The Bachman Books

by Stephen King

"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. "Make-up 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-naturedly 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, red-rimmed 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.

  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 a
im 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 Moue'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 cabby.

  "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 cabby 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 hafts 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 on a swinging 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 Moue's place behind the store, which was a rat warren of old newsies, stolen musical instruments, stolen cameras, and boxes of black-market groceries. Moue 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 hand. 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 Moli
e 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 of 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 of 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-"