Public Enemy Zero

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.

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.

Someone had the good sense to bring Mitchell extra oxygen tanks for his spacesuit so he didn’t suffocate in the middle of the crowd.

By nightfall, the whole world was trained on the events that were going on in downtown Atlanta. A group of CDC scientists who happened to be at the convention as cosplayers were able to make their way over to Mitchell’s court and sit down and talk to him. They’d seen the Great Wall documents and were appalled. They talked to Mitchell about a strategy to get him to safety.

The Naked Man in the Forest walked through the crowd. He was wearing the Otherself’s clothing. Of course, in that crowd, he might have blended in more easily if he had worn nothing at all like he did in the forest clearing.

In his backpack were the 12 eggs he’d been ordered to bring to the dark man in the middle of the crowd. He couldn’t understand at first why the Earth Mother had chosen this thorn of a man to have the eggs. Did she mean for him to break open the eggs in front of him? Was he just supposed to give them to him?

Breaking them all open at once didn’t make any sense. Just one was enough to kill everyone he could see and bring pestilence to this continent. Twelve was overkill. They were meant to be spread apart. Each one with its own plague.

Was the dark man chosen because he was a secret survivor? Was he chosen because his ordeal was just a trial? The Naked Man in the Forest paused when he thought that the dark man was chosen because he had bested him. Was that it? Had he failed so much in the eyes of the Earth Mother she’d chosen his enemy as her new lover?

His stomach was in knots. He didn’t want to give the eggs to the man. He wanted to prove himself. He wanted the Earth Mother for himself.

He couldn’t fight her. He had to try to follow her orders. He moved toward the dark man in the center. A hand reached out and stopped him.

“Who are you?” asked a man dressed in white plastic armor.

The Naked Man in the Forest hesitated. He couldn’t say the name of the Otherself. He was a wanted man now. He tried to walk around the man. Three more people in armor gathered around him.

“What’s in the bag?” asked one of them in a muffled voice.

A gloved hand reached toward the bag. Toward the eggs.

He swatted it away. “Gifts … gifts for Mitchell.”

Two of the armor-wearing people looked at each other.

“Let’s see the gifts.”

The Naked Man in the Forest pulled away. He had been told to only give them to the man. He couldn’t let them see the eggs.

More people gathered around. He gave them a nervous look. There was no way he was going to get to him. He tried. But he failed.

He pulled back from the people in the plastic armor. His eyes darted from left to right as people looked at his bag. He threaded through the crowd of costumed people and ran away. He’d tried. The Earth Mother would have to know he was sincere.

This had been a test, he decided. The Earth Mother wanted to know if he was willing to follow her orders. He had. He was sure she would be proud.

At midnight, the crowd was still growing. A CNN news crew had been allowed through and Mitchell told them everything even including the train wreck and the body he thought was in the trunk of the car. Another news team corroborated the story when they found a man had been pulled from the train wreckage with bogus Department of Transportation identification.

As dawn approached, Mitchell had done what he had set out to do. The word was out. He’d told his side of the story, and for the first time in what felt like an eternity, he was able to be in the middle of the crowd and not feel intense rage. In fact, he felt the opposite. Everywhere he looked he saw a sympathetic face.

A new deal was brokered and Mitchell left his spot where he’d been sitting for almost 24 hours and walked toward an ambulance waiting to take him into isolation over at the CDC a few miles away. People high-fived him and touched him on the shoulder as he made his way through the crowd that had answered his plea.

Mitchell got into the ambulance and sat next to two of the scientists he’d spoken to earlier. They’d changed out of their fantasy costumes and donned spacesuits like his. One of them mentioned a possible treatment they could give to Mitchell that might change his body’s pheromonal trigger. Another said they might be able to rapidly develop an anti-anti-Mitch virus that would allow medical workers and other people to be around him without spacesuits and not try to rip his face off. Mitchell made a comment about being able to look forward to not having to post ads on Craigslist for women who were into gasmask sex and then fell asleep for the short ride to his new home.