The Running Man

Ben takes a taxi to Robard Street. The excited driver recognizes him. He asks Ben to leave a note for his wife, who loves the Games. Ben refuses. He leaves him $1.

Ben goes to Molie Jernigan’s hockshop. Molie is like Robin Hood and will work for anyone with money. However, Ben knows this is a special situation and Molie will be taking on more risk than usual. When Ben asks for ID papers, Molie says he’ll do it for Ben’s wife. He also says that Ben can’t afford to go home. Sentries have been watching his building for a week. Ben is suddenly homesick and sad. As Molie works, he listens to old music and says that Ben missed out on the best songs because of the era in which he was born.

Shortly after midnight, Ben leaves Molie’s with a disguise and a new identity: John Griffen Springer. A driver takes him to the jetport, where Ben buys a ticket to New York. By 3:20 that morning, he is disappearing into the biggest city on earth.

Ben checks into the Brant Hotel after spending a couple of hours hiding in a peepshow theater. After making sure that there are no identifiable objects in the frame, he records himself sleeping with a pillowcase on his head for 10 minutes.

Ben wakes at four in the afternoon, records another video, and deposits his two clips in the hotel’s mail drop. He has to assume the Hunters will find Molie; it’s hard for him not to imagine the Hunters torturing him for information. He decides to keep moving. It will be riskier to hide in a single location for a long time.

Ben pays for another two days at the hotel before leaving via a fire escape. As he buys a bus ticket to Boston, he hears a cop shout, but the man is just pursuing a purse snatcher. He decides to get a gun once he gets to Boston.

After arriving in Boston, Ben gets a room at the YMCA from a racist clerk who makes disparaging remarks about nearly everyone else in the building.

Ben cries in his hotel room. He thinks he might be able to stay in Boston for two days but can’t decide where to go next.

Ben films his next videos naked, with his buttocks facing the camera and a pillowcase on his head as he hums the theme from The Running Man. He uses the public shower and then returns to his room, where he counts cars from his bedroom window to pass the time. Someone knocks on the door and asks for a man named Frankie, but they eventually give up when Ben doesn’t answer.

Ben sees a man in a brown and white hunting jacket across the street. Then he realizes he saw the man earlier when he was counting cars. Everyone suddenly seems as if they might be Hunters. Ben knows that he is growing paranoid but also that he is in danger.

In the shower, Ben breaks a wire toothbrush holder off the wall. He jams it into the elevator’s key slot while pushing the basement button. This takes him to the basement without requiring an access card. He learned the trick as a youth, from a time when he used to steal newspapers for Molie.

In the basement, Ben removes a storm-drain cover and uses a match to light stacks of old newspapers on fire. He rips fuses out of the fuse box until the lights go out before crawling through the storm drain. He manages to support himself with his back and feet pressing against the pipe while replacing the cover. He manages to slip down into the pipe, inch by inch, and crawls away into the dark when the pipe branches horizontally.

The oil tank from the basement explodes when he is 50 feet into the pipe, which quickly begins to grow hot. He reaches a new pipe filled with water, which cools him off. He knows they will assume he’s alive. He’s sure the Hunters are here searching for him.

Ben reaches the foot of a ladder. He records a clip with the camera pointed at his chest and doesn’t speak during the 10 minutes. He feels that the tapes somehow reveal his location. As he waits for dark, he realizes that he’s been running for almost 30 hours.

On the street, a seven-year-old boy named Stacey sees the manhole cover move. He thinks it might be the devil. When Ben emerges, Ben asks the boy if he knows a quiet place to hide. Stacey takes Ben to a lean-to in an alley and tells him that his sister has cancer. He has a big brother named Bradley who can probably help Ben. Ben says he’ll give him $3 to get medicine for the sister if he brings Bradley to him. Then he falls asleep.

When Ben wakes up, Stacey and Bradley are there. Bradley has a switchblade. He recognizes Ben and says the reports say he killed five cops in the hotel fire. Bradley hates cops and says he’ll take Ben somewhere safe. Stacey kicks Ben in the shin, reminding him to pay him the $3 he promised.

An old woman cooks for them in an apartment. Cassie, Bradley and Stacey’s five-year-old sister, screams from the pain of her lung cancer as Ben tells Bradley about Cathy.

Bradley says he knows how to beat the situation with the recordings. He wants Ben to mail the tapes to him, and then Bradley will mail them to the Games Building or have someone else do it from another location. That should confuse anyone who might be tracking Ben with the tapes or the address on the envelopes.

Bradley wants to get a car and smuggle Ben out of the city. Stacey returns with the medicine. As they eat, Bradley says their family is hurting enough that it’s worth the risk to help Ben.

Bradley tells Ben that he likes to read. He and other members of his gang stole a library card and take turns using it. He’s been reading about pollution, which is how he learned about a conspiracy involving air pollution caused by the incessantly running factories. The air is literally killing them. It caused Cassie’s lung cancer. If they—meaning the lower classes—stay inside watching Free-Vee, they’ll die without creating commotion.

Ben is shocked when Bradley says he learned how to make an effective nose filter for only $10. The Network advertises filters that cost hundreds of dollars, which no one but the affluent can afford. Ben thinks about how much he wants to kill Killian and Burns. Bradley says people are angry and looking for a reason to fight back.

The next evening, Bradley says the plan is ready. They watch Ben on that night’s episode of The Running Man, which focuses on the agonizing deaths of the cops at the hotel. It plays one of the clips that Ben recorded that day. In the clip, Ben talks about the air quality and the nose filters, but the feed cuts off quickly. During his second clip, Ben asks people to storm the libraries and read about pollution. A slideshow of the dead cops and their families follows. Their deaths have earned an additional $500 for Ben. As the crowd howls, Ben says he might go to the 90th floor of the Games building and kill them all.

Bradley gives Ben a pistol before putting him in the trunk of a car. He says that one out of roughly every 10 cars is searched at checkpoints, but he thinks he can get them through. Bradley wears a nice suit, intending to pose as the manager for Raygon Chemicals. Ben hears the car stop at a checkpoint almost immediately after they leave.