The Running Man

MINUS 022 AND COUNTING

When Holloway’s voice informed Richards that the plane was crossing the bonier between Canada and the state of Vermont (Richards supposed he knew his business; he himself could see nothing but darkness below them, interrupted by occasional clusters of light), he set his coffee down carefully and said:

“Could you supply me with a map of North America, Captain Holloway?”

“Physical or political?” A new voice cut in. The navigator’s, Richards supposed. Now he was supposed to play obligingly dumb and not know which map he wanted. Which he didn’t.

“Both,” he said flatly.

“Are you going to send the woman up for them?”

“What’s your name, pal?”

The hesitant pause of a man who realizes with sudden trepidation that he has been singled out. “Donahue.”

“You’ve got legs, Donahue. Suppose you trot them back here yourself.”

Donahue trotted them back. He had long hair combed back greaser fashion and pants tailored tight enough to show what looked like a bag of golf balls at the crotch. The maps were encased in limp plastic. Richards didn’t know what Donahue’s balls were encased in.

“I didn’t mean to mouth off,” he said unwillingly. Richards thought he could peg him. Well-off young men with a lot of free time often spent much of it roaming the shabby pleasure areas of the big cities, roaming in well-heeled packs, sometimes on foot, more often on choppers. They were queer-stompers. Queers, of course, had to be eradicated. Save our bathrooms for democracy. They rarely ventured beyond the twilight pleasure areas into the full darkness of the ghettos. When they did, they got the shit kicked out of them.

Donahue shifted uneasily under Richards’s long gaze. “Anything else?”

“You a queer-stomper, pal?”

“Huh?”

“Never mind. Go on back. Help them fly the plane.”

Donahue went back at a fast shuffle.

Richards quickly discovered that the map with the towns and cities and roads was the political map. Pressing one finger down from Derry to the Canada-Vermont border in a western-reaching straightedge, he located their approximate position.

“Captain Holloway?”

“Yes.”

“Turn lleft.”

“Huh?” Holloway sounded frankly startled.

“South, I mean. Due south. And remember-”

“I’m remembering,” Holloway said. “Don’t worry.”

The plane banked. McCone sat hunched in the seat he had fallen into, staring at Richards with hungry, wanting eyes.