The Running Men

The scenery was flashing by so fast. Buildings, lampposts, and, finally barren wasteland. Colette didn't know where the battered Ford was heading. They might as well be heading to the middle of nowhere.

'Say something,' Colette said.

Adam showed no sign he had heard. His body had returned to his natural slump, but he could find just enough energy to lift his head up and stare at the endless road ahead.

'So the police tell me you're a spy.' Colette said.

Adam was silent.

'I can't believe it. I was living with you all these years, you know? And you're a spy.'

Silence.

'Where are we going? No - you won't tell me. You never tell me anything. What's on your face?' Colette dug her fingers into the seat. She was angry, angry for the first time in many months, or even years. Pleasant memories with her friends flashed across her brain, and that made her even angrier, which was confusing, and that fact made her angrier still.

'Are you dead or something? Do you even know what's going on? Right now I've been told you're a spy and being whisked away to god knows where, and you're just sitting there, like some - ' She bit her lip and glared at the seat in front of her, feeling the urge to kick it. All her initial frustrations at Adam in the past years, her combined irritation at his apathy for her's and everyone else's welfare, came boiling to the surface.

'Say something!'

He didn't. Colette sank back into her seat, her energy draining out of her. She looked wearily out of the window. The scenery - if it could be called that, for it was just forgotten rocks and dust - whizzed by so fast her muddled brain couldn't bear to look at it. So she closed her eyes, and fell asleep.

When she opened her eyes again, the Ford had stopped. The back door was open and oily hand was reaching towards her. She saw it was Adam's, and she turned away. Adam retreated, and motioned for her to get out of the car.

Her stomach was growling and she was hot, so she got out, and looked around her. They had arrived in some sort of town with buildings and roads completely unfamiliar to her. A scattering of people were milling around them, barely giving them a second glance. The car was parked in front of one of the houses that lined their side of the street. The house was a plain one, coated with white like the rest of them, but it looked more welcoming than their old apartment all the same.

'Where are we?' she growled.

Adam looked her over with clay-like eyes before replying. 'A friend's house.'

'So what, we're gonna hide here for a while?'

'Yeah,' Adam walked up to the door and knocked on it. Both of them waited a full twenty seconds before they heard someone banging through the house to greet them.

'Yeah, yeah,' the voice muffled out from behind the door. 'Hold your horses, keep your pants on - '

The door was wrenched open and a man almost as lanky as Adam himself emerged. His mouth dropped at the sight of him. After a moment he stuck out his hand, straight as an arrow. 

'Well f**k me with a can opener, it's my man of the hour, Adam Jones, what a pleasure I never expected to see you here. Is it the Commies, my man? Or something else, anything else? Never mind, screw all that, it's been f*****g years, let's just sit down and talk a bit before we get to the meat of things, yeah?'

Adam waited patiently until the man had finished, and then grasped his hand limply. 'Hi, Magnus.'

Magnus burst out laughing. 'Same old Adam. Damn, that's why I liked you in the first place. I'd thought you'd have grown up a bit since everything, but, oh, I'm shooting my mouth off again, I'll give you room to breathe once we get inside, promise - ' 

He broke off. He had noticed Colette standing a little ways off the porch. He only took a few seconds to process this before he started firing off questions.

'Now who is this? Don't tell me - well f**k my lucky stars, is she yours, Adam? Hey, little lady, I'm Magnus, what's yours?'

Colette gulped, and struggled to recall her manners. 'I'm, er, Colette. Adam's my uncle.'

'Wait. So you ended with old Adam? Well f**k me, man, f**k me. And - oh, am I being a bit too overbearing, little lady?'

For Colette had been staring at him all this while with a bemused open mouth. She quickly shut it. 'Oh, it's nothing, er, it's just...'

'The hair,' Adam offered.

'Oh - yeah,' Magnus ran his hand through his hair, which was a full straw of blinding purple. 'Had it so long I've gotten used to it. Sorry about that - and come in! I don't wanna attract attention - explain later - so just come in!'

He practically bounced backwards back into the house, and Adam trudged after him. Colette stayed where she was, staring at the darkened doorway. She didn't know what would happen if she went through it.

Magnus poked his head round the door. 'Come on, little lady, I won't bite. Come on!'

He looked as excited as the regulars at the bar when they saw her enter the dark depths of their dwellings, and she didn't want to disappoint him, so she went in.

The house was dark and had a dusty feel to it. Magnus wandered aimlessly through the gloom until his flailing hand caught the light switch, throwing the room into sharp light. It looked like a raging tornado had blown through it, or rather, just the wild impulses of a man with nothing better to do. Chairs were overturned, shirts strewn across the floor.

'Sorry about the mess,' Magnus said, leading the into an equally messy room, although this had one upright table. 'You hungry? I can tell from your faces, man. Luckily for you, I've already got some porridge boiling over the stove, and you guys can have a bite.'

He seemed relatively calmer now, and Colette felt her natural sense of curiosity return. 'Why were the lights off?' she asked.

'Oh, that?' Magnus was already halfway to the kitchen. 'Well, I was told humans can echolocate like those bats when they're in the dark, so I wanted to give it a try. Of course, those fuckers were lying, but it was fun anyhow. Still,' his voice floated further away as he reached the stove, 'Broke a vase that I couldn't remember where I'd bought it, and it might've been important, so, f**k that.'

Adam was pulling some chairs from the living room and placed it near the table. Colette saw, out of the corner of her eye, him sitting down on one of them. She couldn't see whether he was looking at her, and she forced herself to fix her face on the kitchen door.

Magnus returned, heaving a pot of steaming rice. 'Us jolly Americans don't usually eat this stuff, but, f**k, I don't care whether it's from f*****g China or - ' he stopped dead, looking at Colette.

'Er,' Colette said.

'My little lady!' Magnus burst out. He gave a theatrical bow, still holding the pot of porridge. 'Forgive me - how old are you?'

'Er, sixteen this year...'

'Sixteen!' Magnus exploded, nearly spilling porridge all over the table. 'Sixteen's a nice, ripe age. Too ripe to be tarnished by vulgarities and such, right? I'm so dreadfully sorry if I offended you.'

Colette had heard worse things from the regulars. 'No, don't worry, you didn't!'

'Are you sure? I forget where I am sometimes, horrible flaw of mine, I apologies.'

No matter how smitten the regulars had been, their alpha complex had prevented them from ever apologising. But Magnus was different. His earnest face, with a strand of purple hanging down across it, was so comical that Colette stifled a chuckle. And then Magnus laughed in return. On that note, their bond was sealed. Magnus began ladling out porridge for her, which she began gulping down with gusto.

'Sixteen,' Magnus repeated in wonder. 'Sixteen. You smoke yet?'

Colette swallowed her mouthful of rice before replying. 'Smoking? It's disgusting. But everyone in our school does it, and I don't really know why.'

'You go to school, eh? Well, this just keeps getting better and better. Did you refuse smoking cause it was a big no no for the teachers?'

'No,' Colette protested. 'I'm not really a good girl all the time, stop thinking that, I know you are, everyone does. It's just that this guy at my school wanted me to try, and I think I nearly choked to death when I breathed in. So, I think smoking's really disgusting.'

'I'm liking you more, and more, little lady. So, you a star student then?'

'Not really, but I'm in the top quarter,' she beamed proudly.

'Damn, if I ever wanted a daughter like you, you would be the one. It's like an angel fell from the sky.'

She poked him lightly on the shoulder. 'That's so sweet.'

'Being who you are, little lady, I would've thought you'd have knocked a little more sense into my man Adam over there.'

She had completely forgotten him, and she didn't want to look to check how much he had eaten. 'I've tried for sixteen years,' she pouted to Magnus, 'but he's always been like this as long as I can remember.'

Abruptly, Adam stood up. His bowl had already been slurped clean. 'I'm going to sleep,' he said, and turned towards the stairs.

'Woah, hey, Adam, we were having a conversation here! Live a little, man!'

Adam didn't reply. He disappeared into the bedroom.

'Damn,' Magnus said, rubbing his hair. 'Adam was always the first one to turn in, no matter how fun the table was at that time. It's almost as if he hates spending good old quality time with people, f**k, that's probably right.' he caught what he had said, and shut his mouth with a snap. 'Am I bothering you with the vulgarities, little lady?'

'Don't worry, they say the f word at school all the time.'

'Schools these days...well, why don't you drop a little f bomb yourself once in a while, then?'

She giggled at the way he chose his words. 'It's just that...people don't often mean what they say, but I want to mean what I say. So...I don't really want to make anyone uncomfortable.'

'But you yourself are perfectly okay with people hurling bad words at you?'

'Yeah...I mean, they don't really mean it, most of the time they'll really nice deep down, inside, you know?' She scooped more porridge into her mouth before answering. 'Anyway, never mind about the vulgarities, Mr - '

'Call me Magnus, little lady.'

'Then call me Colette, then!'

'Deal,' Magnus stuck out his hand, and Colette shook it, grinning. Magnus then put his hand in his pocket, and it returned with something clunking together in its fist.

'What's that?' Colette asked.

'Hold your horses,' Magnus threw his hand forwards, and two bright, purple dice bounced across the table. Magnus scooped them up before they reached the edge, glanced at the upturned faces briefly, and stuffed them back into his pocket.

'Woah,' Colette said. 'That...looked smooth.'

'Tell you later what I just did, cause I know you'll ask, that's one of the reasons I like you. Anyway, you were about to say something...?'

She smiled at him. 'I was meaning to ask, since you seem to be friends with Adam, like when you said spoke with him at the table once or something, so, I wanted you to tell me more about him.'

Magnus heaved a gigantic sigh. 'Well, Colette,' he raised his eyebrows on the second word, and Colette grinned, which ellicted a pleased smile from Magnus himself, 'Adam's a great big Pandora's box which I haven't got around to unraveling fully yet. What can I tell you about him? Let's see...well, he likes drawing.'

'I knew that,' Colette said with some excitment. When she had been about nine, she had caught Adam sketching something on his notebook on the sofa. When he had seen her he had tried to hide it, but Colette had naturally ducked around his arms to sneak an extra look. In the end Adam relented, and showed her some of his creations. She couldn't remember what was on it, but had the faint impression of something rough and bold. It was only when she was a little older when she had realised the value of this memory, one among precious few that gave an insight into the inner workings of the cold machine labelled Adam Jones.

'What, you know? You're one lucky girl, then. We would have never found out, if that old fool Knox hadn't got up to get another...what was it...another of those pastries, and then he saw Adam doodling in the corner. We all had a good laugh at how he tried to conceal it. But he actually drew pretty good.'

'Who's we?'

'Ah. This sure brings back the old nostalgia train. There were four of us that stuck together, beginning in the humble 1930s, lasting all through the great war but unfortunately crumbling just before the atomic bomb was dropped on the japs. That's another story for another time, but I'll tell you about the four of us first. The four musketeers. God, it's been so long.'

Colette hurried to finish her porridge, then put her hands on her chin and leaned forward to listen.

'It was in Germany. 1937, I think, where - '

'Wait - Nazi Germany?'

'Yup. Us goddamn Nazis. I'm a German, actually, pure and born Aryan, didn't ya know?'

Magnus looked European enough, and his feature started to bear an eerie resemblance to the deceptively handsome officer she had seen in comic books. Usually, that handsome young officer turned to be practicing homicidial mania in his spare time.

'Don't worry a smite, Colette, I ain't a Nazi. Cross my heart and hope to die, most of Germany didn't completely know what Hitler had up his sleeve until the whole mess was over. Not even some of the lower guys in the Nazi party. But still, it was a sin all the same, for me, at least.

'I signed up for the Hitler Youth when I was just around ten, I think. It was what all the parents were doing, sending their children off to the great wave of the future, courtesy of Adolf Hitler, copyright. But for me, it was all for a bit of fun. I was a bit of a duffer back then, and the only reason I followed Hitler was because I liked his symbol. The swastika. I thought it was as cool as f**k. Really, that's the only thing that did it. Not some grand march towards the Greater Germany. All it took was some crosses spliced together. Seriously. Do you hate me now?'

The question came out of nowhere, and Colette was unprepared. 'No!' she blurted out.

'Well good. But after the war, I hated myself. For being such a duffer when I was ten, all the way to eighteen. You can be such a f*****g duffer boy when you're young, Colette. Lots of things just fly past you. A lot of things also catch on and refuse to let go, too. I was a duffer then, still a duffer now,' he shook his head briefly. 'Man, I'm getting ahead of myself. Where was I?'

'You joined the Hitler youth or something...'

'Ah, yes! I signed up, and they dumped me in a group with other aspiring ten year olds like myself. There was me, another German calling himself Knox, a German-Russian named Kristoff, and of course, our old man Adam.'

'But Adam's American.'

'I know, and it beats me how he ended up in Germany, but that's how it went. Now, the four of us, we made quite a quadpair. Kristoff was a bit of a snob, and the de facto leader of our merry gang. Unlike the most of us he had read up on all the ideologies of the Nazi Party and was always ready with a fascist quote whenever needed. He softened up a bit when he got to know us, though. Knox...I think he was autistic, or an aspie. He wasn't always quite right in the head, but the times when he was sober, he could be a really nice guy. I think it was mostly him that kept us together. 

'I was the joker of the group, the troublemaker, but I've always managed to slip out of our Groupmaster's target sight, no matter how many times Kristoff squealed out of me. Splashing paint on the Furher's face on the wall, and completely wiping all traces of suspicion, is something I'm a master at. And then, of course, lastly, there was Adam. The quietest one, the loner, but the most the most rational of the group, the one that kept us sane. He was also the biggest pessimist I've seen in my whole life, and believe me, I've met Commies before, and - '

He stopped. 'A little sleepy there, Colette?'

Colette forced her eyes open. She hadn't meant to nod off, especially since Magnus had already snagged her attention hook, line and sinker, but she had been traveling with Adam for a long time, so long that she had lost track, and now that she had time to think, she realized she hadn't slept at all since the day they left the apartment, apart from the brief stint in the car.

'I'm fine,' she slurred stubbornly.

'Course you're not. Go up to bed. I'll show you your room.'

'I want...to listen.'

'I'll tell you in the morning, Come on, now, you look dead beat. Up you go.'

She was forced reluctantly up the stairs, and the next thing she knew, she found a bed and collapsed onto it. Her last few thoughts were an image of Adam Jones, sitting at the bar, drinking up. He was quiet.

Magnus remained in the kitchen, washing up the bowls and placing them onto the counter. He heard someone coming down the steps, and turned. Adam Jones sat himself down at the table, a bottle already in his hand. He immediately started drinking. Magnus put down the bowls and pulled out a chair next to him.

There was an uncomfortable silence. Magnus tugged at his mane of purple hair, irked by the inactivity. 'So, Colette mad at you or something?' 

Adam put down his bottle with a hollow clunk. 'Think so.'

'If I had to guess, my man, you've probably turned up cause the Americans found out you were in league with the Commies, am I right?'

'Yeah.'

'Knowing America, they'll have their stocking pulled too tight up their legs not to want to arrest Colette too. So you took her and fled across the country. Am I right so far?'

'Yeah.'

'Then why, Adam, why in God's name, didn't you say something to her? She's halfway across America in a town and state she's never been in her life, a thousand miles away from her home and everything she's ever known, and you didn't say anything? She's sixteen, f**k it, goddamn, Adam, stop being so damn cold.'

'I am,' Adam said, and made a move to start drinking again. Magnus snatched the bottle away from him.

'Your brother, whatsis name, Aaron, he wanted you to take care of her.'

'He hated me.'

'There's no denying that, but when things get cut down to the bone he trusted you. He trusted you, to the very end.'

'I know,' Adam out his head down on the table. 'That idiot.'

'What - Adam, you - argh, f**k it,' Magnus shot up from the table, and began pacing around. 'You're always like this, f**k it, you haven't changed one f*****g smite.'

Adam watched him, and then allowed his eyes to rest on the pile of bowls stacked on top of each other on the sink. 'I'd thought she'd have washed them.'

Magnus spun round. 'What?'

'She's like that. She would have wanted to wash them.'

'Y-yeah,' Magnus let his hands fall to the side. 'I got the sense that she was that kind of girl, actually. Damn.'

'So why didn't you let her?'

'One, she was looking really knackered out and ready to faint anytime soon, two, I wasn't really sure if she was that kind of girl. So I rolled the dice. Got a four-six.

So I washed the bowls.'

'You,' Adam said, 'and your dice.'

'Yeah. A long time since you've seen them, eh?'

'You're an idiot.'

'I know I am, but you're a f*****g duffer as well.'

Adam moved for the bottle again, before realizing it wasn't there anymore. He remained sprawled over the table, lifeless.

'How long are you planning on staying here?'

'Dunno.'

'It can't be f*****g forever, okay?'

Adam didn't move for a while as he made some calculations. 'A few months.'

'Fair enough. But you'd best be thinking about Colette, and how she's going to adjust being cooped up in this house from sunrise till dusk everyday. You'd better be thinking about it. F**k, Adam, you're so f*****g cold sometimes.'

'That's how I like my beer,' Adam remarked morosely, almost as an afterthought. Magnus swept past him and thundered upstairs, leaving Adam to brood alone in the dim kitchen.