by Stephen King
"It goes before a fall," the doctor said. He clicked the tip of his ballpoint in. "If you have nothing to add, Mr. Richards-" He stood up. That, and the switch back to his surname, suggested that the interview was over whether Richards had any more to say or not.
"No."
"The door is down the hall to your right. Good luck.
"Sure," Richards said.
Minus 090 and COUNTING
The group Richards had come in with was now reduced to four. The new waiting room was much smaller, and the whole group had been reduced roughly by the same figure of sixty percent. The last of the Y's and Z's straggled in at four-thirty. At four, an orderly had circulated with a tray of tasteless sandwiches. Richards got two of them and sat munching, listening to a pal named Rettenmund as he regaled Richards and a few others with a seemingly inexhaustible fund of dirty stories.
When the whole group was together, they were shunted into an elevator and lifted to the fifth floor. Their quarters were made up of a large common room, a communal lavatory, and the inevitable sleep-factory with its rows of cots. They were informed that a cafeteria down the hall would serve a hot meal at seven o'clock.
Richards sat still for a few minutes, then got up and walked over to the cop stationed by the door they had come in through. "Is there a telephone, pal?" He didn't expect they would be allowed to phone out, but the cop merely jerked his thumb toward the hall.
Richards pushed the door open a crack and peered out. Sure enough, there it was. Pay phone.
He looked at the cop again. "Listen, if you loan me fifty cents for the phone, I'll--
"Screw off, Jack."
Richards held his temper. "I want to call my wife. Our kid is sick. Put yourself in my place, for Christ's sake."
The cop laughed: a short, chopping, ugly sound. "You types are all the same. A story for every day of the year. Technicolor and 3-D on Christmas and Mother's Day. "
"You bastard," Richards said, and something in his eyes, the stance of his shoulders suddenly made the cop shift his gaze to the wall. "Aren't you married yourself? Didn't you ever find yourself strapped and have to borrow, even if it tasted like shit in your mouth?"
The cop suddenly jammed a hand into his jumper pocket and came up with a fistful of plastic coins. He thrust two New Quarters at Richards, stuffed the rest of the money back in his pocket, and grabbed a handful of Richards's tunic. "If you send anybody else over here because Charlie Grady is a soft touch, I'll beat your sonofabitching brains out, maggot."
"Thank you," Richards said steadily. "For the loan."
Charlie Grady laughed and let him go. Richards went out into the hall, picked up the phone, and dropped his money into the horn. It banged hollowly and for a moment nothing happened-oh, Jesus, all for nothing-but then the dial tone came. He punched the number of the fifth floor hall phone slowly, hoping the Jenner bitch down the hall wouldn't answer. She'd just as soon yell wrong number when she recognized his voice and he would lose his money.
It rang six times, and then an unfamiliar voice said: "Hello?"
"I want to talk to Sheila Richards in SC."
"I think she went out," the voice said. It grew insinuating. "She walks up and down the block, you know. They got a sick kid. The man there is shiftless."
"Just knock on the door," he said, cotton mouthed.
"Hold on."
The phone on the other end crashed against the wall as the unfamiliar voice let it dangle. Far away, dim, as if in a dream, he heard the unfamiliar voice knocking and yelling: "Phone! Phone for ya, Missus Richards!"
Half a minute later the unfamiliar voice was back on the line. "She ain't there. I can hear the kid yellin, but she ain't there. Like I say, she keeps an eye out when the fleet's in." The voice giggled.
Richards wished he could teleport himself through the phone line and pop out on the other end, like an evil genie from a black bottle, and choke the unfamiliar voice until his eyeballs popped out and rolled on the floor.
"Take a message," he said. "Write it on the wall if you have to."
"Ain't got no pencil. I'm hangin up. G'bye."
"Wait!" Richards yelled, panic in his voice.
"I'm . . . just a second. " Grudgingly the voice said, "She comin up the stairs now."
Richards collapsed sweatily against the wall. A moment later Sheila's voice was in his ear, quizzical, wary, a little frightened: "Hello?"
"Sheila." He closed his eyes, letting the wall support him.
"Ben. Ben, is that you? Are you all right?"
"Yeah. Fine. Cathy. Is she-"
"The same. The fever isn't so bad but she sounds so croupy. Ben, I think there's water in her lungs. What if she has pneumonia?"
"It'll be all right. It'll be all right."
"I-" She paused, a long pause. "I hate to leave her, but I had to. Ben, I turned two tricks this morning. I'm sorry. But I got her some medicine at the drug. Some good medicine." Her voice had taken on a zealous, evangelical lilt.
"That stuff is shit," he said. "Listen: No more, Sheila. Please. I think I'm in hems. Really. They can't cut many more guys because there's too many shows. There's got to be enough cannon fodder to go around. And they give advances, I think. Mrs. Upshaw-"
"She looked awful in black," Sheila broke in tonelessly.
"Never mind that. You stay with Cathy, Sheila. No more tricks."
"All right. I won't go out again." But he didn't believe her voice. Fingers crossed, Sheila? "I love you, Ben."
"And I lo-"
"Three minutes are up," the operator broke in. "If you wish to continue, please deposit one New Quarter or three old quarters."
"Wait a second!" Richards yelled. "Get off the goddam line, bitch. You-'
The empty hum of a broken connection.
He threw the receiver. It flew the length of its silver cord, then rebounded, striking the wall and then penduluming slowly back and forth like some strange snake that had bitten once and then died.
Somebody has to pay, Richards thought numbly as he walked back. Somebody has to.
Minus 089 and COUNTING
They were quartered on the fifth floor until ten o'clock the following day, and Richards was nearly out of his mind with anger, worry, and frustration when a young and slightly faggoty-looking pal in a skintight Games uniform asked them to please step into the elevator. They were perhaps three hundred in all: over sixty of their number had been removed soundlessly and painlessly the night before. One of them had been the kid with the inexhaustible fund of dirty jokes.
They were taken to a small auditorium on the sixth floor in groups of fifty. The auditorium was very luxurious, done in great quantities of red plush. There was an ashtray built into the realwood arm of every seat, and Richards hauled out his crumpled pack of Blams. He tapped his ashes on the floor.
There was a small stage at the front, and in the center of that, a lectern. A pitcher of water stood on it.
At about fifteen minutes past ten, the faggoty-looking fellow walked to the lectern and said: "I'd like you to meet Arthur M. Burns, Assistant Director of Games. "
"Huzzah," somebody behind Richards said in a sour voice.
A portly man with a tonsure surrounded by gray hair strode to the lectern, pausing and cocking his head as he arrived, as if to appreciate a round of applause which only he could hear. Then he smiled at them, a broad, twinkling smile that seemed to transform him into a pudgy, aging Cupid in a business suit.
"Congratulations," he said. "You've made it."
There was a huge collective sigh, followed by some laughter and back-slapping. More cigarettes were lit up.
"Huzzah," the sour voice repeated.
"Shortly, your program assignments and seventh floor room numbers will be passed out. The executive producers of your particular programs will explain further exactly what is expected of you. But before that happens, I just want to repeat my congratulations and tell you that I find you to be a courageous, resourceful group, refusing to live on the publi
c dole when you have means at your disposal to acquit yourselves as men, and, may I add personally, as true heroes of our time.
"Bullshit," the sour voice remarked.
"Furthermore, I speak for the entire Network when I wish you good luck and Godspeed." Arthur M. Burns chuckled porkily and rubbed his hands together. "Well, I know you're anxious to get those assignments, so I'll spare you any more of my jabber."
A side door popped open, and a dozen Games ushers wearing red tunics came into the auditorium. They began to call out names. White envelopes were passed out, and soon they littered the floor like confetti. Plastic assignment cards were read, exchanged with new acquaintances. There were muffled groans, cheers, catcalls. Arthur M. Burns presided over it all from his podium, smiling benevolently.
-That Christly How Hot Can You Take It, Jesus I hate the heat
-the show's a goddam two-bitter, comes on right after the flictoons, for God's sake
-Treadmill to Bucks, gosh, I didn't know my heart was
-I was hoping I'd get it but I didn't really think
-Hey Jake, you ever seen this Swim the Crocodiles? I thought
-nothing like I expected
-I don't think you can
-Miserable goddam
-This Run For Your Guns-
"Benjamin Richards! Ben Richards?"
"Here!"
He was handed a plain white envelope and tore it open. His fingers were shaking slightly and it took him two tries to get the small plastic card out. He frowned down at it, not understanding. No program assignment was punched on it. The card read simply: ELEVATOR SIX.
He put the card in his breast pocket with his I. D. and left the auditorium. The first five elevators at the end of the hall were doing a brisk business as they ferried the following week's contestants up to the seventh floor. There were four others standing by the closed doors of Elevator 6, and Richards recognized one of them as the owner of the sour voice.
"What's this?" Richards asked. "Are we getting the gate?"
The man with the sour voice was about twenty-five, not bad looking. One arm was withered, probably by polio, which had come back strong in 2005. It had done especially well in Co-Op.
"No such luck," he said, and laughed emptily. "I think we're getting the bigmoney assignments. The ones where they do more than just land you in the hospital with a stroke or put out an eye or cut off an arm or two. The ones where they kill you. Prime time, baby."
They were joined by a sixth pal, a good-looking kid who was blinking at everything in a surprised way.
"Hello, sucker," the man with the sour voice said.
At eleven o'clock, after all the others had been taken away, the doors of Elevator 6 popped open. There was a cop riding in the Judas hole again.
"See?" The man with the sour voice said. "We're dangerous characters. Public enemies. They're gonna rub us out. " He made a tough gangster face and sprayed the bulletproof compartment with an imaginary Sten gun. The cop stared at him woodenly.
Minus 088 and COUNTING
The waiting room on the eighth floor was very small, very plush, very intimate, very private. Richards had it all to himself.
At the end of the elevator ride, three of them had been promptly whisked away down a plushly carpeted corridor by three cops. Richards, the man with the sour voice, and the kid who blinked a lot had been taken here.
A receptionist who vaguely reminded Richards of one of the old tee-vee sex stars (Liz Kelly? Grace Taylor?) he had watched as a kid smiled at the three of them when they came in. She was sitting at a desk in an alcove, surrounded by so many potted plants that she might have been in an Ecuadorian foxhole. "Mr. Jansky," she said with a blinding smile. "Go right in."
The kid who blinked a lot went into the inner sanctum. Richards and the man with the sour voice, whose name was Jimmy Laughlin, made wary conversation. Richards discovered that Laughlin lived only three blocks away from him, on Dock Street. He had held a part-time job until the year before as an engine wiper for General Atomics, and had then been fired for taking part in a sit-down strike protesting leaky radiation shields.
"Well, I'm alive, anyway," he said. "According to those maggots, that's all that counts. I'm sterile, of course. That don't matter. That's one of the little risks you run for the princely sum of seven New Bucks a day."
When G-A had shown him the door, the withered arm had made it even tougher to get a job. His wife had come down with bad asthma two years before, was now bed-ridden. "Finally I decided to go for the big brass ring," Laughlin said with a bitter smile. "Maybe I'll get a chance to push a few creeps out a high window before McCone's boys get me."
"Do you think it really is-"
"The Running Man? Bet your sweet ass. Give me one of those cruddy cigarettes, pal."
Richards gave him one.
The door opened and the kid who blinked a lot came out on the arm of a beautiful dolly wearing two handkerchiefs and a prayer. The kid gave them a small, nervous smile as they went by.
"Mr. Laughlin? Would you go in, please?"
So Richards was alone, unless you counted the receptionist, who had disappeared into her foxhole again.
He got up and went over to the free cigarette machine in the corner. Laughlin must be right, he reflected. The cigarette machine dispensed Dokes. They must have hit the big leagues. He got a package of Blams, sat down, and lit one up.
About twenty minutes later Laughlin came out with an ash-blonde on his arm. "A friend of mine from the car pool," he said to Richards, and pointed at the blonde. She dimpled dutifully. Laughlin looked pained. "At least the bastard talks straight," he said to Richards. "See you."
He went out. The receptionist poked her head out of her foxhole. "Mr. Richards? Would you step in, please?"
He went in.
Minus 087 and COUNTING
The inner office looked big enough to play killball in. It was dominated by a huge, one-wall picture window that looked west over the homes of the middle class, the dockside warehouses and oil tanks, and Harding Lake itself. Both sky and water were pearl-gray; it was still raining. A large tanker far out was chugging from right to left.
The man behind the desk was of middle height and very black. So black, in fact, that for a moment Richards was struck with unreality. He might have stepped out of a minstrel show.
"Mr. Richards. " He rose and extended his hand over the desk. When Richards did not shake it, he did not seem particularly flustered. He merely took his hand back to himself and sat down.
A sling chair was next to the desk. Richards sat down and butted his smoke in an ashtray with the Games emblem embossed on it.
"I'm Dan Killian, Mr. Richards. By now you've probably guessed why you've been brought here. Our records and your test scores both say you're a bright boy. "
Richards folded his hands and waited.
"You've been slated as a contestant on The Running Man, Mr. Richards. It's our biggest show; it's the most lucrative-and dangerous-for the men involved. I've got your final consent form here on my desk. I've no doubt that you'll sign it, but first I want to tell you why you've been selected and I want you to understand fully what you're getting into."
Richards said nothing.
Killian pulled a dossier onto the virgin surface of his desk blotter. Richards saw that it had his name typed on the front. Killian flipped it open.
"Benjamin Stuart Richards. Age twenty-eight, born August 8, 1997, city of Harding. Attended South City Manual Trades from September of 2011 until December of 2013. Suspended twice for failure to respect authority. I believe you kicked the assistant principal in the upper thigh once while his back was turned?"
"Crap," Richards said. "I kicked him in the ass."
Killian nodded. "However you say, Mr. Richards. You married Sheila Richards, nee Gordon, at the age of sixteen. Old-style lifetime contract. Rebel all the way, uh? No union affiliation due to your refusal to sign the Union Oath of Fealty and the Wage Control Articles. I believe that you refe
rred to Area Governor Johnsbury as 'a corn-holing sonofabitch.' "
"Yes," Richards said.
"Your work record has been spotty and you've been fired . . . let's see . . . a total of six times for such things as insubordination, insulting superiors, and abusive criticism of authority."
Richards shrugged.
"In short, you are regarded as antiauthoritarian and antisocial. You're a deviate who has been intelligent enough to stay out of prison and serious trouble with the government, and you're not hooked on anything. A staff psychologist reports you saw lesbians, excrement, and a pollutive gas vehicle in various inkblots. He also reports a high, unexplained degree of hilarity-"
"He reminded me of a kid I used to know. He liked to hide under the bleachers at school and whack off. The kid, I mean. I don't know what your doctor likes to do. "
"I see." Killian smiled briefly, white teeth glittering in all that darkness, and went back to his folder. "You held racial responses outlawed by the Racial Act of 2004. You made several rather violent responses during the word-association test. "
"I'm here on violent business," Richards said.
"To be sure. And yet we-and here I speak in a larger sense than the Games Authority; I speak in the national sense-view these responses with extreme disquiet. "
"Afraid someone might tape a stick of Irish to your ignition system some night?" Richards asked, grinning. .
Killian wet his thumb reflectively and turned to the next sheet. "Fortunately for us-you've given a hostage to fortune, Mr. Richards. You have a daughter named Catherine, eighteen months. Was that a mistake?" He smiled frostily.
"Planned," Richards said without rancor. "I was working for G-A then. Somehow, some of my sperm lived through it. A jest of God, maybe. With the world the way it is, I sometimes think we must have been off our trolley."
"At any rate, you're here," Killian said, continuing to smile his cold smile. "And next Tuesday you will appear on The Running Man. You've seen the program?"
"Yes. "
"Then you know it's the biggest thing going on Free-Vee. It's filled with chances for viewer participation, both vicarious and actual. I am executive producer of the program. "