The Running Man - Stephen King [85]
Go-no-go in five minutes.
From Harding?
Yes.
He’s bracketed and braced.
All across the night the invisible batwings fly, drawing a glittering net across the northeast corner of America. Servos controlled by General Atomics computers function smoothly. The missiles turn and shift subtly in a thousand places to follow the blinking red and green lights that sketch the sky. They are like steel rattlesnakes filled with waiting venom.
Richards saw it all, and functioned even as he saw it. The duality of his brain was oddly comforting, in a way. It induced a detachment that was much like insanity. His bloodcrusted finger followed their southward progress smoothly. Now south of Springfield, now west of Hartford, now—
Tracking.
…Minus 019 and COUNTING…
“Mr. Richards?”
“Yes.”
“We are over Newark, New Jersey.”
“Yes,” Richards said. “I’ve been watching. Holloway?”
Holloway didn’t reply, but Richards knew he was listening.
“They’ve got a bead drawn on us all the way, don’t they?”
“Yes,” Holloway said.
Richards looked at McCone. “I imagine they’re trying to decide if they can afford to do away with their professional bloodhound here. Imagine they’ll decide in the affirmative. After all, all they have to do is train a new one.”
McCone was snarling at him, but Richards thought it was a completely unconscious gesture, one that could probably be traced all the way to McCone’s ancestors, the Neanderthals who had crept up behind their enemies with large rocks rather than battling to the death in the honorable but unintelligent manner.
“When do we get over open country again, Captain?”
“We won’t. Not on a due south heading. We will strike open sea after we cross the offshore North Carolina drilling derricks, though.”
“Everything south of here is a suburb of New York City?”
“That’s about the size of it,” Holloway said.
“Thank you.”
Newark was sprawled and groined below them like a handful of dirty jewelry thrown carelessly into some lady’s black-velvet vanity box.
“Captain?”
Wearily: “Yes.”
“You will now proceed due west.”
McCone jumped as if he had been goosed. Amelia made a surprised coughing noise in her throat.
“West?” Holloway asked. He sounded unhappy and frightened for the first time. “You’re asking for it, going that way. West takes us over pretty open country. Pennsylvania between Harrisburg and Pittsburgh is all farm country. There isn’t another big city east of Cleveland.”
“Are you planning my strategy for me, Captain?”
“No, I—”
“Due west,” Richards repeated curtly.
Newark swung away beneath them.
“You’re crazy,” McCone said. “They’ll blow us apart.”
“With you and five other innocent people on board? This honorable country?”
“It will be a mistake,” McCone said harshly. “A mistake on purpose.”
“Don’t you watch The National Report?” Richards asked, still smiling. “We don’t make mistakes. We haven’t made a mistake since 1950.”
Newark was sliding away beneath the wing; darkness took its place.
“You’re not laughing anymore,” Richards said.
…Minus 018 and COUNTING…
A half-hour later Holloway came on the voice-com again. He sounded excited.
“Richards, we’ve been informed by Harding Red that they want to beam a high-intensity broadcast at us. From Games Federation. I was told you would find it very much worth your while to turn on the Free-Vee.”
“Thank you.”
He regarded the blank Free-Vee screen and almost turned it on. He withdrew his hand as if the back of the next seat with its embedded screen was hot. A curious sense of dread and déjà vu filled him. It was too much like going back to the beginning, Sheila with her thin, worked face, the smell of Mrs. Jenner’s cabbage cooking down the hall. The blare of the games. Treadmill to Bucks. Swim the Crocodiles. Cathy’s screams. There could never be another child, of course, not even if he could take all this back, withdraw it, and go back to the beginning. Even the one had been against fantastically high odds.
“Turn it on,” McCone said. “Maybe they’re going to offer us—you—a deal.”
“Shut up,” Richards said.
He waited, letting the dread