Full Tilt Part 9

There was little time left if I was going to survive this ride. I had to put away thoughts of life and death and focus on this moment. I had to live through this moment so there could be a next one. I had the strength to do that much.

I will not crash, I told myself. I will not go down in a burst of flames. I won't go down at all! I pulled back on the steering column with the strength of that conviction, and finally it began to move. Before me the battleship fell away as my plane, and all the planes behind me, pulled out of the kamikaze dive into a parabolic arc. All the planes, that is, except for the last one. The last plane just kept going and hit the battleship, detonating in a fireball. I felt sick. Don't be Quinn, I prayed. It would be just like him to crash on purpose, just like he did on his flight simulator back home.

Then, above me, as I climbed away from the battleship, I saw a new cloud billowing up. A face appeared, eyes locked in shock and disbelief. A face that wasn't Quinn's.

No strings, I told myself. I was flying with no strings, and I was no longer afraid. Like it or not, I was in charge, and there was no room for fear. I tried to get control of the plane as it lurched and spun, and I imagined the planes behind me following my motions, like they were still on a roller-coaster track, but I was the one determining the path.

Suddenly the control stick flew out of my grip and forced itself forward. The ride had taken control again, and we had started another dive. This time we were headed toward a destroyer. It began shooting at us. One of its sh.e.l.ls took out a plane behind me. I watched it spiral a flaming path to the sea.

I fought the controls, my will straining against the will of the ride. Once again, I was able to pull up, gaining alt.i.tude at the last second, climbing away from the destroyer. Once again, the last plane didn't pull up in time and detonated on the deck. In an instant we were back in the clouds, but by now I'd gotten a feel for the controls. It was kind of like driving a car with really bad steering. Well, okay, it was more like skydiving in a car with really bad steering, but at least I could make the thing move the way I wanted it to.

I heard another explosion and looked out of the window to see one of the planes in my care fall in flames. That blast hadn't come from below.

Another plane pulled up beside me, matching my speed, its wingtip almost touching mine. It was the American P-40 from my bedroom, with the face of a shark painted on its air intake. Its pilot waved to me.

"A great day for flying," said Ca.s.sandra's voice over my radio. I should have known.

"Nothing like the friendly skies," I radioed back, then I jinked to the right, into a corkscrew, with all the planes behind me still following my lead. Ca.s.sandra fired at me. I felt more than heard her rounds tear into the tail of my Zero, but I didn't lose control. The ride hadn't taken me down, so she was going to do it herself.

A tight bank, and I was able to position myself right behind her. It didn't take a Columbia scholarship to figure out how to fire my machine guns. I let them rip, tearing into her wing. The damage wasn't enough to take her down, but it was enough to let her know I wasn't going out without a fight.

"You're shooting at an American plane," her voice crackled over the radio. "How unpatriotic."

"Sorry, I don't speak English," I told her. "I'm a j.a.panese pilot."

She pulled her plane out of sight, and I wasn't sure where she was until I heard her machine gun fire. The plane right behind me fell away, plunging to the sea, trailing a plume of smoke. I dove, banked, and spun to get away, leading the remaining planes out of the path of Ca.s.sandra's guns. She fired again but missed.

"You're a fantastic squadron leader, Blake. This ride has never been so exciting!" She stormed me from above, leaning on her guns, tearing up my right wing. "You're a true warrior," she said. "There's no greater challenge than a survivor."

No one had ever called me a warrior before. At any other time I might have felt full of myself, but this wasn't any other time.

I tried to maneuver, but my plane was too badly damaged. She fired again, shredding my left wing. My gauges dropped suddenly. My engine began to miss, then caught fire, and my plane began a doomed spiral toward the sea.

I didn't know whether or not the other planes still followed my lead or if I had fallen out of formation when I took the damage. All I could see was black smoke billowing from my engine, but through that smoke, I caught glimpses of an aircraft carrier directly below.

"It's a n.o.ble death," Ca.s.sandra said. "An end worthy of a pilot of the Divine Wind."

And then Ca.s.sandra's own words came back to me.

There's a way out of every ride.

Without intending to, she had provided the means of my salvation. My plane was crashing, no doubt about that now. But there was a way out of every ride. Even this one.

The c.o.c.kpit smelled of gasoline and smoke, and a bitter taste filled my mouth, like I'd been chewing on rubber. The engine had stopped completely. I looked frantically around the c.o.c.kpit for a way out of the ride, pounding on the canopy, searching in front of me, below me, behind me. I was disoriented and dizzy from the spiraling of the Zero, but I wasn't giving up.

"Good-bye, Blake," and she sighed, as if sorry to see the hunt end. "It was worth the risk to bring you here."

There's a way out of every ride... a way out of every ride, I chanted to myself over and over. A hundred k.n.o.bs covered the dashboard, but I had no idea what they did because they were all marked with j.a.panese symbols.

Except one.

Seconds from impact, I spotted it. The ride symbol was right there on a little b.u.t.ton hidden in a corner of the instrument panel. Ha! I didn't wait to think about it. I hit the b.u.t.ton.

Boom! The canopy tore away, my seat ejected into the sky, and the plane crashed into the tower of the aircraft carrier. Shrapnel from the explosion shot past me. The heat singed my eyebrows, but I was out! I was out and rocketing skyward. No strings, no ceiling to hang them from. I'd been cut loose, and I was still alive. I was a survivor, and nothing had ever felt so good.

Your own words saved me, Ca.s.sandra. Who's the winner now?

A hole opened up in the sky like the iris of a camera, and I shot through, out of the world of the Kamikaze.

10.

Depraved Heart Last year I did a term paper on cancer. Cancer is such a sneaky disease because it starts inside, hiding in the body, turning the body's own cells into the enemy. Insidious-that's the word for it-sneaky and subtle and evil all at the same time. It just keeps growing and growing, because the body doesn't know how to wage war against itself. That's the way the park worked. It dug into your thoughts and pulled these worlds right out of them. Your own mind became the enemy, and how can you fight your own mind? The only difference is that cancer doesn't have a soul. I don't know which was harder to face: the soullessness of a tumor, or Ca.s.sandra, the spirit of a malignant park.

She'd done her best to take me out on the Kamikaze, and had almost succeeded, but I was still standing. Well, actually I was floating, with a parachute above me and the lights of the amus.e.m.e.nt park below me. I thought that after ejecting from the Kamikaze, I'd have to swim the South Pacific to find the next ride. Instead, I'd been sent back to where I'd started: the crossroads of all the rides-the place where my world met Ca.s.sandra's. I wondered why.

I landed in the midway, hitting the ground hard and feeling the pain of the impact in my joints. The chute settled down around me, and I had to fight my way out of it, pulling back on the silk. As I tried to pull the shroud of the parachute away, I saw a second figure moving toward me in the billowing fabric, like a ghost. Had I come down on some other rider? Was it Ca.s.sandra?

I pulled the parachute away. It was Russ. I didn't know who was more relieved, him or me.

"You're alive!" he said. "This place hasn't chewed you up!"

"Well, I kinda keep kicking it in the teeth whenever it tries."

The relief in seeing him faded quickly when I thought about Maggie and how he'd run from her in the maze.

"So where's Maggie?" I asked, just to see if he'd squirm.

"Lost her," he said.

Should I confront him about it right here? I decided against it. I looked at the amus.e.m.e.nt park around us. There were still some riders milling around, latecomers seeking out their first ride, but the crowds had been absorbed by the attractions.

"Until now the rides have all connected to one another," I said. "So how come we're here and not in another ride?"

"Like I know?"

There was something strange about Russ. A kind of fear in the way he looked at me. A twitch in his cheek. The rides had stressed me almost to my breaking point, and when I last saw Russ, he was already pushing his. Funny, but I always thought Russ could take care of himself.

I checked my watch: 4:40. Only two rides to go, and time was running out. Maybe he'd abandoned Maggie, but I didn't have it in me to abandon him. "We'll stick together," I told him, "and make sure we don't separate again."

"Okay, fine."

"The rides are tough, but we can be tougher."

"Okay, fine."

"Remember that there's a way off of every ride."

"No problem."

He was so agreeable, it was sad. This place had whipped him, wiped him, and hung him out to dry. I led the way, trying to second-guess what the rides around us might be. "Do you think we should try-"

A sharp explosion of pain on the side of my head. I was on the ground before I knew what hit me, clapping my hand to my aching ear. It was swelling, but my ear had cushioned the blow, protecting my skull. I looked up to see Russ holding a steel pole. It looked like one of the levers that operated the rides.

"I'm sorry, Blake, but I gotta do what I gotta do."

There were tears in his eyes, but they didn't stop him from swinging that pole again. I dodged, and it caught my upper arm; the bone didn't break, but I could feel the pain of the blow from my shoulder to my fingertips. I scrambled away, but Russ still stalked me.

"She's gonna let me go." Russ's face was red from anguish. "You understand, right? I gotta do this, so Ca.s.sandra'll let me out of here. She promised." Russ swung again, but this time he missed. It gave me the time I needed to get to my feet and bolt.

My head was still reeling from that first blow. I couldn't think straight, and I didn't know which way to run, so after rounding a corner I ducked into one of those automated photo booths-the kind you squeeze into with your friends, when they're not trying to kill you. I pulled the curtain and peeked out, hoping I could throw Russ off the track long enough for me to recover physically, and mentally. Through the curtain, I saw him wandering the midway.

"Blake! Don't make this harder than it has to be!"

I took a few deep breaths as I came to grips with the situation. At home Russ lacked the conviction to do much of anything but hang out and wisecrack. But when it came to killing his best friend to save his own hide, he suddenly found deep motivation.

"You know I'll find you, Blake. You won't get away. But I'm sorry. I'm really, really sorry about this."

Was it really Russ? I tried to tell myself that it was a false image of him, like Carl and the whale with my mother's eyes. But who was I kidding? This was no false image. This was Russ through and through. The place had gotten to him. She had gotten to him. The next time he pa.s.sed the booth, I leaped out suddenly, knocking him down. The pole clattered to the ground, and I grabbed it. Now it was me standing over him with the pole in my hand.

"Don't. . . move."

He froze and stared at me, waiting to see what I'd do. I wasn't even sure myself. I was so furious. I was tempted to smash him, just as he'd smashed me, but then he put his head in his hands and started crying like a baby. Still I hung on to that pole, not knowing how to feel.

I'd once read about a type of crime called "depraved heart murder." Few people ever get charged with it, but in the story there was this guy who was on a sinking boat. He couldn't swim, so he panicked and ripped a life vest away from a seven-year-old girl. The little girl drowned.

Depraved heart. He got twenty to life.

What do you feel for a coward like that? What should I feel for someone who would kill his best friend to save his own life?

"I'm sorry, man . . . I'm sorry," Russ said through his tears.

I found I had no response to that.

"Ca.s.sandra promised she'd let me out. All I had to do . . . all I had to do . . ."

"Was kill me?"

His face went an ugly shade of red.

"You didn't ride the Ferris wheel!" he screamed. "You don't know what it does to you! I can't take another ride! If you rode the Ferris wheel, you'd know!"

But I couldn't imagine any ride that would make me slam a pole through my best friend's skull. They say you never know who's the real hero and who's the real coward until you're looking death in the face. I've always been afraid of plenty of things, but fear isn't what makes you a coward. It's how depraved your heart becomes when fear gets pumped through it. I would never climb over the backs of my friends to save myself.

Russ looked around nervously, as if Ca.s.sandra might swoop down out of the sky and swallow him whole. "I'm not letting this place get me like it got Maggie." He started to take off.

"Russ, wait!" I don't know why I tried to stop him when I really just wanted him out of my sight. I guess I'm a pathological fixer. I can't let anyone or anything just be; I've got to try to make it better. "Where do you think you're going to run?"

"This place has to have a way out! We're not stuck in a ride now, so we've got to be closer to getting out!"

"What do you think, you'll just find the back door and skip through?"

"I won't get on another ride!" He pushed me away, and then he looked down one of the many connecting aisles of the park. "Do-do you see that!"

It was a revolving door with a big happy face above it, and stamped on the happy face's forehead were the words: EXIT.

COME AGAIN SOON!.

TELL YOUR FRIENDS!.

Russ ran toward it without a second thought. But there was something wrong. It was too easy. . . .

"Russ, wait!" I tried to catch him, but I hurt so much from the beating he'd given me, I couldn't move fast enough.

Russ never saw it coming. He had no idea.

The dusty ground of the park fell away beneath him as a trapdoor opened with a loud bang. He screamed and dropped down into a hole. I got there a moment too late, but not too late to get a look. The hole had opened into a vast pit full of shiny chrome gears, cogs and pistons, thrown together at weird, impossible angles, all cranking in overdrive.

The Works.

I felt that if I looked too long, I'd fall in too.

Rising heat singed my nostrils, and the smell of burning grease made my throat close up. I couldn't see Russ anymore, couldn't even hear his screams over the grinding of the ma.s.sive machine. It was as if he'd been ground up in it, his essence becoming oil for the gears.

The trapdoor sprang closed. When I looked up, I saw two park workers grab the "exit door" and roll it away, revealing a brick wall behind it. It was just a facade.

"Gets 'em every time," Ca.s.sandra said.

I whirled on her. "You couldn't take me on yourself?" I screamed, my teeth bared like a wild animal. "You had to bring Russ into it?"