Katrina Moonshadow- District Seven female
"My hip hurts."
Ferrari could tell from my tone that this wasn't the pain we'd been enduring for days. That pain wasn't worth speaking of. It was a given, an obvious truth that formed the foundation of our lives at this point. Nothing was more certain and obvious than pain. But not this pain.
"Did you pull a muscle or something?" she asked, huddling up close to me like Peacekeepers with rifles were lions afraid of a group of gazelles who sought safety in numbers.
"It's deeper than that. It's really sharp," I said. I'd first noticed it hours ago. It had only been a little needle of pain then, like a little sliver of bone had come loose and was poking me from the inside. It came and went but it was increasingly present as time went by. Now it hurt with each step. Every time I lifted my leg to walk forward I could feel a muscle inside stretching stiffly like a violin string closer to snapping every time it was tugged.
"Oh, I have that too. It comes and goes," Ferrari said. "It hurts but I can still walk."
So could I, for the moment. But I was walking on two warnings, both of which I'd gotten in the last twenty minutes. Ferrari was walking on three. She hadn't mentioned it since she got them but it had to be on her mind. But then, Ferrari wasn't good at looking ahead.
"Warning! Warning number eight!"
I cringed as I looked over at the Peacekeeper. His face was impassive under opaque shades. They really didn't care. They had their own lives at home and this was just a day at work to them. Everyone does that, even the ones who say they don't. We all know there are destitute or dying people in our own Districts and we don't help them. We say it's all we can do to take care of our own problems. That was how the Capitol could stay in power so long. We had more than enough strength to overthrow them. They didn't bother trying to take that away from us because they knew it didn't matter. We could take them over but they knew we wouldn't. We all just tried to do the best we could with what we could get in our own lives.
A shooting pain pulsed through my leg, almost taking me to the ground. Ferrari's eyes went wide as she saw me struggle not to stumble. My breath came ragged and whistling as I forced my leg forward over the visceral warnings that my muscle was near snapping. I closed my eyes and turned all my being to just taking another step. For a long time I stayed that way, my world revolving around my legs and the road. At last I opened my eyes. I looked back at the road and saw I had taken three steps.
That's how it's going to be, I knew. For the next hour. How many steps would an hour take? I couldn't think that far ahead. I couldn't think five steps ahead. I couldn't make it farther than one more step. For the next hour that was how it would be. A red-hot needle slicing through to my bone as I forced the tissue around it to take one more step.
Ember Steiner- District Two female
I killed Eleanor.
For three days she'd walked without a single stumble. You could have set your watch by her. Then I walked up to her for some companionship and she dropped dead. No warning signs. From zero warnings to dead.
I was a curse. I was worse than worthless. Everyone who ever came near me was worse off for it. If I hadn't trained in the Academy my family wouldn't have been high-profile enough for anyone to care about Shui's empty remarks about the Games. I got close to Miall and Havelock and they were gone too. I drove my own mother away. She and Dad would have married if I hadn't decided to train. I could have gotten her back if I'd told her I'd changed my mind. I guess I thought my mother would love me no matter what. But how could someone love me? All I brought to people was pain. My mother was better off without me. My father still stayed with me after all these years. I wished he would leave me too. All I would ever be to him was a heart broken over and over again until he died of old age.
"You all right?"
I hadn't heard anyone coming up beside me. I turned and saw Elara walking alongside me.
"No, I'm not," I said. I had no energy to withhold it and no heart to try. "I think I should lay down and die."
"You can't," she said.
"Yes, I can," I said. Everything in me was in opposition to what Elara had just said. My body was in such agony it had passed beyond self-preservation and just wanted to die. Mentally I was past wanting to die. I wanted to have never existed.
"I don't mean you're not capable of dying," Elara said. "I mean you don't get to die." It was eerie how flat her face and tone were. She was informing me of a fact, not convincing me of an opinion.
She went on. "if you die it's over for you. No more pain and no more guilt. But that pain and guilt doesn't disappear. Its gets transferred. Transferred to your father. You don't get to do that to him. So keep walking and suck it up."
"What are you even doing? Why are you trying to get me to keep going?" I asked.
Elara's looked through me and to the road beyond. Her voice was hollow. "Because I'm tired. And I'm lonely. But I don't get to die either. And I want someone to walk with until the end."
Elara Angelo- District Twelve female
My eyes were almost closed as I let my head droop closer to the road. Looking ahead at the endless road sucked the hope out of me. For a long time I'd been squinting my eyes almost shut and letting just enough light come in that I could sense the edge of the road. It made me feel like I didn't have a end point hopelessly far away. I was just indefinitely moving forward. No end in sight to give me hope. Just constant torture I had to endure. To endure was easier than to hope.
A Peacekeeper put a bullet through my leg. I screamed and crumpled to my knees. I didn't stop! I thought, my mind so scrambled I barely knew what had happened. I'd only had two warnings and out of nowhere a Peacekeeper had shot me.
Slowly the thoughts filtered back in. My hands were bloodless on my calf, though it was thrumming with pain. There had been no sound of a gunshot. And last of all, a Peacekeeper wouldn't have shot my leg. It's a charley horse, I painfully put together. A cramp so sudden and violent I mistook it for a gunshot.
"-number ten!"
My third warning finished in my ear. There had always been a grace period in between warnings. I didn't know how long it took but it couldn't be longer than thirty seconds. I tried to rise and my leg folded bonelessly under me. It was like it had been cut off from my brain. I was no longer in control of it.
Cramps. I tried to think of what caused them and how to fix them. I'd only had a charley horse once, when I was about five years old. My mother had massaged it and eventually it went away. I set to work rubbing and pushing at my leg, trying to set right a muscle I couldn't even identify. My leg moaned at me as I worked, a aching, simmering pain like a roiling bruise. I sensed death materializing at the edge of the road, watching to see if I could outrun him one more time.
Fifteen seconds went by and that was all I dared. I jumped to my feet ready to hop on one foot for an hour if I needed. The pain hadn't subsided but my leg stayed straight under me. I couldn't move it naturally but I could swing it forward in a shambling zombie gait that didn't look that much different from the other walkers anyway. I whimpered with pain as I limped forward. Somehow I must have made pace because the final warning never buried itself in my head. The pain slowly subsided over the next half-hour. I'd been fifteen seconds from oblivion. No second chance, no last-minute mercy, just a failure to keep pace and a bullet in the head. I didn't know how any of us were still sane. People weren't meant to live so close to death.
My leg slowly came back to life and I increased my pace. It hurt like hell but I couldn't afford to be anywhere near three miles an hour. I caught back up to Katrina and Ferrari and passed them by. Ahead of us was Ember. She was deep in conversation with someone who wasn't there.
Full disclosure the charley horse segment is directly lifted from the original The Long Walk. I may be a lowborn plagiarizer but at least I admit it. I hardly think Stephen King will care anyway. His was way better.