The calm and friendly nature of the voice chilled Mitchell.
This wasn’t a man.
This was a sociopath who acted like men to trap and kill them.
Mad Mitch wanted to call back out to the voice,
Come murder me in here, dumb fuck
! But he kept quiet. His hand probed around the plastic contours of the suit, trying to find the screwdriver. Footsteps moved toward the back of the carrier.
Mitchell could see a shadow come into view. In just a few moments, the shooter was going to poke his head in the back and look to see if there was anybody in there. How far would he go in? Mitchell lifted his chin so he could turn his head and look to the front of the trailer. There were four more Land Cruisers on their sides.
He could try to move all the way to the back, but then what? The farther in he went, the more trapped he would be. Mitchell tried to imagine what the shooter was going to see when he came around the corner. If the shooter looked at the back of the car to see if the hatch had been opened, Mitchell might have a moment before the shooter noticed him in the tight space.
Mad Mitch’s fingers felt the edge of the laptop. He still couldn’t find the damn screwdriver.
Fuck it
. He slid the laptop out of the bag. At the very least he could use it as a shield.
The duffle bag lost some of its tension and fell to the aluminum siding that was the floor and made a metal clang.
Fuck.
“
Hey! Need me to go get help?” The shooter was giving Mitchell a plausible reason to speak up.
Yeah, go get help so you won’t get infected by my reverse rabies that’s not really reverse rabies.
Mad Mitch kept his mouth shut. If he spoke, even if it was an attempt to misdirect the man by telling him he was stuck in the car, he knew he’d lose the advantage.
The shadow grew as it came around the corner. Mad Mitch raised his left hand in an arc and passed the laptop over his head and into the grip of his right hand. The shadow paused. Mad Mitch could hear the man take in a breath of air through his nostrils.
Mad Mitch didn’t even wait to see the man come into view around the corner. He knew a human predator like this was controlled by their killing instinct and would not hesitate. He slammed the laptop downward as the shooter leaped into the crevice.
The thin metal edge of the computer slammed into the shooter’s forehead and formed a crimson streak across his face. Mad Mitch stepped backward. The shooter pushed his body into the crevice. His clawed hands shot at Mitchell’s face, trying to pull away flesh and skin. Mad Mitch slammed the laptop upward at the man’s chin. His head jerked back and then snapped forward as his teeth bared at Mitchell. He let out a growl, sending a shower of blood and spittle at Mitchell’s face.
Mad Mitch took another step back. The man forced himself farther into the crevice. A hand grabbed Mitchell’s shoulder. He could feel nails digging into his skin and trying to pull apart the sinew of his shoulders. Mad Mitch pulled backward and tripped over the bag as he fell onto the metal siding.
The shooter pushed himself into the space where Mitchell had just been. His left hand clawed out into the space beyond the hood. He struggled to pull himself through, but the space was too narrow for his large frame.
Mad Mitch looked at the laptop on the ground. He got to his feet, picked it up and slammed it into the man’s face with both hands while trying to avoid the reach of the hand. The shooter’s nose shattered and sent a cascade of red fluid all over the laptop and Mad Mitch’s hands.
The man’s eyes bulged and looked at Mitchell without blinking. The hand tried to twist around the corner to reach out at Mitchell, but he was too far out of reach. The shooter tried to push his body into the narrow space. Mad Mitch could hear the sound of the Land Cruiser’s metal roof pop inward as he shoved his shoulders past the center.
Fuck.
Mad Mitch slammed the laptop into the man’s face again. He heard a crack as the laptop finally began to crumple. He grabbed it by the sides, held it over his head and brought the corner into the shooter’s left eye socket. Mad Mitch felt it crack through the case of the laptop. Blood spurted out from the eye and it bulged even farther outward, hanging loose.
The shooter kept snarling and trying to grab Mitchell with his left hand. Mad Mitch swung the laptop into the man’s wrist. He could hear something crack as he dented the laptop even more on the man’s thick wrist bones.
Lubricated by his own blood and sweat, the shooter began to slip past the roof of the Land Cruiser and the carrier ceiling. Mitchell looked to the front windshield of the Land Cruiser. This one wasn’t cracked like the one he’d been inside. Mad Mitch kicked his right heel into the windshield, hoping to break it. His foot was just deflected. Mad Mitch slammed the laptop into it. The computer broke into two pieces, only leaving a small spiderweb of cracks.
Mad Mitch threw it to the ground. He picked up the duffle bag and crawled into the space where the wheels met the floor of the carrier. He ducked under the front wheels and shoved his body under the front forks. His spine could feel the axle pressing up against it. He kept moving.
The shooter finally burst through the crevice and into the space Mitchell had just left. He threw his body into the even-tighter area Mitchell was in and grabbed wildly. His hands grabbed Mitchell’s right thigh and began to dig their nails into the skin.
The shooter brought his mouth to tear into Mitchell’s flesh. Mad Mitch reflexively jerked and sent his knee into the shooter’s chin. He heard a loud crack as he dislocated his jaw. The hands didn’t let go.
Mitchell fell backward. He was half supported by the pressure of his hips between the undercarriage and the side wall. His leg was still firmly grasped by the shooter, who was pushing his body in farther.
Mitchell heard the sound of metal clang. He looked to see if his screwdriver had fallen free. His left hand scraped the floor where he couldn’t see. His fingertips grazed something metal. The shooter brought the top of his mouth onto Mitchell’s leg to take a bite. His dislocated jaw couldn’t close on the leg, so he furiously slammed his upper teeth into Mitchell’s shin.
It felt like an ice pick slamming into bone. Half upside down, stuck between the SUV and the carrier, Mitchell began to hyperventilate. He stretched his left hand back to try to grab the object. Mitchell let out a roar as he nearly tore his arm out of socket pulling on the car’s frame.
His fingers grasped the object. It wasn’t his screwdriver. He gripped the handle and brought the shooter’s gun back over his head and pointed it toward the man’s bloody mess of a face as he tried to fillet Mitchell’s calf muscle.
Mad Mitch pulled the trigger and fired a round at almost point-blank range. The back of the shooter’s skull exploded, sending blood and brains into the back of the carrier. His body reflexively kept trying to bite into Mitchell’s leg.
Mad Mitch fired two more rounds into the man’s face before he could pull his leg free. His ears rang from the sound of the shots reverberating in the small space. Mitchell fell backward and hit the ground. With his free hand, he grabbed the duffle bag and went toward the light. He tried to ignore the searing pain in his leg as he stood up and limped from the back of the car carrier.
Outside he could hear sirens as rescue vehicles raced toward the mile-long disaster of twisted metal. Mitchell could see two separate plumes of black smoke coming from tankers at the tail end.
He knew he only had minutes before rescuers found him and tried to finish what the shooter had started. Mitchell pulled a shirt from the bag to use as a bandage. He looked down at the spacesuit in his bag.
In all the commotion, it was worth a try. It looked like a hazmat suit firefighters used to put out chemical fires. If he could get it on quickly enough, he could pass himself off as one of them and get the hell away from the train and the dead body of the first man he ever genuinely wanted to kill.
Mitchell found the car that Mr. Lewis was planning to use for his escape. He was twenty miles away before he noticed the blood stains on the passenger seat and dashboard. He put two and two together and decided he didn’t want to look inside the trunk. It was a bad enough feeling knowing that the murder weapon was in his duffle bag and he had gunpowder residue all over his fingers.
It was just one more situation that kind of made him look like a bad guy. He’d have to deal with this complication in due time. For the present, his only mission was to get the word out about Great Wall. Until people understood what was going on, for most people at least, he was just some shadowy figure in a strange plot.
His only tool was openness. His biggest problem was that being out in the open usually meant people were trying to kill him. The previous owner of the vehicle had mercifully left him with nearly a full tank of gas. With any luck, which was stretching things, he could make it to his final destination in under five hours. From there, he’d let fate take its course. Mitchell was willing to put a big bet on humanity, despite the horror of the last several days, that when given the chance, they’d make more sense of the events of the past four days than the people trying to control things from behind the scenes.
58
Mitchell took the exit off I-75 and drove toward the heart of Atlanta. The signs for Centennial Park reminded him of another innocent man who was wrongly implicated in the center of a terrorism plot. Richard Jewell, like Mitchell, unfortunately fit the profile some people were trying to box him into.
Mitchell took a right turn down Peachtree Street and traveled the last few blocks toward his final destination. He pulled the phone from his pocket that he’d taken back at the pier. He didn’t turn it on just yet. He had no idea how quickly they’d be able to track it. He needed to use it for just one thing.
Mitchell reached his final destination and parked the car in a no-parking zone. He left the keys inside and took the duffel bag loaded with USB drives and the 150 CDs he managed to burn before he drained the computer’s battery. Mitchell instinctively stayed to the less-populated side of the street and walked the last block.
He turned on the phone and opened up an Internet browser. He entered in his Twitter account information and began writing a tweet.
Over the last two days, #MadMitch had been a nonstop trending topic. His @MadMitchFM Twitter account had over 700,000 followers. He had good reason to believe more than a few of them were in a three-block radius.
Mitchell finished his tweet and clicked send. Of course nothing happened at first. He just stood on the corner of Harris and Peachtree, just one more person in a spacesuit in the middle of Dragon*Con surrounded by 50,000 other freaks that had grown up isolated, wanting to connect and not knowing how.
He watched as elves, Klingons, zombies and hundreds of various superheroes walked around from hotel to hotel going to the different events scattered around Atlanta the one weekend out of the year the geeks took over.
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see two girls with fairy wings running toward him. One of them was holding an iPhone and pointing at him. He watched the doors of the Hyatt Regency burst open as a crowd of men and women in Jedi costumes came running out of the hotel, moving in his direction as well.
His tweet had been retweeted over and over again a thousand times in the span of just a few minutes. Some thought it was a joke. Maybe his Twitter account had been hacked. But anybody within walking distance had to come see for themselves.
at dragon*con.
Love me.
Hate me.
Come say hello.
Find the truth.
Don’t worry. I have protection.
As dozens of bodies ran toward him, Mitchell held up his blue spacesuit-covered arms. He closed his eyes and waited. If it was going to end, it was going to end right there. The USB drives, the CDs were at his feet. Some of them were bound to get out. And at that point, that’s all he cared about anymore. He couldn’t run anymore. If he just stopped, they won. If he ruined their secret, then Mitchell won. That’s all that mattered. He could get torn into a thousand pieces for all he cared.
Mitchell heard footsteps getting closer. He kept his eyes shut tight. The spacesuit would only keep his scent in. It couldn’t protect him from their anger. And that was fine. If they saw the devil, then they should pay him his due.
Mitchell shuddered as he felt the first body hit him. Only it wasn’t a tackle. There was no growling or horrific screaming. He felt other hands reach out and touch him.
Mitchell opened his eyes and looked down at a petite teenage girl with thick glasses, stringy hair and fairy wings. She was hugging him. He looked around as dozens of hands reached out to him, not to rip him apart but to connect with him. To tell him that he wasn’t alone. To tell him they believed him.
Mitchell fell to his knees and opened the duffel bag. He began handing out the CDs and USB sticks. Some people pulled out laptops from backpacks and began to read what was inside. Others took them and ran back to hotel rooms and office centers to print out what was on there.