Excerpt from The Boomer Protocols

The tricky part is that if you screw up, you might fall under the wheels. Happened a couple of times to some hoboes who tried it with a few bottles of muscatel warming their bellies.
I'm a couple of miles from the town of Bordon Heights, right outside of Kansas. They call it that because the town is situated at the base of a series of hills. No big deal, not mountains or anything, just hills. On the other side of the track is Lockchee Creek, an offshoot of some river whose name I forget. Since the hills aren't made of rocks, the railroad decided it would be easier to cut through rather than build a bridge across the creek. When the trains come down and around the hill, they have to slow down to negotiate the turn. There're a few yards of flat rail bed that you can run, right beside the slowing train, grab a hold of the wagon and climb on.
It's a little past eleven at night. I figure I've got about three to five minutes, just enough to rattle some cages. That's how I want them, rattled—knowing I'm still around and messing with them. I pick up the cell phone and hit the speed dial. There's only one number there, the only call I'll make.
"Anton," the voice answers.
"You know, you really should work on your phone manners," I say. "I mean, an organization like yours? People will think you folks are inbred or something."
"Where are you?"
I laugh, always the joker that Anton Dimitri, a regular comic. "On my way to you," I reply and shut the phone down. I pitch it across the tracks into the creek. It's one of those pre-loaded cells, anonymous and untraceable. I've no doubt they have the resources to track the location of the call, but I chose it well. There's an interstate that passes nearby and a regional airport less than three miles away. Although they'll have the exact location of the call, I could have gone in a number of directions besides the train. I figure Khan will dispatch at least four teams. He'll try covering all the routes I could have taken. I'm sure Anton will be directing the effort. He'll probably run one of the teams himself. They've been trying to nail me since 1952. Especially Anton. He's missing two fingers on his left hand from the last time we met.
Daddy didn't just cure my polio back in 1950. Although he didn't know it would happen, the procedure gave me certain abilities. That's the reason why originally they wanted to study me. Capture me, poke and prod, dissect, run experiments, the whole nine yards. Over the years it's gone well beyond that.
Now they just want to kill me.
And I just want to destroy them.
I close my eyes and listen to the night. There're two people about twenty yards down the tracks. It's okay. I've run into them earlier, just a couple of travelers waiting to catch the same train. They gave me a bowl of hobo stew earlier and offered to have me travel with them. "Preciate it," I'd replied, but I got my own schedule. Nice folks, even if they live on the edges of society, like me. They're concerned because I look about sixteen.
Actually, by last count, I'm seventy-eight. I understand their concerns, but traveling with me would probably get them killed.
I feel the vibrations. The train is very close. I sense a possum scurrying in the underbrush and an owl on the hunt. The moon is absent, the night is very dark under the overcast and I can smell distant mountains washed over by far away breezes.
A beam of light explodes around the bend and the locomotive comes into view. The noise level cranks up and the train passes right in front of me. I let the first few wagons pass then I run alongside. I grab the sidebar of an empty car with my left hand and swing myself into the open door. Even though my right arm and hand looks okay, there's hardly any strength there. That's the result of the polio before dad's efforts took hold.
I watch the night pass as the train enters the straightaway. It picks up speed again. I'm on my way to New York.