Whatever guilt he was feeling he could deal with later. When it was time to surrender, he would do it only when he knew he would be safe. Until then, he had to do everything he could to protect himself.
“
What the fuck,” he said to his reflection.
“
What the fuck,” Mitch replied.
In broadcasting school, he’d learned the quickest way to feel confident was to assume the posture of someone who looked confident, even when you were alone. He turned around and hopped up and sat on the counter. For a moment, he would try to think of a reason why certain people were trying to kill him.
If the girl by the side of the road hadn’t attacked him, he would have thought that something happened to him at the radio station. But she had. If he’d been attacked by Rookman or Bonnie or the old man at the gas station, things would make more sense. Why not them but everyone else? It couldn’t be proximity. He was much closer to most of them than anybody else.
Mitchell looked at his reflection in the medicine cabinet mirror, hoping for the more confident version of himself to give him an answer.
It did.
“
Rookman, Bonnie and the gas station dude were behind glass, dumbass,” said Mitch.
Fuck.
Mitchell thought back over the last two weeks since he’d been sick. When was the last time he’d actually been face to face with anyone who wasn’t behind glass or on a Skype screen?
He hadn’t.
What was the most significant thing that happened between the time when people just ignored him and when they wanted to murder him on sight?
Getting sick.
What did he come down with? Reverse rabies? Could there even be such a thing?
It was stupid, but it made the most sense for the time being. It gave him something to think around. Rather than thinking it was something so far beyond his understanding or involving a cosmic-level conspiracy, that hypothesis was something he could deal with on a rational level.
Seeing him wasn’t what made people want to kill him. It was something in the air. Something he gave off, either his scent or something else like a fast-acting virus. Maybe it was like the pheromones bees gave off when it was time to attack? Did getting sick mess up his pheromones and tell people to kill him?
It didn’t matter for the moment. Knowing that it was scent or something else he gave off allowed him to focus on the problem. The key to his immediate survival was going to be to avoid having people smell him or breathe the air near him. Handing out gasmasks or finding a spacesuit weren’t practical solutions. Until the authorities understood what was going on, he had to avoid them as well.
Mitch hopped off the counter and walked through the house, checking the windows and doors again. Everything was locked down. Not that it mattered if the police surrounded the house. They’d have no trouble getting inside.
Mitch walked back into the bathroom and splashed some water under his arms and on his chest. He dried off using toilet paper. No time for a shower, he just wanted to get some of the sweat and smell of fear off of him.
He looked back at the reflection. “What now?”
“
Find out what’s going on and move to someplace else.”
He pulled out his iPhone. It was still turned off. Could they locate it when he powered it on?
He knew they could trace phone calls, but what about just the phone? There was a “Find my phone” function that used GPS and WiFi spots to find iPods and iPads. All he had to do to use that was to log into his Mobile.me account and click a button to see where the device was.
Fuck.
His iPad. Mitchell put his phone into his pocket and ran to his backpack. He pulled out his iPad and pressed the Home button. It was on.
He quickly powered it down.
He knew the odds were against them having gotten a search warrant and accessed his account to trace him. But there was that small chance. He could take a risk or he could assume the safe house was blown.
The scared Mitchell wanted to just stay there or, better yet, go hide in the attic. The Mitch he caught a glimpse of in the mirror knew it was a bad idea to stay. The more he tried to guess the risk on things like that, the more likely he was to put himself in harm’s way.
Something Mitchell had put at the back of his mind finally made its way forward. When he turned off the iPad, for the first time he got a look at the time. For some reason he thought it was almost nightfall. It was only 1 p.m. He’d left the mall just a little over an hour before. He’d left his car and the mess at Rachel’s less than twenty minutes before he got to the mall.
He had been on the run for less than two hours. All hell was going to break loose very soon and a lot of angry people were going to be looking for him. However, he still had time to get more distance. He had time to find out what the rest of the world was saying.
Mitch shoved the iPad back in his backpack. He sat down with his back against the front door so he could listen to the street outside while keeping an eye on the backyard through the sliding glass doors. He pulled out an analog radio he kept tuned to the radio station and turned it on.
18
Mitch pushed one earbud into his ear. He left the other one open to listen for anything suspicious. He half expected the station to have switched over to a full-time talk format dealing with the mall events like they did on 9/11. Thankfully, no. The station was playing its normal afternoon lunchtime mix of ‘80s pop. For a moment, Mitchell felt a sense of calm from the normalcy of it. New Order’s “Blue Monday” was playing. He listened to the song a little bit longer than a man on the run should have, but he could feel his heart stop beating so fast.
He flipped the dial over to AM and went to a local news station. In his mind he expected to hear someone say “... in other news” and then go right to talking about the mall. But they didn’t. It was a car commercial. Then a commercial for a life insurance company. Then a commercial for an accident attorney. I bet that guy has a boner right now, thought Mitch.
Finally the station’s afternoon newsreader came on.
“
We’ve got an update on the incident at Park Square Mall. The fire department has said that it wasn’t a fire that caused the evacuation.”
Evacuation.
That’s what they were calling it right now?
“
We’re getting more reports that a riot took place inside the mall and led to a chase of the person who instigated it.”
Was that a riot or an attempted massacre?
Instigator?
They didn’t understand.
“
Although official numbers haven’t been released, news helicopters on the scene have spotted what look like at least six bodies on the outside of the mall. It’s not clear yet if they fell from the roof as some people reported or if they were injured inside the mall or outside in some other manner.”
Six bodies.
And that was just on the outside. He’d heard the sounds behind him as he ran. He knew a lot more people were hurt than that.
Seven? Ten? Twenty?
Lots of people died because he ran. Mitchell’s knuckles were beginning to whiten as he squeezed the radio. He switched hands before he cracked the plastic.
Should he have just stayed there in the food court? If he had known then what he knew now, would he have just sat there and let them get him? Part of him thought that would have been the moral thing to do. Sacrifice himself so that other people wouldn’t be hurt.
He thought about the bloodshot eyes looking at him in the food court. The horrific way people stretched their hands out at him and bared their teeth. The shrill screams. The rage.
Could he have sat still for that? It was one thing to put on a blindfold and take a bullet or to have a doctor administer a lethal dose. Those things were quick. What would it be like to be scratched and bitten until you lost so much blood your heart gave out? He knew the crowd wouldn’t have wasted any time killing him, but it would have been an agonizing death.
No matter the moral calculation of his pain versus those of others, nothing could make him want to go down like that. He’d die for someone else but not like that.
Not that way.
The newsreader was still talking.
“
Police have told us that they’ll be making a statement in approximately a half hour from now. We’re hearing now that they may have a person of interest they’d like to speak to.”
Fuck.
“
In other news an area man is wanted for questioning in the assault of a parking enforcement official and two other people.”
Double fuck.
“
Police would like to speak to Mitchell Roberts, who was last seen on foot near the scene of the altercation.”
Trifecta fuck.
They had his name. Of course they had his name from what happened with the parking officer. They had his damn car and they had Rachel and Rick. They had everything about him at that point.
Everything except that he was also the person of interest at the mall. Person of interest. It was such a silly way to say “guilty” without saying it. Nobody had any doubt what made this person so interesting.
At this point it was reasonable to assume that there was some kind of low-level manhunt and APB put out for him for what happened that morning. If it hadn’t been for the mall, he bet that would have been the story of the day. Unfortunately for his pursuers, he’d created one horrific distraction. From the news, it was a distraction they were still trying to pull bodies from.
Once they connected him to that, everything would escalate. He’d become a really fucking interesting person at that point. It wasn’t just cops waiting for him at his apartment or workplace. It’d be people looking for him at train stations and airports. When they talked to the old lady whose car he took, they’d throw the license plate and car makeup on every electronic sign on the highway. Every cop would have his face on the computer screen in their cars.
“
Unofficial reports from Park Square Mall are coming in that Department of Homeland Security officials are on the scene. Officials are downplaying that this was a terrorism-related incident but haven’t ruled it out just yet. As we pointed out earlier, police are expected to give us an update in 30 minutes ....”
Terrorism?
Holy Christ. Had he just gone from fugitive of the day to Unabomber and DC Sniper status? Was he in Osama bin Laden’s league now?
Mitch shut off the radio. He’d check back in later to find out what they knew. For the moment he needed to get proactive. He looked around the empty house. He couldn’t stay. He also needed to figure out how exactly he was going to go into hiding. Right now he was on the run. Full-on hiding out meant being able to spend days or weeks without getting caught. That meant survival. Food, shelter and ways to protect himself.
In the house, it was only a matter of time before either the police found it through Mike at the radio station or someone else came to check up on it. It was also totally empty of food. He could make it a day or two without eating after that he knew he would get weak and make stupid decisions.
He looked at his backpack. He had his iPad, radio, comics, some notebooks, a charger and another shirt. Was there anything else in the house?
He remembered the door to the attic in the garage. He went back in and pulled the ladder down and climbed up. He found the light switch and turned it on. There were boxes of Christmas decorations, luggage and a box of old clothes. He took the box down from the attic to rummage through it.
He pulled out all the men’s clothing and went back to the master bathroom. He didn’t have to try on the pants to know that they were too small. There was a golf shirt and a pair of shorts that fit. He also found a blazer and a golf cap. A pair of cleated shoes were going to be useless unless he wanted to hide out on a golf course and play the back nine, thought Mitch.
Mitch put on the blue golf shirt. He decided to wear it instead of the T-shirt he had in his bag. It made him look slightly less like a person of interest in his mind. The more upper-middle class he could look, the better.
He decided to shove the blazer and shorts into his bag. He couldn’t remember ever seeing a manhunt from a helicopter where the bad guy ran away in a suit jacket. In a pinch, he could throw the jacket on and look slightly different. That might be the difference between getting stopped and making a clean getaway.
To make a getaway, he needed to know where to get. He wanted to turn on his iPad and just pull up Google Maps and see if anything came to mind. The risk of having it give up his position was too great.
The car in the garage.
Old people still used maps. Mitchell ran back to the car and opened the glove compartment. It was filled with pill bottles. He started to throw them on the floor but decided he should see what was in them. If he got an infection or some other injury, he wasn’t going to be visiting a pharmacy any time soon.