[2001] Public Enemy Zero

by Andrew Mayne

  “Damn,” said Mitchell as he hung up the phone. They’d think he was crazy. They got dozens of calls a day from paranoid lunatics. There was no reason for Mitchell to think they’d treat him any differently.

  He dialed a different number and made a collect call. A gravelly voiced answered. Mitchell hesitated to think about what to say. He knew Rookman was a security nut.

  “Um, is this poison control? ‘Cause I think I ate too many dicks,” said Mitchell.

  “Asshole,” said the voice and then he hung up.

  There went that plan, thought Mitchell. He looked over at the diner to see what the best way to get in and out of the back would be.

  Mitchell jumped when the phone rang behind him. Mitchell stared at it, afraid to answer. Mr. Barks looked up at him.

  Mitchell picked up the receiver. “Hello?”

  “Looks like a pay phone number and not a burner. That’s a mistake man. Always have a burner cell phone,” said Rookman.

  “Yeah, um, I’m new at this.”

  “No shit. Do you have a plan? I mean, don’t tell me. But do you have a plan?”

  Mitchell looked at the diner and the row of trucks in back where he hoped to find a police scanner. “I think so. Part of one. I got an idea for a hideout.”

  “That’s good. But keep moving. So tell me, what’s really going on?” asked Rookman.

  “I don’t know. People try to kill me when they see me. Their eyes go all bloodshot. They look like fucking vampires or zombies.” Mitchell’s voice started to crack. “I just want it to stop.”

  “That’s some scary shit, man. Sounds like it might be some kind of rage virus or something. Is there anything on you that might be making people go bat shit? Like a high-frequency transmitter? There have been experiments on ultra high and low frequencies that make people lose their shit.”

  “No,” said Mitchell. “I searched everything I have. Nothing unusual. I thought maybe my iPad or something. But that was in my car when I first got attacked. I think there’s something wrong with me.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with you, man. Something happened to you. Don’t forget that. You’re just trying to do what you can to survive. You’re a good kid, Mitchell. I see a lot of assholes every day, and I know you’re not one of them. Right now you need to stay alive. I’ll ask some of my spook connections if they know anything. If I can get you some help, I’ll try, maybe through them. But you got to know sooner or later they’re going to start tracking me to get to you. So don’t fall for it.”

  “Yeah, man. Thanks.”

  “Stay safe. Stick with what you know. Don’t do anything stupid. Stay away from people. Especially stay the fuck away from me.”

  Mitchell thanked him and hung up. Stick with what you know. Mitchell knew two things: broadcasting and boats. He’d have to avoid broadcasting for the time being. Boats were his next stop.

  Mr. Barks had watched the conversation, trying to understand. Mitchell gave him a hug and then walked over to the diner. Behind him, the dog laid down to take a nap and wait for his new friend to come back. It would be a long wait.

  Mitchell avoided the street lights that illuminated the parking lot in bright patches and worked his way to the rear of the diner. He was certain all kinds of shady things took place back there, from drug deals to prostitution. He kept a careful eye for anybody lurking in the shadows.

  He heard the loud roar of a tractor-trailer start and then watched one pull out. From where he was standing, he could see the front of the diner. It didn’t look like anyone was on their way out, so he approached a cluster of six trucks.

  Through the large glass windows he could see drowsy men in baseball caps drinking huge cups of coffee and eating more carbs than Mitchell would in a week. A waitress, who looked like she belonged in a nursing home, would shamble around, filling cups, and then go back to a stool behind a register and watch the clock. This was no SWAT team.

  His plan was to scope out the trucks and look through the windows to see if he could spot a scanner. He had no idea how common they would be but at least he’d give it a shot here. If he came up with nothing, then he’d just head over to the marina.

  Mitchell approached the first truck from the side farthest from the diner. He climbed up on the running board and looked inside. It was too dark to be sure, but it didn’t look like there was anything on the dashboard or seat that looked like a scanner.

  He hopped down and was about to walk around the front of the truck when he noticed something -- all the trucks had been parked in a staggered fashion. If he walked around the front, he would be visible by the people in the diner. He guessed it was a strategy to make it easy for the drivers to keep an eye on their rigs while they ate.

  Mitchell decided it would be prudent to take the long way around and avoid being seen. He passed around the back of the truck and walked up to the cab on the next one. A quick look inside showed nothing like a scanner.

  He hopped down and walked toward the back to look at another truck. Doubts about Rookman’s advice were starting to settle in. Mitchell would look at two more and then give up the whole idea.

  Mitchell climbed up on the third truck’s running board and looked in. He couldn’t see anything in there, either. He was about to hop back down when he noticed an antenna sticking out from under a map on the passenger side door.

  All right, we’re in business, he thought. The next step was getting it. He tried the door handle with no luck. That left the next option. Mitchell undid the zipper on his backpack and pulled out the tire iron he’d taken from the back of the stolen car.

  Through the windows of the cab, he looked at the diner to see if anybody was coming. It looked like he had the all-clear. Mitchell had no idea what kind of sound the broken glass would make. He decided to wait for a truck to pass by before he broke the window.

  Two minutes went by and then a truck roared by on the road in front of the diner. Mitch struck the window and it shattered. Without hesitation, he grabbed the scanner from under the map and hopped down off the running board. He moved toward the back of the trailer and caught his breath.

  He heard a door open. Fuck. Mitchell looked to his left and saw a large figure climbing out of the other rig he’d just looked into. He was holding onto something metal in his hand.

  Christ, these guys sleep in their cabs, Mitchell remembered.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” called out the man.

  “Just broke my beer bottle,” said Mitchell.

  The trucker was in the shadow of his own trailer. “Come here for a second,” he called out.

  Mitchell was in the process of thinking of something clever to say when he heard the trucker make a familiar low-pitched growling sound. The silhouette lunged toward Mitchell. A shot went off.

  Mitchell didn’t feel like he’d been hit, so he ran. From behind he could hear the trucker’s footsteps as he chased after him. Afraid to get caught in the open where the trucker could take another shot, Mitchell ran around the back of the nearest trailer, hoping to put it between him and the raging man.

  Even though Mitchell didn’t get a clear look at the man, he could tell he was large by the sound he made as he ran. It was like a locomotive heading toward him. Mitchell passed around the back of the trailer and ran toward the rig in the front. The trucker was still in pursuit.

  Out of the corner of his eye he could see more men pile out of the diner to see what was going on. Mitchell made a beeline from the parked trucks to the street. If he could make it across the street, maybe he could lose his pursuer in the trailer park he’d seen back there.

  As Mitchell passed by the diner, he realized that the men coming to see what the commotion was were going to be too close. He made a quick jag to the right and headed toward the pumps.

  A trucker was standing outside his truck filling it up. He looked up to see Mitchell running in his direction. Confusion turned to rage. He charged toward Mitchell.

  Mitchell heard more footsteps behind him
as the men who stepped outside the diner to see what was going on joined the chase. The man from the pump was getting close. Mitchell didn’t want to get caught in the middle.

  The pump man held out his hands to claw at Mitchell’s face. Mitch ducked down to the right and slammed the tire iron he was holding into the man’s shin. The man fell over. Mitchell could hear the men behind him getting closer. He wasn’t sure if he’d make it to the other side of the street, let alone the trailer park.

  He looked at the open cab door that belonged to the man that he had just hobbled with the tire iron. Mitchell jumped between the pumps and hopped inside. He closed the door just as the first trucker slammed into it.

  Mitchell locked the door and then locked the passenger side.

  A man began beating on the door with his head and fists. Mitchell could hear a loud clanging as the hand holding the gun struck the metal exterior. The men from the diner started to pound on the truck, as well.

  It was a horrible racket. Foreheads and fists began to split open and blood began to cover the outside of the cab. The windows were going to break at any moment.

  Angry faces stared at him with bloodshot eyes.

  Mitchell looked at the controls. The rig was still running, but the shifters were in different places and he had no idea where the brake was. The driver’s side window cracked.

  He’d seen trucks started up a thousand times in movies. Mitchell searched his memory. He reached out with his right hand and unlocked the parking brake and then put it into gear as his left foot popped the clutch. Mitchell hit the gas and the truck jerked forward.

  One of the men who was trying to climb on the hood fell away. Mitchell stepped on the gas again and got the shifter into the groove. The truck rolled away from the fuel pumps.

  Outside the cab, the men kept slamming their fists into the metal sides. Mitchell pushed the accelerator all the way and angled the truck toward the road. He overshot and the trailer clipped the side of a parked pickup truck, dragging it into the road.

  Mitchell had no choice but to keep going. In the blood-splattered rearview mirror, he could see the men were still chasing him. Mitchell passed the pay phone where he had tied up Mr. Barks. The animal gave him a woeful look as Mitchell roared by. In the passenger side mirror he could see the dog barking at the men as they chased after Mitchell.

  The truck built up speed and the men eventually weren’t able to keep up. They faded into the distance, but he didn’t need the scanner he stole to know the police would be on him in minutes.

  27

  Charging down the road in a stolen tractor-trailer truck, Mitchell racked his brain for what to do next. Far from keeping a low profile, the giant rig made it difficult for him to slip into the night. There had to have been a better way to get a police scanner. He knew he needed to stay away from people, but he’d acted stupid. Just because he couldn’t see someone didn’t mean there weren’t people around.

  He had to get rid of the truck, and fast. He wished he were a movie hero and could just head it toward a convenient cliff and fake his death by jumping out before it went over. He didn’t have the convenient cliff or athleticism to pull that off.

  His next best option was to pull off the main road as soon as possible and park the truck somewhere it wouldn’t get noticed for a while. If he could do that, he might be able to buy enough time to get away from his pursuers.

  In his head, he played out the fantasy of just keeping going in the huge rig. Screw roadblocks and chase helicopters. Driving an out-of-control tractor-trailer truck on a televised police chase was a much better way to go than getting stopped in a beat-up Hyundai and getting tackled five feet from the door.

  Up ahead he saw a strip mall next to a car lot. If he could park the rig in the back alley behind the mall, he might have an extra few minutes. Mitchell accelerated. Hopefully the cops would drive right by before they realized that he’d taken a side street.

  Mitchell jerked the wheel to the right to go down the narrow street between the car lot and the mall. The truck skidded into the turn. As soon as the truck pointed down the street, Mitchell stepped on the accelerator again liked he’d done a thousand times in his little car.

  Only his little car never had a 10-ton trailer behind it with its own inertia. The back end of the trailer jackknifed into the center of the road and kept going. Burnt rubber smoke came from the wheels as the trailer swung past the rig like a pendulum.

  Mitchell felt the back of the rig suddenly jerk behind him.

  “Oh, fuck.” He gripped the wheel and braced for impact.

  The trailer skidded across the street and flew up onto the sidewalk in front of the car lot. It knocked down a street lamp and a power line. It kept going and burst through the chain barrier that ran around the entire lot. Mitchell heard the trailer make a loud boom as the force of the impact ripped open riveted sections.

  The truck itself began to tip over as the trailer smashed into a row of new Toyotas and pulled it over with it. Mitchell watched the back of the trailer make a shower of sparks in the driver’s side mirror before it was crushed between the street and the weight of the rig. He felt pain in his shoulder as he was thrown against the driver’s side door when it became the new down.

  The trailer and rig slid a few more feet, sending cars flying before it came to a stop. Mitchell could hear what sounded like hundreds of car alarms go off all around him. That didn’t take long.

  He lifted himself up off the door. Nothing felt broken or cut. While the backend of the trailer had been moving at 50 miles per hour, the truck cab was at the pivot point and moved more slowly when it rolled over. That was something to be thankful for, Mitchell thought half-heartedly.

  The police were going to be on him even faster now. Mitchell had to get out of the rig. The windshield was still intact, so the only way out was the passenger side door.

  Mitchell grabbed his backpack and stood up. He pulled the passenger’s side handle and pushed. The door didn’t want to move. Mitchell shoved again. The door opened a few inches and then fell shut again.

  Mitchell looked around the cab interior and found his tire iron. He gave the windshield several whacks and it fell apart in thousand tiny pieces of glass. Mitchell stepped out onto the street and looked back at the damage.

  The front part of the car lot was a complete wreck. A street light was crushed between the side of the trailer and row of smashed-in cars. Nearby he saw another broken pole being held up by two thick power cables. There was a loud crack as one of them gave out and the pole collapsed. The entire lot was thrown into darkness as the power went out.

  Mitchell looked around. The entire neighborhood had just lost power. For several blocks in either direction, the street was covered in total darkness as the lights went out one by one. The only illumination at all was the flashing lights of the smashed cars as their alarms went off. Over the racket they made, Mitchell could hear sirens in the distance.

  He guessed a blackout maybe was a good thing. It’d make it easier for him to hide if there were no street lights. Good parking job or not, Mitchell had to keep running either way.

  Although the blackout could help him hide or least provide a distraction, he now had to worry about the people coming outside to have a look as they left their houses and trailers behind the strip mall. Running into them would only make things worse. He’d had enough human contact for the night.

  Mitchell put his other arm into a backpack strap and ran down the dark street between the car lot and the strip mall. He wanted to go another two blocks and then take a side street and head toward the marina. It was still the best plan he had. If he couldn’t find a boat there or near there, he didn’t know what else to do, other than literally find some sewer pipe to crawl into and wait for a better idea.

  As a defensive measure, he kept a tight grip on the tire iron in his right hand. It’d saved his life twice in the last few minutes. He felt safer knowing that it was ready at his side.

  28

&
nbsp; Mitchell kept a brisk pace as he headed toward the marina. He would move down one street and then go up another, heading there in a diagonal pattern. If anyone noticed him and thought he looked suspicious, he hoped moving street to street like that would make it difficult to peg down his position.

  The blackout extended several more blocks and then everything returned to normalcy. Although he was in a quiet residential neighborhood, he took extra effort to make sure that he didn’t walk right into someone else out for an evening stroll. A few times cars passed him, but none of them slowed down.

  As a precaution, he gripped the end of the tire iron in his right hand and shielded the bulk of it with his right arm. That way he wouldn’t look too suspicious if anyone caught a glimpse of him through an open window.

  The car lot was over a half mile behind him, but he could still hear the sound of fire engines and police cars. He hoped they would be too focused on the chaos to spread out in a larger search. When he stopped for a moment to look back, he could see a police helicopter shining its spotlight in the area around the car lot.

  The hundreds of cars in the lot provided a lot of hiding spaces for someone on the run. The more they focused their attention behind him, the better his odds of getting away would be.

  In between some of the houses, he could see the canals that ran all around this part of South Florida. The marina was only a few blocks away. He kept an eye out for a potential boat behind the houses in case the marina didn’t work out. The odds weren’t as good targeting a single boat, but it was preferable to have some kind of backup plan.

  One of the things he looked for was any house that was up for sale and looked unoccupied that had a boat in the backyard. That usually meant the owners lived elsewhere and either kept their boat berthed there or rented it out to someone else. A boat from a house like that could go missing for days before anyone noticed.

  His ideal boat would be a small one no more than ten feet long, with a small engine. A bigger boat would be faster and could give him a cabin to sleep in. The problem was keeping it hidden and refueling it.