Man Hunt Read Free Page A

process of domination. Only his most base and useful strength, courage, kept him sane. He fought the panic, knowing only that the drivers of the car yearned for it. Their greatest desire was for him and the others like him to live in complete and never-ending horror.
    In his fight, the young man began mumbling to himself, repeating a short series of soothing words he had taught himself through weeks of endured torture. Yet deep within him another fight stormed on. It was an incessant fight. Interminable. Perpetual. It was a fight he suffered in even his sleep now. In his nightmares.
    My name is 'Obe,' one half of him said. Obe like robe. Obe like globe. Obe like lobe and strobe and especially probe! My name is Obe.
    No! his other half insisted. It isn't! It's what they want you to think. What they forced into you. That's not your true self.
    It is! the first voice maintained. What came before is gone. 'Obe' is who you are now. Who you will always be.
    But the internal debate, like the susurration from his mouth, was easily ignored. Foremost on the young man's mind was the car. Already he was on his toes, ready to run. On the big toe of his right foot, as bare and filthy as a feral child, his toenail had torn on the pavement when he had pounced to position. He wouldn't discover it for hours.
    Obe's vision
    Obe like robe…Obe like globe…
    soon returned, and the colors morphed into objects. A red brick wall stood behind the empty green dumpster he had slept behind. Brown rust covered one whole wall of the dumpster, slowly reclaiming its components to nature. All around him the air was tinted gray, concealing every object, large and small, as long as possible from the approaching sunrise. The young man held his breath, stopping his mumbles with a cognizant effort, and listened.
    The car that woke him was not in sight, but he could hear its low, idling gargle somewhere very near. A thin, ominous cloud of dust had risen violently from the car's screeching arrival, and now a gentle wind blew it down the length of the alley where he waited.
    Then the car announced itself with a roar of its engine.
    "Silver!" he blurted out, then cursed under his breath for doing so. This was one word from his litany, and he was still learning to control it. I am not scum, he thought. I'm not guilty. I can outrun them. I can.
    A second roar dropped him to his knees, scraping the skin there despite the stiff fabric of his issued dark-blue jumpsuit. The string of words came again then, mumbled over and over. Maybe they'll just drive away , he thought over the muttered litany. Sometimes they just drive away . Tears were squeezing out of his eyes, drawing tracts of clean skin on his cheeks. He began rocking forward and back, further thinning the layer of skin from the flesh over his knees.
    A third, monstrous roar let loose from the car and Obe's throat
    Obe like lobe and strobe and especially probe!
    squeezed out a small whimper.
    "Silver," he said more quietly. Yet the simple sound forced another thin layer of sanity to rip away from the abused fabric of his mind. This was more taunting, more torture, than he had yet encountered out in the field. It was killing him. A sudden spasm of panic hit him, and he nearly bolted from behind the dumpster. He was primordial, knowing only RUN! in that moment of delicacy.
    But just before his basal instinct reached the point of no return, another nearby man yelled aloud, and it was thus that Obe was saved.
    When a fourth roar of the engine came, Obe was able to control his tongue while the weaker man finally jumped from his own hiding place and gave in to his own unspeakable urge to run. The car did not immediately follow, but watched, impressively patient. Obe, too, saw the man go, but what he saw as he looked closer drained the last of his panic as a surge of desire pumped him tightly in the chest.
    The stranger was wearing sneakers… sneakers so new they might have been on their maiden run right before Obe's