Train station

     See, trains are actually pretty awesome, you sit, relax, watch out the window, and nobody really bugs you. I love riding on trains, just taking your time and enjoying it. The bitch of trains is transfers. We had to swap trains twice on the way to chicago. It was the second stop that really messed with us.  We were hopping off of our second train, looking for our third, I don't even know what town it was, The station looked pretty familiar, but I mean, there's kind of a running aesthetic with train stations, so it could've been anywhere. Anyway, we were waiting on a bench, because our train wasn't due for an hour, and someone sat down next to allen. He was wearing a hoodie, so I couldn't really see his face at first. I thought it was a homeless guy, to be honest. Then, Allen stood up with him, and gestured for me to leave. I didn't know what was happening. The man in the hoodie had a fist pressed up against Allen's side, and I realized that the stranger had a gun pressed into him. They walked off, and I was fairly certain that Allen was about to be mugged. I figured, if I'm being honest, that Allen could handle a mugger, So I backed away from them, taking our bags with me. Then, the man with the gun pulled Allen into a security booth, and I realized something was genuinely going on. Not a mugging, something serious. I know that sounds weird to say that a mugging wasn't serious, but I hope you know what I mean. I ran to the door, but it was locked, and I couldn't get it open. It had all been so calm, I hadn't realized that anything serious was happening, but suddenly I was alone in a strange city, and Allen had been taken. We missed the train.

Regroup

We emerged from the woods about a week later, on Topanga canyon road. We looked, for all intents and purposes, like a pair of college guys who had just taken a long hike in the woods. We wandered into santa monica, and found a funky diner to have our first properly cooked meal in a week. We had some snack while we were hiding, but it wasn't much. We were more or less at a loss at this point. I mean, we knew what the formula could do, and we knew that people were hunting it. We didn't know what they wanted to use it for, but based on the effects it had had on that rat, it was nothing good. We also didn't have a car anymore, and most of our stuff was gone. We decided that the thing for us to do was regroup. Allen called Silas to see where he was, and what was going on with him. He said that he didn't have much that he could say on the phone, but he was headed back to the bank. We checked our cash supplies, and decided we'd meet him there.

We were on terror lists now, so a plane trip was out of the question. Which left us with two options: buy a used car, or hop a train. We decided to play it frugal, and take a train. It's about two and a half days from L.A. to Chicago by train, and it costs about $800 a person. When I get a chance to write again, I'll explain why it took us almost a week.

Helicopter

     Have you ever seen a police chase on the news? The car seems like it's going so slow, you think "Why aren't they trying to run?" They are. see, it's just like planes in the sky, the farther away they are, the slower they appear to be moving. Those people are driving a hundred miles an hour, but from the chopper, it looks like their car is powered by flintstone feet. When you're in the car, though, everything speeds by.

     The hardest part of the whole thing is trying to figure out how to lose the chopper. Cars are easy to ditch, since you can usually blend into a large group of cars, and if you drive smart enough, they'll lose sight of you, and then you split in a way they're not expecting. A helicopter, on the other hand, has a crazy field of view, so it's more than a matter of driving in front of a semi-truck. If you're clever, though, and I tend to think that Allen was a pretty clever guy, you find a way to make that height useless.

We Shot up the 405, with the helicopter and several cars tightly in tow, and made our way toward Mulholland Drive. Allen told me to get unbuckled, and to start packing our gear, especially anything identifying, and everything related to the hunt, into as few bags as I could manage. He, meanwhile, was flicking around on my phone, looking at maps. I grabbed everything I could, opening the back seat to get to the trunk, and digging through everything. Living in a car can really take a toll on your tidiness. I had two bags packed when we got off of the freeway, and got onto Mulholland, Which we were only on for a couple of minutes. The cars weren't behind us anymore, but the helicopter had tight eyes on us. Allen warned me that we were about to get into some real dangerous shit, and I laughed, as he pulled us into someplace very residential. He switched on cruise control, and steered as he put on his pack, and shoved any last things he could manage into it. Then, he turned us into some little side street/culdesac/suburban nightmare, and told me to be ready to jump. He swung a hard left through a side yard, and shouted while the car was under some trees, and we both rolled out of the car. One of the smaller bags I had with me snagged in the door, and I almost got pulled along, but I tore it off my arm, luckily. We dashed for cover as the car continued down the path it was on. The chopper followed it, and we scrambled away. The car headed down a dirt road toward the "Upper Stone Canyon Reservoir" which yes, I did look up afterward. The bag that was caught on the door was full of cash, and scattered bills all down the road. We didn't stop to think about it, we still had plenty of cash, and, more importantly, we had to get the hell out of there.

     We headed to opposite direction of the car, hiding in the trees, and making our way toward the 405 again. We spent a long time hiking through the very posh woods out there, just trying to outrun the search crews radiating from the crash of our car. It was another long while before we had any contact with the world. But we spent a lot of time sitting around small, dark fires thinking. I waited four months before I ever found out what happened to Kevin. I've never felt guiltier about anything.