The Long Walk

YOU CAN MAKE IT! He would have shrieked with laughter if he had been able. Boston! The very sound was mythic, rich with unbelievability.
    Baker was beside him again. “Garraty?”
    “What?”
    “Are we in?”
    “Huh?”
    “In, are we in? Garraty, please .”
    Baker ’s eyes pleaded. He was an abattoir, a raw-blood machine.
    “Yeah. We’re in. We’re in, Art.” He had no idea what Baker was talking about.
    “I’m going to die now, Garraty.”
    “All right.”
    “If you win, will you do something for me? I’m scairt to ask anyone else.” And Baker made a sweeping gesture at the deserted road as if the Walk was still rich with its dozens. For a chilling moment Garraty wondered if maybe they were all there still, walking ghosts that Baker could now see in his moment of extremis.
    “Anything.”
    Baker put a hand on Garraty’s shoulder, and Garraty began weeping uncontrollably. It seemed that his heart would burst out of his chest and weep its own tears.
    Baker said, “Lead-lined.”
    “Walk a little bit longer,” Garraty said through his tears. “Walk a little longer, Art.”
    “No—I can’t.”
    “All right.”
    “Maybe I’ll see you, man,” Baker said, and wiped slick blood from his face absently.
    Garraty lowered his head and wept.
    “Don’t watch ’em do it,” Baker said. “Promise me that, too.”
    Garraty nodded, beyond speech.
    “Thanks. You’ve been my friend, Garraty.” Baker tried to smile. He stuck his hand blindly out, and Garraty shook it with both of his.
    “Another time, another place,” Baker said.
    Garraty put his hands over his face and had to bend over to keep walking. The sobs ripped out of him and made him ache with a pain that was far beyond anything the Walk had been able to inflict.
    He hoped he wouldn’t hear the shots. But he did.

Chapter 18
    “I proclaim this year ’s Long Walk at an end. Ladies and gentlemen—citizens—behold your winner!”
    —The Major
     
     
     
     
    They were forty miles from Boston.
    “Tell us a story, Garraty,” Stebbins said abruptly. “Tell us a story that will take our minds off our troubles.” He had aged unbelievably; Stebbins was an old man.
    “Yeah,” McVries said. He also looked ancient and wizened. “A story, Garraty.”
    Garraty looked from one to the other dully, but he could see no duplicity in their faces, only the bone-weariness. He was falling off his own peak now; all the ugly, dragging pains were rushing back in.
    He closed his eyes for a long moment. When he opened them, the world had doubled and came only reluctantly back into focus. “All right,” he said.
    McVries clapped his hands solemnly, three times. He was walking with three warnings; Garraty had one; Stebbins, none.
    “Once upon a time—”
    “Oh, who wants to hear a fucking fairy story?” Stebbins asked.
    McVries giggled a little.
    “You’ll hear what I want to tell you!” Garraty said shrewishly. “You want to hear it or not?”
    Stebbins stumbled against Garraty. Both he and Stebbins were warned. “I s’pose a fairy story’s better than no story at all.”
    “It’s not a fairy story, anyway. Just because it’s in a world that never was doesn’t mean it’s a fairy story. It doesn’t mean—”
    “Are you gonna tell it or not?” McVries asked pettishly.
    “Once upon a time,” Garraty began, “there was a white knight that went out into the world on a Sacred Quest. He left his castle and walked through the Enchanted Forest—”
    “Knights ride,” Stebbins objected.
    “Rode through the Enchanted Forest, then. Rode. And he had many strange adventures. He fought off thousands of trolls and goblins and a whole shitload of wolves. All right? And he finally got to the king’s castle and asked permission to take Gwendolyn, the famous Lady Fair, out walking.”
    McVries cackled.
    “The king wasn’t digging it, thinking no one was good enough for his daughter Gwen, the world-famous Lady Fair, but the Lady Fair loved the White Knight so much that she threatened to run away into the Wildwoods if . . . if . . .” A wave of dizziness rode over him darkly, making him feel as if he were floating. The roar of the crowd came to him like the boom of the sea down a long, cone-shaped tunnel. Then it passed, but slowly.
    He looked around. McVries’s head had dropped, and he was walking at the crowd, fast asleep.
    “Hey!” Garraty shouted. “Hey, Pete! Pete! ”
    “Let him alone,” Stebbins said. “You made the promise like