The Long Walk

by Richard Bachman

But of course it had hurt. It had hurt before, in the worst, rupturing way, knowing there would be no more you but the universe would roll on just the same, unharmed and unhampered.

“I wonder why he’s here, why he doesn’t say anything. And whether he’ll live or die.” “Garraty, we’re all going to die.” “But hopefully not tonight,” Garraty said.

Garraty wondered sickly why Travin didn’t just let it roll down his legs. Better to be dirty than dead.

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.

“You did not tell the truth and so you will have to pay the consequences.” —Bob Barker Truth or Consequences

He ate the last of his mom’s cookies, balled up the foil, and pitched it into the brush at the side of the road. Just another litterbug on the great tomato plant of life.

“I’ll outlast Barkovitch, though,” McVries said, almost to himself. “I can do that, by Christ.”

Thinking, Garraty thought. That’s the day’s business. Thinking. Thinking and isolation, because it doesn’t matter if you pass the time of day with someone or not; in the end, you’re alone.

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?”

It was strange—in spite of all the noise he could still hear the warnings clearly. I could die, he thought. I could just die laughing, wouldn’t that be a scream?

He thought that the longer you went without speaking, the harder it gets to break the silence.

“How about his life?” Garraty asked. “Who’d walk for that?” “Nobody, before the Walk started, maybe. But right now I’d be happy enough with just that, the hell with the Prize, the hell with having my every heart’s desire. How about you?”

“Come on, assholes! You want to live forever?” —Unknown World War I Top Sergeant

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.

“I don’t care if you win or lose, just as long as you win.” —Vince Lombardi

It was Abraham, looking like a victim of the Bataan March.

The sobs ripped out of him and made him ache with a pain that was far beyond anything the Walk had been able to inflict. He hoped he wouldn’t hear the shots. But he did.

“Once upon a time,” Garraty began, “there was a white knight that went out into the world on a Sacred Quest. He left his castle and walked through the Enchanted Forest—” “Knights ride,” Stebbins objected.