The Long Walk
Maximilian K. Gehring
“Do you know what it is like to be at the epicenter of a nuclear explosion, kid?”
These were the first words spoken to me by the gruff man sitting at the bar next to me. His hair was graying and frayed, more akin to an old and fraying shag carpet than anything that could reasonably grow out of a person’s head. His skin was leathery and coated in dust and dirt, but was in surprisingly good condition.
“The first thing you feel is the thump. The ground shakes beneath you, trembles from the force. Feels like the very earth is alive, shaking in its boots in fear. It’s a terrifying experience. But what is more frightening is the whoosh. See, the bombs we used back then were a combination of both nuclear and thermobaric bombs. In case you somehow weren’t aware, thermobaric bombs have this nasty habit of sucking away all the air away into a single point and using that as a catalyst for the explosion. Its so powerful, that you can feel the very air around you being sucked away. It makes this fantastic whooshing noise. God, if I ever hear that noise again in this life it will be too soon for me. Anyways.”
The man takes a swig from his mug, the golden liquid disappearing behind his cracked and harden lips. He sighs, both in contentment and in exhaustion, and puts his mug back down.
“Our tank was NBC protected, thankfully. Means we were able to weather the worst of the radiation without too much of an issue. The same can’t be said for the shockwave, unfortunately. We were thrown like a tin can across the desert, and by some miracle most of us stuck the landing. Jackson got unlucky, landed funny on his neck. Or maybe he got lucky and died before things went all fuck-up, I dunno. Sometimes I wish I had gotten to go out like that. Probably woulda spared me from what happened next.”
The man takes another swig of beer, his eyes weary and bleached from overuse.
“I made my crew wait as long as we could out there in that god awful silence, waiting for the radiation to hopefully die down. Rations ran out though, so we had to leave. If I had had my way we would still be in that damn tank, but democracy and all that, and most folks don’t want to die a slow death from dehydration and starvation. Joey was the first one to crack open his hatch. I remembered how bright it was, when he opened that piece of metal. Decent amount of dust fell into the tank too but, what were we gonna do about it? It’s not like any of us cared enough to sweep out the damn thing. Wasn’t like any of us were ever going to return there. Too dangerous. Do you know what the world looks like after you’ve detonated a nuke on it?”
The man pauses and looks at me, but continues on without waiting for a response.
“It’s quiet. Really, really fuckin quiet. Everything feels like it’s holding its breath, and the only noise you can hear is the whistling of the wind. Really bleak, too. Lotta dust gets thrown up when you blow up something big enough, and it was still raining down when we got outside. Looked like it was snowing, almost. Always reminds me of Christmas, for some reason. Guess it’s because of how much it looked like snow. But fuck it, doesn’t matter. ‘S not really integral to the story. Barry was the first person to speak up, I think. I’m not really sure which one of em said it, but I distinctly remember a soft ‘Jesus Christ…’ from behind me. Don’t blame em, if I’m being honest. Woulda admonished the kid for taking the Lord’s name in vain but… honestly, I was thinking the same thing. Only an act of God could have done the things that we saw out there. Sometimes I think maybe it was God, punishing us for our hubris of thinking that we deserved this world, that he made those men turn those keys and push those buttons, sending us all to hell in nuclear fire. But who am I to judge, I would have done the same thing in their position. That’s war, I suppose. No place for morality.”
The man falls quiet, picking up his mug of beer and contemplating it. Half of his drink was left sloshing away in the cold glass, bubbling softly as he stared at its golden form. He took another drink, slower this time, taking the care to nurse his beverage to savor its taste. He began to speak once more.
“We started walkin. One of my boys, forgot who, managed to pry a compass off the center control console and grabbed a map before we left. That probably saved our lives in the end, the fact that we were able to at least try and figure out where we were going. He pointed us west, and we went that way. Supposedly there was a decently sized city out there somewhere, but that was kinda hard to believe with the state that the world was in at this point. How anything could have survived something like that confused me but then again we made it, so it was at least possible that something else had survived the blast. The first day’s walk was fine, pretty uneventful. Really boring. Shockingly enough, there’s not much to see after everything’s been flattened and wiped off the face of the earth. We tried to play ‘I spy’, but that got boring fast after all anyone could say was either ‘I spy with my little eye something gray’ or ‘I spy with my little eye something brown’. We just walked in silence after that. Thought about home a lot during that time, hoped there would be something left for me to go back to. That I think was the one thing that kept me moving in that godforsaken desert, the hope that my girl was still back home, safe and sound, waiting for me. She wasn’t but, eh, story for another time. The first day was ok, but that night was awful. Poor Joey musta didn’t take Jackson’s death too well, kid was was whimpering and sobbing all night. We all pretended we couldn’t hear him but… I would be lying if I said most of us weren’t in a similar boat. The kid had so many years left ahead of him…”
The man trails off into silence, staring through the wall at some distant point far beyond this world. He almost looks as if he could shed a tear and, in this moment, I would not have blamed him. Reliving these memories cannot have been comforting, especially for the sake of some random at a bar. I want to reach out and put my arm on him, to try and comfort him, to let him know that he did everything he could and it’s not his fault that Jackson passed but before I am given the opportunity to try and connect, he sighs deeply, and takes another swig of beer.
“I doubt many of us spent that first night without shedding a tear or two for him. We loved that kid, he was almost a mascot for us. Always excited with the world, ready to take on anything. But that’s all in the past now, I suppose. The next day was more of the same, more walking in that desolate hellhole where God had sent us to die, trying and failing to play I Spy, and getting lost in our thoughts. I thought about what was going to happen next, this time. Suppose we made it to that city on the horizon. What then? Would there be anyone there willing to take us in? Would we even be in friendly territory? Things all around the world got really blurry at this time, old world boundaries were erased overnight, and everyone got really confused as to who was who. We didn’t know this at the time, and for all we knew we were marching straight into enemy territory and would have been shot on sight when we showed up. But we had no other choice, y’know? There was no other close city, and we were already running low on provisions. Food had been just about gone for two days now, and water was getting limited. It was either we would make it to that city, or we would join Jackson as dusty corpses in that godforsaken desert. So, we kept marching on. Marched, single file, to the close of day. The second night was worse than the first. Joey cried even more this time, sounded a lot more pained this time around. We all felt sorry for the kid, but there wasn’t much we could do for ‘im. All of us were just about on our last legs, dead men walking. We all had our own problems to worry about, not to say that we didn’t mourn the kid. But Jackson was dead, and the rest of us had to move on. Simple as that. The third day was surprisingly hot. I guess the dust had finally all fallen out of the sky, so the sun could finally fully shine through. It felt awful trudging through the dirt and sand with the sun torching us as we hobbled along, but it was either that or die. We walked for what felt like hours, through that awful fuckin’ sun and that awful fuckin’ sand, but we did it. I think Johnston saw it first, the city sparkling and shining on the horizon. It was the first time in this entire damn war that I felt that maybe there was a higher power out there looking out for us. The chance that we could escape this nightmare was like an angel’s blessing in our busted minds. We stood there for a good 5 minutes or so, just baking in the sun and looking at that beautiful haven out there in the distance. It was so close, it couldn’t have been more than a mile or two away at most. Then Joey fuckin’ croaked.”
The old man shakes his head, and takes a deep breath, shuddering as he does so. A little bit of dust flakes off as he sighs, flittering listlessly to the ground below. The man went to take another swig of beer, only to realize that his once frothy mug had been thoroughly drained. Grumbling to himself, he reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a flask. He pulled the cap off, and took a long swig from its metal spout. The stench of strong liquor wafted out from the depths of the old and weathered flask, which seemed to be coated in the same layer of dirt and dust as the man himself. With a click, the lid was replaced and the flask was laid to rest on the bar-top counter. The man sighed, and continued his tale.
“The thing that got us the most was the way he dropped. The kid just collapsed like a fuckin sack of potatoes and began to twitch around in the dust. We rushed to help him, but there wasn’t a whole lot any of us could do. None of us were medics by any measure outside knowing basic first aid, and that was limited knowledge at best. Safe to say, none of us knew what the hell we were supposed to do, and we sure as hell didn’t know how to treat a seizure properly. So we just watched him. We stared at him as he frothed at the mouth and his eyes rolled back into his head, stared at him as his body slowed and eventually came to a stop. We didn’t know what to do. I’m not sure there was anything we COULD do. We should have done something, but we stood around like a bunch of lemmings as we watched our brother effing DIE!”
The man ended with a shout, aggressively jumping from his stool and knocking both it and the beer mug to the floor. The mug shattered into thousands of glass shards, scattered across the dust-covered floor. The stool hit the floor with a loud thud, sending clouds of dust rolling across the ground. I wondered if it was like the thump of the nuclear missile exploding above the old man’s tank. Probably not, I thought to myself. Would have been a lot louder. The man raged for a moment, before angrily sighing and picking up his stool. The dust settled down as the man took his seat, and once more began his tale.
“Sorry ‘bout that, I tend to get a little pissed off when I think about that day for too long. I hate the feeling of helplessness that it made me feel, yknow? We were world-class soldiers, fighting in the strongest army to ever grace the Earth! We were the best! And we couldn’t do anything but watch as our friend, someone we had fought and killed with for months died in front of us. It’s a shitty way to go, and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. Nobody deserves to die like that. Nobody deserves to go out in a way that undignified. Just ain’t right.”
The man takes another heavy drink from his flask. I wondered how many nights he had spent thinking about that fateful day, and how many more he had spent trying to drown the memory in a haze of alcohol. Too many, I assumed.
“We carried his body with us for a while, but we had to leave him back there too. It was just too far to the city, and we only had the strength to get our own walking corpses to the city limits before collapsing. None of us were proud of it, when we finally reached the asphalt. The desert had taken two of us in a way that frankly was just plain fuckin awful, and it was even worse when we realized that the city was just more of the same. There was nobody there. Nobody alive, anyways. Sure there were plenty of corpses and skeletons in the streets and buildings but fat load of fuckin good that did us. Looked like every building had been picked clean too, was hardly any damn thing of value left in that entire city by the time we got there. We managed to luck out in an old department store and found somethings that were at least technically edible. That night was a lot quieter than any of the others. No one said too much. I think just about all of us had shut down by this point. We weren’t dead, but we sure as fucking hell weren’t alive. Things get muddy around this point; everything seems to just blur together. I don’t know how long we walked around that city, but it was long enough that eventually I was the only one left. All the others fell and died like Joey, frothing and twitching in the fucking dust. We just stared at them, and walked onwards. Wasn’t anything we could do for ‘em, best to try and not think about it too much. I must have been picked up by friendly troops at some point, cause the next thing I can remember is being back home. Felt wrong, being allowed to go home when no one else was able to. Wasn’t fair that I was the only one who made it out of the desert. They all fought and worked damn hard, why the hell was I the poor sod allowed to live? I just don’t get it. But, that’s that I suppose. Nothing I can do about it now. War’s done. Show’s over. Pack it up, everyone head home. God be with ye and all that.”
The man finishes off the remaining liquor in the weathered flask, letting a small trickle of auburn liquid dribble out of the corner of his mouth. With delicate deliberateness, he replaced the lid of the flask, and stashed it once more in his pocket. He threw a couple dollar notes on the counter and hobbled out of the bar. The door swung shut silently behind him, leaving me alone in the dark and dusty building. I took one last swig of my drink, and paid my tab. I stepped down from my bar stool, watching as the dust swirled and twisted from the impact. I pushed open the door, my exit leaving the bar now entirely deserted. Show’s over, everyone go home.
Maximilian Gehring is a cadet at New Mexico Military Institute. His hobbies consist of listening to music, writing stories, and swimming laps when he has time.