up and down and around one huge room, it whipped through a long series
of tunnels, some lit and some not. The lap bar, meant to restrain the
rider’s lap, was tight enough to be safe, but if a kid was slim and
agile, he could contort himself in such a way as to squeeze out from
under it, scramble over it, and stand in the leg well. Then he could
lean against the lap bar and grip it behind his back or hook his arms
around it-riding daredevil.
It was a stupid and dangerous thing to do, which Jeremy and Tod knew.
But they had done it a couple of times anyway, not only on the Millipede
but on other rides in other parks. Kidding pumped up the excitement
level at least a thousand percent, even in pitch tunnels where it was
impossible to see what was coming next “Rocket jockeys!”
Tod said when they were halfway through the line.
He insisted on giving Jeremy a low five and then a high five, though
they looked like a couple of asshole kids. “No rocket jockey is afraid
of daredeviling the Millipede, right?”
“Right,” Jeremy said as they inched through the main doors and entered
the pavilion. Shrill screams echoed to them from the riders on the cars
that shot away into the tunnel ahead According to legend (as kids’
legends went at every amusement park with a similar ride, a boy had been
killed riding daredevil on the Millipede because he’d been too tall. The
ceiling of the tunnel was high in all lighted stretches, but they said
it dropped low at one spot in a darkened passage-maybe because
airconditioning pipes through at that point, maybe because the epa made
the contractor put in another support that hadn’t been planned for,
maybe because the architect was a no-brain.
Anyway, this tall kid, sag up, smacked his head into the low part of the
ceiling, never even saw it coming, It instantly pulverized his face,
decapitated him. All the unsuspecting bozos riding behind him were
splattered with blood and brains and broken teeth.
Jeremy didn’t believe it for a minute. Fantasy World hadn’t been built
by guys with horse turds for brains. They had to have figured kids
would find a way to get out from under the lap bars, because nothing was
entirely kid-proof, and they would have kept the ceiling high all the
way through.
Legend also had it that the low overhang was still somewhere in one of
the dark sections of the tunnel, with bloodstains and flecks of dried
brains on and expectations. Something about being securely in the
middle of the tunnel, which was total cow flop.
For anybody riding daredevil, standing up, the real danger was that he
would fall out of the car when it whipped around a sharp turn or
accelerated Unexpectedly. Jeremy figured there were six or eight
particularly radical curves on the Millipede course where Tod Ledderbeck
might easily topple out of the car with only minimal assistance.
The line moved slowly forward.
Jeremy was not impatient or afraid. As they drew closer to the boarding
gates, he became more excited but also more confident. His hands were
not trembling. He had no butterflies in his belly. He just wanted to
do it.
The boarding chamber for the ride was constructed to resemble a cavern
with immense stalactites and stalagmites. Strange benighted creatures
swam in the murky depths of green pools, and albino mutant crabs prowled
the shores, reaching up with huge wicked claws toward the people on the
boarding platform, snapping at them but not quite long-armed enough to
snare any dinner.
Each train had six cars, and each car carried two people. The cars were
painted like segments of a Millipede; the first had a big insect head
with moving jaws and multifaceted black eyes, not a cartoon but a really
fierce monster face; the one at the back boasted a curved stinger that
looked more like part of a scorpion than the ass of a Millipede. Two
trains were boarding at any one time, the second behind the first, and
they shot off into the tunnel with only a few seconds between them