The Long Walk

by Richard Bachman

Do you believe in true love, Hank dear?” “I believe in a good screw,” Olson said, and Art Baker burst out laughing.

It’s not survival of the physically fittest, that’s where I went wrong when I let myself get into this. If it was, I’d have a fair chance. But there are weak men who can lift cars if their wives are pinned underneath. The brain, Garraty.” McVries’s voice had dropped to a hoarse whisper. “It isn’t man or God. It’s something… in the brain.”

“Enjoy it while you can,” Baker said, joining the group. “It’s going to be a scorcher. It’s hot already and it’s only six-thirty in the morning.” “Think you’d get used to it, where you come from,” Pearson said, almost resentfully. “You don’t get used to it,” Baker said, slinging his light jacket over his arm. “You just learn to live with it.”

Bredes… they’ve destroyed being an adolescent, Garraty. If you’re a sixteen-year-old boy, you can’t discuss the pains of adolescent love with any decency anymore. You just come off sounding like fucking Ron Howard with a hardon.”

There comes a time when the will just runs out. Doesn’t matter what I think, see? I used to have a good time smearing away with oil paints. I wasn’t too bad, either. Then one day—bingo. I didn’t taper off, I just stopped. Bingo. There was no urge to go on even another minute. I went to bed one night liking to paint and when I woke up it was nowhere.”

He was indebted again, and it shamed him. It shamed him because he knew he would not help McVries if the chance came.

Garraty tried to think of it as poetic justice, but it only made him feel sick. The pain within him had turned into a sickness, a rotten sick feeling that seemed to be growing in the hollows of his body like a green fungus.