Read Online Man Hunt by K. Edwin Fritz - Free Book Online

pounded at the rolling treadmill with the consistency of a vibrant young heartbeat. Every step sounded a punctuated slap that screamed a weak protest from the overworked machine and reverberated up his weakened legs and, eventually, into his shredded mind.
    The room was filled with more than thirty men, all of them running towards a faded mural of an old roadway that narrowed to a distant vanishing point. But off to the right, in the corner, was the door.
    It stood open, that damned door, and a fresh breeze occasionally slipped in. The women disliked this, no doubt, and those men closest to it enjoyed those rare moments of relief, but the agony the door inflicted was undoubtedly worth it in the women's eyes. It was the ultimate torture. With the simplest flick of his eyes he could clearly see the grass of the island's hills and the blue sky beyond. He could hear those occasional gusts of wind. He could smell the clean air mix with the collective sweat of thirty running men. Forget the ropes and the thumbscrews and the other, more creative, methods of inflicting unbearable physical pain. That door was so much worse, so much crueler, because he wasn't chained when he ran the treadmills. He wasn't even within twenty feet of a single woman. Except, of course, when Rhonda walked by with her miniature whip.
    God he was tired. How long had he been running? Thirty minutes? Forty? He dared not ask the time, and though the clock was right there on the side wall, looking would be just as dangerous. He might lose his footing, and he'd surely be punished simply for indulging in a curiosity.
    Why condition us like this? he wondered yet again. What hell are we still in for? Isn't the torture enough? Isn't the mush they're making of my mind enough? Why insist we strengthen our legs and our lungs? What kind of goose, exactly, are they fattening?
    He had come to the conclusion they would be forced to run some kind of race– probably one with horrible obstacles– in which the losers would finally be killed. Or perhaps it was the course itself that did the killing, and only one man survived. Maybe I'll just sit at the starting line when that day comes, he thought . Maybe I'll look them straight in the eyes and tell them to fuck off with a giant smile on my face.
    CRACK! He yelped like a startled dog but didn't stop running. Rhonda had lashed him with her whip again, right across the naked back.
    'The Hickory Switch', his grandmother would have called it. He knew this despite knowing nothing else about his forgotten relative. Not her name, not her face, not whether she had been portly or frail, and not the relative whiteness of her hair. But somewhere inside him, he knew this unknown figure would have called Rhonda's toy a 'switch' and that hers had been made from a sapling branch of a hickory tree.
    His mind insisted that what Rhonda carried was just an ordinary short whip, but for some reason that word– 'switch'– and the idea of it coming from a grandmother– from his grandmother– was always there. It refused to leave him.
    How can I remember a thing like that when sometimes I forget my own name? he wondered. CRACK! Rhonda's switch hit another man to his left. CRACK! The next man in line got his. CRACK! The next. And the next. And the next. She walked the rows of treadmills sometimes hitting every one of them, sometimes picking out what seemed like– but surely weren't– random victims.
    The treadmills were all set to the same insane speed: a single notch below full-on sprint. The men ran it until their legs gave out and they tumbled to the floor in a broken, heaving heap. And they all fell, several times, each day they were forced to run. The women usually gave a fallen man a few seconds to catch his breath, but if he wasn't back on the treadmill within two cracks of Rhonda's switch, he'd be beaten right there in front of the others, hauled back to his box, and he'd be back on the treadmills the following day. Twice he'd seen a man