Gravity Walkers

Prologue

Trip “The Flip” Donnegan looked intently at the ramp ahead of him. Revving his Honda’s throttle to the upper reaches of its power, he prepped himself for one of the biggest jumps of his life. Trip had already assured himself of a gold medal in the step-up contest at the Gravity Games, but this jump would be for a world record. Adrenaline pumped through Trip’s veins as he pictured himself in mid-flight on his motorcycle. The launch ramp was ten feet tall, the bar he had to clear at thirty-five feet, so at his highest point he would be over forty-five feet above the hard-packed dirt floor of the arena. Momentarily taking his hands off the handlebars, shaking his arms, and rolling his shoulders to remove the tension he was feeling, Trip was about ready to launch into the record books. Gripping the handlebars once again, he set his whole focus on the ramp ahead. He twisted the throttle to its fullest and kicked the bike into gear. Launching forward, he knew he had good speed and thought that he just might be able to make this attempt a success. As his rear wheel cleared the ramp and his front wheel pointed at the sky, all Trip could picture was completing this jump, celebrating that night with his buds, and maybe hooking up with one of the chicks that liked to hang around extreme motocross riders. He certainly was not thinking about the fact that he had less than ten seconds to live. As he cleared the bar at over forty-five feet in the air, Trip suddenly found himself falling to the earth at as if a gigantic magnet were weighing him down. The effect was so sudden and so strong that Trip couldn’t brace himself or bring his body to an upright position. Instead, he fell fast, smacking the hard ground flat on his back, severing his spine. In the next instant, his bike, which was falling just as fast as he himself had fallen, crashed down on him. The foot peg came right through the open area in his helmet and impaled his face, embedding itself three inches deep in Trip’s crushed face. Screams filled the arena but no one made a move to help Trip. That was because they themselves could not rise out of their seats! Some who had been standing were now flat on their backs, unable to raise an arm off the floor. In a panic, the people in the seats tried to stand but found their legs so heavy that they couldn’t take a step, immediately being pulled downward with such force that it was impossible to move. One unfortunate man fell backwards and hit his head on the concrete floor, bleeding helplessly from a massive gash in his head. If anyone had been able to see things rationally, they may have thought it unusual that the blood was not spreading. Instead, it was pooling around the back of his skull, matting his hair. Amidst the pandemonium, no one noticed the man in the white body suit, almost like an acrobat’s. This man walked calmly across the arena floor, up into the paralyzed audience, and out the arena’s door. The moment he left, everything returned to normal and thirty people were trampled in the stampede to leave. Watching the horror from a distance, the man in the white body suit laughed at all of the screams.