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.
By the time the police showed, Mitchell had a ring of over 1,000 costumed misfits blocking the streets and sidewalks for two blocks in either direction. Many didn’t know why they were there at first, but word quickly spread. They were there to protect Mad Mitch and get the word out.
Hundreds of blogs uploaded PDFs describing the illegal biological warfare that was taking place. Details of the unauthorized vaccination of the public with a faulty vaccine quickly spread. CNN, headquartered just a few blocks away, had anchors reading the contents of the documents on air as they tried to make sense of it all.
In the middle of it all sat Mitchell. He answered questions from the people all around him. Others walked by and gently patted him on the shoulder or gave him a hug. The girl fairy who had been the first to reach out to him helped organize people in a protective perimeter around him. Men and women in Stormtrooper uniforms from the 501st stood guard and helped keep the government officials far away by gathering crowds to block them.