Running Red

by Jack Bates

  “Every month there is a race at the Velodrome,” Leslie says. Her voice is low, her eyes on the door. “Denny sends challenges to other tribes. If they accept, they come here and we have a race for dowries.”

  “They race runners?”

  “Sort of,” Leslie says.

  “Leslie, please, you have to tell me what all of this means. What the hell is a rabbit?”

  Leslie looks at the porch floor. Her tears fall in big drops. Leslie looks up at me. “Well, think about it. A runner won’t run if it doesn’t have something to latch onto, right? It’ll just stand there.”

  “So they put people in with the runners and watch them chase them around the track?”

  “Sort of,” Leslie says. “It’s more in the infield. See, Denny built an obstacle course. If the rabbit can make it five minutes in the Velodrome without getting latched, Denny lets him go free.”

  “What about the dowries?”

  “Denny and the tribe leader are betting their rabbits make it and the other tribe’s don’t. I don’t know about the other tribes, but the winner of ours gets a month in the house and some of the dowry for himself.”

  “Are men the only ones chosen as rabbits?”

  Leslie shakes her head. “No. There have been women on the field as well.”

  “Were you ever a rabbit?”

  Leslie shakes her head, horrified at the thought. “It’s why I agreed to be a wife. I have—what is it? An immune system?”

  “Immunity,” I say. Score one for the lasting value of reality elimination shows. “Leslie, how old are you?”

  “Denny says our age don’t matter anymore. He says time has died.”

  “How old were you before that?”

  “Almost twenty.”

  Auntie Alice appears in the kitchen door’s screen. “Come along, ladies,” she says. “We have to get ready for the race.”

  Leslie bows her head and goes inside. I start to follow her when Auntie Alice stops me. “Don’t get any ideas today, dear. This is how things are now.”

  “They don’t have to be,” I think. I don’t say anything. I just nod.

  She steps aside and I go in. Aubrey is there. He holds my old clothes. I guess a rabbit in a white cotton sundress just isn’t all that entertaining.

  Eleven

  Matt and I are put on an old piano-box carriage. It’s called that because the bed looks like an old-fashioned upright piano, only with the keys cut off and the legs removed and a bench put over its back. The wooden wheels are large, and come up just below my chin. The padded, leather bench seat has a fan back, although the leather is old and cracked. The cushion in the bench seat is worn; when I sit down the leather gives and breaks open.

  I marvel at how small people must have been back in the day. Neither Matt nor I are large for our age, but we barely fit on the seat. In fact, we have to turn our legs in to rest our feet on the box’s floorboard, or one of our feet hangs over the side.

  There are no horses. Several of the tent dwellers lift the harness beams and pull us across the field. Leslie and Tessa walk behind us. Tessa stops scratching at her arm when I turn and look at her. She covers the spot with her hand. I don’t have to see the pimples on the inside of her arm to know she has Balzini’s Rash. I wonder how long she’s known. Matt and I are jostled as we ride. Occasionally I bang the bruise on the back of my leg. There is a searing, shooting pain pulsing in the fat of my calf, but I won’t show it. Besides, it’s not as bad as it was. It’s more of a dull throb.

  I’m not certain where the carriage was last night, but I wasn’t exactly sightseeing as I tried to get away. I missed a lot of things. Out here in the daylight I see a large propane gas tank on the east side of the stadium. It is painted pink and has the face of a pig painted on one end.

  “That’s Petunia,” Matt says. It’s the first thing he’s said since I was brought down the hill and put on the carriage.

  “Pretty name for a pink pig,” I say.

  “It’s full of propane. It powers the stadium.”

  “Why does the stadium need power?”

  We hit a rut and I’m bounced against him. Matt grabs me to keep me from falling off the bench seat. One of his hands hooks around my shoulder. His other hand has found one of my breasts. We sit like that, staring into each other’s eyes. To be honest, it’s a bit awkward, as his hand only has the three fingers now; the nub of his missing forefinger and thumb press into me and I can feel them move. I’m a bit embarrassed, not by his embrace, but that it has been so long since I’ve had this kind of physical contact. I can feel myself blushing.

  The mood is interrupted when Tessa screams. It is an ear-piercing, blood-curdling scream. The carriage pullers stop abruptly and Matt and I are rocked forward. His hands go to the buckboard in front of us. I stiffen my legs against it and lean back.

  Tessa is running across the field to the pool. Sledge and Jimmy the Scarecrow are leading the runners from the pool towards the stadium. It’s not the walking runners that have frightened her. It’s what she sees in the corner.

  Bethany’s husk clutches the fence. Behind her, a runner has latched onto her neck, not with its teeth, but those black talons from inside its mouth. In the daylight, I see that they are real. Snaking out between them is a kind of proboscis, like a butterfly would have, and it is inserted into the side of Bethany’s throat.

  The runners are mutating. Auntie Alice and Denny are probably aware of this but are keeping it a secret. Why, I can’t imagine, unless it’s to have some sort of advantage over their competitors in the race.

  Tessa tries to pry Bethany’s fingers from the fence. She’s trying to rescue her, but it is far too late. In less than 48 hours, Bethany will be a compost pile, a breeding ground for fungal spores that will infect countless others besides Tessa. Maybe the terror she feels isn’t at the sight of what happened to her friend, but what will happen to her.

  The latching probably happened earlier this morning, I think. It’s an odd circle of procreation. The fungus that drives the runners will survive, passed on to Bethany, who will now only live to carry it further. The runner will release her several hours from now and become one of those mossy humps where new spores of the fungus will sprout. Less than twenty-four hours later, Bethany will show the first signs of the infection: a belt of pimples over her belly. The fungus will spread quickly. I imagine she will be ripe for next month’s race.

  The last I had heard, they were calling the fungus Balzini’s Moss, named after a type of carpenter ant that had originally introduced the fungus to its colony; later, Balzini got tagged with the rash when people started developing the pimples. In ants, it had thrived on the calcium in the ant’s muscles, which helped it learn how to control the ant’s movement.

  Tessa falls against the fence, screaming, “No! No! No!” She shakes the fence, but Bethany doesn’t respond. She tries again to pry her fingers free. Shannon, the tired looking mother, hurries across the field. Behind her runs Dirks. Before Shannon can grab hold of Tessa, I yell out to her.

  “She has Balzini’s Rash,” I cry.

  Tessa looks up at me. Her eyes are wild with rage. “No I don’t, you bitch. They’re just mosquito bites.” She covers the spot on her arm with her hand again. She sobs and looks to Shannon for help. The tired mom and Dirks back away. They stand there with their arms around each other watching Tessa sob.

  “Get that wagon moving,” Sledge says.

  The pullers lift the harness bars and rock us forward and back until the piano-box carriage rolls forward. We are back on our way. I want to ask Matt if he saw the change in the runner, but before I can, he turns to me and begins talking.

  “Listen, Robbie, before we get there, there’s something you need to know. First off, Denny has designed some traps and surprises on the field. They are spring operated, never the same two months in a row. That way no one can train for the race.”

  “Is that the worst?”

  “No. Once we get out on the field, the peop
le in the bleachers fight for their tribes by attacking the rabbits.”

  “Guns? Bows?”

  Matt shakes his head. “No. There’s no sport in that, is there?”

  I can’t tell if he’s joking with me. “What do we do?” I ask.

  “Keep moving. You have to survive five minutes. At the end of five minutes they’ll ring a bell or something.”

  “What about the runners?”

  “Handlers will come out with nets.”

  “Nets?”

  “You’ll see.”

  I am overwhelmed. We are almost to the stadium. People are standing along the top, waving at us. This is real. I am about to be led into a coliseum to battle to the death like the gladiators used to for the Romans.

  I suddenly hug Matt. His hands come around my back.

  “I hated you when we first met,” I say in his ear.

  “Why you gotta hate? I’m a lover.”

  I laugh and bury my face against his neck. My eyes are wet. I feel broken, no longer that independent journeyer who has survived alone for over a year. Less than two days with civilization and I’m desperate to be part of a community.

  But not at this cost.

  There are loud cheers coming from the stands. As we go around the concrete walk and pass Petunia, I begin to hear boos. These are Gumm’s people. They hiss and flip us off and spit at us. It only stops when we enter a tunnel that will take us under the stadium and up onto the infield. The concrete tunnel reverberates from the stomping of feet above us. The passage thunders around us. A few moments later we are pulled out onto the infield. There is a mixture of cheers and boos.

  All I can do is tremble.

  The track towers around us. The once bright finish on the wood is weathered and gray. Wooden studs have been cut from long boards and attached along the sloping track in patchwork fashion. I think these are for climbing out of the infield. A metal pipe barrier runs along the top of the bike track, no doubt originally put up to keep fans from falling onto the track.

  Large openings gape in several spots around the track where it has either caved in from neglect or was chopped away. I can only imagine what lies beneath them: spikes, toxic runners, and maybe even some mountain lion.

  The infield is a nightmare of ramps and platforms. The tallest platform is a makeshift cage made of cyclone fencing. Coils of razor wire line the top edges. There is one large gate currently guarded by Sledge. Inside the cage is mixed group of runners representing both tribes. At some point, Sledge will release the pack of runners and they will swarm down upon us, hoping to latch.

  We are at the far end of the giant, warped oval. The bleachers run around all four sides of the stadium, but the tribes have divided along the longer, opposite sides. There are small squads of guards in the end zone sections to keep the groups separated. The watchers sit closer to the track, staring at us through the gaps in the barrier made from pipes.

  Scarecrow Jimmy walks out from behind a wooden column. “All right, you two,” he says. “Let’s get you ready.” He holds a hand up for me, but I ignore it. Matt hops down off the opposite side of the carriage. The people who pulled us in wheel the carriage back through the tunnel. A rolled up, segmented, corrugated door is brought back down behind them.

  Scarecrow Jimmy saunters toward a lower platform. It too has a cage. There is a dividing fence running through the center. Inside are the two men in biking gear. Matt and I are put in on one side. The older biker sits in the corner away from us. The younger biker turns around and leans against the fence.

  “What is this?” he asks.

  “Welcome to the race,” Matt says.

  “What race?” the younger guy asks. “Where do we run?”

  Matt squints and points at the taller platform. “See those runners up there? In a little while, Denny—he’s the guy who controls the house—is going to signal the bald guy there. His name is Stretch. Stretch is going to open that cage, and Jimmy over there is going to open our cage. Then, for five minutes, we have to keep away from the runners.”

  “Welcome, my friends,” the older biker says, “to the Coliseum.” He hangs his head, shakes it, and laughs. The younger guy looks at us and shakes his head like he’s telling us to ignore him.

  “Who are you guys?” I ask.

  “I’m Brent. He’s Striker.”

  “And you were just out biking?”

  I think I must have struck a nerve because Brent stops talking. He stares at me.

  “Just tell them, Henderson.”

  Brent looks over his shoulder at Striker. “That another one of your bright ideas?”

  “That’s no way to speak to your superior,” Striker says.

  Brent faces the man in the corner. “You don’t get it yet, do you? None of the protocol bullshit matters any more. Not out here in the wilds. Look at where we are, Captain. We’re right smack in the middle of a nightmare. These freaks aren’t living by your rules. Nobody is living by your rules.”

  Matt nudges me. He lifts his chin at the two men. “So they really are the Guard.”

  “We’re not the Guard, punk,” Brent says. “We’re an elite team sent out by D.C. to see what’s left of humanity.”

  “Elite?” Matt says. He doesn’t need to say any more. His tone has said it all.

  “Yeah,” Brent says. “Elite. Which is more than I can say for you, Digits.” Brent holds up his fingers and wiggles them at Matt.

  “I can still do this, asshole,” Matt says. He gives him the finger. I guess some things won’t change in the new world. Alpha males will continue to spar like their Neanderthal counterparts.

  “Where did Gumm catch you two?” I ask.

  Striker uses the fence to pull himself up. “We rode in,” Striker says. “Our mission was to make contact, infiltrate.”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “Why don’t you tell us?” Brent says. “You’re not from around here.”

  “How do you know?” Matt says.

  “Don’t you know who your friend is, Digits? She’s the girl with the sling.”

  Somehow these two strangers know of me. He and Striker must have seen me camping or hiking along the road. Or someone else did. Maybe they’ve been out collecting information on people. It would explain why the younger man stared at me on the lawn this morning. I can’t think who I might have encountered that would have been collecting data on the wilderness dwellers.

  And then I remember her. It’s just a flash, but I remember the whole incident.

  I helped this woman get away from a pack of runners. I was farther down state, where a massive road repair project had been underway. Yuki and I needed to use this massive bridge to cross a really wide and deep river. It was a really windy day. I was afraid the wind would blow me over the side. I hate heights, so I stuck to the lane closest to the median. It was four lanes wide on either side and I was hugging the middle. The hike took forever.

  We finally hit the crest of the bridge and we were coming down into the construction zone when Yuki started growling. It was just what I needed—to be trapped on some ridiculously towering bridge where the wind and gravity were teaming up to get me. I could see the runners circling around one of those plastic port-a-johns. The runners were flailing at the plastic sides of the movable toilet. The three of them moved around the unit, occasionally grabbing at it. Then they did that thing runners do sometimes: They waited, their heads bent forward, like they were in that kind of suspended animation, just waiting to strike.

  The closer we got, the more I could hear screaming. There was a rather sleek looking bicycle lying on the side of the road. Whoever was inside must have biked it across the bridge we just walked and come down into the three runners.

  I sent Yuki after them and she knocked one down by leaping on it. She dragged it away by the ankle as it clawed at the pavement. I walked over and separated its head from its body with a shovel left at the work site. The ooze that came out was a dark red and smelled like death.

&nbs
p; I dropped the closest one to me with a pellet from my wrist rocket to the back of his head. Most of his hair had fallen out by then. There were dark splotches where the pimples had erupted. When the pellet struck him, some of the pus splattered onto the concrete embankments once used to close off lanes. His flesh puckered inward and he fell to the ground. I buried the tip of the spade into the back of his neck and scooped the head over the barriers.

  The last runner was too preoccupied to notice I was there. I buried the blade of the hand axe in the back of its head and took it to the ground. With a foot on the runner’s back, I wriggled the handle until it at last came out. I finished my civic duty.

  “It’s okay to come out now,” I said.

  The plastic door opened and the woman came out. She wore a pair of those knee length biking pants with a matching black top. Both had a neon green stripe running on the sides, very much like the biking clothes worn by Brent and Striker. She had a camera in her grasp. Not one of those little square ones you could slip into your pocket, but the kind a photographer would have used at a football game.

  “Kind of a crazy photo op,” I said.

  She looked at the plastic outhouse. “Oh, that? No. I was afraid the runners might get it if I left it out here.”

  It’s so rare to run into people that, when I do, I want to talk their ears off. “What were you taking pictures of?”

  She had told me she was going to record how the world had survived an apocalyptic event. She had posed me standing over the three headless runners, the axe in one hand and the slingshot in the other. Yuki had sat patiently at my side.

  She had ridden off on her bike. I never thought anything of it. At the time, we were just two wanderers going in different directions.

  “How do you know me?” I ask Brent.

  He doesn’t get a chance to tell me. Gumm’s bugle boy blares his trumpet. The chanting and rowdy crowds grow silent.

  Denny steps out of the small press box atop the bleachers on the longer, northern side of the stadium. In his hand he holds a battery-operated megaphone.

  “Good afternoon, my friends,” he says. “Welcome to the Velodrome!”