, breathlessly moaning.
"Oh no. Oh no, oh no."
She and Kevin braced their feet against the front of the car, clinging to the raised and wobbly shoulder restraints. The swift loss of altitude was lifting Ian and Erin from their seats. They clung to each other and the restraints.
The train hit the bottom of the hill at terminal velocity and the passengers were slammed back down in their seats. It roared over the three-inch drop in the broken track. Wendy and Kevin bounced back and forth, banging each other with elbows and knees, but amazingly, the train stayed on the track.
Unfortunately, the three inch drop, at that speed, was enough to snap two of the guide wheels off the axel of the lead car, and the truncated train squealed under a low hanging support beam and up into the inbound curve of the big loop, grinding sparks from its axels. The friction began to slow it down, and just before it reached the apex of the loop it came to a stop, almost completely upside down, the few remaining guide wheels holding it to the track. Wendy and Kevin clung to the dangling shoulder restraints for dear life. Erin and Ian did the same, but Ian, seeing Erin slipping, reached out to catch her, and lost his own tenuous grip on the car instead. With a girlish scream, he plummeted toward the ground.
"Ian!" shrieked Erin. She reached down for him with one hand, and the fingers of the other slipped off the bar. She fell after him, a flapping, black taffeta missile that smashed into red ruin on the tracks below.
Wendy looked around, holding onto the shoulder restraints like a kid dangling from the monkey bars. Kevin dangled beside her. They had stopped. All was silent.
"Are we…?" she asked. "Is it over?"
Kevin swallowed. "Maybe." He hissed through clenched teeth. "Maybe if we just hang on…"
But just as he spoke, there was a deafening squeal of steel on steel, and the train began to slide back down the curve of the loop in reverse. As it picked up velocity and righted itself, Wendy was slammed back into the car, but a button on the sleeve of Kevin's varsity jacket was caught on the shoulder restraint, and he swung awkwardly from it, his feet just brushing the seat. He jerked on the button. It wouldn't rip.
"Fuck," he cursed, and standing on tiptoes, he tried to free his sleeve while the train hurtled blindly backwards. He couldn't get it off. He needed to be five inches higher. He pushed himself up on the lip of the hoof. The button came free. A shape hurtling toward him made him look up. With a sudden, fearsome impact, the low hanging beam they had shot under earlier tore him into ragged bloody halves. Wendy shrieked as hot gore sprayed her from head to foot, and Kevin's legs and lower torso flopped to the floor of the cab, her camera bouncing out of his pocket and skittering away. Wendy gagged and covered her eyes while behind her, Kevin's head, arms, and crushed and shattered chest slid off the pole and fell wetly to the ground. She was all alone, facing backwards as her hair whipped around her eyes in a speeding coaster train, with the severed legs of her dead boyfriend's best friend bleeding all over her shoes. Could things get any worse?
The train sped toward the long hill that it had raced down before. Just before the hill, at the low point of the valley, was the break in the track. Coming forward, it was a three-inch drop, but going backward, it was a three-inch rise, a steel curb. The wheels of Wendy's car –the last car- slammed into the raised tracks and stopped dead. Wendy was smashed into her seat with an impact that cracked her skull and shot blood from her nose and eyes. In front of her, three cars, all ominously empty, rose off the track and curled over her head like the tail of a scorpion, as inertia kept them moving.
Wendy's car was torn from the tracks and turned upside down as the other cars pulled it up and back. Only semi-conscious, as blood filled her brain-pan and shock started to close her body down, she saw the ground racing up at her in a red-tinged blur. The first car smashed into the concrete, then the second, then-
"Yo," the attendant said. "Can't you read?"
4
The Paranoid Girl
Wendy's head snapped up. She was sitting in the twelfth car, sweating and breathing hard. The train was still at the platform. Kevin was sitting beside her. The attendant was walking toward her, an angry scowl on his face, pointing at her camera. She looked up at him, uncomprehending and disoriented. He pointed at a sign. She turned her head, as if in a dream. The sign said "No loose objects. No cameras".
Kevin was reaching for the camera, but as he opened his mouth she already knew what he was going to say –I'll put it in my pocket, all right?
"I'll put it in my pocket, all right?"
The attendant hesitated, and then nodded. "Fine."
Kevin stuffed the camera in the pocket of his pants. Wendy's heart thudded in her throat, making it difficult to breathe. She raised her head and looked forward, confused and frightened. Ahead of them, Frank was lowering his DV cam and slipping it stealthily under his shirt. Wendy stared at him in horror as the attendant, satisfied that all was shipshape, started back toward his control panel.
Kevin grinned eagerly and started to lean forward. Wendy gasped and grabbed his hand, stopping him from squishing it into the gum that was stuck on the lap bar. Wendy gaped at the gum blankly as Kevin grinned at her.
"Hey, thanks," he said. "Good eye."
Wendy whimpered under her breath. This was more than déjà vu. She knew everything that was going to happen. They were going to crash. Frank Cheek was going to drop his camera and… Wendy turned her head from the gum to the attendant, who had returned to his console. He was flipping up the clear, plastic safety casing that covered the launch button, and raising his hand over his head.
"And away we go!" he cried, then stabbed a single finger down toward the button.
Wendy panicked, pushing desperately at her shoulder restraints.
"We need to get out of here!" she screamed at the top of her lungs. "WE NEED TO GET OUT OF HERE!"
The attendant's finger continued to move down toward the button, syrup slow and inevitable as a nightmare.
"No! NO! Don't push that button!" Wendy cried. "DON'T PUSH THAT BUTTON!"
The attendant's finger stopped an inch from the button. He looked up, making a scowling face.
"What the hell is this crap?" he asked in a gruff, sour voice.
His assistant looked over and saw Wendy struggling against her restraints. He sighed.
"Look like we got a screamer," he said out of the corner of his mouth.
They started toward the twelfth car, the other passengers looking around to see what all the fuss was about.
Kevin stared at Wendy, pulling away from her, like she was infectious or insane.
"Let me off!" she was shouting. "Everybody needs to get off!"
"Wendy. Hey come on Wendy, it's all right," Kevin said, trying to calm her down. He cringed, embarrassed as everybody looked their way. "Take it easy. It'll all be over before you know it."
Wendy shook her head, wild eyed.
"No," she cried. "It's going to crash. It's going to crash."
She knew how crazy she sounded, but she knew what was going to happen. She knew. She had to stop it.
"Okay, this is beyond a joke now," the attendant growled. "We can't have this kind of shit. Call security." His assistant nodded and turned back to the console, as the attendant continued towards Wendy's car.
In the front car, Jason struggled to turn around, but the restraints held him.
"Is that Wendy?" Wendy heard him ask. "What's the matter?"
"I don't know," Carrie replied. "Sounds like her."
The other passengers in the train squirmed impatiently and shouted insults. The kids waiting in the line to get on the next one mocked Wendy and shouted at the attendants to get a move on.
The attendant stopped beside Wendy, holding his hands out, placating.
"Listen," he said. "You're scaring the other passengers. If you don't stop screwing around, I'm going to have to take you off the ride, okay."
"Not just me, everybody needs to get off!" Wendy shouted, fending off Kevin's attempts to hold her back and shut her up. "The hydraulics are going to rupture. The tracks will collapse."
The attendant paused, shocked by the preciseness of the warning. He grimaced and looked back at his assistant, who nodded as he hung up the phone. He turned back to Wendy.
"Uh, that's pretty much out of nowhere," he said. "You know something we don't? Somebody call in a threat or something?"
"I just know. I…" Wendy's face fell. She knew what the attendant was going to say if she told him, but how else could she explain it. "I saw it. I saw it happen."
"It's okay, sir," said Kevin, trying to be the peacemaker. "She was just a little upset before. We're okay now."
Two heavy set, nylon-jacketed security guards, a big white guy whose embroidered name on the breast of his jacket read Colquitt, and an even bigger black guy with the unlikely name of Bludworth, hurried onto the platform from an emergency exit. The attendant whistled them over to Wendy's car and they crossed quickly, hands on their flashlights. The attendant turned away from Wendy to meet them.
"What's going on?" asked Colquitt.
The attendant jerked his thumb over his shoulder. "That chick is dope or something," he muttered. "She's saying a bunch of weird shit about the coaster crashing. She's nuts."
Colquitt looked past the attendant to Wendy, who was clinging to Kevin's arm and shivering. The other passengers were shouting and whistling now. A chant started up toward the front and spread down the length of the car.
"Let's go! Let's go! Let's go!"
Colquitt bit his lip. "All right," he said. "Let her out."
The attendant turned back to his assistant. "Open up seven through twelve!" he called.
The assistant looked down at the console. There were two buttons, one labeled 1-6 and another labeled 7-12. He pressed 7-12, and all the restraints on cars seven through twelve released at once with a hiss of hydraulics. Lewis groaned with relief. Along with the rest of the freed passengers, Ashley and Ashlyn turned to look back at the commotion.
Frank Cheek grinned at the two girls and stuck his camera in their faces.
"So, want to do a little interview while we wait?" he asked. "What's your favorite sexual position?"
"Forget it, pervert," Ashley said.
Wendy leapt out of the car like it was on fire. Kevin followed reluctantly. Colquitt and Bludworth took Wendy's arms and led her off of the side. Kevin made to follow, but they waved him back. He crossed his arms and leaned on the car watching anxiously.
Colquitt looked Wendy in the eye. "All right, miss," he said, face grim. "You want to tell me what's the matter?"
"She was just a little upset before…" Kevin began.
He ignored Kevin completely. "Miss?"
Wendy hung her head. "I… I don't know," she said in a small, defeated voice. "I saw it… in my head. The… the track broke… The roller coaster crashed…"
Colquitt and Bludworth exchanged a blank glance. Colquitt sighed.
"Uh, you saw it?" He frowned. "You mean like a… psychic vision or something?"
"I know it sounds crazy," she said. "But I know it's going to crash. It's going to happen. You have to take everybody off."
"I'm sorry, miss," Bludworth said, shaking his big, bulldog head. "We don't shut down the rides without reasonable cause."
In the train, Frank Cheek focused in on Ashlyn. "So," he asked. "You girls ever thought about, you know, fooling around together? I mean, you're both so hot. How could you resist?"
