Stephen King - The Running Man

“I want to tell everybody in the studio and at home that that wasn’t my wife! That was a cheap fake-”

The crowd drowned him out. Their screams of hate had reached a near fever pitch. Thompson waited nearly a minute for them to quiet a little, and then repeated: “How long do you expect to hold out, Mister Richards?”

“I expect to go the whole thirty,” Richards said coolly. “I don’t think you’ve got anybody who can take me.”

More screaming. Shaken fists. Someone threw a tomato.

Bobby Thompson faced the audience again and cried: “With those last cheap words of bravado, Mr. Richards will be led from our stage. Tomorrow at noon, the hunt begins. Remember his face! It may be next to you on a pneumo bus… in a jet plane… at a 3-D rack… in your local killball arena. Tonight he’s in Harding. Tomorrow in New York? Boise? Albuquerque? Columbus? Skulking outside your home? Will you report him?”

“ YESS!!!” They screamed.

Richards suddenly gave them the finger-both fingers. This time the rush for the stage was by no stretch of the imagination simulated. Richards was rushed out the stage-left exit before they could rip him apart on camera, thus depriving the Network of all the juicy upcoming coverage.

Killian was in the wings, and convulsed with amusement. “Fine performance, Mr. Richards. Fine! God, I wish I could give you a bonus. Those fingers… superb!”

“We aim to please,” Richards said. The monitors were dissolving to a promo. “Give me the goddam camera and go fuck yourself.”

“That’s generically impossible,” Killian said, still grinning, “but here’s the camera.” He took it from the technico who had been cradling it. “Fully loaded and ready to go. And here are the clips.” He handed Richards a small, surprisingly heavy oblong box wrapped in oilcloth.

Richards dropped the camera into one coat pocket, the clips into the other. “Okay. Where’s the elevator?”

“Not so fast,” Killian said. “You’ve got a minute… twelve of them, actually. Your twelve hours’ leeway doesn’t start officially until six-thirty.”

The screams of rage had begun again. Looking over his shoulder, Richards saw that Laughlin was on. His heart went out to him.

“I like you, Richards, and I think you’ll do well,” Killian said. “You have a certain crude style that I enjoy immensely. I’m a collector, you know. Cave art and Egyptian artifacts are my areas of specialization. You are more analogous to the cave art than to my Egyptian urns, but no matter. I wish you could be preserved-collected, if you please just as my Asian cave paintings have been collected and preserved.”

“Grab a recording of my brain waves, you bastard. They’re on record.”

“So I’d like to give you a piece of advice,” Killian said, ignoring him. “You don’t really have a chance; nobody does with a whole nation in on the manhunt and with the incredibly sophisticated equipment and training that the Hunters have. But if you stay low, you’ll last longer. Use your legs instead of any weapons you happen to pick up. And stay close to your own people.” He leveled a finger at Richards in emphasis. “Not these good middle-class folks out there; they hate your guts. You symbolize all the fears of this dark and broken time. It wasn’t all show and audience-packing out there, Richards. They hate your guts. Could you feel it?”

“Yes,” Richards said. “I felt it. I hate them, too.”

Killian smiled. “That’s why they’re killing you.” He took Richards’s arm; his grip was surprisingly strong. “This way.”

Behind them, Laughlin was being ragged by Bobby Thompson to the audience’s satisfaction.

Down a white corridor, their footfalls echoing hollowly-alone. All alone. One elevator at the end.

“This is where you and I part company,” Killian said. “Express to the street. Nine seconds.”

He offered his hand for the fourth time, and Richards refused it again. Yet he lingered a moment.

“What if I could go up?” he asked, and gestured with his head toward the ceiling and the eighty stories above the ceiling. “Who could I kill up there? Who could I kill if I went right to the top?”

Killian laughed softly and punched the button beside the elevator; the doors popped open. “That’s what I like about you, Richards. You think big.”

Richards stepped into the elevator. The doors slid toward each other.

“Stay low,” Killian repeated, and then Richards was alone.

The bottom dropped out of his stomach as the elevator sank toward the street.

The elevator opened directly onto the street. A cop was standing by its frontage on Nixon Memorial Park, but he did not look at Richards as he stepped out; only tapped his move-along reflectively and stared into the soft drizzle that filled the air.

The drizzle had brought early dusk to the city. The lights glowed mystically through the darkness, and the people moving on Rampart Street in the shadow of the Games Building were only insubstantial shadows, as Richards knew he must be himself. He breathed deeply of the wet, sulphur-tainted air. It was good in spite of the taste. It seemed that he had just been let out of prison, rather than from one communicating cell to another. The air was good. The air was fine.

Stay close to your own people, Killian had said. Of course he was right. Richards hadn’t needed Killian to tell him that. Or to know that the heat would be heaviest in Co-Op City when the truce broke at noon tomorrow. But by then he would be over the hills and far away.

He walked three blocks and hailed a taxi. He was hoping the cab’s Free-Vee would be busted-a lot of them were-but this one was in A-1 working order, and blaring the closing credits of The Running Man. Shit.

“Where, buddy?”

“Robard Street.” That was five blocks from his destination; when the cab dropped him, he would go backyard express to Moue’s place.

The cab accelerated, ancient gas-powered engine a discordant symphony of pounding pistons and manifold noise. Richards slumped back against the vinyl cushions, into what he hoped was deeper shadow.

“Hey, I just seen you on the Free-Vee!” the cabbie exclaimed. “You’re that guy Pritchard!”

“Pritchard. That’s right,” Richards said resignedly. The Games Building was dwindling behind them. A psychological shadow seemed to be dwindling proportionally in his mind, in spite of the bad luck with the cabby.

“Jesus, you got balls, buddy. I’ll say that. You really do. Christ, they’ll killya. You know that? They’ll killya fuckin-eye dead. You must really have balls.”

“That’s right. Two of them. Just like you.”

“Two of ’em!” the cabby repeated. He was ecstatic. “Jesus, that’s good. That’s hot! You mind if I tell my wife I hadja as a fare? She goes batshit for the Games. I’ll hafts reportcha too, but Christ, I won’t get no hunnert for it. Cabbies gotta have at least one supportin witness, y'know. Knowin my luck, no one sawya gettin in.”

“That would be tough,” Richards said. “I’m sorry you can’t help kill me. Should I leave a note saying I was here?”

“Jesus, couldja? That’d be-”

They had just crossed the Canal. “Let me out here,” Richards said abruptly. He pulled a New Dollar from the envelope Thompson had handed him, and dropped it on the front seat.

“Gee, I didn’t say nothin, did I? I dint meanta-”

“No,” Richards said.

“Couldja gimme that note-”

“Get stuffed, maggot.”

He lunged out and began walking toward Drummond Street. Co-Op City rose skeletal in the gathering darkness before him. The cabbie’s yell floated after him: “ I hope they getya early, you cheap fuck!”