The starter pistol wasn’t much louder than a balloon popping, and as its feeble echoes faded, fifteen boys began walking along the width of the otherwise deserted highway toward the rising sun. It was a completely anticlimactic beginning.
Most of them were staring down at their watches. Kenny was matching his stride step for step with Butters, who was staring at his own watch. Kenny could see the upper display on it holding steady at 3.7. The jeeps began slowly rolling along the breakdown lanes on both sides, keeping pace with the walkers.
“Aaaaaaand....they’re off!” one of the walkers on the other side of the highway wisecracked, and there was some nervous laughter. Even a couple of the soldiers riding along beside them grinned at that.
Kenny continued to match pace with Butters as the field slowly spread out. Most of the boys seemed intent on walking as slowly as possible and began dropping back. Only a couple seemed intent on walking faster. Butters slowly drifted toward the right edge of the highway and Kenny followed alongside him.
“Okay,” Kyle said from a few feet away; Stan was right next to him, but he appeared to be speaking to anyone within earshot. “So this is it? We just...walk? This is stupid.”
“You won’t think so in a couple days,” the boy with 14 – Tucker around his neck said from the centerline of the highway. “When you haven’t slept in two days and your feet feel like two bricks, and you’ve seen a few of us get shot, then talk to us about how stupid this is.”
“It isn’t just that,” Kyle replied huffily. “This whole idea of gambling on when kids are going to get shot...it is fucking stupid.”
“No, it isn’t,” Cartman said. Having overheard them, he angled closer to insert himself into this conversation. Kenny decided to look for a way to move Butters away from him as soon as he could. “It’s fucking brilliant, actually.”
“How is this possibly brilliant?” Stan asked. Kyle angrily unwrapped a sandwich from his rations, taking a bite from it and throwing its container onto the asphalt.
“Well, you know the government used to tax peoples’ income, right?” Kenny rolled his eyes; apparently another know-it-all was about to explain the ‘benefits’ of the Long Walk. “And tax their food, and their gasoline, and their property; some people had to pay half their income or more to the government every year...and the tax code was 50,000 pages long and no one understood it. It didn’t matter anyway though, because no matter how much they taxed people it wasn’t enough, and about the time the national debt hit forty trillion dollars the rest of the world figured out the USA was broke, and then the Long Walk was born.” Butters was looking down at the pavement, eating a snack cake.
“They never came right out and said it,” Cartman continued. “But you know it’s true: Those countries like China and Russia who forgave most of our debt did it not just for a part of the revenue stream the Walk created. Oh hell no, they did it for the chance to see a few white round-eyed all-American boys get cut down in their prime on high definition TV, just because they slowed down one time too many.”
“That’s horrible,” Butters said, reaching into his backpack for something else to eat. He also sped up slightly, and Kenny sped up as well to keep up with him.
“Horrible or not, he’s right,” Tucker replied. “Now, people just have to wager ten percent of their incomes on this...and in less than a week, a few thousand people are going to win a few hundred bucks apiece...and a couple hundred people or so, the really big rollers, will be rich beyond their wildest dreams.” Kenny thought of his father, who was probably passed out in the back seat of their SUV somewhere in eastern Colorado by now. “Not to mention that jackpot that whichever one of us survives this clusterfuck will walk away with. Which is going to be me, by the way.”
Kenny and Butters had pulled a dozen yards ahead of the other boys involved in that conversation. Butters seemed intent on ignoring them, but Kenny was straining to eavesdrop on their discussion as they dropped even further back.
Cartman was talking while eating a donut. “That huge jackpot that I’m going to win? That’s only a quarter of what people gambled. Another quarter goes to pay winning bets...and the government keeps the rest. That’s why it’s fucking brilliant. The masses think they’re just gambling and don’t even know they’re actually paying taxes.”
“And you don’t even have to bet on when someone’s going to get shot,” Stan observed. “You can bet on...I dunno, who’s going to win, um...”
“Or who gets shot first, or eighth, or last,” Cartman said, laughing. “Or when the first person gets shot. Did you guys know the longest one of these has gone before someone got taken out was something like fourteen miles? Jesus Christ, if you can’t even walk that far you shouldn’t enter this.”
Kenny took a drink from his canteen and looked out the corner of his eye at Butters, who was walking resolutely next to him, still staring at the pavement as it passed under their feet. Butters looked back a moment later, catching Kenny staring.
“Y—you know,” Butters said hesitantly. “You don’t have to walk with me, if you don’t want to. I...mean if you’d rather hang out with those other guys...”
Kenny’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t you want me to walk with you?”
“No! I mean yes. I...” He seemed to be struggling with the idea that Kenny would actually prefer to walk just with him. “I’d like it if you did,” he finished softly a moment later.
“Good! Because yes, I’d rather walk next to you than those guys.” He was starting to feel protective toward this smaller boy; it was similar to how he used to act around his younger sister. They smiled at each other and fell into a comfortable silence.
Over the next thirty minutes the road began to slope very slightly uphill, making walking more difficult and the horizon in front of them appear unnaturally close. Kenny watched as Tucker put a pair of earbuds attached to an MP3 player in his ears. The brown-haired boy, Donovan, who had made a fool out of himself on national television with his colostomy bag was talking to someone on a cell phone. Kenny took another drink from his canteen and sighed contentedly.
“Hey, you guys,” Kyle suddenly said a few minutes later, loudly enough for his voice to carry. It was the first time Kenny had heard him say anything in at least twenty minutes. “We’re going to see something really interesting up ahead in a minute.”
Kenny automatically looked at the road ahead. The highway had begun to level off as they approached the crest of a long rolling hill. He realized at once what Kyle was referring to, and now that he was aware of it, he could begin to hear it as well: the sound of a very large crowd heard from a great distance. Spectators were kept away from the first three miles of the Long Walk to avoid distracting the walkers, but they were approaching that threshold now.
After another minute they reached the top of the hill and the road leveled off. Ahead of them, beneath a perfectly blue sky, both lanes of the interstate stretched on to infinity; and lining it on the right were tens of thousands of people a hundred or more deep, along with yet another much larger military presence. There were cars and vans, people throwing colorful beach balls through the air and booths set up at the back of the crush of people selling concessions. It looked like a festival, and at the sight of the walkers finally coming over the hill the crowd turned as one toward them and began cheering wildly.
Crowd control was simple: Anyone venturing onto the highway who wasn’t authorized to be there would be shot, and there wasn’t a person alive who hadn’t seen videos of it happening from previous Long Walks. It was an extremely effective way of keeping order.
“Oh...hamburgers,” Butters whispered, taking a step closer to Kenny. Kenny turned to grin at that epitaph and say the first smartass thing that came to mind, but when he realized that Butters looked absolutely terrified he reached for his hand and laced their fingers together instead.
“Dude...just ignore them,” Kenny said, squeezing Butters’ fingers in acknowledgement of the grateful look he gave him. He looked down at their joined hands and wondered if he should let go or keep holding on. Butters didn’t seem to mind.
“Warning! First warning, number seven, Donovan!” a megaphone-enhanced voice called out from the nearest jeep, and the kid with the colostomy bag suddenly looked around like a deer caught in headlights. Kenny watched as he snapped his phone shut and picked up his pace.
“Anyone who bet on number seven to be the first person to get a warning just started celebrating,” Stan said.
Butters looked up at Kenny and shook his head. “It’s going to be really hard to ignore that many people, Ken.” He grabbed onto Kenny’s hand harder, effectively making Kenny’s mind up for him.
Kenny nodded, walking as close to him as he could without tripping him. They would be at the perimeter set up by the soldiers in less than a minute, and after that they would be walking alongside a large number of people, probably for the rest of the Long Walk. He was about to suggest moving toward the left side of the highway, farther away from the crowd, when Butters spoke first.
“I’m imagining they’re all in their underwear instead,” he said, making Kenny almost double over laughing. “You know, like they say you should when you’re doin’ public speaking.”
Kenny straightened up again and grinned at him. “Dude, that...” he shook his head. “That’s a really disgusting image.” Butters was barely holding back a laugh of his own, which he unleashed when Kenny added, “I mean...some of these people really need to go home and put some more clothes on.”
They walked past the beginning of the crowd, laughing and holding hands. Stan had been right: Something like this is a lot better when you have someone to talk to.
“Thank you for holding my hand,” Butters said quietly a few minutes later. “It’s real nice of you.”
“I’ll hold your hand for the rest of the walk if you want,” Kenny replied; it occurred to him that he was going to have to figure out how to carry out his plan now that Butters was in the picture. “Well, maybe I’ll let go while you’re eating, or taking a piss...”
Butters laughed again. “You’re real funny, Ken.” He turned his attention to something behind Kenny. “We’re not the only ones. Look!”
Kenny turned to look behind him and saw Stan and Kyle holding hands as well, thirty feet behind them. At Kenny’s look they both smiled and waved with their free hands.
“Sweet,” Kenny said, turning around to face forward again. He noticed he and Butters were walking faster than almost everyone; there were only three walkers in front of them, the farthest nearly one hundred feet away. They ignored the shouts from people in the crowd twenty feet away as they walked past them. After several minutes, Butters let go of Kenny’s hand to reach into his backpack. He removed a banana and began to peel it.
“Want half?” Butters offered, proffering the banana.
“Ah...no thanks. But tell me something dude: What have you got in that backpack anyway? It looks heavy.”
“Well, um...” Butters hesitated and then went on as if reading a list he’d memorized. “Eight clean pairs of socks, a jacket for when it gets cold at night...um, a new pair of boots, three big jars of peanut butter, a jar of pecans, some hard boiled eggs—“
“Okay, woah!” Kenny said, trying not to laugh. “All right...some of that makes sense, like having some snacks. But eight pairs of socks and new boots? Peanut butter...dude, what the fuck?”
“Even the most expensive pair of boots will start to fall apart after about three or four days of nonstop walking,” Butters replied defensively. He looked ready to defend everything on his list.
“But eight pairs of socks? I brought, like, two pairs...and they give us food every morning, 3,500 calories’ worth...”
“That’s not enough for this.” Butters gestured as if to indicate everything around them. The nearest walker was Tucker, who was walking down the centerline of the interstate a few steps behind them and listening intently to his MP3 player. “Just walking like this while carrying a backpack burns about 400 calories an hour. Do the math.”
Kenny’s eyes widened as he began to try multiplying 24 hours in a day by 400 in his head, but Butters saved him the trouble.
“That’s 9,600 calories a day, Ken. By the end of the second day, everyone who hasn’t been taken out of the race yet is going to start losing weight and getting weak.” Kenny felt his stomach drop as the implications of what Butters said sank in. He thought about the two sandwiches and piece of cake in his own backpack and shook his head.
“Once they’ve used up their body fat, people start burning muscle to keep going next, and after that, they start digesting their own organs. That’s why I brought a lot of high calorie food, enough to keep me going for days along with what they give us, long after almost everyone else will have dropped out from exhaustion.” Butters’ fingers were clenching Kenny’s almost painfully. “And as for the socks? Well, taking care of your feet is important. I’m going to change my socks every morning.”
Kenny was staring at him, both impressed and shaken by his knowledge. “Won’t you have to sit down and draw a warning to do that?”
“Yeah,” Butters replied, nodding. “But I practiced, and I got to where I can sit down, take off my boots and socks, wipe my feet with a wet ‘n’ dry towel, put new socks and my boots back on and be up on my feet and walking again in 25 seconds. Heck, my best time was 21 seconds!”
Kenny felt stunned by this, and gained a new sense of admiration for his walking companion. “Sounds like you’ve been practicing for this. You sure know a lot about it.” He realized how unprepared he was for this (not that he planned to try to win) and wondered how many of the others were as unprepared as he was.
“Kenny?” Butters said quietly. “There’s something I want to tell you...I mean, if we’re going to be friends and all...”
Kenny looked at him curiously. He’d taken it as a given that they were going to be friends, at least for another two days. “Okay, sure. What’s that?”
He looked nervously toward the road passing slowly under their feet for several seconds, as if weighing an important decision. “I’m in this to win,” Butters finally said quietly. Kenny snorted.
“I think most of us are, don’t you?”
“Yeah, but...” He looked up again; Kenny spotted a woman in the crowd ten feet away breastfeeding a baby. “I really mean it! I—I mean...my dad’s been training me for the last ten months for this, ever since we knew I was going to be in it.”
Kenny shook his head doubtfully. “I dunno, dude; why do I get the feeling that he might have overtrained you—”
“No, Ken!...he didn’t.” Butters’ expression was intense. “He knew exactly what he was doing...and he shared every bit of it with me.” He finally took a bite of the banana and slipped his left hand back into Kenny’s right. “I only trained four days a week, and rested the other three. But the last six months? I...I’d walk fifteen miles each time I trained, carrying a backpack that weighs two pounds more than this one, at almost five miles an hour. This pace we’re doing is easy for me.”
Kenny nodded. “Wow...you actually do have a shot at winning this.”
“Ken, a month ago I walked sixty miles at this pace. I could have gone a lot farther...but my dad followed next to me in his car the whole way, and we went by Long Walk rules. He counted all the times I slowed down too much and gave me warnings and everything.”
“How many warnings did you get?”
“The most I got at one time was two,” Butters replied proudly. “It was after about forty miles, and I had to...oh, you know...”
“Stop and take a shit?” Kenny asked, and Butters nodded.
“Yeah. I...well, that’s how I know how long a pair of boots lasts before they start to fall apart.” He smiled and squeezed Kenny’s hand. “I like talking to you!”
“You too, man.” He watched Butters take the last bite of his banana and drop the peel onto the asphalt. “You know...I kind of wish we’d met somewhere else.”
“Me too, Kenny. I...I’m really not looking forward to seeing you, ah...get taken out of the race.”
Kenny felt a twinge of guilt at that comment. He came to a sudden decision and said, “Hey man, there’s something I need to tell you about too, okay? I...” He trailed off while he tried to organize his thoughts, and was about to continue when there was a sudden cry of pain from somewhere ahead of them. Kenny quickly spotted the source: One of the faster walkers had stopped and was looking down at his left foot in horror.
”Warning! First warning, number ten, McDonald!” The jeep carrying the soldier who had called out the warning coasted to a stop.
“I twisted my ankle!” McDonald said loudly, in a tone that made it seem like he believed it actually mattered. Realization dawned on his face a moment later: The soldiers didn’t care about his ankle, and the crowd had suddenly gotten louder as they realized they might be about to see someone get taken out of the race. “No!” he shouted and started hobbling.
“Oh shit,” Kenny said. “He should have taken his thirty seconds to try to rest his leg.”
McDonald was limping bravely but he clearly couldn’t maintain his speed for long. He slowed down again and the soldier raised the megaphone to his mouth. ”Second warning, number ten!”
“It isn’t fair!” he screamed. “I hurt my leg, it’s not fair!” He seemed to have remembered the thirty-second rule, as he was standing still now, putting most of his weight on his right leg.
“Hey, you want an aspirin?” someone in the crowd called out and there was a lot of raucous laughter from the heckler’s drunken buddies.
Kenny and Butters walked past him a few moments later. “Good luck, man,” Kenny muttered while trying not to look at the boy’s tear-streaked face. Once they were past him, Kenny turned to Butters and said urgently, “Dude, if he does get shot, don’t watch, okay?”
Butters nodded grimly, and they both picked up their pace, trying to put the doomed kid further behind them. At least two minutes passed; Kenny realized McDonald must be trying to walk again or he would have gotten his third warning by now. And as if that realization were a cue, the heavily distorted voice called out: “Third warning, number ten!”
“No!” the boy screamed behind them. Kenny and Butters were practically jogging now, and Kenny was about to look at his watch to see just how fast they were actually going when there was another scream, followed immediately by two extremely loud gunshots.
“Oh Jesus!” Butters shouted, whirling around to look. Kenny looked too, just long enough to see a mostly headless corpse hit the pavement, an enormous gout of blood pumping from its neck. The crowd suddenly went completely silent, leaving only the echoes from the gunshots.
Out of the corner of his eye, Kenny saw Butters whirl around again, most of the banana and chocolate cake he’d eaten earlier exiting his mouth with a loud retch and splattering across the road in front of him. To his credit, he didn’t even draw a warning.