Stephen King - The Running Man

Richards lay passively, holding the pistol lightly in his right hand, thinking how different Bradley had looked in the gang suit. It was a sober Dillon Street double-breasted, as gray as bank walls. It was rounded off with a maroon tie and a small gold NAACP pin. Bradley had made the leap from scruffy gang-member (pregnant ladies stay away; some of us’ns eat fetuses) to a sober black business fellow who would know exactly who to Tom.

“You look good,” Richards said admiringly. “In fact, it’s damn incredible.”

“Praise Gawd,” Ma said.

“I thought you’d enjoy the transformation, my good man,” Bradley said with quiet dignity. “I’m the district manager for Raygon Chemicals, you know. We do a thriving business in this area. Fine city, Boston. Immensely convivial.”

Stacey burst into giggles.

“You best shut up, nigger,” Bradley said. “Else I make you shit in yo boot an eat it.”

“You Tom so good, Bradley,” Stacey giggled, not intimidated in the least. “You really fuckin funky.”

Now the car swung right, onto a smoother surface, and descended in a spiraling arc. They were on an entrance ramp. Going onto 495 or a feeder expressway. Copper wires of tension were stuffed into his legs.

One in eleven. That’s not bad odds.

The car picked up speed and height, kicked into drive, then slowed abruptly and kicked out. A voice, terrifyingly close, yelling with monotonous regularity: “Pull over… have your license and registration ready… pull over… have your-”

Already. Starting already.

You so hot, man.

Hot enough to check the trunk on one car in eight? Or six? Or maybe every one?

The car came to a full stop. Richards’s eyes moved like trapped rabbits in their sockets. He gripped the revolver.

“Step out your vehicle, sir,” the bored, authoritative voice was saying. “License and registration, please.”

A door opened and closed. The engine thrummed softly, holding the car an inch off the paving.

”-district manager for Raygon Chemicals-”

Bradley going into his song and dance. Dear God, what if he didn’t have the papers to back it up? What if there was no Raygon Chemicals?

The back door opened, and someone began rummaging in the back seat. It sounded as if the cop (or was it the Government Guard that did this, Richards wondered half coherently) was about to crawl right into the trunk with him.

The door slammed. Feet walked around to the back of the car. Richards licked his lips and held the gun tighter. Visions of dead policemen gibbered before him, angelic faces on twisted, porcine bodies. He wondered if the cop would hose him with machine-gun bullets when he opened the trunk and saw Richards lying here like a curled-up salamander. He wondered if Bradley would take off, try to run. He was going to piss himself. He hadn’t done that since he was a kid and his brother would tickle him until his bladder let go. Yes, all those muscles down there were loosening. He would put the bullet right at the juncture of the cop’s nose and forehead, splattering brains and splintered skull-fragments in startled streamers to the sky. Make a few more orphans. Yes. Good. Jesus loves me, this I know, for my bladder tells me so. Christ Jesus, what’s he doing, ripping the seat out? Sheila, I love you so much and how far will six grand take you? A year, maybe, if they don’t kill you for it. Then on the street again, up and down, cross on the corner, swinging the hips, flirting with the empty pocketbook. Hey mister, I go down, this is clean kitty, kid, teach you how-

A hand whacked the top of the trunk casually in passing. Richards bit back a scream. Dust in his nostrils, throat tickling. High school biology, sitting in the back row, scratching his initials and Sheila’s on the ancient desk-top: The sneeze is a function of the involuntary muscles. I’m going to sneeze my goddam head off but it’s pointblank and I can still put that bullet right through his squash and-

“What’s in the trunk, mister?”

Bradley’s voice, jocular, a little bored: “A spare cylinder that doesn’t work half right. I got the key on my ring. Wait, I’ll get it.”

“If I wanted it, I’d ask.”

Other back door opened; closed.

“Drive on.”

“Hang tight, fella. Hope you get him.”

“Drive on, mister. Move your ass.”

The cylinders cranked up. The car lifted and accelerated. It slowed once and must have been waved on. Richards jolted a little as the car rose, sailed a little, and kicked into drive. His breath came in tired little moans. He didn’t have to sneeze any more.

The ride seemed much longer than an hour and a half, and they were stopped twice more. One of them seemed to be a routine license check. At the next one a drawling cop with a dull-wilted voice talked to Bradley for some time about how the goddam commie bikers were helping that guy Richards and probably the other one, too. Laughlin had not killed anyone, but it was rumored that he had raped a woman in Topeka.

After that there was nothing but the monotonous whine of the wind and the scream of his own cramped and frozen muscles. Richards did not sleep, but his punished mind did finally push him into a dazed semi-consciousness. There was no carbon monoxide with the air cars, thank God for that.

Centuries after the last roadblock, the car kicked into a lower gear and banked up a spiraling exit ramp. Richards blinked sluggishly and wondered if he was going to throw up. For the first time in his life he felt carsick.

They went through a sickening series of loops and dives that Richards supposed was a traffic interchange. Another five minutes and city sounds took over again. Richards tried repeatedly to shift his body into a new position, but it was impossible. He finally subsided, waiting numbly for it to be over. His right arm, which was curled under him, had gone to sleep an hour ago. Now it felt like a block of wood. He could touch it w4h the tip of his nose and feel only the pressure on his nose.

They took a right, went straight for a little, then turned again. The bottom dropped out of Richards’s stomach as the car dipped down a sharp incline. The echoing of the cylinders told him that they were inside. They had gotten to the garage-

A little helpless sound of relief escaped him.

“Got your check, buddy?” A voice asked.

“Right here, pal.”

“Rampway 5.”

“Thanks.”

They bore right. The car went up, paused, turned right again, then left. They settled into idle, then the car dropped with a soft bump as the engine died. Journey’s end.

There was a pause, then the hollow sound of Bradley’s door opening and closing. His footsteps clicked toward the trunk, then the chink of light in front of Richards’s eyes disappeared as the key slid home.

“You there, Bennie?”

“No,” he croaked. “You left me back at the state line. Open this goddam thing.”

“Just a second. Place is empty right now. Your car’s parked next to us. On the right. Can you get out quick?”

“I don’t know.”

“Try hard. Here we go.”

The trunk lid popped up, letting in dim garage light. Richards got up on one arm, got one leg over the edge, and could go no farther. His cramped body screamed. Bradley took one arm and hauled him out. His legs wanted to buckle. Bradley hooked him under the armpit and half led, half pushed him to the battered green Wint on the right. He propped open the driver’s side door, shoved Richards in, and slammed it shut. A moment later Bradley also slid in.

“Jesus,” he said softly. “We got here, man. We got here.”

“Yeah,” Richards said. “Back to Go. Collect two hundred dollars.”