The Long Walk

“Like a stuck pig.” Davidson shook his head. “It’s funny the way things turn out, isn’t it? You fall down any other time, you get a little scrape. He needs stitches.” He pointed to the road. “Look at that.”

Garraty looked and saw tiny dark spots on the drying hardtop. “Blood?”

“It ain’t molasses,” Davidson said grimly.

“Is he scared?” Olson asked in a dry voice.

“He says he doesn’t give a damn,” Davidson said. “But I’m scared.” His eyes were wide and gray. “I’m scared for all of us.”

They kept on walking. Baker pointed out another Garraty sign.

“Hot shit,” Garraty said without looking up. He was following the trail of Zuck’s blood, like Dan’s bone tracking a wounded Indian. It weaved slowly back and forth across the white line.

“McVries,” Olson said. His voice had gotten softer in the last couple of hours. Garraty had decided he liked Olson in spite of Olson’s brass-balls outer face. He didn’t like to see Olson getting scared, but there could be no doubt that he was.

“What?” McVries said.

“It isn’t going away. That baggy feeling I told you about. It isn’t going away.”

McVries didn’t say anything. The scar on his face looked very white in the light of the setting sun.

“It feels like my legs could just collapse. Like a bad foundation. That won’t happen, will it? Will it?” Olson’s voice had gotten a little shrill.

McVries didn’t say anything.

“Could I have a cigarette?” Olson asked. His voice was low again.

“Yeah. You can keep the pack.”

Olson lit one of the Mellows with practiced ease, cupping the match, and thumbed his nose at one of the soldiers watching him from the halftrack. “They’ve been giving me the old hairy eyeball for the last hour or so. They’ve got a sixth sense about it.” He raised his voice again. “You like it, don’t you, fellas? You like it, right? That goddam right, is it?”

Several of the Walkers looked around at him and then looked away quickly. Garraty wanted to look away too. There was hysteria in Olson’s voice. The soldiers looked at Olson impassively. Garraty wondered if the word would go back on Olson pretty quick, and couldn’t repress a shudder.

By four-thirty they had covered thirty miles. The sun was half-gone, and it had turned blood red on the horizon. The thunderheads had moved east, and overhead the sky was a darkening blue. Garraty thought about his hypothetical drowning man again. Not so hypothetical at that. The coming night was like water that would soon cover them.

A feeling of panic rose in his gullet. He was suddenly and terribly sure that he was looking at the last daylight in his life. He wanted it to stretch out. He wanted it to last. He wanted the dusk to go on for hours.

“Warning! Warning 100! Your third warning, 100!”

Zuck looked around. There was a dazed, uncomprehending look in his eyes. His right pants leg was caked with dried blood. And then, suddenly, he began to sprint. He weaved through the Walkers like a broken-field runner carrying a football. He ran with that same dazed expression on his face.

The halftrack picked up speed. Zuck heard it coming and ran faster. It was a queer, shambling, limping run. The wound on his knee broke open again, and as he burst into the open ahead of the main pack, Garraty could see the drops of fresh blood splashing and flying from the cuff of his pants. Zuck ran up the next rise, and for a moment he was starkly silhouetted against the red sky, a galvanic black shape, frozen for a moment in midstride like a scarecrow in full flight. Then he was gone and the halftrack followed. The two soldiers that had dropped off it trudged along with the boys, their faces empty.

Nobody said a word. They only listened. There was no sound for a long time. An incredibly, unbelievably long time. Only a bird, and a few early May crickets, and somewhere behind them, the drone of a plane.

Then there was a single sharp report, a pause, then a second.

“Making sure,” someone said sickly.

When they got up over the rise they saw the halftrack sitting on the shoulder half a mile away. Blue smoke was coming from its dual exhaust pipes. Of Zuck there was no sign. No sign at all.

“Where’s the Major?” someone screamed. The voice was on the raw edge of panic. It belonged to a bulletheaded boy named Gribble, number 48. “I want to see the Major, goddammit! Where is he?”

The soldiers walking along the verge of the road did not answer. No one answered.

“Is he making another speech?” Gribble stormed. “Is that what he’s doing? Well, he’s a murderer! That’s what he is, a murderer! I… I’ll tell him! You think I won’t? I’ll tell him to his face! I’ll tell him right to his face!” In his excitement he had fallen below the pace, almost stopping, and the soldiers became interested for the first time.

“Warning! Warning 48!”

Gribble faltered to a stop, and then his legs picked up speed. He looked down at his feet as he walked. Soon they were up to where the halftrack waited. It began to crawl along beside them again.