The Running Man
by Stephen King
Contents
…Minus 067 and COUNTING… Richards stood by the ladder, lookin
Overview
Richards survives the sewers long enough to find a possible exit into what he believes may be the city’s working-class core. He avoids exposing himself in daylight, records a deliberately uninformative tape, and grows increasingly certain that the required tapes may be betraying his location.
The chapter slows the chase into a tense pause, emphasizing Richards’s exhaustion, caution, and need to outthink the game’s surveillance as much as its Hunters.
Summary
After escaping the explosion at the Y.M.C.A. and moving through the sewer system, Ben Richards reaches a ladder beneath a manhole cover. He is surprised to see daylight through the cover’s breather holes because the darkness and monotonous sewer sounds have destroyed his sense of time.
Richards listens for traffic above and notices no air-cars, only occasional ground vehicles and Hondacycles. This makes Richards suspect he may have reached the city’s core and the poorer districts where his own people live, though Richards credits luck more than skill.
Because daylight would make emerging too dangerous, Richards decides to wait until dark. To fill the time and satisfy the game’s requirements, Richards records another tape, aiming the camera only at his chest and staying silent so the recording will not reveal his surroundings.
Richards stores the exposed tape with the others and remains troubled by the suspicion that the tapes may be helping the Network locate him. Exhausted after nearly thirty hours of running, Richards sits on the ladder and waits for nightfall.
Who Appears
- Ben RichardsExhausted fugitive hiding in the sewers, cautiously waiting for night and suspecting surveillance.