The long walk

“But I didn't, thanks to the musketeer,” McVries said sullenly. His hand went to the scar. “Fuck, we're all going to buy it.”

“Somebody wins. It might be one of us.”

“It's a fake,” McVries said, his voice trembling. “There's no winner, no Prize. They take the last guy out behind a barn somewhere and shoot him too.”

“Don't be so fucking stupid!” Garraty yelled at him furiously. “You don't have the slightest idea what you're sa—”

“Everyone loses,” McVries said. His eyes peered out of the dark cave of his sockets like baleful animals. They were walking by themselves. The other Walkers were keeping away, at least for the time being. McVries had shown red, and so had Garraty, in a way - he had gone against his own best interest when he ran back to McVries. In all probability he had kept McVries from being number twenty-eight.

“Everyone loses,” McVries repeated. “You better believe it.”

They walked over a railroad track. They walked under a cement bridge. On the other side they passed a boarded-up Dairy Queen with a sign that read: WILL REOPEN FOR SEASON JUNE 5.

Olson drew a warning.

Garraty felt a tap on his shoulder and turned around. It was Stebbins. He looked no better or worse than he had the night before. “Your friend there is jerked at the Major,” he said.

McVries showed no sign of hearing.

“I guess so, yeah,” Garraty said. “I myself have passed the point where I'd want to invite him home for tea.”

“Look behind us.”

Garraty did. A second halftrack had rolled up, and as he looked, a third fell in behind it, coming in off a side road.

“The Major's coming,” Stebbins said, “and everybody will cheer.” He smiled, and his smile was oddly lizardlike. “They don't really hate him yet. Not yet. They just think they do. They think they've been through hell. But wait until tonight. Wait until tomorrow.”

Garraty looked at Stebbins uneasily. “What if they hiss and boo and throw canteens at him, or something?”

“Are you going to hiss and boo and throw your canteen?”

“No.”

“Neither will anyone else. You'll see.”

“Stebbins?”

Stebbins raised his eyebrows.

“You think you'll win, don't you?”

“Yes,” Stebbins said calmly. “I'm quite sure of it.” And he dropped back to his usual position.

At 5:25 Yannick bought his ticket. And at 5:30 AM, just as Stebbins had predicted, the Major came.

There was a winding, growling roar as his jeep bounced over the crest of the hill behind them. Then it was roaring past them, along the shoulder. The Major was standing at full attention. As before, he was holding a stiff, eyes-right salute. A funny chill of pride went through Garraty's chest.

Not all of them cheered. Collie Parker spat on the ground. Barkovitch thumbed his nose. And McVries only looked, his lips moving soundlessly. Olson appeared not to notice at all as the Major went by; he was back to looking at his feet.

Garraty cheered. So did Percy What's-His-Name and Harkness, who wanted to write a book, and Wyman and Art Baker and Abraham and Sledge, who had just picked up his second warning.

Then the Major was gone, moving fast. Garraty felt a little ashamed of himself. He had, after all, wasted energy.

A short time later the road took them past a used car lot where they were given a twenty-one-horn salute. An amplified voice roaring out over double rows of fluttering plastic pennants told the Walkers — and the spectators — that no one out-traded McLaren's Dodge. Garraty found it all a little disheartening.

“You feel any better?” he asked McVries hesitantly.

“Sure,” McVries said. “Great. I'm just going to walk along and watch them drop all around me. What fun it is. I just did all the division in my head - math was my good subject in school - and I figure we should be able to make at least three hundred and twenty miles at the rate we're going. That's not even a record distance.”

“Why don't you just go and have it on someplace else if you're going to talk like that, Pete,” Baker said. He sounded strained for the first time.

“Sorry, Mum,” McVries said sullenly, but he shut up.

The day brightened. Garraty unzipped his fatigue jacket. He slung it over his shoulder. The road was level here. It was dotted with houses, small businesses, and occasional farms. The pines that had lined the road last night had given way to Dairy Queens and gas stations and little crackerbox ranchos. A great many of the ranchos were FOR SALE. In two of the windows Garraty saw the familiar signs: MY SON GAVE HIS LIFE IN THE SQUADS.

“Where's the ocean?” Collie Parker asked Garraty. “Looks like I was back in Illynoy.”

“Just keep walking,” Garraty said. He was thinking of Jan and Freeport again. Freeport was on the ocean. “It's there. About a hundred and eight miles south.”

“Shit,” said Collie Parker. “What a dipshit state this is.”

Parker was a big-muscled blond in a polo shirt. He had an insolent look in his eye that not even a night on the road had been able to knock out. “Goddam trees everyplace! Is there a city in the whole damn place?”