The Long Walk

by Richard Bachman

the Major the rarest and most dangerous monster any nation can produce, a society-supported sociopath.

“The ultimate game show would be one where the losing contestant was killed.” —Chuck Barris Game show creator MC of The Gong Show

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.

But when you work for the Government, the Government is twice as aware that you’re alive, twice as ready to call in a Squad if things seem a little dicky around the edges.

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?”

If I fall, I die. I’ll never get up.

Some folks like to see other folks die. I can’t understand that, can you?”

Like a badly treated guitar that has been knocked about by an unfeeling musician, the strings were not broken but only out of tune, discordant, chaotic.

The lights filled the sky with a bubblelike pastel glow that was frightening and apocalyptic, reminding Garraty of pictures he had seen in the history books of the German air-blitz of the American East Coast during the last days of World War II.

There was a raw redness in that swelling sound of Crowd. A hunger that was numbing. Garraty had a vivid and scary image of the great god Crowd clawing its way out of the Augusta basin on scarlet spider-legs and devouring them all alive.

Only Crowd, a creature with no body, no head, no mind. Crowd was nothing but a Voice and an Eye, and it was not surprising that Crowd was both God and Mammon. Garraty felt it. He knew the others were feeling it. It was like walking between giant electrical pylons, feeling the tingles and shocks stand every hair on end, making the tongue jitter nuttily in the mouth, making the eyes seem to crackle and shoot off sparks as they rolled in their beds of moisture. Crowd was to be pleased. Crowd was to be worshiped and feared. Ultimately, Crowd was to be made sacrifice unto.

“You cain’t beat it. We-uns was all crazy to try. You cain’t beat the rottenness of it. Not in this world. Lead-lined, that’s the ticket…”

“Don’t watch ’em do it,” Baker said. “Promise me that, too.”

“If there are such things as souls, his is still close. You could catch up.”

And it was time to get started. There was still so far to walk.