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Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: vermont
Posts: 139
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The Long Walk[finally finished]
I finally found the time to finish this thing. I hope you guys like it, comments and criticism are always welcome.
The Long Walk
Jonas stumbled and fell, his legs giving out and crumpling under the weight of his body. He was dehydrated, literally starving to death, and at the very end of his rope.
His friends at work had suggested the idea of vacationing in the American southwest. ‘Go see Death Valley,’ they said, ‘See the cactus up close and personal, the road runners, etc., etc.’ Now, lying on the ground, his face mashed into the sand and his limp body spreading out across the top of a sandy knoll, all he could think was that they must have wanted him to die.
But that was crazy. He was a likeable enough guy, if a little on the shy side. He was the wallflower type, the kind of person who would sit at a table by himself (or stand against the wall, drink in hand), during one of the company parties. He even got asked to dance a few times, but he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. And mostly because of his wallflowering, he was still single. At thirty-eight, he was still single. Every night, after work, he went home to his one-bedroom apartment and made himself dinner, read for a while, watched the news, and went to bed, ready for the same routine the next day.
He hardly ever took vacations. The only reason he was doing so now was because he had stacked up so many personal days over the years that the company was afraid he’d just take off for a few months on some paid island hopping trip or something of the sort. The fact that Jonas hadn’t even thought of leaving his routine behind for years didn’t matter to them. They wanted him to relax. In the oddest sense, to protect themselves, they wanted him to have a good time.
And so, Jonas started asking around. What was the best place to go to? Have you been there? What’d you do there? Was it fun? He got the usual answers in return; go to the Bahamas, go to Hawaii, go to the mountains, get away from the city. In other words, he got all the answers he needed and none of them. Until he asked Clint, that is.
Clint was one of those people who looked exactly like you’d expect them to if the only thing you’d seen was their name on a sheet of paper. He was big, tall, wide-shouldered, handsome, the beau of the office. The type of guy that all of the ladies would swoon over. And he just sat back and enjoyed it. A more stereotypical person you couldn’t find.
Clint suggested the desert. And not just any desert, he suggested the deserts of the southwest, down near Death Valley, the kind of places where people sit down fifty feet from their cars and never stand up again. As soon as Clint made his suggestion the rest of the opinions in the office flew out the window, as if he were more than just another lackey like the rest of them. ‘Yeah, that sounds like fun,’ they said, ‘you should definitely go there,’ they said. They were empty agreements, but since none of the other suggestions really held even a scrap of interest for Jonas, and because he’d always been the type to fall for peer-pressure, he caved and took Clint’s suggestion.
He’d gone online, done his research, checked out various activities and finally decided on rock climbing. He’d never done it before, wasn’t sure if he was afraid of heights, wasn’t in the greatest of shapes, and to top it off it went against his better judgment, but he’d made his choice and he was going to stick to it.
He signed up with a group of amateur rock climbers led by a self-professed expert named Sal Salkin, who apparently had over twenty years of experience under his belt and promised nothing would go wrong. As far as Jonas knew, his credentials checked out, so he typed in his credit card information, ordered a plane ticket and waited for his vacation to start.
When it did, he didn’t expect it, didn’t know what to do. He made it halfway to the train station in his suit and tie before he realized what he was doing and then had to run home and hurry for the airport. He boarded his flight without complication, slowly easing his way through the airport security and settled his slightly overlarge frame into his window seat, waiting for take off.
He was staring out of the window, watching other planes take off, thinking about the last time he had taken a vacation (five years ago), when someone plopped down in the seat next to him, fairly jumping into it. Jonas turned to inspect his companion and nearly head-butted her. She was leaning across the armrest that separated them and staring out his window, watching the people scurrying about near the plane, the baggage handlers and other airport personnel. She turned and looked at him.
“Hi.” She flashed him an ear-to-ear grin and turned back to the window.
“Um, hello.” At his best, Jonas had never been good with women, preferring the quiet type and incapacitated by the louder ones. If a woman shouted at him, it was all he could do to keep himself from curling up into a little ball. As it was, he was pressing back into the padding of his chair as deep as he could go. He looked as if he were as eager to avoid touching the woman as if her skin were made of poison and one touch would kill him.
Apparently unaware of his discomfort, she finished her inspection of the airport grounds and returned to her own seat, again flopping down so that she bounced a bit in her seat. Again, he turned to him sporting an enormous grin.
“I’m Karyn, with a Y.” She eagerly stuck out her right hand.
Jonas stared at it for a moment and then slowly reached over and shook it. They continued shaking for a few minutes, neither letting go, but the motion became slower and slower and she raised her eyebrows, still smiling.
“And you are?”
Jonas searched for a few minutes and found a voice, but when it tumbled out of his mouth it wasn’t his. It belonged to someone not quite so far beyond puberty.
“Jonas.” He cleared his throat and then said his name again. “Jonas.”
“Is it your first time flying?” Karyn dropped his hand, which he had forgotten was still in her possession, and it smacked into the armrest. He fumbled with it for a moment and finally decided it looked most natural in his lap, contentedly curled up with the other one.
“No, no, I’ve flown before. Just not for a while.”
“Ah.” She was still smiling; a big, wide smile, and she added a knowing nod to it. “I know what that’s like. So where are you headed? Besides the obvious I mean. Got family out west or anything?”
“Well, actually,” Jonas stumbled over the words, “I’m going on vacation, rock climbing.”
She hit him in the arm, probably punched him as hard as she could. “Get outta here! Me too! You headed for the badlands, the desert?”
Jonas recoiled and pulled his arm away from her destructive reach under the pretense of turning towards her and nodded.
“Yes, I signed up with a group online and we’re all meeting at the airport tonight.”
“Wow, that’s crazy. It definitely can’t be coincidence that we’re sitting next to each other then.”
“Why not?”
Karyn reached into her carry-on, pulled out a few pieces of paper, and laid them on his lap.
“’Cause I’m doing the same thing. Wanna grab a bite when we land?”
Jonas looked down at the papers in his lap. They were printouts of the same site that had offered the trip he was embarking on.
“Um, I dunno, I mean, I don’t know when I—I mean we—have to meet up with the group. Maybe we should just find them when we get off the plane.”
She still had the grin in place. “Oh, c’mon, Jonas. It’ll be fun, I promise.”
Jonas looked down at the papers in his lap and flipped through them, looking for an excuse to be silent a few moments more. In the end, he couldn’t see a way out of it, and gave in.
“Okay.”
Karyn spent the rest of the flight chatting his ear off while he stared disconsolately through the window, watching the horizon change as they flew south and west. Gradually, the shadows on the ground below lengthened and the sun overhead fell towards the mountains to the west. They flew on into darkness and finally arrived at their destination around ten o’clock. Fortunately for Jonas, the group was waiting for them as they disembarked. When they saw the hand-made signs bearing their names, Karyn nudged him in the ribs.
“Looks like you get out of this one, Buddy.”
Jonas happily and silently agreed, a small, nervous smile quirking the left side of his lips, hidden from Karyn who walked on his right.
They, Jonas, Karyn, and the other climbing hopefuls jammed themselves into an over-large van and headed out into the desert night. They drove past hotel after hotel, and at each one Jonas brightened and balked as they passed it. Soon, the last of the hotels were behind them, and Jonas was left staring at the horizon, wondering. Slowly, he worked up the nerve to ask a question.
“Mr. Salkin, where are we staying?”
Mr. Salkin turned in his seat and searched among the passengers for the speaker. Miraculously, the van remained between the yellow and white lines of the road while he was distracted.
“Please, call me Sal.” He smiled at Jonas, a used-car dealer’s smile. “We’re staying with the rocks, the only companions we’ll need on this trip.”
“What about food, tents, all that stuff?”
Sal laughed. “Don’t worry man, it’s all been taken care of. You’ll be bunking down in pairs tonight. The tents are set up, the food is waiting for you, everything’s ready.”
When they reached the campsite a few hours later, indeed, everything was ready and waiting for them. As they climbed out of the van, Karyn nudged him in the back.
“So how ‘bout it, ‘bunkmate?’ You want to sleep head-to-toes or head-to-head?”
“Um.” Jonas hadn’t though about it, or even considered who he wanted to bunk down with. “Maybe we should—“
“—Just think about it? Don’t worry, Jonas, I won’t bite, really.”
Jonas looked down at his feet and then glanced around the camp, not wanting to look at Karyn. Finally, he did look at her, and managed to give a nervous smile. She reached over and nudged him in the shoulder.
“C’mon, let’s go find a tent and drop our stuff inside.”
They left the van and joined the rest of the vacationers among the tents, choosing one that was a few yards from the rest, a bit back in the shadows. They dumped their stuff in the tent and then rejoined the others who were grouping up in front of Sal. He asked them to take a seat and when they had done that he smiled.
“Okay, gang, here’s the game plan for right now. Tonight is for sleeping, and tomorrow morning, that’s when the climbing is going to start. Roundabout eight o’clock, a few other guides who I work in concert with are going to arrive and we’ll start going over the basics.
“Now, If anybody’s up for a midnight snack, there’s food in the three red coolers over there near my tent, but if you’re not, I’d head for bed.”
The group broke apart, a few heading for the food, but most heading for their tents. Jonas and Karyn were among the latter.
Inside the small tent, they unrolled their sleeping bags and tucked themselves in.
“Goodnight, Jonas.” Karyn was grinning at him again.
“Goodnight, Karyn. See you in the morning.” Jonas didn’t feel particularly like grinning, so he simply curled up, tossed and turned for a few moments and then fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
When he woke in the morning and turned over, Karyn wasn’t there. Her sleeping bag and gear were all in place, so he supposed she was out eating breakfast with the others. He checked his watch; eight thirty. He pulled his sleeping bag down around his legs and slipped out of it, listening, expecting to hear the others up and about. But he didn’t hear anything. So, he moved to the flap of the tent, unzipped it and stuck his head out into the morning air.
His bleary, brimming-with-sleep eyes took in his surrounding slowly. There was no one in the camp. All of the equipment that the other climbers had brought with them was still there, as was the van, but there wasn’t a person in sight.
Maybe they left to go climbing without me, thought Jonas. You’d think at least Karyn would have noticed I wasn’t in the group. He settled down to wait. For some reason, he’d brought a book with him, maybe in case he found that he didn’t like climbing, so he walked back to the ten he had shared with Karyn and pulled his bag out into the morning sun. The book was in one of the side pockets and he pulled it out while glancing around the camp.
It certainly was odd that they’d go off and leave him all alone, especially in the middle of the desert. He didn’t even have any idea how close the nearest town was. He settled down on the ground sitting against his backpack and started to read.
Around noon, a little more concerned, Jonas dropped his book in the dirt and walked to the coolers, feeling in need of a snack. Normally he never ate in the morning, so by now his stomach was demanding his attention. He opened the first cooler and his breath caught in his throat. It was empty. So was the second. Jonas paused and squeezed his eyes shut, praying, before opening the third and final cooler. He opened it, peeked slowly out of the corner of his eye at the interior and almost screamed.
The only thing it contained was a canteen full of water. He reached down, grabbed it and then backed away from the coolers. He had no food. He was going to starve out here, starve to death unless they came back with more food. But why the hell would they take it in the first place? And why did they leave on foot?
That gave Jonas an idea. He ran to the edge of the camp and walked around it, looking for footprints leading away from it. He circled twice before admitting defeat; nobody had walked away from the camp.
Did they fly then? Jonas returned to the middle of the camp and turned in a circle. Everything was still here, everything except for the food and the people.
Deciding to put his faith in his companions, Jonas returned to his book, clutching the canteen to his chest. If no one came back, it and the water it contained had just become his most precious possessions.
Jonas read for the rest of the day, occasionally standing up and pacing around the camp, staring off into the distance, watching for any sign of the other climbers. He even searched through their bags, looking for a cell phone or something of the sort, replacing everything as carefully as he could in case they did come back. Of course, his luck, or lack thereof, held and he didn’t find anything.
Throughout the day, he sipped at the canteen, drinking as little as he could. The water did little to ease the pain that grew inside as the day wore on. It started as small rumblings shortly after he found the water and quickly escalated to an arching pain impossible to alleviate until he found food.
The sun slowly arched overhead and made its way down to the west. When night fell, the other climbers still hadn’t returned and Jonas decided it was time to bed down. As he was walking to his tent, he stopped, thinking he had seen a light on the horizon, but he blinked and there was nothing when he looked again. Sighing, he stepped into his tent and curled up in his sleeping bag, staring at the roof above him. He stayed that way for a while, thinking, and slowly drifted off into sleep, but not before feeling the cold of the desert night seeping into the tent.
Again, in the morning, the camp was deserted. Jonas woke again a little after eight and stalked out into the sun, bleary-eyed. He made a circuit of the campsite while sipping on the canteen and found it the same as yesterday; there still weren’t any tracks leading out into or coming from the desert. His stomach rumbled, coiling and bunching into knots.
Jonas spent the morning sitting in the middle of camp thinking over his options. When it came down to it, there was only one; he had to walk to civilization or die waiting for someone who might never return to the camp.
He decided that he was going to walk. In truth, he had no other option. If the possibility of committing suicide had crossed his mind, it would have been quickly dismissed; he didn’t have the stomach for it. The only thing he could make himself do was start walking and not stop until he either dropped from fatigue or hunger.
Around noon, he pulled his bag out of his tent and riffled through it, considering what he should bring. ‘Well,’ he thought, ‘what’d they take in the movies?’ According to them, all he should need would be the essentials, his license, the canteen, and something to keep him warm at night.
He gathered the first two and rolled up his sleeping bag, shoving it into its carrying case. He hoisted it onto his back walked to the edge of the camp, turning around and looking at what he was leaving. The camp was stark and lifeless, just a small group of tents sitting in the midst of desert brush I the lee of a great stone, something no one would notice unless they stumbled across it. And yet, it was the most solid aspect of the last few days. The people had only been there for a few hours, and aside from Karyn, he hadn’t even known the names of any of them.
Karyn. He thought about her for the first time since he had found himself alone. He hadn’t known her long enough to be able to say that he missed her, but he would have felt a little more comfortable if she at least was there.
But, she was gone, vanished with the rest of them, and if he stayed, he’d vanish as well. He turned away from the tents and began walking down the path the van had created through the brush.
He covered five miles that day, at first setting himself a brisk pace, sipping water from the canteen when his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. But as the day wore on and the heat beat down the back of his neck, he slowed. As he walked, the sleeping bag became heavier and heavier and more awkward to hold. The fact that the carrying case had no straps made it worse, and he dropped it on several occasions. Eventually, near nightfall, he slowed to a halt.
Not knowing what else to do, he sat in the lee of a small dune, waiting for the sun to sink behind the horizon.
After the sun had set, he pulled the sleeping bag from its carrying case and curled into a ball, hoping to stave off the encroaching cold of the night.
In the morning, he woke cramped and sore, not ready for another day of walking. There was nothing else to do though, so he climbed lurching to his feet and re-packed the sleeping bag. He slung it across his shoulders and set off across the desert again.
The sun beat down on his back as it rose higher in the sky. There was a tube of sunscreen back in his backpack, but he was much too far away to go back now. Going back for anything would mean death. The only chance for life lay ahead.
Jonas sipped as little from his canteen as he could, but he knew he was drying out faster than he was drinking, losing more water to the sun than the canteen had contained when he found it. Sweat dripped from his brow and rolled down his chest underneath his shirt. He felt it sliding into his shorts and down his legs and from there it fell into the sand of the desert and was absorbed instantly.
Mirages began appearing on the horizon in the haze of heat rising off the sand a few hours after Jonas started walking. Green leaves glistened wetly in the distance and vast bodies of water shimmered under the baking sun, but as he drew closer they all faded and disappeared.
Jonas’ mind reeled as the day wore on. The pure open-ness and flatness of the desert was such a stark difference to the closed valleys between the towers that made up the city where he lived. To go from a mostly vertical landscape to one that was purely horizontal had been a shock to his mind. Having seen the desert countless times on the screen of his TV made no difference. Those skies were still contained within a box, and before he had arrived they hadn’t been real, not in the way they were now. In reality, the skies were the biggest he had ever seen, stretching farther in the clear air than he could see.
The sand beneath his feet crunched and shifted as he stepped, the air pulled the moisture from his body, and grit blowing in the wind collected in the corners of his eyes.
When he sank to the ground at the end of the day, it was all he could do to lie back and stretch out in his sleeping bag. His stomach was an aching ball in the middle of his belly, pulling and coiling, dragging his attention back to itself, but he was running out of anything to give it. After sipping on the water canteen for two days, there was almost nothing left. The last vegetation that Jonas had seen had long passed from sight, and now the only thing he could see in every direction was sand. He sank into sleep slowly, watching satellites and shooting stars streak across the night sky.
Jonas dreamed of a dark forest, shining darkly green under a full moon. Silently, he stepped into a shallow pool and waded across it, reveling in the wetness that swam around his feet. There was no sound in the dream, but instead of being terrifying, as in the nightmares of his youth, it was peaceful and calming. It felt as if he spent hours wading back in forth across the pool, the most calming hours in the last few days.
The dream ended far too quickly and he woke to the early afternoon sun. It felt as if he were baking inside his sleeping bag and he struggled out of it, rolling in the hot sand. Slowly, he climbed to his feet, grabbed the canteen and held it to his chest, staring at the horizon. There was almost no water left. Almost no life left.
Jonas bent down to collapse the sleeping bag into its carrying case, but he just didn’t have the energy. He expended what little he did have by throwing the case away in frustration.
He turned away from the crumpled sleeping bag and crawled to the top of the closest dune. Small shoots of grass dotted its peak.
He peered into the horizon, hoping to see something, something that might lend him hope, or the strength to stand up.
What he saw was a shimmering wave of green. Not blue like the waves of heat that normally rose from the desert floor, but green like grass. Vegetation, which meant water and life. A smile peeled apart his cracked lips and he stumbled to his feet and down the far side of the dune. The canteen fell from lax fingers and thumped into the sand.
Jonas walked unsteadily for two hours while the sun beat down on his head and shoulders, expecting the green wave to disappear as he crested each dune. But it remained. The further he walked, the clearer it became. Soon, he could make out the trunks of trees that looked like palms and small bushes. Strength seemed to flow up from the desert into his limbs and he began walking faster and faster, his breathing becoming more and more labored as he struggled along.
He died fifty feet from the grove of trees, spread-eagled across the small sandy knoll where he collapsed.
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