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Chapter 4






" The ultimate game show would be one where the losing contestant was killed.­"

Chuck Barns

Game show creator

MC of The Gong Show

 

Everyone was disappointed with Caribou.

It was just like Limestone.

The crowds were bigger, but otherwise it was just another mill‑ pulp‑ and‑ service town with a scattering of stores and gas stations, one shopping center that was having, according to the signs plastered everywhere, OUR ANNUAL WALK‑ IN FOR VALUES SALE!, and a park with a war memorial in it. A small, evil‑ sounding high school band struck up the National Anthem, then a medley of Sousa marches, and then, with taste so bad it was almost grisly, Marching to Pretoria.

The same woman who had made a fuss at the crossroads so far back turned up again. She was still looking for Percy. This time she made it through the police cordon and right onto the road. She pawed through the boys, unintentionally trip­ping one of them up. She was yelling for her Percy to come home now. The sol­diers went for their guns, and for a moment it looked very much as if Percy's mom was going to buy herself an interference ticket. Then a cop got an armlock on her and dragged her away. A small boy sat on a KEEP MAINE TIDY barrel and ate a hotdog and watched the cops put Percy's mom in a police cruiser. Percy's mom was the high point of going through Caribou.

" What comes after Oldtown, Ray? " McVries asked.

" I'm not a walking roadmap, " Garraty said irritably. " Bangor, I guess. Then Augusta. Then Kittery and the state line, about three hundred and thirty miles from here. Give or take. Okay? I'm picked clean. "

Somebody whistled. " Three hundred and thirty miles. "

" It's unbelievable, " Harkness said gloomily.

" The whole damn thing is unbelievable, " McVries said. " I wonder where the Major is? "

" Shacked up in Augusta, " Olson said.

They all grinned, and Garraty reflected how strange it was about the Major, who had gone from God to Mammon in just ten hours.

Ninety‑ five left. But that wasn't even the worst anymore. The worst was trying to visualize McVries buying it, or Baker. Or Harkness with his silly book idea. His mind shied away from the thought.

Once Caribou was behind them, the road became all but deserted. They walked through a country crossroads with a single lightpole rearing high above, spotlight­ing them and making crisp black shadows as they passed through the glare. Far away a train whistle hooted. The moon cast a dubious light on the groundfog, leav­ing it pearly and opalescent in the fields.

Garraty took a drink of water.

" Warning! Wanting 12! This is your final warning, 12! "

12 was a boy named Fenter who was wearing a souvenir T‑ shirt which read I RODE THE MT. WASHINGTON COG RAILWAY. Fenter was licking his lips. The word was that his foot had stiffened up on him badly. When he was shot ten minutes later, Garraty didn't feel much. He was too tired. He walked around Fenter. Looking down he saw something glittering in Fenter's hand. A St. Christopher's medal.

" If I get out of this, " McVries said abruptly, " you know what I'm going to do? "

" What? " Baker asked.

" Fornicate until my cock turns blue. I've never been so horny in my life as I am right this minute, at quarter of eight on May first."

" You mean it? " Garraty asked.

" I do, " McVries assured. " I could even get horny for you, Ray, if you didn't need a shave."

Garraty laughed.

" Prince Charming, that's who I am, " McVries said. His hand went to the scar on his cheek and touched it. " Now all I need is a Sleeping Beauty. I could awake her with a biggy sloppy soul kiss and the two of us would ride away into the sunset. At least as far as the nearest Holiday Inn. "

" Walk, " Olsen said listlessly.

" Huh? "

" Walk into the sunset."

" Walk into the sunset, okay, " McVries said. " True love either way. Do you believe in true love, Hank dear? "

" I believe in a good screw, " Olson said, and Art Baker burst out laughing.

" I believe in true love, " Garraty said, and then felt sorry he had said it. It sounded naive.

" You want to know why I don't? " Olson said. He looked up at Garraty and grinned a scary, furtive grin. " Ask Fenter. Ask Zuck. They know."

" That's a hell of an attitude, " Pearson said. He had come out of the dark from someplace and was walking with them again. Pearson was limping, not badly, but very obviously limping.

" No, it's not, " McVries said, and then, after a moment, he added cryptically: " Nobody loves a deader."

" Edgar Allan Poe did, " Baker said. " I did a report on him in school and it said he had tendencies that were ne‑ recto‑ "

" Necrophiliac, " Garraty said.

" Yeah, that's right. "

" What's that? " Pearson asked.

" It means you got an urge to sleep with a dead woman, " Baker said. " Or a dead man, if you're a woman."

" Or if you're a fruit, " McVries put in.

" How the hell did we get on this? " Olson croaked. " Just how in the hell did we get on the subject of screwing dead people? It's fucking repulsive."

" Why not? " A deep, somber voice said. It was Abraham, 2. He was tall and disjointed‑ looking; he walked in a perpetual shamble. " I think we all might take a moment or two to stop and think about whatever kind of sex life there may be in the next world. "

" I get Marilyn Monroe, " McVries said. " You can have Eleanor Roosevelt, Abe old buddy."

Abraham gave him the finger. Up ahead, one of the soldiers droned out a warning.

" Just a second now. Just one motherfucking second here. " Olson spoke slowly, as if he wrestled with a tremendous problem in expression. " You're all off the subject. All off."

" The Transcendental Quality of Love, a lecture by the noted philosopher and Ethiopian jug‑ rammer Henry Olson, " McVries said. " Author of A Peach Is Not a Peach without a Pit and other works of‑ '

" Wait! " Olson cried out. His voice was as shrill as broken glass. " You wait just one goddam second! Love is a put‑ on! It's nothing! One big fat el zilcho! You got it? "

No one replied. Garraty looked out ahead of him, where the dark charcoal hills met the star‑ punched darkness of the sky. He wondered if he couldn't feel the first faint twinges of a charley horse in the arch of his left foot. I want to sit down, he thought irritably. Damn it all, I want to sit down.

" Love is a fake! " Olson was blaring. " There are three great truths in the world and they are a good meal, a good screw, and a good shit, and that's all! And when you get like Fenter and Zuck‑ "

" Shut up, " a bored voice said, and Garraty knew it was Stebbins. But when he looked back, Stebbins was only looking at the road and walking along near the left‑ hand edge.

A jet passed overhead, trailing the sound of its engines behind it and chalking a feathery line across the night sky. It passed low enough for them to be able to see its running lights, pulsing yellow and green. Baker was whistling again. Garraty let his eyelids drop mostly shut. His feet moved on their own.

His half‑ dozing mind began to slip away from him. Random thoughts began to chase each other lazily across its field. He remembered his mother singing him an Irish lullaby when he was very small... something about cockles and mussels, alive, alive‑ o. And her face, so huge and beautiful, like the face of an actress on a movie screen. Wanting to kiss her and be in love with her for always. When he grew up, he would marry her.

This was replaced by Jan's good‑ humored Polish face and her dark hair that streamed nearly to her waist. She was wearing a two‑ piece bathing suit beneath a short beach coat because they were going to Reid Beach. Garraty himself was wearing a ragged pair of denim shorts and his zoris.

Jan was gone. Her face became that of Jimmy Owens, the kid down the block from them. He had been five and Jimmy had been five and Jimmy's mother had caught them playing Doctor's Office in the sandpit behind Jimmy's house. They both had boners. That's what they called them‑ boners. Jimmy's mother had called his mother and his mother had come to get him and had sat him down in her bedroom and had asked him how he would like it if she made him go out and walk down the street with no clothes on. His dozing body contracted with the groveling embarrassment of it, the deep shame. He had cried and begged, not to make him walk down the street with no clothes on... and not to tell his father.

Seven years old now. He and Jimmy Owens peering through the dirt‑ grimed win­dow of the Burr's Building Materials office at the naked lady calendars, knowing what they were looking at but not really knowing, feeling a crawling shameful ex­citing pang of something. Of something. There had been one blond lady with a piece of blue silk draped across her hips and they had stared at it for a long, long time. They argued about what might be down there under the cloth. Jimmy said he had seen his mother naked. Jimmy said he knew. Jimmy said it was hairy and cut open. He had refused to believe Jimmy, because what Jimmy said was disgusting.

Still he was sure that ladies must be different from men down there and they had spent a long purple summer dusk discussing it, swatting mosquitoes and watching a scratch baseball game in the lot of the moving van company across the street from Burr's. He could feel, actually feel in the half‑ waking dream the sensation of the hard curb beneath his fanny.

The next year he had hit Jimmy Owens in the mouth with the barrel of his Daisy air rifle while they were playing guns and Jimmy had to have four stitches in his upper lip. A year after that they had moved away. He hadn't meant to hit Jimmy in the mouth. It had been an accident. Of that he was quite sure, even though by then he had known Jimmy was right because he had seen his own mother naked (he had not meant to see her naked‑ it had been an accident). They were hairy down there. Hairy and cut open.

Shhh, it isn't a tiger, love, only your teddy bear, see?... Cockles and mus­sels, alive, alive‑ o... Mother loves her boy... Shhh... Go to sleep...

" Warning! Warning 47! "

An elbow poked him rudely in the ribs. " That's you, boy. Rise and shine." McVries was grinning at him.

" What time is it? " Garraty asked thickly.

" Eight thirty‑ five."

" But I've been‑ "

" ‑ dozing for hours, " McVries said. " I know the feeling."

" Well, it sure seemed that way."

" It's your mind, " McVries said, " using the old escape hatch. Don't you wish your feet could? "

" I use Dial, " Pearson said, pulling an idiotic face. " Don't you wish everybody did?

Garraty thought that memories were like a line drawn in the dirt. The further back you went the scuffier and harder to see that line got. Until finally there was nothing but smooth sand and the black hole of nothingness that you came out of. The memories were in a way like the road. Here it was real and hard and tangible. But that early road, that nine in the morning road, was far back and meaningless.

They were almost fifty miles into the Walk. The word came back that the Major would be by in his jeep to review them and make a short speech when they actually got to the fifty‑ mile point. Garraty thought that was most probably horseshit.

They breasted a long, steep rise, and Garraty was tempted to take his jacket off again. He didn't. He unzipped it, though, and then walked backward for a minute. The lights of Caribou twinkled at him, and he thought about Lot's wife, who had looked back and fumed into a pillar of salt.

" Warning! Warning 47! Second warning, 47! "

It took Garraty a moment to realize it was him. His second warning in ten minutes. He started to feel afraid again. He thought of the unnamed boy who had died because he had slowed down once too often. Was that what he was doing?

He looked around. McVries, Harkness, Baker and Olson were all staring at him. Olson was having a particularly good look. He could make out the intent expres­sion on Olson's face even in the dark. Olson had outlasted six. He wanted to make Garraty lucky seven. He wanted Garraty to die.

" See anything green? " Garraty asked irritably.

" No, " Olson said, his eyes sliding away. " Course not."

Garraty walked with determination now, his arms swinging aggressively. It was twenty to nine. At twenty to eleven‑ eight miles down the road‑ he would be free again. He felt an hysterical urge to proclaim he could do it, they needn't send the word back on him, they weren't going to watch him get a ticket... at least not yet.

The groundfog spread across the road in thin ribbons, like smoke. The shapes of the boys moved through it like dark islands somehow set adrift. At fifty miles into the Walk they passed a small, shut‑ up garage with a rusted‑ out gas pump in front. It was little more than an ominous, leaning shape in the fog. The clear flu­orescent light from a telephone booth cast the only glow. The Major didn't come. No one came.

The road dipped gently around a curve, and then there was a yellow mad sign ahead. The word came back, but before it got to Garraty he could read the sign for himself:

STEEP GRADE TRUCKS USE LOW GEAR

Groans and moans. Somewhere up ahead Barkovitch called out merrily: " Step into it, brothers! Who wants to race me to the top? "

" Shut your goddam mouth, you little freak, " someone said quietly.

" Make me, Dumbo! " Barkovitch shrilled. " Come on up here and make me! "

" He's crackin', " Baker said.

" No, " McVries replied. " He's just stretching. Guys like him have an awful lot of stretch."

Olson's voice was deadly quiet. " I don't think I can climb that hill. Not at four miles an hour. "

The hill stretched above them. They were almost to it now. With the fog it was impossible to see the top. For all we know, it might just go up forever, Garraty thought.

They started up.

It wasn't as bad, Garraty discovered, if you stared down at your feet as you walked and leaned forward a little. You stared strictly down at the tiny patch of pavement between your feet and it gave you the impression that you were walking on level ground. Of course, you couldn't kid yourself that your lungs and the breath in your throat weren't heating up, because they were.

Somehow the word started coming back‑ some people still had breath to spare, apparently. The word was that this hill was a quarter of a mile long. The word was it was two miles long. The word was that no Walker had ever gotten a ticket on this hill. The wont was that three boys had gotten tickets here just last year. And after that, the word stopped coming back.

" I can't do it, " Olson was saying monotonously. " I can't do it anymore." His breath was coming in doglike pants. But he kept on walking and they all kept on walk­ing. Little granting noises and soft, plosive breathing became audible. The only other sounds were Olson's chant, the scuff of many feet, and the grinding, ratcheting sound of the halftrack's engine as it chugged along beside them.

Garraty felt the bewildered fear in his stomach grow. He could actually die here. It wouldn't be hard at all. He had screwed around and had gotten two warnings on him already. He couldn't be much over the limit right now. All he had to do was slip his pace a little and he'd have number three‑ final warning. And then...

" Warning! Warning 70! "

" They're playing your song, Olson, " McVries said between pants. " Pick up your feet. I want to see you dance up this hill like Fred Astaire."

" What do you care? " Olson asked fiercely.

McVries didn't answer. Olson found a little more inside himself and managed to pick it up. Garraty wondered morbidly if the little more Olson had found was his last legs. He also wondered about Stebbins, back there tailing the group. How are you, Stebbins? Getting tired?

Up ahead, a boy named Larson, 60, suddenly sat down on the road. He got a warning. The other boys split and passed around him, like the Red Sea around the Children of Israel.

" I'm just going to rest for a while, okay? " Larson said with a trusting, shell­shocked smile. " I can't walk anymore right now, okay? " His smile stretched wider, and he fumed it on the soldier who had jumped down from the halftrack with his rifle unslung and the stainless steel chronometer in his hand.

" Warning, 60, " the soldier said. " Second warning."

" Listen, I'll catch up, " Larson hastened to assure him. " I'm just resting. A guy can't walk all the time. Not all the time. Can he, fellas? " Olson made a little moaning noise as he passed Larson, and shied away when Larson tried to touch his pants cuff.

Garraty felt his pulse beating warmly in his temples. Larson got his thins warning. now he'll understand, Garraty thought, now he'll get up and start flogging it.

And at the end, Larson did realize, apparently. Reality came crashing back in. " Hey! " Larson said behind them. His voice was high and alarmed. " Hey, just a second, don't do that, I'll get up. Hey, don't! D‑ "

The shot. They walked on up the hill.

" Ninety‑ three bottles of beer left on the shelf, " McVries said softly.

Garraty made no reply. He stared at his feet and walked and focused all of his concentration on getting to the top without that third warning. It couldn't go on much longer, this monster hill. Surely not.

Up ahead someone uttered a high, gobbling scream, and then the rifles crashed in unison.

" Barkovitch, " Baker said hoarsely. " That was Barkovitch, I'm sure it was."

" Wrong, redneck! " Barkovitch yelled out of the darkness. " One hundred per cent dead wrong! "

They never did see the boy who had been shot after Larson. He had been part of the vanguard and he was dragged off the road before they got there. Garraty ventured a look up from the pavement, and was immediately sorry. He could see the top of the hill just barely. They still had the length of a football field to go. It looked like a hundred miles. No one said anything else. Each of them had retreated into his own private world of pain and effort. Seconds seemed to telescope into hours.

Near the top of the hill, a rutted dirt road branched off the main drag, and a farmer and his family stood there. They watched the Walkers go past‑ an old man with a deeply seamed brow, a hatchet‑ faced woman in a bulky cloth coat, three teenaged children who all looked half‑ wilted.

" All he needs... is a pitchfork, " McVries told Garraty breathlessly. Sweat was streaming down McVries's face. " And... Grant Wood... to paint him."

Someone called out: " Hiya, Daddy! "

The farmer and the farmer's wife and the farmer's children said nothing. The cheese stands alone, Garraty thought crazily. Hi‑ ho the dairy‑ o, the cheese stands alone. The farmer and his family did not smile. They did not frown. They held no signs. They did not wave. They watched. Garraty was reminded of the Western movies he had seen on all the Saturday afternoons of his youth, where the hero was left to die in the desert and the buzzards came and circled overhead. They were left behind, and Garraty was glad. He supposed the farmer and his wife and the three half‑ wilted children would be out there around nine o'clock next May first and the next... and the next. How many boys had they seen shot? A dozen? Two? Garraty didn't like to think of it. He took a pull at his canteen, sloshed the water around in his mouth, trying to cut through the caked saliva. He spit the mouthful out.

The hill went on. Up ahead Toland fainted and was shot after the soldier left beside him had warned his unconscious body three times. It seemed to Garraty that they had been climbing the hill for at least a month now. Yes, it had to be a month at least, and that was a conservative estimate because they had been walking for just over three years. He giggled a little, took another mouthful of water, sloshed it around in his mouth, and then swallowed it. No cramps. A cramp would finish him now. But it could happen. It could happen because someone had dipped his shoes in liquid lead while he wasn't looking.

Nine gone, and a third of them had gotten it right here on this hill. The Major had told Olson to give them hell, and if this wasn't hell, it was a pretty good ap­proximation. A pretty good...

Oh boy‑

Garraty was suddenly aware that he felt quite giddy, as if he might faint himself. He brought one hand up and slapped himself across the face, backward and for­ward, hard.

" You all right? " McVries asked.

" Feel faint."

" Pour your... " Quick, whistling breath, "... canteen over your head. "

Garraty did it. I christen thee Raymond Davis Garraty, pax vobiscum. The water was very cold. He stopped feeling faint. Some of the water trickled down inside his shirt in freezing cold rivulets. " Canteen! 47! " he shouted. The effort of the shout left him feeling drained all over again. He wished he had waited awhile.

One of the soldiers jog‑ trotted over to him and handed him a fresh canteen. Gar­raty could feel the soldier's expressionless marble eyes sizing him up. " Get away, " he said rudely, taking the canteen. " You get paid to shoot me, not to look at me. "

The soldier went away with no change of expression. Garraty made himself walk a little faster.

They kept climbing and no one else got it and then they were at the top. It was nine o'clock. They had been on the road twelve hours. It didn't mean anything. The only thing that mattered was the cool breeze blowing over the top of the hill. And the sound of a bird. And the feel of his damp shirt against his skin. And the memories in his head. Those things mattered, and Garraty clung to them with des­perate awareness. They were his things and he still had them.

" Pete? "

" Yeah. "

" Man, I'm glad to be alive."

McVries didn't answer. They were on the downslope now. Walking was easy.

" I'm going to try hard to stay alive, " Garraty said, almost apologetically.

The road curved gently downward. They were still a hundred and fifteen miles from Oldtown and the comparative levelness of the turnpike.

" That's the idea, isn't it? " McVries asked finally. His voice sounded cracked and cobwebby, as if it had issued from a dusty cellar.

Neither of them said anything for a while. No one was talking. Baker ambled steadily along‑ he hadn't drawn a warning yet‑ with his hands in his pockets, his head nodding slightly with the flatfooted rhythm of his walk. Olson had gone back to Hail Mary, full of grace. His face was a white splotch in the darkness. Harkness was eating.

" Garraty, " McVries said.

" I'm here."

" You ever see the end of a Long Walk? "

" No, you? "

" Hell, no. I just thought, you being close to it and all‑ "

" My father hated them. He took me to one as a what‑ do‑ you‑ call‑ it, object les­son. But that was the only time."

" I saw."

Garraty jumped at the sound of that voice. It was Stebbins. He had pulled almost even with them, his head still bent forward, his blond hair flapping around his ears like a sickly halo.

" What was it like? " McVries asked. His voice was younger somehow.

" You don't want to know, " Stebbins said.

" I asked, didn't I? "

Stebbins made no reply. Garraty's curiosity about him was stronger than ever. Stebbins hadn't folded up. He showed no signs of folding up. He went on without complaint and hadn't been warned since the starting line.

" Yeah, what's it like? " he heard himself asking.

" I saw the end four years ago, " Stebbins said. " I was thirteen. It ended about sixteen miles over the New Hampshire border. They had the National Guam out and sixteen Federal Squads to augment the State Police. They had to. The people were packed sixty deep on both sides of the road for fifty miles. Over twenty peo­ple were trampled to death before it was all over. It happened because people were trying to move with the Walkers, trying to see the end of it. I had a front‑ row seat. My dad got it for me. "

" What does your dad do? " Garraty asked.

" He's in the Squads. And he had it figured just right. I didn't even have to move. The Walk ended practically in front of me."

" What happened? " Olson asked softly.

" I could hear them coming before I could see them. We all could. It was one big soundwave, getting closer and closer. And it was still an hour before they got close enough to see. They weren't looking at the crowd, either of the two that were left. It was like they didn't even know the crowd was there. What they were looking at was the mad. They were hobbling along, both of them. Like they had been crucified and then taken down and made to walk with the nails still through their feet."

They were all listening to Stebbins now. A horrified silence had fallen like a rubber sheet.

" The crowd was yelling at them, almost as if they could still hear. Some were yelling one guy's name, and some were yelling the other guy's, but the only thing that really came through was this Go... Go... Go chant. I was getting shoved around like a beanbag. The guy next to me either pissed himself or jacked off in his pants, you couldn't tell which.

" They walked right past me. One of them was a big blond with his shirt open. One of his shoe soles had come unglued or unstitched or whatever, and it was flapping. The other guy wasn't even wearing his shoes anymore. He was in his stocking feet. His socks ended at his ankles. The rest of them... why, he'd just walked them away, hadn't he? His feet were purple. You could see the broken blood vessels in his feet. I don't think he really felt it anymore. Maybe they were able to do something with his feet later, I don't know. Maybe they were."

" Stop. For God's sake, stop it." It was McVries. He sounded dazed and sick.

" You wanted to know, " Stebbins said, almost genially. " Didn't you say that? "

No answer. The halftrack whined and clattered and spurted along the shoulder, and somewhere farther up someone drew a warning.

" It was the big blond that lost. I saw it all. They were just a little past me. He threw both of his arms up, like he was Superman. But instead of flying he just fell flat on his face and they gave him his ticket after thirty seconds because he was walking with three. They were both walking with three.

" Then the crowd started to cheer. They cheered and they cheered and then they could see that the kid that won was trying to say something. So they shut up. He had fallen on his knees, you know, like he was going to pray, only he was just crying. And then he crawled over to the other boy and put his face in that big blond kid's shirt. Then he started to say whatever it was he had to say, but we couldn't hear it. He was talking into the dead kid's shirt. He was telling the dead kid. Then the soldiers rushed out and told him he had won the Prize, and asked him how he wanted to start."

" What did he say? " Garraty asked. It seemed to him that with the question he had laid his whole life on the line.

" He didn't say anything to them, not then, " Stebbins said. " He was talking to the dead kid. He was telling the dead kid something, but we couldn't hear it. "

" What happened then? " Pear‑ son asked.

" I don't remember, " Stebbins said remotely.

No one said anything. Garraty felt a panicked, trapped sensation, as if someone had stuffed him into an underground pipe that was too small to get out of. Up ahead a third warning was given out and a boy made a croaking, despairing sound, like a dying crow. Please God, don't let them shoot anyone now, Garraty thought. I'll go crazy if I hear the guns now. Please God, please God.

A few minutes later the guns rammed their steel‑ death sound into the night. This time it was a short boy in a flapping red and white football jersey. For a moment Garraty thought Percy's mom would not have to wonder or worry anymore, but it wasn't Percy‑ it was a boy named Quincy or Quentin or something like that.

Garraty didn't go crazy. He turned around to say angry words at Stebbins‑ to ask him, perhaps, how it felt to inflict a boy's last minutes with such a horror-­but Stebbins had dropped back to his usual position and Garraty was alone again.

They walked on, the ninety of them.

 


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