The Long Walk

Freeport. I don’t think I can make it to Oldtown. I’m dying, I think.
    A sound began to beat its way into the night then, savage and orgiastic. It was a voice, it was many voices, and it was repeating the same thing over and over.
    Garraty! Garraty! GARRATY! GARRATY! GARRATY!
    It was God or his father, about to cut the legs out from under him before he could learn the secret, the secret, the secret of—
    Like thunder: GARRATY! GARRATY! GARRATY!
    It wasn’t his father and it wasn’t God. It was what appeared to be the entire student body of Oldtown High School, chanting his name in unison. As they caught sight of his white, weary, and strained face, the steady beating cry dissolved into wild cheering. Cheerleaders fluttered pompoms. Boys whistled shrilly and kissed their girls. Garraty waved back, smiled, nodded, and craftily crept closer to Olson.
    “Olson,” he whispered. “Olson.”
    Olson’s eyes might have flickered a tiny bit. A spark of life like the single turn of an old starter in a junked automobile.
    “Tell me how, Olson,” he whispered. “Tell me what to do.”
    The high school girls and boys (did I once go to high school? Garraty wondered, was that a dream?) were behind them now, still cheering rapturously.
    Olson’s eyes moved jerkily in their sockets, as if long rusted and in need of oil. His mouth fell open with a nearly audible clunk.
    “That’s it,” Garraty whispered eagerly. “Talk. Talk to me, Olson. Tell me. Tell me.”
    “Ah,” Olson said. “Ah. Ah.”
    Garraty moved even closer. He put a hand on Olson’s shoulder and leaned into an evil nimbus of sweat, halitosis, and urine.
    “Please,” Garraty said. “Try hard.”
    “Ga. Go. God. God’s garden—”
    “God’s garden,” Garraty repeated doubtfully. “What about God’s garden, Olson?”
    “It’s full. Of. Weeds,” Olson said sadly. His head bounced against his chest. “I.”
    Garraty said nothing. He could not. They were going up another hill now and he was panting again. Olson did not seem to be out of breath at all.
    “I don’t. Want. To die,” Olson finished.
    Garraty’s eyes were soldered to the shadowed ruin that was Olson’s face. Olson turned creakily toward him.
    “Ah?” Olson raised his lolling head slowly. “Ga. Ga. Garraty?”
    “Yes, it’s me.”
    “What time is it?”
    Garraty had rewound and reset his watch earlier. God knew why. “It’s quarter of nine.”
    “No. No later. Than that?” Mild surprise washed over Olson’s shattered old man’s face.
    “Olson—” He shook Olson’s shoulder gently and Olson’s whole frame seemed to tremble, like a gantry in a high wind. “What’s it all about?” Suddenly Garraty cackled madly. “What’s it all about, Alfie?”
    Olson looked at Garraty with calculated shrewdness.
    “Garraty,” he whispered. His breath was like a sewer-draught.
    “What?”
    “What time is it?”
    “Dammit!” Garraty shouted at him. He turned his head quickly, but Stebbins was staring down at the road. If he was laughing at Garraty, it was too dark to see.
    “Garraty?”
    “What?” Garraty said more quietly.
    “Je. Jesus will save you.”
    Olson’s head came up all the way. He began to walk off the road. He was walking at the halftrack.
    “Warning. Warning 70!”
    Olson never slowed. There was a ruinous dignity about him. The gabble of the crowd quieted. They watched, wide-eyed.
    Olson never hesitated. He reached the soft shoulder. He put his hands over the side of the halftrack. He began to clamber painfully up the side.
    “Olson!” Abraham yelled, startled. “Hey, that’s Hank Olson!”
    The soldiers brought their guns around in perfect four-part harmony. Olson grabbed the barrel of the closest and yanked it out of the hands that held it as if it had been an ice-cream stick. It clattered off into the crowd. They shrank from it, screaming, as if it had been a live adder.
    Then one of the other three guns went off. Garraty saw the flash at the end of the barrel quite clearly. He saw the jerky ripple of Olson’s shirt as the bullet entered his belly and then punched out the back.
    Olson did not stop. He gained the top of the halftrack and grabbed the barrel of the gun that had just shot him. He levered it up into the air as it went off again.
    “Get ’em!” McVries was screaming savagely up ahead. “Get ’em, Olson! Kill ’em! Kill ’em!”
    The other two guns roared in unison and the impact of the heavy-caliber slugs sent Olson flying