Public Enemy Zero

54

The idea for everything had come to Mitchell when he realized he’d have to ditch the car sooner rather than later. He was 20 minutes north of the mall when he saw police cars behind him begin to line up on the exits on the highway. He took the nearest exit before a Highway Patrol car came to a stop in the middle of the off-ramp.

Steinmetz, aka Dr. Lovestrange — Mitchell had found the name on a letter in the console — had meant well. But even he had no idea how intense this manhunt was going to get once they realized Mitchell had slipped away.

The escape made Mitchell appear far more resourceful than he was and also more sinister. The negotiation and the surrender seemed like some kind of mastermind plot. Now that the authorities weren’t treating him like a hospital patient on the run, his actions had implicated him in something much more global.

He had to tell the world about Great Wall or else his actions would never make any sense. There was no way he would survive for very long at the center of such a massive hunt. He was in a race to get the word out before they caught him.

Everything came into focus for Mitchell when he realized he had one and only one goal: get the word out before they got him. To do that, he needed a way to spread the message. He entertained the idea of breaking into a copy shop and holding them hostage while they printed out the contents of the computer files. But he knew that would take too long. He’d find himself surrounded before the first printout was finished collating.

Steinmetz’s computer was going to have to be his printing press, if not online then by making copies onto USB sticks and CD-ROMS. That meant one more stop before he dropped off the car and took an alternate means of transportation.

Mitchell pulled the SUV into a Walgreens several miles from where he exited. He had a bold idea, but given the state of panic everyone was in, it could work.

He donned the spacesuit and walked in through the front door. The small Indian woman behind the counter gave Mitchell a curious look.

Mitchell turned to her. “He’s been spotted in this area. Do you have a back room where you can hide?”

The woman nodded.

“Go there, but don’t touch anything electrical, like a phone.” It sounded stupid as he said it, but the woman was too scared to point that out. She ran off toward the back of the store.

Mitchell grabbed a shopping basket and walked over to the side of the store where they had USB memory sticks and blank CD-ROMS. He began piling them into the basket. Once it was full, he headed back out the front of the store and got into the car with the spacesuit still on.

He got the helmet off but had to drive with the seat pushed back at its farthest setting to accommodate the backpack. His silly trick wasn’t going to last for very long and he needed to get to where he could ditch the car as soon as possible.

Back when Mitchell was hiding out on the island, he’d played around with the scanner, listening to different frequencies. On one cluster of bands, he found different voices talking about dispatching police cars, ambulances and other emergency vehicles. That was the one he paid the most attention to. While scanning around, he found another band he couldn’t understand at first. It took him ten minutes to realize that the talk of “knuckles,” “drawbars” and “gas cans” was railroad chatter. He was listening to rail yard workers somewhere not too far off getting trains prepped.

He remembered them talking about “the 10:15 North Atlantic.” At 10:40, he could hear the sound of a train passing somewhere not too far away from where he was hiding across the Intracoastal.

Mitchell pulled into the parking lot of a Best Buy not too far away from where he’d thought he remembered seeing the rail yard the calls had come from. He parked in the far side by a beat-up Ford Focus and stripped off the spacesuit. He shoved it into the duffel bag. His fingers touched the screwdriver Steinmetz had given him, which he realized he was supposed to have left behind, and had an idea. He took the license plate from the Ford Focus and shoved it into his bag. It worked before. Maybe it would work again.

Mitchell then climbed through the hedges and ran toward the railroad tracks that snaked around the back of the Best Buy and toward the rail yard. Ahead he could see the tail end of the “10:15.” By his watch, it was already 10:17 p.m. He’d heard trains rarely left on time, so he hoped he’d just had a bit of good fortune.

Mitchell ran along the side of the train that was in shadows. He was looking for an open railcar. He didn’t know how common they actually were, but Rookman had guests come on who talked about using them to travel around like 21st-century hobos. Up ahead he could hear the train blow a whistle and start up. There was the sound of metal hitting metal as the knuckles that connected the cars began to pull against each other from the front to the back of the train. The train would build up speed and begin to overtake him if he didn’t find a spot.

Car after car was either a tanker or a locked-up freight car. Mitchell was beginning to lose hope. If all else failed, he could just cling to a ladder and get off at some point farther on up the rail, but that meant being out in the open and risk getting caught.

The train was beginning to match pace with Mitchell’s jogging. He had to run faster in order to get to the cars that were farther ahead. He rounded another bend and could see the front of the train a thousand feet away. Closer to him he saw several car carriers loaded with brand-new Toyota Land Cruisers headed from the port of Miami to somewhere north. They had walls along the sides but the backs were open.

Mitchell ran up to the closest carrier and threw the duffel bag with the spacesuit and laptop onto the platform at the end of the car. He grabbed the metal frame around the back and pulled his chest onto the back of the car. He didn’t appreciate how high off the ground the backend was until he felt his feet dangle and drag in the gravel as he struggled to pull himself aboard.

He finally managed to get a knee and then both legs onto the carrier as the train picked up speed. Mitchell picked up his bag and climbed over the space between the hood of the last car and the top of the carrier. He didn’t want to break the window of the outermost car.

Mitchell pulled out his screwdriver and got ready to slam it into the back window of a brand-new silver Land Cruiser when he got the impulse to actually check if it was locked. He reached down and squeezed the latch for the rear hatch. It popped open. Of course. Mitchell threw his duffel bag into the back.

He looked at the sticker on the windshield of the rearmost Land Cruiser and tried to decipher the symbols. Origin was listed as MIA. Destination was listed as ATL. Atlanta. He tried to remember what was going on in Atlanta at that time. He knew the CDC had headquarters there. But there was something else. Of course, thought Mitchell. His endgame was in sight. First, he needed to make several hundred copies of the files while the train drove through the night. Then he could plan out how he was going to cause a commotion.