The Running Man

by Stephen King

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.

  …Minus 080 and COUNTING…

  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.

  …Minus 079 and COUNTING…

  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 Molie’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 cabbie.

  “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 ’m!” the cabbie 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 hafta 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!”

  …Minus 078 and COUNTING…

  Through a backyard; through a ragged hole in a cyclone fence separating one barren asphalt desert from another; across a ghostly, abandoned construction site; pausing far back in shattered shadows as a cycle pack roared by, headlamps glaring in the dark like the psychopathic eyes of nocturnal werewolves. Then over a final fence (cutting one hand) and he was rapping on Molie Jernigan’s back door—which is to say, the main entrance.

  Molie ran a Dock Street hockshop where a fellow with enough bucks to spread around could buy a police-special move-along, a full-choke riot gun, a submachine gun, heroin, Push, cocaine, drag disguises, a styroflex pseudo-woman, a real whore if you were too strapped to afford styroflex, the current address of one of three floating crap-games, the current address of a swin
ging Perverto Club, or a hundred other illegal items. If Molie didn’t have what you wanted, he would order it for you.

  Including false papers.

  When he opened the peephole and saw who was there, he offered a kindly smile and said: “Why don’t you go away, pal? I never saw you.”

  “New Dollars,” Richards remarked, as if to the air itself. There was a pause. Richards studied the cuff of his shirt as if he had never seen it before.

  Then the bolts and locks were opened, quickly, as if Molie were afraid Richards would change his mind. Richards came in. They were in Molie’s place behind the store, which was a rat warren of old newsies, stolen musical instruments, stolen cameras, and boxes of black-market groceries. Molie was by necessity something of a Robin Hood; a pawnbroker south of the Canal did not remain in business long if he became too greedy. Molie took the rich uptown maggots as heavily as he could and sold in the neighborhood at close to cost—sometimes lower than cost if some pal was being squeezed hard. Thus his reputation in Co-Op City was excellent, his protection superb. If a cop asked a South City stoolie (and there were hundreds of them) about Molie Jernigan, the informant let it be known that Molie was a slightly senile old-timer who took a little graft and sold a little black market. Any number of uptown swells with strange sexual tendencies could have told the police differently, but there were no vice busts anymore. Everyone knew vice was bad for any real revolutionary climate. The fact that Molie also ran a moderately profitable trade in forged documents, strictly for local customers, was unknown uptown. Still, Richards knew, tooling papers for someone as hot as he was would be extremely dangerous.

  “What papers?” Molie asked, sighing deeply and turning on an ancient gooseneck lamp that flooded the working area of his desk with bright white light. He was an old man, approaching seventy-five, and in the close glow of the light his hair looked like spun silver.

  “Driver’s license. Military Service Card. Street Identicard. Axial charge card. Social Retirement card.”

  “Easy. Sixty-buck job for anyone but you, Bennie.”

  “You’ll do it?”

  “For your wife, I’ll do it. For you, no. I don’t put my head in the noose for any crazy-ass bastard like Bennie Richards.”

  “How long, Molie?”

  Molie’s eyes flashed sardonically. “Knowin your situation as I do, I’ll hurry it. An hour for each.”

  “Christ, Five hours…can I go—”

  “No, you can’t. Are you nuts, Bennie? A cop comes pullin up to your Development last week. He’s got a envelope for your ol lady. He came in a Black Wagon with about six buddies. Flapper Donnigan was standin on the corner pitchin nicks with Gerry Hanrahan when it transfired. Flapper tells me everythin. The boy’s soft, you know.”

  “I know Flapper’s soft,” Richards said impatiently. “I sent the money. Is she—”

  “Who knows? Who sees?” Molie shrugged and rolled his eyes as he put pens and blank forms in the center of the pool of light thrown by the lamp. “They’re four deep around your building, Bennie. Anyone who sent to offer their condolences would end up in a cellar talkin to a bunch of rubber clubs. Even good friends don’t need that scam, not even with your ol lady flush. You got a name you want special on these?”

  “Doesn’t matter as long as it’s Anglo. Jesus, Molie, she must have come out for groceries. And the doctor—”

  “She sent Budgie O’Sanchez’s kid. What’s his name.”

  “Walt.”

  “Yeah, that’s it. I can’t keep the goddam spics and micks straight no more. I’m gettin senile, Bennie. Blowin my cool.” He glared up at Richards suddenly. “I remember when Mick Jagger was a big name. You don’t even know who he was, do ya?”

  “I know who he was,” Richards said, distraught. He turned to Molie’s sidewalk-level window, frightened. It was worse than he thought. Sheila and Cathy were in the cage, too. At least until—

  “They’re okay, Bennie,” Molie said softly. “Just stay away. You’re poison to them now. Can you dig it?”

  “Yes,” Richards said. He was suddenly overwhelmed with despair, black and awful. I’m homesick, he thought, amazed, but it was more, it was worse. Everything seemed out of whack, surreal. The very fabric of existence bulging at the seams. Faces, whirling: Laughlin, Burns, Killian, Jansky, Molie, Cathy, Sheila—

  He looked out into the blackness, trembling. Molie had gone to work, crooning some old song from his vacant past, something about having Bette Davis eyes, who the hell was that?

  “He was a drummer,” Richards said suddenly. “With that English group, the Beetles. Mick McCartney.”

  “Yah, you kids,” Molie said, bent over his work. “That’s all you kids know.”

  …Minus 077 and COUNTING…

  He left Molie’s at ten past midnight, twelve hundred New Dollars lighter. The pawnbroker had also sold him a limited but fairly effective disguise: gray hair, spectacles, mouth wadding, plastic buck-teeth which subtly transfigured his lip line. “Give yourself a little limp, too,” Molie advised. “Not a big attention-getter. Just a little one. Remember, you have the power to cloud men’s minds, if you use it. Don’t remember that line, do ya?”

  Richards didn’t.

  According to his new wallet cards, he was John Griffen Springer, a text-tape salesman from Harding. He was a forty-three-year-old widower. No technico status, but that was just as well. Technicos had their own language.

  Richards reemerged on Robard Street at 12:30, a good hour to get rolled, mugged, or killed, but a bad hour to make any kind of unnoticed getaway. Still, he had lived south of the Canal all his life.

  He crossed the Canal two miles farther west, almost on the edge of the lake. He saw a party of drunken winos huddled around a furtive fire, several rats, but no cops. By 1:15 A.M. he was cutting across the far edge of the no-man’s-land of warehouses, cheap beaneries, and shipping offices on the north side of the Canal. At 1:30 he was surrounded by enough uptowners hopping from one sleazy dive to the next to safely hail a cab.

  This time the driver didn’t give him a second look.

  “Jetport,” Richards said.

  “I’m your man, pal.”

  The airthrusters shoved them up into traffic. They were at the airport by 1:50. Richards limped past several cops and security guards who showed no interest in him. He bought a ticket to New York because it came naturally to mind. The I.D. check was routine and uneventful. He was on the 2:20 speed shuttle to New York. There were only forty or so passengers, most of them snoozing businessmen and students. The cop in the Judas hole dozed through the entire trip. After a while, Richards dozed, too.

  They touched down at 3:06, and Richards deplaned and left the airport without incident.

  At 3:15 the cab was spiraling down the Lindsay Overway. They crossed Central Park on a diagonal, and at 3:20, Ben Richards disappeared into the largest city on the face of the earth.

  …Minus 076 and COUNTING…

  He went to earth in the Brant Hotel, a so-so establishment on the East Side. That part of the city had been gradually entering a new cycle of chic. Yet the Brant was less than a mile from Manhattan’s own blighted inner city—also the largest in the world. As he checked in, he again thought of Dan Killian’s parting words: Stay close to your own people.

  After leaving the taxi he had walked to Times Square, not wanting to check into any hotel during the small morning hours. He spent the five and a half hours from 3:30 to 9:00 in an all-night perverto show. He had wanted desperately to sleep, but both times he had dozed off, he had been snapped awake by the feel of light fingers crawling up his inner thigh.

  “How long will you be staying, sir?” the desk clerk asked, glancing at Richards’s registration as John G. Springer.

  “Don’t know,” Richards said, trying for meek affability. “All depends on the clients, you understand.” He paid sixty New Dollars, holding the room for two days, and took the elevator up to the twenty-third floor. The room offered a somber view of the squali
d East River. It was raining in New York, too.

  The room was clean but sterile; there was a connecting bathroom and the toilet made constant, ominous noises that Richards could not rectify even by wiggling the ball in the tank.

  He had breakfast sent up—a poached egg on toast, orange drink, coffee. When the boy appeared with the tray, he tipped lightly and forgettably.

  With breakfast out of the way, he took out the videotape camera and looked at it. A small metal plate labeled INSTRUCTIONS was set just below the viewfinder. Richards read:

  1. Push tape cartridge into slot marked A until it clicks home.

  2. Set viewfinder by means of crosshairs within the sight.

  3. Push button marked B to record sound with video.

  4. When the bell sounds, tape cartridge will pop out automatically.

  Recording time: 10 minutes.

  Good, Richards thought. They can watch me sleep.

  He set the camera on the bureau next to the Gideon Bible and sighted the crosshairs on the bed. The wall behind was blank and nondescript; he didn’t see how anyone could pinpoint his location from either the bed or the background. Street noise from this height was negligible, but he would leave the shower running just in case.

  Even with forethought, he nearly pressed the button and stepped into the camera’s field of vision with his naked disguise hanging out. Some of it could have been removed, but the gray hair had to stay. He put the pillow slip over his head. Then he pressed the button, walked over to the bed, and sat down facing the lens.

  “Peekaboo,” Ben Richards said hollowly to his immense listening and viewing audience that would watch this tape later tonight with horrified interest. “You can’t see it, but I’m laughing at you shiteaters.”

  He lay back, closed his eyes, and tried to think of nothing at all. When the tape clip popped out ten minutes later, he was fast asleep.