The Running Man

by Stephen King

  “Just bring me the receipts,” Richards said, and closed the door gently in the cop’s face.

  The bourbon came twenty minutes later, and Richards told the surprised deliveryman that he would like a couple of thick novels sent up.

  “Novels?”

  “Books. You know. Read. Words. Movable press.” Richards pantomimed flipping pages.

  “Yes, sir,” he said doubtfully. “Do you have a dinner order?”

  Christ, the shit was getting thick. He was drowning in it. Richards saw a sudden fantasy-cartoon: Man falls into outhouse hole and drowns in pink shit that smells like Chanel No. 5. The kicker: It still tastes like shit.

  “Steak. Peas. Mashed potatoes.” God, what was Sheila sitting down to? A protein pill and a cup of fake coffee? “Milk. Apple cobbler with cream. Got it?”

  “Yes, sir. Would you like—”

  “No,” Richards said, suddenly distraught. “No. Get out.” He had no appetite. Absolutely none.

  …Minus 084 and COUNTING…

  With sour amusement Richards thought that the Games bellboy had taken him literally about the novels: He must have picked them out with a ruler as his only guide. Anything over an inch and a half is okay. He had brought Richards three books he had never heard of: two golden oldies titled God Is an Englishman and Not as a Stranger and a huge tome written three years ago called The Pleasure of Serving. Richards peeked into that one first and wrinkled his nose. Poor boy makes good in General Stomics. Rises from engine wiper to gear tradesman. Takes night courses (on what? Richards wondered, Monopoly money?). Falls in love with beautiful girl (apparently syphilis hadn’t rotted her nose off yet) at a block orgy. Promoted to junior technico following dazzling aptitude scores. Three-year marriage contract follows, and—

  Richards threw the book across the room. God Is an Englishman was a little better. He poured himself a bourbon on the rocks and settled into the story.

  By the time the discreet knock came, he was three hundred pages in, and pretty well in the bag to boot. One of the bourbon bottles was empty. He went to the door holding the other in his hand. The cop was there. “Your receipts, Mr. Richards,” he said, and pulled the door closed.

  Sheila had not written anything, but had sent one of Cathy’s baby pictures. He looked at it and felt the easy tears of drunkenness prick his eyes. He put it in his pocket and looked at the other receipt. Charlie Grady had written briefly on the back of a traffic ticket form:

  Thanks, maggot. Get stuffed.

  Charlie Grady

  Richards snickered and let the paper flitter to the carpet. “Thanks, Charlie,” he said to the empty room. “I needed that.”

  He looked at the picture of Cathy again, a tiny, red-faced infant of four days at the time of the photo, screaming her head off, swimming in a white cradle dress that Sheila had made herself. He felt the tears lurking and made himself think of good old Charlie’s thank-you note. He wondered if he could kill the entire second bottle before he passed out, and decided to find out.

  He almost made it.

  …Minus 083 and COUNTING…

  Richards spent Saturday living through a huge hangover. He was almost over it by Saturday evening, and ordered two more bottles of bourbon with supper. He got through both of them and woke up in the pale early light of Sunday morning seeing large caterpillars with flat, murderous eyes crawling slowly down the far bedroom wall. He decided then it would be against his best interests to wreck his reactions completely before Tuesday, and laid off the booze.

  This hangover was slower dissipating. He threw up a good deal, and when there was nothing left to throw up, he had dry heaves. These tapered off around six o’clock Sunday evening, and he ordered soup for dinner. No bourbon. He asked for a dozen neo-rock discers to play on the suite’s sound system, and tired of them quickly.

  He went to bed early. And slept poorly.

  He spent most of Monday on the tiny glassed-in terrace that opened off the bedroom. He was very high above the waterfront now, and the day was a series of sun and showers that was fairly pleasant. He read two novels, went to bed early again, and slept a little better. There was an unpleasant dream: Sheila was dead, and he was at her funeral. Somebody had propped her up in her coffin and stuffed a grotesque corsage of New Dollars in her mouth. He tried to run to her and remove the obscenity; hands grabbed him from behind. He was being held by a dozen cops. One of them was Charlie Grady. He was grinning and saying “This is what happens to losers, maggot.” They were putting their pistols to his head when he woke up.

  “Tuesday,” he said to no one at all, and rolled out of bed. The fashionable G-A sunburst clock on the far wall said it was nine minutes after seven. The live tricast of The Running Man would be going out all over North America in less than eleven hours. He felt a hot drop of fear in his stomach. In twenty-three hours he would be fair game.

  He had a long hot shower, dressed in his coverall, ordered ham and eggs for breakfast. He also got the bellboy on duty to send up a carton of Blams.

  He spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon reading quietly. It was two o’clock on the nose when a single formal rap came at the door. Three police and Arthur M. Burns, looking potty and more than a bit ridiculous in a Games singlet, walked in. All of the cops were carrying move-alongs.

  “It’s time for your final briefing, Mr. Richards,” Burns said. “Would you—”

  “Sure,” Richards said. He marked his place in the book he had been reading and put it down on the coffee table. He was suddenly terrified, close to panic, and he was very glad there was no perceptible shake in his fingers.

  …Minus 082 and COUNTING…

  The tenth floor of the Games Building was a great deal different from the ones below, and Richards knew that he was meant to go no higher. The fiction of upward mobility which started in the grimy street-level lobby ended here on the tenth floor. This was the broadcast facility.

  The hallways were wide, white, and stark. Bright yellow go-carts powered by G-A solar-cell motors pottered here and there, carrying loads of Free-Vee technicos to studios and control rooms.

  A cart was waiting for them when the elevator stopped, and the five of them—Richards, Burns and cops—climbed aboard. Necks craned and Richards was pointed out several times as they made the trip. One woman in a yellow Games shorts-and-halter outfit winked and blew Richards a kiss. He gave her the finger.

  They seemed to travel miles, through dozens of interconnecting corridors. Richards caught glimpses into at least a dozen studios, one of them containing the infamous treadmill seen on Treadmill to Bucks. A tour group from uptown was trying it out and giggling.

  At last they came to a stop before a door which read THE RUNNING MAN: ABSOLUTELY NO ADMITTANCE. Burns waved to the guard in the bulletproof booth beside the door and then looked at Richards.

  “Put your I.D. in the slot between the guard booth and the door,” Burns said.

  Richards did it. His card disappeared into the slot, and a small light went on in the guard booth. The guard pushed a button and the door slid open. Richards got back into the cart and they were trundled into the room beyond.

  “Where’s my card?” Richards asked.

  “You don’t need it anymore.”

  They were in a control room. The console section was empty except for a bald technico who was sitting in front of a blank monitor screen, reading numbers into a microphone.

  Across to the left, Dan Killian and two men Richards hadn’t met were sitting around a table with frosty glasses. One of them was vaguely familiar, too pretty to be a technico.

  “Hello, Mr. Richards. Hello, Arthur. Would you care for a soft drink, Mr. Richards?”

  Richards found he was thirsty; it was quite warm on ten in spite of the many air-conditioning units he had seen. “I’ll have a Rooty-Toot,” he said.

  Killian rose, went to a cold-cabinet, and snapped the lid from a plastic squeeze-bottle. Richards sat down and took the bottle with a nod.

  “Mr
. Richards, this gentleman on my right is Fred Victor, the director of The Running Man. This other fellow, as I’m sure you know, is Bobby Thompson.”

  Thompson, of course. Host and emcee of The Running Man. He wore a natty green tunic, slightly iridescent, and sported a mane of hair that was silvery-attractive enough to be suspect.

  “Do you dye it?” Richards asked.

  Thompson’s impeccable eyebrows went up. “I beg pardon?”

  “Never mind,” Richards said.

  “You’ll have to make allowances for Mr. Richards,” Killian said, smiling. “He seems afflicted with an extreme case of the rudes.”

  “Quite understandable,” Thompson said, and lit a cigarette. Richards felt a wave of unreality surge over him. “Under the circumstances.”

  “Come over here, Mr. Richards, if you please,” Victor said, taking charge. He led Richards to the bank of screens on the other side of the room. The technico had finished with his numbers and had left the room.

  Victor punched two buttons and left-right views of The Running Man set sprang into view.

  “We don’t do a run-through here,” Victor said. “We think it detracts from spontaneity. Bobby just wings it, and he does a pretty damn good job. We go on at six o’clock, Harding time. Bobby is center stage on that raised blue dais. He does the lead-in, giving a rundown on you. The monitor will flash a couple of still pictures. You’ll be in the wings at stage right, flanked by two Games guards. They’ll come on with you, armed with riot guns. Move-alongs would be more practical if you decided to give trouble, but the riot guns are good theater.”

  “Sure,” Richards said.

  “There will be a lot of booing from the audience. We pack it that way because it’s good theater. Just like the killball matches.”

  “Are they going to shoot me with fake bullets?” Richards asked. “You could put a few blood bags on me, to spatter on cue. That would be good theater, too.”

  “Pay attention, please,” Victor said. “You and the guards go on when your name is called. Bobby will, uh, interview you. Feel free to express yourself as colorfully as you please. It’s all good theater. Then, around six-ten, just before the first Network promo, you’ll be given your stake money and exit—sans guards—at stage left. Do you understand?”

  “Yes. What about Laughlin?”

  Victor frowned and lit a cigarette. “He comes on after you, at six-fifteen. We run two contests simultaneously because often one of the contestants is, uh, inadept at staying ahead of the Hunters.”

  “With the kid as a back-up?”

  “Mr. Jansky? Yes. But none of this concerns you, Mr. Richards. When you exit stage left, you’ll be given a tape machine which is about the size of a box of popcorn. It weighs six pounds. With it, you’ll be given sixty tape clips which are about four inches long. The equipment will fit inside a coat pocket without a bulge. It’s a triumph of modern technology.”

  “Swell.”

  Victor pressed his lips together. “As Dan has already told you, Richards, you’re a contestant only for the masses. Actually, you are a working man and you should view your role in that light. The tape cartridges can be dropped into any mailslot and they will be delivered express to us so we can edit them for airing that night. Failure to deposit two clips per day will result in legal default of payment.”

  “But I’ll still be hunted down.”

  “Right. So mail those tapes. They won’t give away your location; the Hunters operate independently of the broadcasting section.”

  Richards had his doubts about that but said nothing.

  “After we give you the equipment, you will be escorted to the street elevator. This gives directly on Rampart Street. Once you’re there, you’re on your own.” He paused. “Questions?”

  “No.”

  “Then Mr. Killian has one more money detail to straighten out with you.”

  They walked back to where Dan Killian was in conversation with Arthur M. Burns. Richards asked for another Rooty-Toot and got it.

  “Mr. Richards,” Killian said, twinkling his teeth at him. “As you know, you leave the studio unarmed. But this is not to say you cannot arm yourself by fair means or foul. Goodness! No. You—or your estate—will be paid an additional one hundred dollars for any Hunter or representative of the law you should happen to dispatch—”

  “I know, don’t tell me,” Richards said. “It’s good theater.”

  Killian smiled delightedly. “How very astute of you. Yes. However, try not to bag any innocent bystanders. That’s not kosher.”

  Richards said nothing.

  “The other aspect of the program—”

  “The stoolies and independent cameramen. I know.”

  “They’re not stoolies; they’re good North American citizens.” It was difficult to tell whether Killian’s tone of hurt was real or ironic. “Anyway, there’s an 800 number for anyone who spots you. A verified sighting pays one hundred New Dollars. A sighting which results in a kill pays a thousand. We pay independent cameramen ten dollars a foot and up—”

  “Retire to scenic Jamaica on blood money,” Richards cried, spreading his arms wide. “Get your picture on a hundred 3-D weeklies. Be the idol of millions. Just holograph for details.”

  “That’s enough,” Killian said quietly. Bobby Thompson was buffing his fingernails; Victor had wandered out and could be faintly heard yelling at someone about camera angles.

  Killian pressed a button. “Miss Jones? Ready for you, sweets.” He stood up and offered his hand again. “Makeup next, Mr. Richards. Then the lighting runs. You’ll be quartered offstage and we won’t meet again before you go on. So—”

  “It’s been grand,” Richards said. He declined the hand.

  Miss Jones led him out. It was 2:30.

  …Minus 081 and COUNTING…

  Richards stood in the wings with a cop on each side, listening to the studio audience as they frantically applauded Bobby Thompson. He was nervous. He jeered at himself for it, but the nervousness was a fact. Jeering would not make it go away. It was 6:01.

  “Tonight’s first contestant is a shrewd, resourceful man from south of the Canal in our own home city,” Thompson was saying. The monitor faded to a stark portrait of Richards in his baggy gray workshirt, taken by a hidden camera days before. The background looked like the fifth floor waiting room. It had been retouched, Richards thought, to make his eyes deeper, his forehead a little lower, his cheeks more shadowed. His mouth had been given a jeering, curled expression by some technico’s airbrush. All in all, the Richards on the monitor was terrifying—the angel of urban death, brutal, not very bright, but possessed of a certain primitive animal cunning. The uptown apartment dweller’s boogeyman.

  “This man is Benjamin Richards, age twenty-eight. Know the face well! In a half-hour, this man will be on the prowl. A verified sighting brings you one hundred New Dollars! A sighting which results in a kill results in one thousand New Dollars for you!”

  Richards’s mind was wandering; it came back to the point with a mighty snap.

  “…and this is the woman that Benjamin Richards’s award will go to, if and when he is brought down!”

  The picture dissolved to a still of Sheila…but the airbrush had been at work again, this time wielded with a heavier hand. The results were brutal. The sweet, not-so-good-looking face had been transformed into that of a vapid slattern. Full, pouting lips, eyes that seemed to glitter with avarice, a suggestion of a double chin fading down to what appeared to be bare breasts.

  “You bastard!” Richards grated. He lunged forward, but powerful arms held him back.

  “Simmer down, buddy. It’s only a picture.”

  A moment later he was half led, half dragged onstage.

  The audience reaction was immediate. The studio was filled with screamed cries of “Boo! Cycle bum!” “Get out, you creep!” “Kill him! Kill the bastard!” “You eat it!” “Get out, get out!”

  Bobby Thompson held his arms up and shouted good-natur
edly for quiet. “Let’s hear what he’s got to say.” The audience quieted, but reluctantly.

  Richards stood bull-like under the hot lights with his head lowered. He knew he was projecting exactly the aura of hate and defiance that they wanted him to project, but he could not help it.

  He stared at Thompson with hard, redrimmed eyes. “Somebody is going to eat their own balls for that picture of my wife,” he said.

  “Speak up, speak up, Mr. Richards!” Thompson cried with just the right note of contempt. “Nobody will hurt you…at least, not yet.”

  More screams and hysterical vituperation from the audience.

  Richards suddenly wheeled to face them, and they quieted as if slapped. Women stared at him with frightened, half-sexual expressions. Men grinned up at him with blood-hate in their eyes.

  “You bastards!” he cried. “If you want to see somebody die so bad, why don’t you kill each other?”

  His final words were drowned in more screams. People from the audience (perhaps paid to do so) were trying to get onstage. The police were holding them back. Richards faced them, knowing how he must look.

  “Thank you, Mr. Richards, for those words of wisdom.” The contempt was palpable now, and the crowd, nearly silent again, was eating it up. “Would you like to tell our audience in the studio and at home how long you think you can hold out?”

  “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.