Man Hunt by K. Edwin Fritz Page B

sectors hunted more often for the thrill of it than for the outcome. But the black sector women… they had only ever killed. That had always been the word on the street.
    I'm dead, his mind repeated . That's the simple truth. I'll never make it home. Never make it to black sector. Never live long enough to lose my sanity like that–
    Obe's rambling mind stopped and focused. The man in black. The man who had reached into Obe's new blue jumpsuit in search of food and come up empty and screaming. Food, he thought. I need food. An idea had come to him, but it was horribly thin. He wasn't even sure about which direction he had wandered that morning. The center, he reminded himself. It's in the center. Just run toward the center.
    "Put 'em down you blue bastard! They don't belong to you!" The engine suddenly gunned and the car's frame shimmied from the restrained power behind it. Obe looked down at the sneakers in his hands, wishing he had just a few additional seconds to put them on. "Silver," he muttered to himself. "Silver lining."
    And then, without warning and his feet still bare, Obe ran.
     
     

3
     
    It was already habit to immediately put what was in his hands down the front of his jumpsuit. He ran on the balls of his feet and never slowed, never hobbled when he landed on a pebble or piece of dislodged road rubble. Pain was something he had to ignore.
    He was different when running. No longer a man but prey, the fear that had built up inside him for an hour, an afternoon, or even a few days, would finally break and turn into pure adrenaline.
    Despite what the women had tried to teach him, Obe now knew there were only two kinds of men on the island: those who would harness this fear into fuel, and those that allowed the fear to control them. Sometimes those men ran who ignorantly crossed the threshold of the city's boundaries and into the unprotected open hills. More often they were surprised to find themselves in a dead-end alley and, even worse, thought it was then too late to escape. Such poor runners survived only on luck and on the ambiguous whims of the women.
    Obe had a good jump on the flat black car that had come to clean up the recent kill, but his chances of survival were nevertheless almost nil. Smart runners were beaten all the time. And he'd only heard of two cases of someone surviving a hunt from the black car. His thin hope of an idea was already gone from the forefront of his mind, stored deep within his subconscious where instinct reigned. As his legs violently scissored, he knew only that the best way to escape was to do so before the chase truly began.
    Muttering his silver words of encouragement, Obe sprinted straight down the middle of the road with his head lowered and arms pumping. He pictured clouds beneath his feet that were lined with soft, silver satin, and eventually he barely felt the ground at all.
    The car closed quickly, and above the groan of the engine he heard a smart crack! in the air behind him. He flinched instantly, a reaction that was ingrained into him. The hours and hours of training they had made him endure in the fortress had done that. The treadmills had done that.
    The crack came again and he flinched again, slowing a half step in the process, just as designed. Obe blinked his eyes and held them shut for a moment, running blindly straight and trying not to let the image of the treadmills come, but this was a fight he always lost. Another crack and it was there.
    He saw the painted wall, the women lined up with their shotguns, and the door left purposely ajar. That door was the worst. It begged at all of them to just have the courage to go for it. But none of them ever did. Not once in all the days and weeks they had made him run the treadmills.
    He felt his feet on the pavement but his ears heard the fast, jolting hisses as they landed on the treadmill instead. And then another crack came from behind him and he was back inside the fortress.
     
     

4
     
    His bare feet