The Long Walk

by Richard Bachman

“Sit down, boys,” he said. “Keep Hint Thirteen in mind.” Hint Thirteen was “Conserve energy whenever possible.”

The tiny radar dishes turned busily, monitoring each Walker’s speed with a sophisticated on-board computer. Low speed cutoff was exactly four miles an hour.

“Sure I know it,” Garraty said. It was in the rule book. They gave you three warnings. The fourth time you fell below four miles an hour you were… well, you were out of the Walk. But if you had three warnings and could manage to walk for three hours, you were back in the sun again.

“Conserve energy whenever possible”—Hint 13.

“Your Plan and the stuff that comes out of my asshole bear a suspicious resemblance to each other,”

“I’m pleased to announce that you have finished the first mile of your journey, boys. I’d also like to remind you that the longest distance a full complement of Walkers has ever covered is seven and three-quarters miles. I’m hoping you’ll better that.”

Hint 6: Slow and easy does it.

“I suppose you’re wondering why I’m writing down everyone’s name and number,” Harkness said. “You’re with the Squads,” Olson cracked over his shoulder. “No, I’m going to write a book,” Harkness said pleasantly. “When this is all over, I’m going to write a book.” Garraty grinned. “If you win you’re going to write a book, you mean.”

Garraty figured they had to be less than a mile from breaking the record.

And Garraty could smell panic coming off Curley in waves, and it was like the smell of a ripe, freshly cut lemon.

It was one-thirty. The Long Walk had progressed through eighteen miles.

“It’s a bigger town than Limestone,” Garraty said. He was still feeling defensive, God knew why. Maybe because so many of these boys would die here, maybe all of them. Probably all of them. Only six Long Walks in history had ended over the state line in New Hampshire, and only one had gotten into Massachusetts, and the experts said that was like Hank Aaron hitting seven hundred and thirty home runs, or whatever it was… a record that would never be equaled.

Hint 3: Do not, repeat, do not wear sneakers. Nothing will give you blisters faster than sneakers on a Long Walk.

Two of them gone now. The odds infinitesimally adjusted in favor of those remaining. There was some subdued talk, and Garraty wondered again what they did with the bodies.

Now they were twenty-five miles into the Long Walk.

Hint 10: Save your wind. If you smoke ordinarily, try not to smoke on the Long Walk.

By four-thirty they had covered thirty miles.

Four gone, Garraty thought. Eight and a half hours on the road and only four gone. There was a small, pinched feeling in his stomach. I’ll never outlast all of them, he thought. Not all of them. But on the other hand, why not. Someone had to.

And he hadn’t even done it alone. There were currently ninety-five other fools in this parade.

They rounded a bend and passed a small shop where the owner, a little man wearing stained white, had set up a soft drink cooler with a sign over it which read: ON THE HOUSE FOR THE LONG WALKERS!! COURTESY OF “EV’S” MARKET! A police cruiser was parked close by, and two policemen were patiently explaining to Ev, as they undoubtedly did every year, that it was against the rules for spectators to offer any kind of aid or assistance—including soft drinks—to the Walkers.

“Get out of here before I pull your fucking nose off and make you eat it,” Collie Parker snarled.

“Next time he comes around I think I’ll trip him,” Olson said. His voice sounded dull and drained. “Tut-tut,” McVries said. “Rule 8, no interference with your fellow Walkers.”

Not long after that, they walked into downtown Caribou. They were forty-four miles from their starting point.

I get out of this,” McVries said abruptly, “you know what I’m going to do?” “What?” Baker asked. “Fornicate until my cock turns blue. I’ve never been so horny in my life as I am right this minute, at quarter of eight on May first.”

Garraty thought that memories were like a line drawn in the dirt. The further back you went the scuffier and harder to see that line got. Until finally there was nothing but smooth sand and the black hole of nothingness that you came out of.

They were almost fifty miles into the Walk.

The shot. They walked on up the hill. “Ninety-three bottles of beer left on the shelf,” McVries said softly.

The hill went on. Up ahead Toland fainted and was shot after the soldier left beside him had warned his unconscious body three times.

Nine gone, and a third of them had gotten it right here on this hill.

It was nine o’clock. They had been on the road twelve hours.

Garraty supposed a person could do a lot of things when his life was at stake. They had come about fifty-four miles now.

“It took me a while to figure it out, but it was faster after I got around that mental block. Walk or die, that’s the moral of this story. Simple as that. 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.”

It seemed to him that the sound of his footfalls had become as loud to his ears as the sound of his own heartbeat. Vital, life and death sound.

“It’s midnight. We live to fight another day, Garraty.” “And many of ’em,” Abraham added. “For me, that is. Not that I begrudge you, you understand.” “A hundred and five miles to Oldtown, if you care,” Olson put in tiredly.

The harmonica player started in satirically on Taps and somebody—Collie Parker, by the sound—told him angrily to shut the fuck up.

Stebbins laughed. Garraty felt suddenly furious with Stebbins, and wanted to turn to him and ask him how he’d like someone laughing at his death. It was something you’d expect of Barkovitch. Barkovitch had said he’d dance on a lot of graves, and there were sixteen he could dance on already.

They were seventy-five miles into the Walk, and there were twenty-four gone.

He looked at the road quite a lot now. Sometimes the white line was solid, sometimes it was broken, and sometimes it was double, like streetcar tracks. He wondered how people could ride over this road all the other days of the year and not see the pattern of life and death in that white paint. Or did they see, after all?

Garraty wondered if twenty-six down was an unusually high or an unusually low number for seventy-five miles into a Long Walk.

“How many miles? Any idea?” “About eighty, I make it. And twenty-seven down. We’re a quarter of the way home, Pete.”

“We must be halfway to Oldtown, huh?” McVries said. “Eighty down, eighty to go?”

“Now boys,” McVries said. He had recovered and was his old sardonic self again. “Why don’t you settle this like gentlemen? First one to get his head blown off has to buy the other one a beer.”

Most of these guys don’t know why they got into it. Look at that Barkovitch. He ain’t in it to get no Prize. He’s just walkin’ to see other people die. He lives on it. When someone gets a ticket, he gets a little more go-power. It ain’t enough. He’ll dry up just like a leaf on a tree.”

They had been on the road for twenty-two hours. Twenty-two hours of nonstop walking, it was unbelievable.

Garraty could remember reading that the largest number to ever complete the first hundred miles of a Long Walk was sixty-three. They looked a sure bet to crack that record; there were still sixty-nine in this group.

“Let this ground be seeded with salt,” McVries said suddenly, very rapidly. “So that no stalk of corn or stalk of wheat shall ever grow. Cursed be the children of this ground and cursed be their loins. Also cursed be their hams and hocks. Hail Mary full of grace, let us blow this goddam place.” McVries began to laugh. “Shut up,” Abraham said hoarsely. “Stop talking like that.”

“All the world is God,” McVries said, and giggled hysterically. “We’re walking on the Lord, and back there the flies are crawling on the Lord, in fact the flies are also the Lord, so blessed be the fruit of thy womb Percy. Amen, hallelujah, chunky peanut butter. Our father, which art in tinfoil, hallow’d be thy name.” “I’ll hit you!” Abraham warned. His face was very pale. “I will, Pete!”

They’re animals, all right. But why are you so goddam sure that makes us human beings?”

“We want to die, that’s why we’re doing it. Why else, Garraty? Why else?”

“You know something?” McVries said finally. “What?” “If I had a dollar… just a dollar, mind you… I think I’d put it on you, Garraty. I think you’ve got a chance to win this thing.” Garraty laughed self-consciously. “Putting the whammy on me?”