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.