by Andrew Mayne
PUBLIC ENEMY ZERO
By Andrew Mayne
Copyright © 2011 Andrew Mayne
Cover Copyright © 2011 Andrew Mayne
@AndrewMayne
andrewmaynebooks.com
This book is a work of fiction.
Acknowledgements
Special thanks to Justin Robert Young, Adam Marcus and everyone who helped me with this book: Dan Dirks, Lachlan Burns, Steve Griffin, RKMagic, Becky Graves, James Walsh, Ryan Crutchfield, Mario Orsini, Matt Cairoli, Eliyahu Wincelberg, Dave Egleston, Drew Dickelman, Iris Newman and Dennis Owens.
Prologue
The Naked Man in the Forest sat on a rotting ash tree trunk and stared at a tangle of vines on a nearby oak. Sunlight filtered through the leaves, casting thousands of pinpoints of light on the ground like tiny golden stars.
He could feel insects crawling over him. The moss under his scrotum was making him itch. But he remained still. Even as mosquitoes landed on his bare flesh and drank from him, he did nothing. He was waiting for Her to appear. Sometimes she made him wait hours. It was her way.
He was tiny and insignificant in her presence. He thought he had sinned in her eyes. He’d gotten lost in his Otherself and forgotten who he truly was. Birds chirped and forest things went about their work in the brush around him. He sat quietly, thankful that She had let him sit in her garden.
He watched as the vines on the oak began to undulate. Green leaves formed into supple lips. White flowers formed her eyes. Moss and twigs formed the bridge of her nose, and her beautiful face formed before him.
Hello my child.
Tears welled in his eyes. He was always happiest in her presence. Without her, he was nothing. He was worse than nothing; he was a pestilence. Something wicked and dark.
Why are you crying my child?
The naked man cleared his throat. Guilt stifled his words. Her face, so perfect, so wise, encouraged him.
“Earth Mother, I have sinned,” he said, his face filled with shame. “I have forgotten who I am. I let ... I let the Otherself lead me astray.”
He wanted to look away but couldn’t bear not experiencing her presence. He looked down at his pale skin. “I feel like I’ve lost my way.”
Oh child, your path is a difficult one. But you’re here now. You haven’t lost your way. The Otherself can be confusing, but where are you happiest?
“Here, Earth Mother.”
And who do you love?
“You, Earth Mother!”
And you have earned my love. I’m so proud of you. You’ve gone so far. We’ve come so close. So very close.
“How much longer must I be the Otherself?”
When my eggs are ready for the world. When the time of the cleansing is upon us. Until then, you must be the Otherself. You must continue to build trust. You must protect my eggs.
“Yes, Earth Mother.” He wiped away tears. “I know your suffering is so much greater than my own. Being apart from you is just … I feel so vile.”
I know, my child. Soon your suffering will be over. The darkness will be gone, and you will live in my garden for all of eternity.
The Naked Man in the Forest watched the vines slide away and her face fade. She wasn’t truly gone; she was still all around him in the trees, the birds, the dirt beneath his feet. Her mother face was just a way for him to look upon her and know she was looking back.
When he was the Otherself, he forgot what her presence really meant. Although the Otherself was doing her bidding, he loathed that being to the core.
The Otherself was everything that was wrong with the world. The Otherself was why Earth Mother suffered. Otherself and all its kin were the darkness casting their shadow on Earth Mother. Soon, she promised, soon that would change. He could cast aside the Otherself once and for all and be the child of Earth Mother forever.
The Naked Man in the Forest walked back to the clothes the Otherself wore. He brushed the itchy moss off his backside and pulled on his underwear. When he picked up his pants, a small Ziploc bag fell from his pocket. He picked it up and tossed it aside.
It had been over a year since he’d had to take the blotters of LSD to clearly see the Earth Mother. Now she came just as vividly as ever without it. Of course, in the forest was the only place he could see her. But he could hear her all the time telling him what to do.
The Naked Man in the Forest put on the rest of his clothes, and the Otherself walked back to his car.
1
The light turned red and Mitchell pressed the brake pedal. Although the street was deserted, he looked around self-consciously as the worn-down brake pads let out a squeal when they brought the car to a stop. Up ahead, a row of streetlights seemed to stretch on to infinity into the horizon. Each one cast a small protective circle of amber light on the wet ground. On the side of the intersection, he noticed the blinking hazard lights of a car that had pulled over to the shoulder.
A heavy-set woman in a waitress uniform struggled with a spare tire at the rear of her car. Mitchell instinctively looked at his broken clock and then to his iPhone. He was going to be late. He wondered why she didn’t call someone to help her fix the tire. Then he noticed the condition of the car. It wasn’t much better off than his. Maybe she didn’t have anyone to call or a phone to call them, he wondered, feeling sorry for her.
The light changed to green. He decided to go slowly through the intersection.
When his front wheels touched the crosswalk on the other side, he watched the woman fall over where the grass met the side of the road. The tire went rolling before falling on its side, mocking her fall.
Mitchell let out a sigh. He turned on his blinkers and pulled his car up ahead of her so he didn’t pull in behind her and scare her. She was having a bad enough night. He didn’t want to make her think she was about to get raped.
He left his car door open as he stepped out. At his back bumper, he called out to the woman.
“Need any help?”
She looked up from the ground where she was assessing her situation and her life. Rivulets of mascara ran down the sides of her eyes. She wiped the tears and snot from her nose. “Yeah.” She paused for a moment trying to make out the figure in the dark. He looked young and clean-cut. “My boyfriend is on the way, but I could use a hand.”
Mitchell questioned the existence of the boyfriend but said nothing.
“Let’s take a look.”
He walked over to where she was sitting and offered her a hand up. He looked to see where the tire had rolled to. Suddenly his left eye saw a flash of red as his temple felt something hit. Mitchell let go of her hand and stumbled backward.
“Fuck!” Confused, he looked to see where the rock had been thrown from.
The woman balled up the fist of the hand he had just let go and let loose another punch. This one landed on the side of his jaw.
Mitchell jerked back, trying to understand.
That’s when he saw the expression in her eyes and her teeth bared at him.
She screamed and came at him with her hands outstretched. Her fingernails swung at him like claws. He jumped back as they grazed his chest. He opened his own arms wide in an instinctive gesture. She came at him again, her thick legs pushing against the ground as she tried to catapult at his neck.
Mitchell jumped back again, and she fell flat on the ground, making a thud. Mitchell thought he heard something crack. She shouted incomprehensible swear words at him in a voice that sounded more animal than human.
He stepped forward to see if she was all right. Bloodshot eyes looked up at him. Red was pouring from her nose, and her cheek had road rash. The woman screamed at him again and then came to her feet much more spryly than he thought possible.
Mitch
ell backed up again. He was trying to understand what he had done. What had he said?
She ran toward him again. He backed away and turned into a jog.
He could hear her feet clopping on the ground as she chased after him. She was getting closer. Mitchell wanted to shout back and ask her what was going on, but he was too panicked to say anything. He didn’t even know what to say.
Behind him her pace slowed down as her body began to give out. She screamed out in a hoarse voice.
Mitchell turned around. She was halfway between him and his car. He could keep running or make a break for his car and count on his greater speed to get him there fast enough to lock the door.
She got a second wind and burst toward him. Blood and snot dripped from her face as she pumped her arms and screeched out.
On impulse, Mitchell ran toward her. She raised her arms out to claw him. He jumped to the side and felt the wind as she overstepped and went past. He ran to his car without looking back.
Footsteps grew louder as he jumped through the open door. He pulled it shut as her fists came pounding against the window. Furious, she smashed her head against the window, trying to break the glass. Blood and snot splattered the window as her face made a sickening thud each time it struck.
His heart beating out of his chest, Mitchell fumbled through his pockets to find his keys. He threw his tangled iPhone earbuds on the ground before he felt his key ring. He turned the ignition, put it into drive and stepped on the gas as the woman started beating the glass with bloody knuckles.
The car’s bald tires spun out for a moment on the wet grass.
Mitchell screamed out, “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”
The car finally got traction and lurched forward.
Off-balanced, the woman fell into the muddy grass.
In the rearview mirror, Mitchell watched as she pulled herself up and ran after him. Her uniform was a mess of dirt and blood. She let out another scream and then came to a stop and stood there, blankly watching as he drove off.
Mitchell sped through a light as it turned yellow to gain as much distance as he could. His mind raced for an explanation for what just happened. He reached down to touch his fly in a moment of self-conscious panic, afraid that he’d approached her with his penis hanging out. His fly was in place. Mitchell felt stupid.
When it was obvious she wasn’t going to chase him down in her car with a flat tire, he began to relax. He pulled out his iPhone and contemplated calling 911.
And tell them what? All she had to say was that his fly was open or that he’d attacked her and it would be his word against hers. Her bloody face looked a lot worse than his. He put his phone back.
After he ran out of reasons to blame himself, he finally realized that she was probably just bipolar or something. For all he knew, she was racing home to get her medication before she flipped out. He just caught her at the wrong time. Crazy. That’s all.
He began to pity her like someone with Tourette’s. It’s not a condition anybody wants. After she got medicated, she’d probably feel horrible about it. Of course, he’d never got an apology from a girlfriend who started silly arguments during a period, so maybe she wouldn’t feel bad about it either. He knew it was an asshole thing to think.
With the threat diminished and the decision that she was just psycho, Mitchell began to calm down. He realized his seat belt alarm had been going off since he drove off. He clicked it into place and drove toward the radio station.
By the time he reached the parking lot, he was already debating whether to tell the story on the air.
He grabbed his backpack, got out of his car and looked at the bloody mess on his window and the kicked-in driver’s side door. Seeing that, he felt a little less sorry for the woman. He then felt guilty about that.
Mitchell swiped his card at the entrance and walked into the building. He decided to keep the story to himself for now.
2
At that hour of the night, the lobby and the rest of the building were empty except for Rookman in broadcast booth two. He ran the 10 p.m. to 1 a.m. shift. His show was a call-in conspiracy program with special guests who used nicknames like Truthseeker, Indian Joe, The Ghost Stalker and Dr. Annihilation.
Mitchell walked by the window and waved. Inside, a man in his late forties wearing a trucker’s hat pointed at his watch and gave Mitchell the finger.
Mitchell gave an apologetic shrug. Rookman grinned and waved him off.
All the station’s broadcast booths were about as big as a bathroom with the exception of the conference room where the morning crew did its show. It was usually filled with silly props and those magazines they give out at strip clubs. One of the hosts was in the middle of trying to avoid time for cocaine possession. The reason that it hadn’t made it into the papers was based in part because he used a fake radio name and the fact that their station was so under-listened to, nobody cared.
Mitch once heard that the advertising manager was talking about leaking the story to help their Arbitron numbers. It was that kind of station and that kind of business.
Mitch reached his booth and opened the door. The smell of bad coffee permeated it.
Oddly, he thought, he kind of missed it. He’d been gone for a week, and as much as he hated his job, it’d been the only connection he’d had with the outside world since Rachel broke up with him.
Granted, getting cursed at by drunks and having teenagers call in to scream obscenities wasn’t an ideal connection, but it was something.
He flipped on the monitor to listen to Rookman’s show while he did his own show prep, which basically consisted of pulling up some of his iTunes Genius lists and thinking of inane questions to ask people to generate some interesting calls.
Rookman was better at that. At that moment, he was talking to a man who claimed that a recent meteor spotted over the skies of Los Angeles that crashed into the ocean was actually a manned Chinese spacecraft on a secret mission.
The caller had a disarmingly calm voice that didn’t sound like a crackpot. He sounded like Kiefer Sutherland to Mitchell.
“You’ve said it over and over again, Rookman. People have to wake up. There’s a new Cold War going on. This fireball that came down wasn’t a meteor. It was a spacecraft. Talk to any scientist and they’ll tell you the re-entry doesn’t make sense for anything else.”
“So what was it?” asked Rookman.
“It goes back three years ago. Remember when the space shuttle made that secret mission to fix a military satellite? They found something. Something that scared the hell out of them. Now we all know that World War III isn’t going to be fought with nukes. It’s going to be with computers and biological warfare and in space.
“It’s not going to be over in years or even months or days. It’s going to be over in minutes. Whoever has the tactical advantage wins. One day, those of us that survived the night are going to flip on the television or go to Google’s homepage and see that someone else is in charge.”
“So what does this have to do with the meteor?”
“Spacecraft, Rookman. We’re talking about a spacecraft. So NASA sends their payload specialists up there. Guys who get their orders from underground in Langley and they see something on the satellite that’s not supposed to be there.”
“Describe for us what they saw,” said Rookman.
“Maybe the size of a cigar. It’s got an antenna, a large battery and piece of plastic explosive the size of your fingernail. When a call comes down and the powers that be decide it’s time to strike, you don’t have time to launch missiles or scramble jets or change satellite orbits. It’s going to happen in seconds. One minute everything is fine, the next minute all those Chinese-made computers that are routing our email and handling our phone calls and store photos of our pet dog are going to run a piece of code written in some university back in Beijing. Guess who’s in charge then?”
“I’m guessing not us,” replied Rookman.
“Well, the only thing stopping them is ou
r military advantage. The problem with that is it’s all controlled by satellites. So the solution there is to take them out. But it’s got to happen quickly. Instantly. So what do you do? You don’t try to shoot them with a laser that may or may not work. You don’t shoot missiles at them. You need something simple. You booby trap them.”
“So that’s what the space shuttle found? A booby trap on one of our satellites?”
“Exactly. Now you’re about to ask me what does that have to do with those Chinese astronauts that burned up over Santa Monica Pier. That was payback. The Chinese launch was a secret mission. They sent a small Soyuz capsule covered in radar-absorbing material into one of the same orbits as one of our birds.
“Only this time we’re ready. We hit them with a blast of microwaves from one of our communications satellites. It’s all it takes. We fry them in their capsule and everything goes haywire. Remember when half the country lost satellite TV four days ago? Guess the real reason why? So the astronauts are dead and the equipment is malfunctioning. The spaceship eventually loses orbit and comes crashing down to earth and lights up the sky over L.A.”
“That’s an incredible story.”
“Of course, the Chinese can’t say what happened and we can’t say anything, either. Neither one of us wants to let on to what we can do or what we know.”
“And that’s why it’s a cold war. Thank you again for calling in. I know I can say for everyone listening that we all appreciate the risk you take in bringing this to us.”
Next came the touch Mitchell loved the most about Rookman’s show when he had callers with government conspiracy stories.
“Now just to make it clear that we’re not asking anyone to violate state secrets and commit what some would call treason in doing their patriotic duty, I have to ask if you’re working for the government.”
At that point the caller hung up. Or at least to the audience it sounded like he hung up. Mitchell suspected that Rookman simply hung up on them to create a dramatic effect.