The Running Man
by Stephen King
Contents
…Minus 097 and COUNTING… A hard, callused hand slapped his sh
Overview
Richards advances deeper into the Games Building, passing another layer of police scrutiny while openly antagonizing the guards. The process grows more ominous as automated card checks remove some applicants without explanation, showing that survival depends on arbitrary unseen judgments as much as physical endurance.
Richards’s defiance establishes his hostility toward the system, but the warnings from cops and applicants suggest that the Network’s machinery is already marking and measuring him.
Summary
After passing Desk 9, Ben Richards enters the hall beyond the application desks and is stopped by a cop who demands his card. When the cop seems disappointed that Richards is allowed through, Richards taunts him about enjoying rejection and reminds him that poverty could make the cop an applicant someday.
Richards joins a small line for the elevators, where another cop checks his card. Richards again provokes the officer, who warns him that the system will eventually break him. A nervous applicant ahead of Richards cautions that antagonizing the cops is dangerous because they share information, but Richards remains unmoved.
The elevator opens onto a heavily guarded car, with one cop controlling the buttons and another sitting in a bulletproof cubicle with a shotgun. The applicants are packed tightly inside and taken to the second floor.
On the second floor, the applicants enter a large waiting room with a Free-Vee and a cigarette dispenser. Each person shows an ID card to a camera; some cards trigger a buzzer, and those applicants are seized and taken away. Richards’s card passes inspection, so he buys cigarettes, sits far from the Free-Vee, and smokes for the first time in months.
Who Appears
- Ben RichardsDefiant applicant who passes further screening while provoking armed police.
- Hall copGuard who checks Richards’s card and is angered by Richards’s taunts.
- Elevator copOfficer who inspects Richards and warns that the system will break him.
- Nervous applicantFellow applicant who warns Richards not to antagonize the police.
- Elevator guardsArmed officers controlling the crowded elevator and second-floor transfer.