Stephen King: The Running Man

“Cough.”

Richards coughed.

“Move along.”

His temperature was taken. He was asked to spit in a cup. Halfway, now. Halfway down the hall. Two or three men had already finished up, and an orderly with a pasty face and rabbit teeth was bringing them their clothes in wire baskets. Half a dozen more had been pulled out of the line and shown the stairs.

“Bend over and spread your cheeks.”

Richards bent and spread. A finger coated with plastic invaded his rectal channel, explored, retreated.

“Move along.”

He stepped into a booth with curtains on three sides, like the old voting booths voting booths had been done away with by computer election eleven years ago and urinated in a blue beaker. The doctor took it and put it in a wire rack.

At the next stop he looked at an eye-chart. “Read,” the doctor said.

“ E-A, L-D, M, F-S, P, M, Z-K, L, A, C, D-U, S, G, A-”

“ That’s enough. Move along.”

He entered another pseudo voting booth and put earphones over his head. He was told to push the white button when he heard something and the red button when he didn’t hear it anymore. The sound was very high and faint-like a dog whistle that had been pitch-lowered into just audible human range. Richards pushed buttons until he was told to stop.

He was weighed. His arches were examined. He stood in front of a fluoroscope and put on a lead apron. A doctor, chewing gum and singing something tunelessly under his breath, took several pictures and noted his card number.

Richards had come in with a group of about thirty. Twelve had made it to the far end of the room. Some were dressed and waiting for the elevator. About a dozen more had been hauled out of line. One of them tried to attack the doctor that had cut him and was felled by a policeman wielding a move-along at full charge. The pal fell as if poleaxed.

Richards stood at a low table and was asked if he had had some fifty different diseases. Most of them were respiratory in nature. The doctor looked up sharply when Richards said there was a case of influenza in the family.

“Wife?”

“No. My daughter.”

“Age?”

“A year and a half.”

“Have you been immunized? Don’t try to lie!” the doctor shouted suddenly, as if Richards had already tried to lie. “We’ll check your health stats.”

“Immunized July 2023. Booster September 2023. Block health clinic.”

“Move along.”

Richards had a sudden urge to reach over the table and pop the maggot’s neck. Instead, he moved along.

At the last stop, a severe-looking woman doctor with close-cropped hair and an Electric Juicer plugged into one ear asked him if he was a homosexual.

“No.”

“Have you ever been arrested on a felony charge?”

“No.”

“Do you have any severe phobias? By that I mean-”

“No.”

“You better listen to the definition,” she said with a faint touch of condescension. “I mean-”

“Do I have any unusual and compulsive fears, such as acrophobia or claustrophobia. I don’t.”

Her lips pressed tightly together, and for a moment she seemed on the verge of sharp comment.

“Do you use or have you used any hallucinogenic or addictive drugs?”

“No.”

“Do you have any relatives who have been arrested on charges of crimes against the government or against the Network?”

“No.”

“Sign this loyalty oath and this Games Commission release form, Mr., uh, Richards.”

He scratched his signature.

“Show the orderly your card and tell him the number-”

He left her in midsentence and gestured at the bucktoothed orderly with his thumb. “Number twenty-six, Bugs.” The orderly brought his things. Richards dressed slowly and went over by the elevator. His anus felt hot and embarrassed, violated, a little slippery with the lubricant the doctor had used.

When they were all bunched together, the elevator door opened. The bulletproof Judas hole was empty this time. The cop was a skinny man with a large wen beside his nose. “Step to the rear,” he chanted. “Please step to the rear.”

As the doors closed, Richards could see the S’s coming in at the far end of the hall. The doctor with the clipboard was approaching them. Then the doors clicked together, cutting off the view.

They rode up to the third floor, and the doors opened on a huge, semi-lit dormitory. Rows and rows of narrow iron-and-canvas cots seemed to stretch out to infinity.

Two cops began to check them out of the elevator, giving them bed numbers. Richards’s was 940. The cot had one brown blanket and a very flat pillow. Richards lay down on the cot and let his shoes drop to the floor. His feet dangled over the end; there was nothing to be done about it.

He crossed his arms under his head and stared at the ceiling.

He was awakened promptly at six the following morning by a very loud buzzer. For a moment he was foggy, disoriented, wondering if Sheila had bought an alarm clock or what. Then it came to him and he sat up.

They were led by groups of fifty into a large industrial bathroom where they showed their cards to a camera guarded by a policeman. Richards went to a blue-tiled booth that contained a mirror, a basin, a shower, a toilet. On the shelf above the basin was a row of toothbrushes wrapped in cellophane, an electric razor, a bar of soap, and a half-used tube of toothpaste. A sign tucked into the corner of the mirror read: RESPECT THIS PROPERTY! Beneath it, someone had scrawled: I ONLY RESPECT MY ASS!

Richards showered, dried with a towel that topped a pile on the toilet tank, shaved, and brushed.

They were let into a cafeteria where they showed their L D. cards again. Richards took a tray and pushed it down a stainless steel ledge. He was given a box of cornflakes, a greasy dish of home fries, a scoop of scrambled eggs, a piece of toast as cold and hard as a marble gravestone, a halfpint of milk, a cup of muddy coffee (no cream), an envelope of sugar, an envelope of salt, and a pat of fake butter on a tiny square of oily paper.

He wolfed the meal; they all did. For Richards it was the first real food, other than greasy pizza wedges and government pill-commodities, that he had eaten in God knew how long. Yet it was oddly bland, as if some vampire chef in the kitchen had sucked all the taste out of it and left only brute nutrients.

What were they eating this morning? Kelp pills. Fake milk for the baby. A sudden feeling of desperation swelled over him. Christ, when would they start seeing money? Today? Tomorrow? Next week?

Or maybe that was just a gimmick too, a flashy come-on. Maybe there wasn’t even any rainbow, let alone a pot of gold.

He sat staring at his empty plate until the seven o’clock buzzer went and they were moved on to the elevators.

On the fourth floor Richards’s group of fifty was herded first into a large, furniture-less room ringed with what looked like letter slots. They showed their cards again, and the elevator doors whooshed closed behind them.

A gaunt man with receding hair with the Games emblem (the silhouette of a human head superimposed over a torch) on his lab coat came into the room.

“Please undress and remove all valuables from your clothes,” he said. “Then drop your clothes into one of the incinerator slots. You’ll be issued Games coveralls.” He smiled magnanimously. “You may keep the coveralls no matter what your personal Games resolution may be.”

There was some grumbling, but everyone complied.

“Hurry, please,” the gaunt man said. He clapped his hands together twice, like a first-grade teacher signaling the end of playtime. “We have lots ahead of us.”