Man Hunt

by K. Edwin Fritz

  CHAPTER 4

  TO RUN

  1

  Obe sat inside an open dumpster and looked up through its green-framed window to the sky above. He sat on a small pile of ratty newspapers. A pool of black ooze wafted its foul odors from the far corner. With his ears carefully tuned to any approaching cars, he was looking at the passing clouds. The only true memory of his brother had been not just of the spectacular silver-lined gray cloud, but also a formless knowledge that afterwards they had lain on the grass with their faces to the sky and had created stories out of the white and gray clouds that constantly changed.

  He saw a wolf, a rabbit, a turkey with one missing leg. He imagined his brother would have told him the wolf had eaten the turkey's leg and the rabbit was too quick to get caught. He chuckled to himself and wondered if the stories they had told that day were real or only the wishful thinking of his damaged mind.

  When he heard the distant rumble of a car engine, he flinched and slid off his perch, plunking his battered right foot into the pool of ooze. He listened and heard the growl of the engine grow in volume. Without pausing to think, he leaped from the bottom of the dumpster straight to its ledge some five feet above. His silver litany came with him. "Lining… silver lining…" he mumbled.

  He jumped down, landing hard on the balls of his feet and listened again. Left or right? he wondered. But there was only silence. Wherever the car was, it had either stopped or was rolling silently. He trotted cautiously to his right, his motions nearly graceful in his own purposeful silence. He approached the open road at the end of the alley, but just ten feet from his goal an engine suddenly roared and he stopped dead. The car was just around the corner.

  A single flash of terror swept over him before a green blur floundered past and wiped it clean. Dumbfounded, Obe saw it was the same man he had seen earlier that morning, and that he was nearly dead, with or without the car behind him.

  The change in the man with the new green sneakers was incredible. He was utterly exhausted, panting like a dog under the summer sun. And still, he ran. His jumpsuit was soaked with sweat down to the knees. His shoulders sagged. His arms hung and wavered loosely as if the fists at the end of them were fifty pound weights. And still, the man ran, favoring one cramped leg even as he did so.

  Then, just as quickly as the man appeared, he was gone, in and out of Obe's line of sight in a single second.

  Obe leaned forward to see more, but tires squealed and he froze, willing himself to blend into the scenery of the alley behind him. An instant later a blur of vibrant, sky-blue roared past. He felt a hot blast of exhaust fumes and then his own hot flush of panic. Both were followed by a fresh, cool drain. The women inside the car had not seen him. He was safe.

  He knew he should run the other way, and fast. Instead he took several careful steps forward. His fingers caught the corner of the wall as he peeked out to see taillights. His eyes were immediately drawn to the vanity license plate: "MAN KLR".

  Like all of the island's cars, it had several horrible modifications. This one, painted a garishly-bright glossy blue, had a trio of foot-long barbed wire strands extending from the sides of each hubcap. The spinning vortex of hellish chaos they created as the car rolled along would easily shred a man's calves.

  But not knives, Obe thought. Oh, no. Knives would cut his legs clean off, and then how would he run? How would you bitches have any fun?

  From the rear of the car protruded four sharpened forklift tines. The front, he knew, was adorned with a simple steel grill into which triangular shark's teeth had been cut.

  The man in green was attempting to cross the street and into a far alley.

  "Run, you son of a bitch!" Obe whispered. But the women, it seemed, had finally grown bored and were ready to finish the job.

  In a single motion, the car swerved and accelerated, the powerful engine taking the flow of gas from the open throttle and turning it into raw speed. A second later the car's battered front end connected with the ill-fated man, adding another dent to its long, history.

  The man's head snapped back as his body flung high into the air, arms and legs flailing unnaturally. In a moment of eerie silence, the car zipped by directly underneath his awkward flight. It then screeched to a halt far beyond the unmoving body that had fallen in a formless crumple. The tires squealed and smoked, and the front end lurched downward as it hurriedly reversed. It thumped over what was left of the man in green and came to a gentle stop.

  The scene paused then as the women seemed to discuss something. Obe strained to understand but could hear only the engine gargling away like a dog's warning growl.

  Finally, the car pulled slowly forward and drove leisurely over the limp body one more time. The front tires eased up and over the man's head, reluctantly giving way to the pressurized shocks. Obe's gut hitched at the loud crack! of the dead man's skull splitting open under the car's immense weight.

  A moment later the rear tires eased over, squashing a torrent of blood and brains onto the road. Obe saw the spreading pool on the blacktop and envisioned the eventual faded mark it would become.

  Then the car simply kept on going, gathering speed as it went. Two blocks later it turned and vanished out of sight.

  2

  Obe peered from around the corner of the alley, trembling from what he had just seen. Though he had been chased by that same car or another like it dozens of times and had always known the intention, this was the first time he'd actually witnessed a kill.

  He couldn't get the last, slow drive-over out of his mind. It had been an insulting after-thought, a loud belch succeeding an expensive meal. He suddenly felt empty and worthless all over again.

  He stared at the body of the man in green, still unable to believe he had run all morning only to be cut down so quickly and efficiently. The blood on the road was still bright with life, still spreading toward its eventual splotch of commemoration like all the others. He saw a leg twisted at a strange angle. The two halves of the skull that had moments ago been a single entity lay separated, oozing what looked like globs of oatmeal.

  It was too much. Obe's stomach hitched once and hard, and then he was bent over emptying what little food he'd recently consumed. It was only when his stomach finally settled that he looked up again and saw the sneakers. In a rush he remembered what had been so intriguing about the man in the first place.

  Obe

  like globe and like strobe

  looked in the direction the car had gone, wondering why the body had been left behind. Though kills occurred on a daily basis, it was very rare to actually see a dead man. He stared at the sneakers, wanting desperately to have them for himself.

  It's against the rules, he thought. If I'm ever seen with them, I'm done. And I can't hide them. They're green and I'm in blue sector now.

  He looked again at the dead man on the street and recalled the brutality of his demise. Anger welled within him, and he made a difficult but conscious decision.

  "Fuck the rules," he said aloud, and stepped out of the alley. He advanced, hugging the wall of the building as he tiptoed toward his bounty. His bent toenail groaned in pain, and he wondered when he had earned that particular injury. A large cut on the bottom of his left foot stretched open, splitting the half-healed scab. He ignored them both easily enough, but another panic attack was quickly working its way out of his stomach. His tongue began mouthing the litany.

  He neared the body and cut toward it without hesitation. His straining ears might have heard a low rumbling, but he wasn't sure.

  He reached the body and was instantly kneeling and tugging at the heel of one of the sneakers, but his fumbling hands wouldn't obey. He glanced over his shoulder in the direction the car had gone. There was nothing. He heard only the wind and his own continued rummaging, and he calmed enough to cease the mouthed words of comfort.

  The sneaker came off with a jolt and a blotch of wet blood smeared across his left thigh. The second one came off with a single rude tug, and then he was h
olding them.

  The sneakers were island gold. More than gold, they were worth a man's whole life. "Silver lining," Obe said.

  He stood to go but was pulled back when he noticed the shade of the dead man's jumpsuit. It wasn't the vibrant green of the new sneakers. It was faded. The thinned knees, the dirt, and the old stains gave it character the sneakers didn't have. The suit had a history. A memory.

  Obe looked at the name patch on the left-hand breast of the jumpsuit and felt his chest seize up in shock. The word OTTER was stitched there, staring up at him. That had been his animal name when he had worn green. The dead man was wearing the very jumpsuit Obe himself had worn for more than three months and had finally given up mere days ago.

  "Hey blue! Put those down!" Obe looked toward the voice. A car idled not thirty feet away, and his terror returned in a flash. He stared it down, not even seeing the women inside. The car was its own entity. Despite the incredible danger, he knew it wouldn't immediately make the first move. No car ever did. He had a few precious moments to think, to plan.

  He had never seen this car so close up before because it was from the one sector of the island he'd never been to. It had been painted flat black and had a single, double-edged, blade protruding from each hub cab.

  No fooling around in black sector, his mind offered. This car doesn't hunt. It just kills. What are my options? I broke a rule, so I can't outrun it. The walkways are my only chance. Lose it on the other side. Must go now. No time.

  Meanwhile the car and the women within watched him, privy to their own plan of attack. Distantly, he knew it was the women he needed to outmaneuver, not the tangible weapon itself. But it was hard, so very hard, to separate the two. His training, after all, had been thorough.

  But the blue car is nearby, he thought. They'll call each other trap me the walkways won't work shit I'm dead. And despite his three months of self-education, he felt the twittering of true heartbreak settle in. He had always run on the premise that the women of blue and green sectors hunted more often for the thrill of it than for the outcome. But the black sector women… they had only ever killed. That had always been the word on the street.

  I'm dead, his mind repeated. That's the simple truth. I'll never make it home. Never make it to black sector. Never live long enough to lose my sanity like that–

  Obe's rambling mind stopped and focused. The man in black. The man who had reached into Obe's new blue jumpsuit in search of food and come up empty and screaming. Food, he thought. I need food. An idea had come to him, but it was horribly thin. He wasn't even sure about which direction he had wandered that morning. The center, he reminded himself. It's in the center. Just run toward the center.

  "Put 'em down you blue bastard! They don't belong to you!" The engine suddenly gunned and the car's frame shimmied from the restrained power behind it. Obe looked down at the sneakers in his hands, wishing he had just a few additional seconds to put them on. "Silver," he muttered to himself. "Silver lining."

  And then, without warning and his feet still bare, Obe ran.

  3

  It was already habit to immediately put what was in his hands down the front of his jumpsuit. He ran on the balls of his feet and never slowed, never hobbled when he landed on a pebble or piece of dislodged road rubble. Pain was something he had to ignore.

  He was different when running. No longer a man but prey, the fear that had built up inside him for an hour, an afternoon, or even a few days, would finally break and turn into pure adrenaline.

  Despite what the women had tried to teach him, Obe now knew there were only two kinds of men on the island: those who would harness this fear into fuel, and those that allowed the fear to control them. Sometimes those men ran who ignorantly crossed the threshold of the city's boundaries and into the unprotected open hills. More often they were surprised to find themselves in a dead-end alley and, even worse, thought it was then too late to escape. Such poor runners survived only on luck and on the ambiguous whims of the women.

  Obe had a good jump on the flat black car that had come to clean up the recent kill, but his chances of survival were nevertheless almost nil. Smart runners were beaten all the time. And he'd only heard of two cases of someone surviving a hunt from the black car. His thin hope of an idea was already gone from the forefront of his mind, stored deep within his subconscious where instinct reigned. As his legs violently scissored, he knew only that the best way to escape was to do so before the chase truly began.

  Muttering his silver words of encouragement, Obe sprinted straight down the middle of the road with his head lowered and arms pumping. He pictured clouds beneath his feet that were lined with soft, silver satin, and eventually he barely felt the ground at all.

  The car closed quickly, and above the groan of the engine he heard a smart crack! in the air behind him. He flinched instantly, a reaction that was ingrained into him. The hours and hours of training they had made him endure in the fortress had done that. The treadmills had done that.

  The crack came again and he flinched again, slowing a half step in the process, just as designed. Obe blinked his eyes and held them shut for a moment, running blindly straight and trying not to let the image of the treadmills come, but this was a fight he always lost. Another crack and it was there.

  He saw the painted wall, the women lined up with their shotguns, and the door left purposely ajar. That door was the worst. It begged at all of them to just have the courage to go for it. But none of them ever did. Not once in all the days and weeks they had made him run the treadmills.

  He felt his feet on the pavement but his ears heard the fast, jolting hisses as they landed on the treadmill instead. And then another crack came from behind him and he was back inside the fortress.

  4

  His bare feet pounded at the rolling treadmill with the consistency of a vibrant young heartbeat. Every step sounded a punctuated slap that screamed a weak protest from the overworked machine and reverberated up his weakened legs and, eventually, into his shredded mind.

  The room was filled with more than thirty men, all of them running towards a faded mural of an old roadway that narrowed to a distant vanishing point. But off to the right, in the corner, was the door.

  It stood open, that damned door, and a fresh breeze occasionally slipped in. The women disliked this, no doubt, and those men closest to it enjoyed those rare moments of relief, but the agony the door inflicted was undoubtedly worth it in the women's eyes. It was the ultimate torture. With the simplest flick of his eyes he could clearly see the grass of the island's hills and the blue sky beyond. He could hear those occasional gusts of wind. He could smell the clean air mix with the collective sweat of thirty running men. Forget the ropes and the thumbscrews and the other, more creative, methods of inflicting unbearable physical pain. That door was so much worse, so much crueler, because he wasn't chained when he ran the treadmills. He wasn't even within twenty feet of a single woman. Except, of course, when Rhonda walked by with her miniature whip.

  God he was tired. How long had he been running? Thirty minutes? Forty? He dared not ask the time, and though the clock was right there on the side wall, looking would be just as dangerous. He might lose his footing, and he'd surely be punished simply for indulging in a curiosity.

  Why condition us like this? he wondered yet again. What hell are we still in for? Isn't the torture enough? Isn't the mush they're making of my mind enough? Why insist we strengthen our legs and our lungs? What kind of goose, exactly, are they fattening?

  He had come to the conclusion they would be forced to run some kind of race– probably one with horrible obstacles– in which the losers would finally be killed. Or perhaps it was the course itself that did the killing, and only one man survived. Maybe I'll just sit at the starting line when that day comes, he thought. Maybe I'll look them straight in the eyes and tell them to fuck off with a giant smile on my face.

  CRACK! He yelped like a startled dog but didn't stop running. Rhonda had lashed him with h
er whip again, right across the naked back.

  'The Hickory Switch', his grandmother would have called it. He knew this despite knowing nothing else about his forgotten relative. Not her name, not her face, not whether she had been portly or frail, and not the relative whiteness of her hair. But somewhere inside him, he knew this unknown figure would have called Rhonda's toy a 'switch' and that hers had been made from a sapling branch of a hickory tree.

  His mind insisted that what Rhonda carried was just an ordinary short whip, but for some reason that word– 'switch'– and the idea of it coming from a grandmother– from his grandmother– was always there. It refused to leave him.

  How can I remember a thing like that when sometimes I forget my own name? he wondered. CRACK! Rhonda's switch hit another man to his left. CRACK! The next man in line got his. CRACK! The next. And the next. And the next. She walked the rows of treadmills sometimes hitting every one of them, sometimes picking out what seemed like– but surely weren't– random victims.

  The treadmills were all set to the same insane speed: a single notch below full-on sprint. The men ran it until their legs gave out and they tumbled to the floor in a broken, heaving heap. And they all fell, several times, each day they were forced to run. The women usually gave a fallen man a few seconds to catch his breath, but if he wasn't back on the treadmill within two cracks of Rhonda's switch, he'd be beaten right there in front of the others, hauled back to his box, and he'd be back on the treadmills the following day. Twice he'd seen a man die of a heart attack right under the watching eyes of the women. They made no attempt to help him and had left his body where it lay while the other men finished their runs.

  It had taken him twelve consecutive days of running before he had lasted the full hour instead of being beaten unconscious on the floor. Twelve times before he had met their criteria for the first time.