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"Forty-seven," Garraty read aloud from the machine as he fed the card into it. His voice was clear and steady, and he carefully did not read the name below the number. He waved the car forward, and as it made its tired way into the parking lot, he only let his eyes pause on the license plate for a brief moment.
"Number 47," McVries repeated beside him, leaning to bump his shoulder against Garraty's. "Maine's Own." Garraty could hear the smirk in his voice. "You're from Maine, aren't you, Garraty? Place your bets yet?" He watched as the boy climbed from the car and stretched. "He looks like as good a place to put your money as any of them."
"Rule six," Garraty replied absently. No betting.
McVries chuckled. "Funny, isn't it?" he asked. "How they get 'hints' and we get rules?"
"Hilarious," Garraty replied dryly. He kept his hand still against the top of the humming machine between them, deliberately not reaching to touch the cool metal of the carbine slung across his back. He felt McVries's eyes on him for a few moments before they turned back to the crowd slowly gathering opposite them.
"Nice day for a walk," McVries said mildly, and Garraty wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it, wanted to laugh until he puked, and stay curled up there on the cool asphalt until everyone walked right past him, took this party on down the road and left him alone lying there against his native soil, overlooked and forgotten.
"Yeah," he said noncommittally instead. The others were all across from them, some of them stationed around the perimeter of the little patch of grass where the Walkers milled aimlessly, some of them making slow lazy circles between the boys, accustoming them to the idea of armed men walking casually in their midst. Stebbins and Parker were by their respective halftracks, Parker leaning against the door having a cigarette, Stebbins behind the wheel, all but invisible through the glare off the windshield. Olson was perched in a tree with his rifle resting casually against his leg, flipping through the pages of a comic book.
It was a mild morning, a beautiful morning – a nice day, indeed, for a walk – and Garraty let himself smile at the boy in the next car that came along, just briefly, just until the car pulled away and McVries remarked, "That one's Vegas's odds-on favorite to win."
"Win," Garraty echoed hollowly, and he did laugh at that, a rattling broken sound that made McVries flinch beside him. "Right."
______________
Garraty held his breath as he waited for the Major's hand to fall, and around him, a hundred and four other boys did the same.
A hundred of them had gotten the call, said yes, sir, and showed up to take their mark on the line marked in the asphalt. Four of them – and five others besides, in Parker's halftrack, on its way to meet them a few miles down the road – had said no, had backed out, and here they stood, with fifteen days of hell behind them and innumerable more ahead, with nothing but the promise of maybe. Maybe they would walk away from this. It wasn't enough, not nearly.
Then there was Stebbins. Stebbins, who couldn't be more than a few years older than Garraty, but who walked and talked and moved with a gangly kind of grace that implied he'd been doing this for life.
"Shoot straight," was the only advice he had offered as he handed each of them a rulebook.
"Worried someone will slap a bullseye to your back?" Olson had asked, and Stebbins didn't give him the satisfaction of a reaction, just leveled a stare at him.
"It's easier," he said calmly, "if they die quickly."
"Easier for who?" Baker muttered.
"You," Stebbins replied flatly.
"Sounds like you've done this before," McVries said.
Stebbins, predictably, had no reply.
Garraty held his breath, tense and waiting, McVries by his side, Olson and Baker on either side of them, their hands ready against their guns. His eyes flickered down to his watch, and as it ticked over to 9:00, the Major's hand fell.
No one bought a ticket on the starting line. It wasn't much, but it was something.
______________
The word came back.
It was a phrase Garraty had heard before, in the brief articles he'd read about the Walk – "at mile 82, the word came back that #35 had sprained his ankle" – but he hadn't understood, he hadn't grasped the full weight of the words until he found himself walking along behind the boys, McVries half a column ahead, Olson with the vanguard, Baker sitting atop the halftrack, taking in the full scope of the picture. From that vantage point, it became clear that the word did, indeed, come back.
The Walk had its own communications, its own methods of conveying what needed to be said, and Garraty watched the patterns between the boys form and reform, bunching together, branching off. A mathematician may have been able to make an algorithm off it, but Garraty found himself plotting it out in his head like a roadmap, that 62 would likely turn towards 89 first, and when 43 knew something, 12 and 6 were soon to follow.
He caught only snatches of conversation, and was busy trying to eavesdrop when one of the guys from Parker's team dropped back and started keeping pace with him.
"You're thinking pretty hard," he said in a low voice, and Garraty glanced up at him.
"Not much else to do," he replied evenly.
The boy gave him a smile incongruent to the scene around them. "Anything useful?"
"Depends on the use you'd put it to," Garraty replied.
"I'm thinking of writing a book." At Garraty's incredulous look, he stuck out a hand. "Harkness," he added. "Third out of the drum, first on the backout list."
"That's a distinction," Garraty replied with a half smile, shaking quickly and glancing around to see if anyone had noticed. He returned his gaze forward, aiming his chronometer and checking the pace of one of the stragglers before continuing quietly, "Can't imagine the Major will look too kindly on that."
"Probably not," Harkness agreed. "What's he going to do, though? Squad me?" His laugh was almost merry. "Are you counting them? There's a hundred. I checked."
Garraty shook his head. "Establishing the communication patterns of the Walker in his natural habitat."
"You should copy down whatever you come up with," Harkness said, and Garraty couldn't quite nail down whether his tone was serious or not. "I could use it in my book."
"Yeah, I'll do that," Garraty replied, and with a nod, Harkness sped up and continued making progress along the column, eyeing the boys and clearly taking mental notes.
It wasn't more than another quarter mile before McVries was angling towards him. "Rule Five," he muttered in a passable imitation of Stebbins, and Garraty let the corner of his mouth curve up in a smile.
"'No conversing between yourselves,'" he replied sternly, earning himself a quick flash of a grin.
"He telling you about his book?"
Garraty nodded. "I can't quite tell if he's kidding or not," he admitted.
"Probably a little of both," McVries replied. "Crazy motherfucker, that one."
"Aren't we all?"
"Likely, Ray, my boy. Quite likely." He looked up at the sky, then at the boys walking around them. "On a day like this, I could go right the fuck off my rocker," he said pleasantly, and ahead of them they heard the sharp bark of one of Parker's boys yelling "Warning, 77! First warning!"
"Ah," McVries said. "So it begins."
Garraty opened his mouth to say that it began fifteen days ago, that it began a month ago when the names came out the drum, that maybe it began a generation ago when the Walk started in the first place, but McVries was already angling away from him, making his way through the boys with his fingers resting against his gun, just in case.
______________
They were eight miles in when the first boy bought his ticket.
It was one of Parker's boys who did it, ultimately, and Garraty felt a sick sense of pride that it didn't have to be one of them, one of his boys. It was a little guy, by the name of Barkovitch, and as he walked away from the body lying sprawled and broken in the road, Garraty could see a sick smile spreading across his face.
He turned away and thought of Jan to keep himself from retching. Her face was already fading in his mind, washed out behind the startling contrast of the boy's bright blood against the asphalt.
He'd heard a rumor that the boys who took the April 31st backout date were the cleanup crew. He didn't know if it was true. Maybe Harkness would, with his book and the notes that he thought no one saw him taking. Garraty didn't ask.
He put one foot in front of the other, and he kept walking.
______________
The boy was blond, and limping.
"Warning!" Garraty called. "Warning, 32! Second warning!"
The boy sped up, and Garraty hazarded a glance around. Dark was falling, and his night vision goggles showed him that the second halftrack had peeled away, leaving just the five of them on the road. McVries was taking a turn behind the wheel, Stebbins on top of the vehicle, and Olson and Baker were pacing the vanguard. He was the only one in range, and he watched the boy stagger along, hoping against hope that he'd keep going, that the cramp in his leg would loosen and everyone would continue on their way.
The boy stalled again, dropping back from the boys he'd been walking with. One of them cast a distressed glance over his shoulder, but none of them slowed down even a single pace.
"Third warning," Garraty called, "third warning, 32!"
He raised his gun.
The boy was blond, and sweating, and as Garraty fired, he realized that it was the boy he'd smiled at through the window of a car, a lifetime and a half ago.
______________
"So," McVries said, dropping into step beside him, his voice pitched low enough that none of the boys padding along nearby could hear him. "Why?" He tapped two fingers against his carbine and raised his eyebrows at Garraty.
Garraty looked back to the boys, beginning to count their steps again. "It's not a very good story," he said.
McVries shrugged. "Better than the one anyone else is telling me right now." He let a hand wave at the empty shoulder beside him. The halftrack rumbled along ahead of them, and Garraty watched a group of boys form and reform beside it, pulling his chronometer from his pocket to check the speed of the boys in the back, killing time. "You're not here because you want to see people die," he continued. "That much is clear. You can spot them a mile off, the ones who wanted this. There's something about the smiles on them. Barkovitch, for one. Maybe Stebbins too."
"Parker?" Garraty offered, and McVries let his mouth curl into a smile.
"Nah, Parker's just a big ol' sonofabitch," McVries said, sounding like he found it to be an admirable quality. "Baker's a conscientious objector, Scramm has a family to support, and Harkness still thinks he's going to make millions off his book. What about you, Ray Garraty? What's your story? Why are you here walking with me, instead of with them?" He nodded towards the boys beside them, one of whom had tears cutting silent tracks through the smudges of dirt on his face. Garraty watched them fall for a few moments before looking away, feeling faintly embarrassed.
"A girl," he said finally, quietly, as if it were a confession. It felt like one, in a way, looking ahead instead of at McVries, Rule 5 hanging between them like a curtain. "My girlfriend," he corrected himself, the words feeling too distant and impersonal. "Jan."
"Jan," McVries repeated like a benediction. "Pretty?"
"The prettiest," Garraty replied instantly before he had a chance to note the cheesiness of it. When he risked a glance at McVries, though, the faint smile on his lips was almost fond, instead of mocking.
"You, what? Decided you had to live for her?"
"Something like that," Garraty replied, then shook his head at himself. "No, that's unfair. It wasn't that noble. I let her think it was, but in the end, I took the backout date to get into her pants."
McVries let out a laugh, then craned his neck to make sure Stebbins's attention was still on the road. A few of the boys glanced in their direction, expressions ranging from startled to annoyed, but their attention refocused on the road before long. After a reasonable period of time had passed, McVries laughed again, low and conspiratorial.
"Poor Garraty," he said, "she kept you a virgin, didn't she?"
Garraty felt his cheeks go hot. "She didn't keep me anything," he said.
"But you are, aren't you?" McVries's shoulder bumped against his. "Sweet, pure, innocent Ray."
"You can save those words for someone who hasn't killed anyone today," Garraty replied sharply, and McVries lost the smile instantly, face going pale.
He didn't apologize, but Garraty didn't pull away from him either. They walked in silence for a mile or so, pointing their chronometers at boys every so often, once leveling their guns at one as two parts of a whole, in perfect step, right through the moment when he sped up and they lowered the muzzles gratefully.
"Tell me about it?" McVries asked finally, quietly, like an offer more than a request.
"There's not much to tell," Garraty replied. "It should have been more complicated than that, but it wasn't, really. It was easier than I thought it would be to dial the number. Thanks, but no thanks." He closed his eyes. "She looked like Christmas. Like I'd just given her everything she ever wanted. And all I could think when she hugged me as I hung up was that I was about to get everything I'd ever wanted." He let out a soft breath of a laugh. "I thought that, I really did."
"The Prize," McVries said, sounding wistful.
"As good as," Garraty agreed.
"And then the Squads?"
Garraty nodded. "Then the Squads," he confirmed. "It was my mom who answered the door. We couldn't quite hear her from the kitchen, but her voice was getting higher and higher, and when we came out, she was saying that no, they let you take the backout date, that was what it was there for, wasn't it?"
"Sure it is," McVries agreed. "In fact, they count on it."
"That was pretty much what the soldier told her, yeah. 'You never thought to wonder, did you?' he asked, turning to me, 'where all the boys come from?' My mom started to say that they were volunteers, brave misguided volunteers like me, and the soldier cut her off. 'Not those boys, ma'am,' he said. He looked back at me, waiting for an answer, and I had to admit that no, I hadn't thought of it, not once."
McVries looked at him steadily for a moment or two, then nodded. "Sounds like a good story to me, Garraty," he said. "You should tell it to Harkness, put it in his book."
Garraty sighed. "Everything's a joke to you, isn't it?" He eyed McVries. "What about you? What's your story?"
"Oh, Garraty." McVries gave him a smile from ear to ear before backing away, folding himself back towards the stragglers at the end of the column of Walkers. "Haven't you figured it out by now? I'm just a big old coward." He was whistling as he dropped back out of range, and Garraty shook his head, turning forward again and returning to the task at hand – setting one foot down in front of the other, and hoping that everyone around him would continue to do the same.
______________
"That's fucked up," Olson said too loudly, ignoring Baker's quiet attempts to shush him. "That's just - that's unbelievably fucked up."
Through the windshield, Garraty could make out McVries making a cut it out motion at them, and he dropped back a few paces, distancing himself from Baker and Olson, but not before he heard Olson's incredulous "Fucking brothers, you've got to be shitting me."
He paced the halftrack for a while before Stebbins nodded at him to hop up on the back, and Garraty did, gratefully settling down beside McVries. The sun was glaring down, and McVries had popped open the umbrella on the back of the vehicle, leaning back under the shade as he surveyed the boys. Garraty let his legs swing for a few moments like they were kids on the playground, taking a lemonade break, kicking them hollowly against the side of the truck.
"What was that about?" he finally ventured, nodding towards Olson.
"Olson's cracking," McVries said calmly.
Garraty shook his head. "No more than any of us," he objected.
"No," McVries replied. "More than any of us." He waved a hand. "The conversation, though – that was about Joe."
"Joe from Parker's team?"
"Know any other Joes?"
"Lots of them," Garraty replied.
"Before." McVries made an impatient sound. "They don't count anymore."
"No," Garraty agreed. Nothing counted anymore – nothing but the road and the boys who occupied it.
"Parker's Joe," McVries confirmed, "is brothers with #56."
Garraty's head snapped around to stare at him. "You're fucking with me."
"Wish I were."
Garraty closed his eyes. "That's why he backed out," he said, and McVries nodded.
"And here he is."
"Olson's right. That's fucked up."
"You're telling me." McVries leaned back on his elbows briefly, stretching. "And you wonder why the guy is losing it."
"If anyone's losing it, it should be Joe."
"That guy's a rock. I don't think anything will break him." McVries reconsidered. "Well, unless he's the one to give 56 his ticket."
Garraty flinched. "Don't even joke about that," he said.
In the end, it was Scramm who took out Joe's brother, raising his gun at the last moment and firing so that Joe wouldn't have to.
"Good guy, that Scramm," Baker said to Garraty in a low voice as he passed him.
Sometime in the next press of crowd, Garraty looked around for Scramm to tell him just that, but he had vanished, and he never joined up with the Walk again.
______________
Baker dropped back beside him in the darkness so suddenly that it took some effort for Garraty not to jump.
"Baker," he greeted him calmly, and Baker nodded in reply. He walked quietly beside him for a while before Garraty ventured, "How's Olson?"
Baker shrugged. "Same," he replied. "Not really talking much anymore." He sniffed in the cool night air. "Took another one down, about a half hour ago."
Garraty raised his eyebrows. "That was him?"
"Give him hell, the Major said, and I guess that's exactly what Olson intends to do. Sanity or no."
They walked in silence for a while, their steps matched, the boys around them illuminated an eerie green in their night vision.
"What brings you back here?" Garraty asked finally, so tired of games he wanted to scream, and Baker winced.
He was silent for a long moment, then got to the point. "If you knew," he said quietly, "would you have?"
Garraty fought to keep his stomach calm. He shook his head.
"Me neither," Baker admitted.
"No, I mean - " Garraty watched the tired shuffle of the boys' feet around them. "I don't know." Baker looked at him and said nothing. "I really don't know."
______________
Seven boys crossed into Massachusetts. Seven boys, and the five of them. Stebbins was back behind the wheel, Baker riding along with his gun propped against the edge of the halftrack, not even bothering to lower it anymore.
McVries walked paces behind Garraty, a silent shadow haunting his steps as they paced the wrecked, dying husks of boys ahead of them.
Lie down Garraty found himself mouthing with each step, lie down, just lie down, and he thought no one had noticed until he turned to find Stebbins's eyes on him through the window of the halftrack. His clamped his lips shut and bit them until they bled.
"Soon," he said quietly, in McVries's direction, not quite to him, but near him. "It has to be over soon, right?" He counted paces. "Soon, and then we can go home. We'll be done with this. Done. Done." His voice faded out.
"Oh, Garraty," McVries's voice was mournful enough that if Garraty had a heart left, it might have broken it. "You still don't get it, do you?" He reached to touch Garraty's face, quick, fleeting, the touch too light for him to even feel. "You should have walked. It would have been quicker."
Seven crossed into Massachusetts, and on an unremarkable stretch of Rt. 1 in Danvers, Baker shot down the fifth, his body hitting the ground silently in the roaring approval of the crowd. Two left, just two of them, making their stumbling way down the road, one of them steady as a tank, walking like someone led forward by an invisible string, the other weaving back and forth across the painted white lines, careening into the first boy at one point, the two of them leaning against each other, telling each other something that must have been important, that had to be, if Garraty could only make out what the words were –
One of them fell.
"Warning," McVries called, the word half catching on his lips before he repeated it. "Third warning, number 88!"
He lifted his gun, aimed, and didn't shoot.
The moment stood there, suspended, and Garraty began to think that they were going to live the rest of their lives on that stretch of road, held in that moment like a drop of amber, with McVries looking down his gun at the unconscious boy, but then the boy's head jerked sideways in an explosion of red, and Garraty turned to see Stebbins aiming a handgun out the window of the halftrack, idling by the side of the road.
Garraty watched the last boy, staggering down the road as if he didn't know, as if he had no idea it was over, and he had won. "It's over," he said aloud, the words sweet and unfamiliar. "Pete." He turned for McVries, but he was gone, and when he looked to the top of the halftrack, Baker had disappeared as well. It was only Stebbins, standing there outside the open driver's side door, steady as ever, looking at Garraty with an expression he did not understand.
"Yes," he agreed. "Garraty. It's over."
Garraty turned, and ran.