10:36pm

Wait­ing. For the bus to take us to Fisherman’s Wharf. 20 min­utes. Now 12 minutes.

It’s late. Well, it’s not that late. We have some time till mid­night. But we’ve been run­ning. We’re tired.

The bus will take us to Fisherman’s Wharf. From there we’ll catch the 30. The 30 will take us to the end. Sim­ple as that. Easy victory.

Now it’s 10 minutes.

---

7:22pm

“Here’s what we’re think­ing: this whole crowd’s gonna try to get to PP and LP first since those check­points are close by. So we’re gonna head to Fort Mason first, avoid the crowd. From there we can run the route back­wards. While all the chasers are look­ing for folks in the south­east, we’ll be in the north­west. When they migrate to the north­west, we’ll be in the southeast.”

“What about the end? We’ll have to get all the way from Chi­na­town to Crissy Field? Won’t the way be swarm­ing with chasers?”

“The end will be swarm­ing with chasers what­ever we do.”

---

9:10pm

We’re at an out­post of light in a sea of dark. How did we get here? What is this place? My shoes are damp with mud.

Music is blar­ing from a boom­box. A man in a skele­ton out­fit is ask­ing me to form a conga line. He won’t stamp my sheet unless I join the conga line.

My sis­ter has enthu­si­as­ti­cally joined the conga line.

Well, I’ve gotta get that stamp.

---

9:17pm

We got lucky. We caught the 47 at Fort Mason just as it was leaving.

A silent check for red; the coast appears clear. They can’t tag us on the bus, any­way — but it’s good to know for when we get off.

A big guy in a front-​facing seat notices the blue rib­bon tied around my sleeve. “Hey,” he says, “I’m curi­ous: what party are those blue rib­bons for?”

I halt­ingly begin to answer, look to my sis­ter for sup­port. She pipes up.

“It’s for this, like, city-​wide game of sharks and min­nows. We have these maps that we need to get stamped at six dif­fer­ent check­points through­out the city, by mid­night. But there are chasers with red rib­bons through­out the city that are try­ing to tag you. And if they do, you give them your blue rib­bon and you tie on a red rib­bon and you become a chaser your­self. Except they can’t tag you in safe zones, like at the check­points them­selves or at bus shel­ters or on the bus.”

“Yeah, we’re just com­ing from the check­point at Form Mason. Now we need to get to the Broad­way Tunnel.”

The guy is thereby sat­is­fied. I turn to Danny and Nathan for advice.

“OK, we obvi­ously don’t want to get off at Broad­way — the chasers’ll be wait­ing for us there. So should we get off before or after Broadway?”

“I think it’s gotta be after, right?”

“Agreed. Check out the map, there aren’t any check­points to the south. No chaser is gonna be patrolling the south­ern border.”

---

9:26pm

“Shit! Red! Chaser!”

“Cross the street! Go, go, GO!”

---

8:03pm

The plan has changed.

That stuff about going to Fort Mason first? Screw it, Theresa said.

Now we’re run­ning, five peo­ple in for­ma­tion on the side­walks of SoMa. I raise my arm to sig­nal I’m turn­ing right.

We’ve decided to make a run for the Pagoda Place stop in Chi­na­town. We’ve got the energy to spare, and there won’t be many chasers this early. If we want to take any risks tonight, now’s the time.

We run oppor­tunis­ti­cally, mov­ing west or north depend­ing on what the lights allow.

Con­struc­tion ahead, which has arti­fi­cially nar­rowed the side­walk into a dan­ger­ous choke­point. If I were a chaser, I’d lurk at exactly such a spot. We duck down an alley instead.

1st and Mis­sion. Now we’re by the office. There’s a pas­sage between Mis­sion and Mar­ket by the Con­tem­po­rary Jew­ish Museum, near Tro­pisueño — Danny knows what I’m talk­ing about. It’ll dump us out right by Grant, and then it’s a straight shot to the first safe zone.

Roads, roads, roads. So many of these words would be mean­ing­less unless you live here. Swap the names out with streets from Chicago, New York, Lon­don, Madrid — it could mean the same. It’s so arbitrary.

I love it. All that time spent at bus stops, study­ing maps of the city, is finally pay­ing off. Such a sense of agency. Here’s a place I finally feel like I know.

9:38pm

And then I remem­ber how eas­ily I can be surprised.

The top of the Broad­way Tun­nel. The actual top. Not just the bridge a block away from the top of the Broad­way Tun­nel, the one that I walk across every time I come home from the gym. The actual top, where appar­ently there’s a lit­tle park.

I live lit­er­ally only seven blocks away from here, but I’ve never been here. I pride myself at hav­ing explored my neigh­bor­hood pretty well. You’d think I’d have gone out of my way a block or two one day and check out the top of the Broad­way Tunnel.

Well, I’m here now. Along with my four com­pa­tri­ots and a small lin­ger­ing crowd of other run­ners, all of us rest­ing. Cos­tumed agents sit at a makeshift table. This is less fes­tive than that sur­real Fort Mason post. We approach the table.

The man with the stamp takes my paper, hes­i­tates, allows a bal­loon of awk­ward­ness to inflate between us. And then: “What do you want your future to be like?”

I was not expect­ing this. I answer dumbly: “…Good?”

“‘Good’? Is that all?”

Hey, why not? I’m tired from all this run­ning. I shrug.

“That may be ask­ing for a lot. My advice to you: aim low.”

He stamps my card.

---

10:55

The bus is crammed to capac­ity, mainly with peo­ple wear­ing blue rib­bons on their arms won­der­ing what the bus dri­ver must think of all this. But remem­ber, this is a San Fran­cisco Muni dri­ver; this night hardly reg­is­ters as more than a blip of annoy­ance on their weird-​shit-​o-​meter.

We are dumped uncer­e­mo­ni­ously at Fisherman’s Wharf. The place is a waste­land. It’s inside the safe zone, so the chasers have no rea­son to be here. It’s almost 11 and all the attrac­tions are closed, so tourists have no rea­son to be here. And it’s Fisherman’s Wharf, so res­i­dents of San Fran­cisco have no rea­son to be here.

The air is cool and moist, with a touch of fog that lends an apoc­a­lyp­tic feel to the place. The streets are car­less, the side­walks unpeo­pled. Paved expanses lead nowhere in par­tic­u­lar. It looks like an amuse­ment park after clos­ing time, and that’s essen­tially what it is.

“Any­one have any idea where the check­point is?”

A voice pipes up from the group of blue rib­bons ahead of us: “No idea. I wish they had done a bet­ter job indi­cat­ing where the check­points are.”

At which point we begin to hear the beats from a minia­ture out­door dance party that’s hap­pen­ing about 100 feet off to our right.

They even have a vel­vet rope.

---

10:19pm

We’re run­ning, but we don’t really need to. I think I’m run­ning out of oblig­a­tion — because we thought this would be the hard­est stretch, so we might as well pre­tend it is.

But it’s not. There isn’t a sin­gle red rib­bon to be seen. So we’re run­ning up Bat­tery for no par­tic­u­lar rea­son other than to give a few inno­cent bystanders some­thing to won­der about for a few seconds.

We’ve only been threat­ened by a chaser once, an hour ago, near the Broad­way Tun­nel check­point. And even that was only an imag­ined threat: we essen­tially walked into the guy, freaked out, and ran away — and weren’t chased, because (we didn’t real­ize) we were in a safe zone at the time.

Nearly two and a half hours in: no real chaser threat. And these two blocks, the pre­sumed hard­est stretch? A cake­walk. We’ve so got this.

---

11:10pm

Run.

Run.

Fol­low Dane.

They got Theresa. Who else?

Not you, Greg. And not Dane. Fol­low Dane.

Did we lose them?

Slow­ing down. Good. Safe.

What?

Oh shit. Dane’s down.

Shit shit shit.

Guy behind. Gaining.

Yel­low light. Make it across. That’ll slow him down.

He’s not slow­ing down.

He got Dane. I’m alone.

Still gain­ing.

No cars in the street. Jaywalk.

Make it back to the safe zone. Three blocks. Two blocks.

Wait, where does the safe zone begin?

Alone.

---

11:02pm

“How many min­utes do we have before the 45 arrives?”

“Just under 10. It’s like seven blocks away. If we run, we can make it.”

“OK, let’s do it.”

---

11:13pm

This hotel park­ing lot is famil­iar. I think I came here with Emma once to buy kitschy San Fran­cisco stuff for a recruit­ing video.

Now I’m using it to hide from zom­bies. Same city, new perspectives.

---

11:35pm

I’m walk­ing west on North Point Street along­side a man in his paja­mas. It’s an act of desperation.

He’s a grad stu­dent at Berke­ley. He hasn’t got­ten caught yet either, but he’s giv­ing up. He has other places to be. He peels off to the left.

“Good to meet you. Have a good night!”

“You too.”

Alone again. These streets should be dense with chasers, but I see no one.


No, wait, there’s some­one in the dis­tance.
Are they wear­ing a red rib­bon? Can’t tell.
Cross to the other side of the street to be safe. It’s darker there.
Keep cool. Don’t bring atten­tion to your­self. Nonchalance.


Never mind, those peo­ple are fine: ordi­nary Hal­loween rev­el­ers. Beyond them, this street looks empty for blocks. Maybe even all the way to the Fort Mason safe zone.

Is this really going to work? Is this how I break out of jail? By strolling out the front door?

Oh well. It’s a beau­ti­ful night.

---

8:59pm

We hop off the 30 at North Point and Van Ness.
“Guys, let’s head south!” I say.
They want to know why. Every­one else is head­ing north.
“It’s a short­cut.”
Hmm, well, that might not be quite true.
“It’s a scenic shortcut.”

---

9:02pm

There are no lights. A biker whizzes down the hill next to us. We pause to take in the water­front, the stars, the lights of Marin and Oak­land that have been poured across the hills and val­leys, the sounds of the bay.

My sis­ter is jump­ing up and down mani­a­cally. “Guys, I’m FREAKING OUT. This is so FREAKING beau­ti­ful! Holy CRAP!”

---

11:45pm

I hop on the 30 at North Point and Van Ness.

I see a few other blue rib­bons. Excel­lent. The 30 will drop us off just around the cor­ner from the final safe zone. It’ll be swarm­ing with chasers, but with these other blues around, I might be able to scram­ble through.

I.e., can­non fodder.

I nod to one in solidarity.

I take a seat. Have Danny and Nathan made it? Is my sis­ter wait­ing for me at the end? What­ever hap­pened to Dane?

Five min­utes later, Danny gets on the bus (blue rib­bon intact). He’s with a stranger — not Nathan.

“Hey Greg.”

Holy crap!

“Holy crap!”

Holy crap!

I’m no longer alone.

---

8:23pm

The Pagoda Place check­point in Chi­na­town is mobbed with run­ners. It’s as we guessed: a pop­u­lar first stop for the night.

I wait in line and hand off my sheet to a stoic vol­un­teer in skele­ton makeup. It’s returned to me with the first stamp of the night — a blue bas­ket­ball. Along with my stamp sheet I’m given a paper tag, through which has been looped a rub­ber band. The tag reads:

If I die tonight…
_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​
_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​
_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​

I have a pen, but I don’t fill it out. Yet I slip it around my wrist.

Off to catch the 30.

---

12:06am

The Palace of Fine Arts. For those of you who haven’t vis­ited, it looks like some­one was vis­it­ing the Explorato­rium and acci­den­tally left behind a bunch of majes­tic Atlantean ruins.

It’s specif­i­cally Atlantean — not Greek or Roman. Only the Atlantis com­par­i­son con­veys its stately Romanesque beauty, while simul­ta­ne­ously cap­tur­ing the exotic qual­ity of its absurd pur­pose­less­ness. It is beau­ti­ful, but it is espe­cially beau­ti­ful because it makes no sense why it should be there.

And now it sits between us and the final checkpoint.

We shouldn’t actu­ally be here. The 30 should have dropped us off just around the cor­ner from Crissy Field. Instead, it dropped us off more like seven blocks away.

For­tu­nately, there haven’t been nearly as many chasers as I had expected. Maybe a few, but we’ve been cir­cum­spect and there’s been no actual chas­ing. Our new com­pa­triot — Mad­die, the one who came onto the bus with Danny — told us there wouldn’t be many. After all, who wants to be the jerk that camps out for run­ners right at the end? That’s not cool.

Appar­ently she knows what she’s talk­ing about: she’s done this before. Actu­ally, she’s helped orga­nize it before.

She’s wear­ing some kind of armor for her Hal­loween cos­tume, though I don’t reg­is­ter exactly what she’s sup­posed to be. It’s dark, and every sil­hou­ette is poten­tially a per­son who wants to kill me, so I’m not pay­ing the clos­est atten­tion to these kinds of details.

Now it’s just the three of us. Well, there was that creepy guy with the extra blue rib­bon and the bag with tuna in it. He was on the bus and had been tail­ing us by around 20 feet for a few blocks since we got off. We seem to have shaken tuna guy, though.

So it’s just the three of us, and the Palace of Fine Arts.

---

We walk in.

The spec­tac­u­lar colon­nade dra­mat­i­cally soars over our heads to the right. Fur­ther ahead, the main dome of the place stands majes­ti­cally, bathed in arti­fi­cial light.

“This is… pretty epic.”

This is the most appro­pri­ate use of the word I can recall ever being applied to any­thing in my direct experience.

As we approach the mid­way point near the main dome, we see some­one ahead of us. Two peo­ple. One breaks into a chase after the other.

Threat.

And now a third per­son approaches. Who’s this? Are they safe?

They break into a run towards us.

Not safe.

Crap.

Crap crap crap.

Two chasers.

Where are we at? Where am I? How did we get here? I don’t know.

Crap.

Three of us, two of them. One peels off to chase Mad­die back in the direc­tion we came from. Another chases Danny and me. Danny dashes off to the left, runs into the dome.

What’s the right thing to do here? Well, there’s one chaser and two of us: do the math. I peel off right. I ensconce myself against a con­crete wall where two columns pro­vide me some cover.

The chaser went after Danny. Now I can’t see or hear a god damn thing.

I peer out to the right. A pair of non-​players, folks I noticed walk­ing in. OK.

I have to make it through the Palace. I have to cut through the dome.

I creep forward.

Another place of cover, the entrance­way to the dome. I peer fur­ther in. I can’t see anyone.

I creep forward.

From the other side of the dome, a chaser saun­ters toward me. Shit.
He sees me see him. Shit.
I back away slowly. I am exposed. He con­tin­ues to saunter.

Then he breaks into a run.

Shit.

I make a break to the left, out of the dome, try­ing to escape from the colonnade.

And ahead of me: a girl in some kind of… is that armor? Mad­die? Is she alive?

No, that’s a red rib­bon. But is it Mad­die? Did they get her? Am I outnumbered?

She’s directly ahead of me. Could I still make a break for it now? Maybe. I don’t know. Prob­a­bly not.

You know what? If they got her, let them get me. It was a good fight; I’m beat. I slow down. I raise my arms slightly. “OK. OK, you got me. You got me.”

She bumps into me, tag­ging me. A voice from behind shouts, “We got him! The trap worked!”

So I slip the blue rib­bon off my arm. As I hand it to the impa­tient girl (who isn’t Mad­die and isn’t wear­ing armor, I can now see), I notice a sil­hou­ette on the far end of the Palace of Fine Arts. It’s Danny, dash­ing towards the final checkpoint.

And he’s going to make it.