The Running Man Read online

  16-03-2023

  “THEY’RE AFTER ME...

  As Jeff drove the nearly dark street, the man beside him peered behind them, agitated. “They’re after me ... in a blue car ... to kill me because I know too much.”

  “For heaven’s sake, relax!” Jeff urged.

  The man slumped down in the seat, exhausted. Jeff glanced back and saw a green sedan pulling out of a street, swerving and out of control. Suddenly, it cut to the right and smashed into Jeff’s car, spinning it around. Both men leaped out.

  Then the on-rushing sound of another motor whirled Jeff around. Coming around a comer, heading straight for Jeffs passenger, was a big, blue sedan. There was a heavy thud, and the car zoomed on, leaving a crumpled heap in the street.

  Jeff ran to the man who was gasping, “Now they know you ... be careful ... be careful . . .” Then he was dead.

  AUTHOR’S PROFILE

  J. Hunter Holly was born in Lansing, Michigan, and graduated from Michigan State University in 1954 with a B.A. degree in psychology. Her affiliations at the University were Phi Kappa Phi, state university national honor society; Tau Sigma, honorary society of the school of science and arts; and Psi Chi, psychology honorary society.

  Miss Holly's major interests, aside from science fiction and psychology, lie in the study of American Indian lore, anthropology, philosophy and the arts. She is the author of two previous Monarch science-fiction novels entitled ENCOUNTER and THE FLYING EYES.

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  A Science Fiction Novel

  THE RUNNING MAN

  J. Hunter Holly

  Author of

  THE FLYING EYES

  MONARCH BOOKS, INC

  Derby, Connecticut

  Contents

  Chapter one

  Chapter two

  Chapter three

  Chapter four

  Chapter five

  Chapter six

  Chapter seven

  Chapter eight

  Chapter nine

  Chapter ten

  Chapter eleven

  Chapter twelve

  THE RUNNING MAN

  A Monarch Science Fiction Novel

  Published in April, 1963

  Copyright © 1963 by J. Hunter Holly

  Cover Painting by RALPH BRILLHART

  Monarch Books are published by MONARCH BOOKS,

  INC., Capital Building, Derby, Connecticut, and represent

  the works of outstanding novelists and writers of non-fiction

  especially chosen for their literary merit and

  reading entertainment.

  Printed in the United States of America

  All Rights Reserved

  Chapter one

  JEFF Munro hated expressways. They cut through the forests and rolling hills with a sterile path of divided lanes and monotony. They were merely concrete signboards—Exit Here, Food and Lodging at Next Exit, and on and on into a blank boredom that by-passed the green growth and transformed every mile into a dull sameness of gray pavement and speeding cars. He avoided them resolutely, driving the old roads that wound in a subtle pattern through the countryside of farms and forests, inching through little towns where human beings lived with no exit signs.

  He chided himself for using the word, “hate.” Cory would say it was characteristic of him and his too-strong opinions. Jeff supposed it was. But only short, stinging words could describe his convictions.

  Driving the miles alone, Jeff wished he had Cory beside him so they could argue it out, their favorite pastime on quiet evenings. He would tell Cory that an opinion worth holding was worth shouting out, and prove that he had won his position in the world by following that rule. Associate Professor—it was a good, honorable job, but nothing noteworthy. Political Science Department at Union College— it was a good department and a good school, but still nothing spectacular. Physically, he was an average man and knew it: five-feet-ten, black hair and brown eyes, still nothing uncommon. Yet students at Union College fought to register in his classes, and joined the clubs he served as adviser in droves. Why? Because, he would tell Cory, he spoke out. He believed strongly and he spoke and wrote for his beliefs, in the college paper and the Union Town paper. People listened because he was willing to put his reputation and emotions on the line.

  As he rounded a gentle curve, a sign popped up before him. Yellow green, and red, it blasted at his vision with its message: “HFP is on the march! Join and save the world!” From that sign on, the trees along the road were dotted with slogans or the initials, HFP, Heralds for Peace.

  “Join and save the world,” Jeff grumbled. “Rather, don’t join and save the world. Save it from the fanatics.”

  He knew this road well, and the signs were a new nuisance. But the next town was Bolin, and from there it was less than two hours home.

  He wheeled into the last curve before the straight stretch of road that cut through Bolin. “What the devil?” he muttered. For there was no road through Bolin. Where the road should have swept between the stores lining the main street, there was a mass of people, milling about, surging one way and then another. Over the road hung a red and yellow banner. “Heralds for Peace Lecture Today. Attend, and Save the World.”

  Jeff slowed his car to a crawl and approached the crowd closely, honking his horn so they would clear a path for him. But his horn hardly made a dent in the din of shouting.

  “What’s going on?” he yelled to a man near his right front fender. “Can’t I get through?”

  The man swung about, a stout man with a dirt-streaked face, and when his eyes met Jeff’s, Jeff recoiled. There was pure hatred in the farmer’s eyes, and murder. Their glance held for only a moment, then the farmer re-entered the crowd.

  Jeff got halfway out of his car and laid on the horn. “I want through!” he yelled. But no one bothered to look at him. He left the car in the middle of the road and walked to the crowd. A boy slipped out of the mass of people, ducking under arms and running doubled over. When he stood up in the clear, Jeff caught his arm.

  “What’s going on?” Jeff demanded.

  The boy’s face was flushed bright crimson and his breath panted in his chest. “We’re going to kill her!” he said, and pulled out of Jeff’s grasp. He ran to the side of the road, scooped up stones and packed them into his pockets, then ducked back into the crowd.

  “We’re going to kill her!” he had said, and the words were cold in Jeff’s mind. The boy had been so blunt, and so eager. “We’re going to kill her!” And the pockets full of stones.

  He left his spot on the pavement and moved ahead quickly. This was no simple demonstration. It was a mob, and a mob meant something—someone—at the center, at the victim point. He ran, reaching the outer edge of the people and shoving his way through. Shouted words hit his ears, but he could decipher very few of them. “Damn do-gooder!” he heard, and: “Give her a lesson she won’t forget!”

  As he pushed in from the back, it was harder going. The people were a compact wall, shoulder to shoulder, and he couldn’t break through. Inside the pack, the emotion hit him full force. The people were wild with anger, and it was almost tangible in the air. He searched frantically for an opening, letting the anger around him burn and impel his body, too. The seconds lost seemed suddenly precious. This was none of his business, none of his doing or undoing, but somehow he felt that he was the only sane person in Bolin, and if he failed to act, dreadful things would happen.

  A space of a few inches opened up between two bulky men in front of him
, and he slammed his way between them. He was only three back from the edge now, and a new voice was added to the din, a high, shrill voice that cried out to anyone who would hear, “Leave me alone! You’re children of the devil! Leave me alone!”

  The voice cried in defiance and pleading and Jeff clutched at it, pushing the last way into the open by sheer force of will and elbow. And there, walking backward before the creeping crowd, was a woman. She was middle-aged, her hair graying in streaks. Her dress was cotton and simple, her face pale and shiny, devoid of makeup. Fear made a harshness about her mouth and eyes. The red fire of blood wormed down her left arm, and oozed into her hair from the back of her scalp.

  Somewhere just within his peripheral vision, an arm jerked up and a stone flew over the massed heads. The woman jerked and clutched her body; then again, as another stone flew in at her. Blood gashed behind the last one, and she was a convulsing figure, dancing her way among the hurtling pebbles.

  Jeff leaped across the empty stretch of pavement and threw himself in front of her, shielding her with his body. He stiffened himself, and shouted into the face of the mob, “What’s going on? Are you all out of your minds? What are you people doing?”

  The effect of seeing a stranger rear up before them was what he had hoped it would be. The stones stopped flying and the forward momentum of the mob halted. But how long did he have before they started again? Seconds. He had to turn them in seconds.

  “Get the hell out of the way,” an anonymous voice yelled.

  Jeff didn’t move, not a step back, nor a step forward. They were all poised, a mass on one side, a tiny blot of two on the other, and the first movement would decide it.

  “Don’t dirty yourself with her,” another shout sounded.

  “Leave the HFP-er alone. She has it coming!”

  “No!” Jeff shouted back. “There are two of us here now. Two of us. What is this all about?”

  The answer was garbled as they all yelled at once. H picked out a few words: “ HFP-er,” “Nuisance,” “Ordered out of town,” “Name caller.”

  He felt the women’s faltering touch on his sleeve, and he chose a sentence to jump upon, addressing himself to one man, desperately trying to bring the mob down to an individual basis again. “Why was she ordered out of town?” he cried.

  “Because we didn’t want no lecture.” The big man accepted the challenge. “She’s not going to stand on a platform and call us Communists or sinners any more. If other towns can run them out, so can we!”

  Shouts of approval rose behind the man, but the shrill voice of the woman behind Jeff cut through the noise with a scream of its own. “I shall speak the truth loudly and as long as I can!”

  A growl rose in the street, and Jeff stood solidly against it. “Stop it!” he ordered. “Since when do people of Bolin operate in the Dark Ages? You have no right to throw—”

  He was cut off by a strong forward movement in the mob. “We have every right!” came back at him. It was the same big man. “Calling my little girl the devil’s child—pestering decent, God-fearing women because they wear a little lipstick—knocking on doors—we have every right to rid our town of vermin.”

  Suddenly the woman was no longer behind Jeff, but beside him. Her stance was stiff and unyielding. “Painted women are the devil’s tools,” she said, and her voice was low, bringing a hush to the street. “And they raise the devil’s children. You’re wicked, all of you, and infiltrated with Communists. There are only two choices—HFP or Communism. If you’re against HFP, then—”

  A new stone zoomed in on her and she grabbed her face. When she drew her hand away, blood was making a trail down her cheek.

  “For heaven’s sake, shut up!” Jeff hissed at her. “You’ll get us both killed.”

  “I didn’t ask you to stand with me.” She opened her hand, showing him the blood. “Do God’s children do such things?”

  “You’ll find out what God’s children do,” a new voice called from the crowd. “One more word, and you’ll know.”

  “Where is the law in this town?” Jeff demanded.

  “Right in front of you,” the same big man answered.

  There was no help from the law, then. The sheriff was leading them. What was left for him to do?

  He watched in fascination as the same boy he had stopped in the road, the boy with the pockets full of stones, crept out from under the big bodies in the crowd to stand in the front line.

  “Just let me take her away from here,” Jeff asked, not chastising them any more, but begging them. “Let us walk away.” It was “us” now. He was in too deep to back out, and whatever befell the woman befell him, too.

  His answer was a raised arm and a stone. He clutched his face at the sting of it, and when he saw his own blood, he lost control. “Now, just a minute,” he began, feeling the redness of anger in his face. “You’ve got to—” Another stone cut in at him, striking his calf, and he repeated the grotesque dance of the woman.

  “He’s on of them, himself,” the boy was shouting to the mob. “He’s come to save her, can’t you see that? If there were two of them then why not three?”

  “Two?” Jeff whirled to the woman beside him, but she had no chance to answer. In that one sentence from the boy, he had lost any control over the mob he had gained.

  The wall of people rushed forward, and the stones flew at him in a rain of stinging pain. Fear rose in his mouth, and he grabbed the woman’s hand and pulled her along with him, trying to run, to get clear before the falling stones changed to hands.

  But the woman stumbled, and he was dragging her along the pavement. He let go, and the mob descended on her. Hands turned to fists, and stones to fingernails, and he plowed his way through them, fighting them off. He had to reach her before she died right there, on the road through Bolin.

  Blows fell on him, and he let the groans come as they would, but he fought back. He rammed his fists into stomachs and groins; he dashed for every open foot of ground. He was knocked down, but he rose up again, until he had made his way into the center. He fell beside the woman. She was covered with blood and dirt, and her eyes looked at him with a glassiness that meant her senses were gone. Semiconscious, she could never run.

  The men around him beat upon his back, but he struggled to his knees and then to his feet and lifted the woman up like a sack of vegetables, heaving her over his shoulder. He ran, running square into the crowd, and his momentum knocked some of them out of the way.

  Hands reached out to grab him, but he sidestepped. With his right hand flailing before him as a club, he cleared his way yard by yard. These people weren’t ready to suffer pain, only to inflict it.

  A stone ripped into his back, then another, and the added sting of each made him drive harder. It was a gantlet of beating fists and hands, of flying stones and damning mouths, but the path opened and he ran it. What he thought was freedom turned out to be only a store front. He rammed into the door and with the heavy weight of the woman on his left shoulder, staggered down the aisle, past the counters of yard goods and thread and buttons. The crowd was still coming behind him, but he had a start. They must have stopped outside for a moment, he thought, and never broke his stride.

  He fell against the counters in the narrow aisle, and his thighs bruised, but he pushed on and at last reached the back door. Heaving a great breath, he pushed it open. Fresh air.

  He turned to the left, intending to run the back way around to his car, but now he saw what had slowed the people down. He could hear them behind him, and as he neared the corner of the line of buildings, more of them dashed around to meet him head on. They were yelling and screaming, and there was murder in them.

  He dreaded going among them again. He hadn’t the strength or the breath. But if he didn’t, it meant he was through. He shifted the woman’s body on his shoulder to give it better balance, put his head down and ran, one fist before him to act as a ramrod. He felt it smash into a face, heard a high cry, and knew he had struck the boy with the stones in his pockets. Satisfaction gave his body an extra spurt of energy, and he zigzagged, dodging into every open space, ignoring the blows that fell on him. He peered up and headed straight for a woman, her mouth open in screams. Clenching his teeth, he slammed his fist hard into her chin and she toppled beside him. And for a moment, as he had prayed, he ran alone. The mob stopped to examine the woman he had knocked down, and he ran alone.