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Somewhere along the endless stretch of road between Caribou and Oldtown, Baker and Abraham and Pearson had the bright idea to play a game. The idea was to name one person on the walk you’d be willing to take with you on a deserted island for the next fifty years. It reminded Garraty of those stupid games you used to play as a kid, when you were stuck in the car on a long trip and had nothing better to do to pass the time.
“I’d bring my Cathy, of course,” Scramm said, the first of them to take the bait. From beside Garraty, Olson snorted, and a few others chuckled. The picture of innocence, that’s what Scramm was. So innocent it bordered on insanity.
“No, numbnuts, you gotta take one of us. Not your wife,” Parker said.
Scramm still looked confused. He squinted into the midday sun, which shone bright above the horizon and made the day scorching. Sweat pooled on Garraty’s upper back, just below his neck. It had been a long night, he reckoned, for all of them. But now that the light was back, everything was easier to manage. You just had to get out of the darkness, and it all seemed a lot less terrifying. That’s what he told himself, anyway.
“I’d probably take you, Art,” Olson said as he nodded his head towards Baker. “You’re the least likely of this lot to piss me off.”
“Poor choice on your part, Olson,” McVries chimed in, coming up behind Garraty and peering over his shoulder. McVries stuck his thumb out towards the front of the pack where Barkovitch, trusty number 5, marched onwards, his head bent down to his feet as if to kiss the asphalt. Garraty had a passing thought about knocking him down on his ass so they could all dance on his grave together. Then he shook his head, angry at himself. What the hell was this Walk turning him into? An animal, that’s what.
“Wouldn’tcha rather be stuck with good ‘ol Gary?” McVries continued. “I’m sure he’d be a real riot.”
“Oh, fuck off, McVries.” Olson rounded on McVries with an expression that looked something like a pissed off bulldog. “What poor sap would you take, then?”
“Garraty, of course.” McVries waggled his eyebrows at Garraty. “We could sing songs around the campfire, maybe even cuddle together at night under the stars.”
Garraty shoved him, just a little. Only enough to knock him off balance slightly. “Knock it off, you lunatic.”
In response, McVries grinned crookedly. “Now, now, Garraty,” he said in a sing-song voice. “Play nice or else you’ll get us both warnings.”
Garraty laughed, but it was hollow. Joking about getting a warning or a ticket was common fodder for entertainment now that they’d seen what the Walk truly was—the only problem was when you remembered it wasn’t really a joke at all. The others had all fallen silent.
“You know, I probably won’t mind gettin’ my ticket so long as I have a nice casket to look forward to,” Baker joked, trying to ease the tension that had risen. “A lead-lined one, that’s the real deal, what my uncle always said.”
The other boys nodded in agreement, no one really up to debating with Baker about types of coffins. It was best not to think too hard about it all. The group dispersed, retreating into their own personal spaces, until it was just Garraty and Baker walking together.
“You know, that McVries can be a real pain sometimes,” Baker said with a small laugh. “I like ‘im, but he sure likes to rile everybody up, don’t he?”
“Sure, I guess,” Garraty said.
Since starting the Walk, Garraty, quite frankly, hadn’t known what to make of McVries. He seemed to constantly alternate between friendly and antagonistic, earnest and cynical. But he was one of them, a Musketeer, and that meant they were friends. At least for now.
“But he’s a good guy, I reckon,” Baker mused, not noticing that Garraty had stopped talking. “I wouldn’t take what he said about the island too personal, if I were you.”
Garraty shook his head. “I’m not.”
The real truth of it was, he didn’t think McVries’s suggestion sounded half bad. To sing songs around a campfire, to wiggle his toes around in the sand, to rest his aching feet… well, that would be just the thing, wouldn’t it?
The quiet moments hurt the worst, like the hours right before sunrise, when everyone became lost in their own heads, shuffling forward on their ceaseless death march. When he and the rest of the guys were shooting the shit or making up some piss-dumb game to pass the time, it was easier to forget the fact that they were centerpieces in the Major’s sadistic jerk-off, broadcast live for the entire nation to eat up. In the quiet, though, you couldn’t escape it. You just couldn’t, Garraty thought.
By this point, his feet had begun to ache. He figured they had been for some time now.
As the sun rose, a line of pine trees on the horizon grew long shadows that stretched along the road ahead, and Garraty guessed they were about thirty miles from Augusta. A hazy fog rolled off the sky, dancing in front of his vision. He blinked a few times in an attempt to see more clearly through the mist. Behind him, shots rang out in the silence, and Garraty wondered vaguely who ate it. Maybe it was that kid in the green sweater who’d been stumbling for the last three miles. Or maybe it was the one wearing the shoes with holes in ‘em, a doomed choice from the start. They were sneakers, too, wasn’t there some hint about not wearing those?
Then he wondered at what mile he’d stopped flinching when the guns sounded. But how could he not get used to it, he thought, somewhat mad. He picked ‘em up, he put ‘em down, and he picked ‘em up, and he put ‘em down, and, and—
He blinked, and McVries was snapping his fingers in front of his face. It was always that goddamned McVries, never giving him any peace and quiet, never minding his own business. Garraty itched the skin of his arm, which had suddenly grown hot and prickly.
“Thought I lost you in there for a second, Garraty,” he said, the lopsided grin on his face stretching his scar. “Can’t be losing Maine’s favorite to win, now can we? Whatever will we do without those cheerleaders in their short skirts, waving those ‘Go-Go-Garraty’ signs until the motherfucking cows come home?”
Garraty looked up at him with weary eyes. “What the hell do you want, Pete?”
Clearly taken aback by the use of his first name, McVries recoiled a bit, then gradually softened. “Alright, Ray,” he said.
“Sorry,” Garraty mumbled. “Just thinking too much again.”
McVries lolled his head back, gazed up at the foggy sky. “That’s the trouble with all this, isn’t it? The goddamn thinking,” he said. “It’s enough to make a man go crazy.”
Garraty eyed him. “And the guns aren’t?”
McVries smirked, but it was gone as soon as it came. “Fair enough,” he said with a shrug.
They walked side by side in silence for a while, nothing but their footfalls and the steady humming sound of the soldiers’ half-track for background noise. Garraty reached into his pack to pull out some food he’d been saving, found he wasn’t hungry, and put it back. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d tried to eat something.
“You remember that game we played, way back when? About who we would take to a deserted island?” McVries said.
Garraty thought for a moment, sifting through his hazy, disjointed memories. It seemed as though the whole Walk had started to run together, like a sick motion picture that was only images of dead boys and blood on the road, and he was the poor sonofabitch who paid to go see it. “Sure,” he said, once he’d remembered the game.
“I’ve been thinking about that a lot.”
Garraty frowned. “About deserted islands?”
“No, about escape.” McVries lowered his voice conspiratorially. “And if we were to, hypothetically… do it.”
A harsh, ragged laugh escaped Garraty, drawing the attention of another Walker nearby, who stumbled forward before regaining their stride. “You’re off your rocker,” he said. “Fat chance we’d ever be able to escape.”
“Yeah, I know, but fucking entertain me for a second here, would you, Garraty?” McVries had his arms crossed over his chest now and a scowl on his face. “I’m trying to be…”
“What, stupid? That’s the fastest way to get a ticket I’ve ever heard of.”
“Just… what if we did? Escape, I mean.”
Garraty turned to look at McVries and was surprised to see an open expression, softer and more contemplative than normal. McVries wouldn’t meet his gaze, and there was no hint of his usual sarcasm or bravado—only a muted sadness.
“I suppose that’d be nice,” Garraty finally said. “I’d probably take a long nap, first thing. Then soak my feet in some hot water or something for a real long time.”
McVries laughed. “Yeah,” he said. “I’d probably do about the same. Then maybe I’d take a vacation, fuck off to a beach somewhere. Like one of those places rich people always go when they’re trying to escape their shit lives.”
Then they lost one another for a few moments, both absorbed in their own fantasies of what it might be like, to not have to walk anymore. To be able to sit and to not think about anything at all. The biggest reprieve of all, to be free of his own thoughts.
“What if we did?” Garraty echoed.
As he said it, he thought he could hear the words whisper up and into the fog, tracing lines and repeating themselves over and over again, what if, what if?
What if?
Had he wanted to die, when he got that leg cramp?
Garraty’s first instinct was to say no, of course not. He didn’t think he was suicidal; hell, he didn’t even know what the fuck he was doing in the Long Walk in the first place. But he’d seen Death now, stared into the soulless eyes of a soldier and watched his thumb on the trigger, ready to pull it, and felt—
Nothing.
He’d felt nothing.
Everything had just gone still.
Sure, at first there’d been panic. The cramp in his leg wasn’t loosening, he was getting his warnings all in a row: one, two, three, and next came the bang. Yet, there had been a moment where his mind had simply stopped thinking, and he’d thought to himself, it feels damn good to sit down.
Then McVries had looked back. Only for a second, and Garraty thought he might have even imagined it. But he had, and there’d been something like panic on his face, and maybe sadness too. And after, it all came back to Garraty, what it meant to be human and alive, and his heart thumped in his chest, pumped blood all through his body, and he realized:
I don’t want to die.
And he’d jerked himself off the sidewalk and back into the pack just before the soldier gave him his ticket.
Even though he’d been spared, his heart hadn’t slowed down yet. He knew that if he slowed down at any moment, he was a dead man. His muscles twitched, every nerve in his body alight as he walked onwards, onwards. Beside him walked McVries, keeping pace with him, keeping him above water. Making sure he didn’t lose his damn mind. By now, they’d saved one another more times than he could count, and they could do it again.
Garraty took a deep breath in and a long, long breath out.
It was about midnight, Garraty guessed, based on some bullshit like moon position and star alignment. Either way, it was dark outside, his surroundings an inky black that made it hard to see. Up ahead, someone’s transistor radio crackled. Garraty hung around the back of the pack, striding along at an even pace that kept him just above the limit to avoid a warning. His thoughts filtered in and out of reality. Now, he only seemed to think in fragments. Like viewing the whole damn world through shattered glass. But thinking wasted energy anyway. Hint 13: Conserve energy whenever possible. That was the way to go.
Stebbins lingered at the very edge of the group, walking a little ways behind Garraty. McVries was the only other person around him. They’d been walking steadily next to one another for the past ten miles, ever since they’d gotten out of Augusta and nearly been swallowed whole by Crowd, that monster God who demanded sacrifice. Their sacrifice. Well, Garraty thought, they’ll get their wish soon enough.
He heard McVries rifle through his pack, then flash something in front of his eyes.
“The hell is that?” Garraty mumbled, half-asleep.
“A dime.”
Garraty waited for McVries to offer an explanation.
“Baker taught me this neat trick. Says you can win any coin toss with it.” McVries held up the dime, flipping it between his fingers. “So, you wanna make a little bet?”
Garraty snorted. “You just told me you know how to rig the game, why would I agree to that?”
“Heads we stay, tails we escape.”
McVries’s face was serious, his lips in a tight line. He gripped the dime so hard the tip of his index finger had gone white. Garraty opened his mouth and closed it a few times, trying to find a response.
“Garraty, please.” McVries was begging now. Garraty had never heard him sound so desperate before. So broken.
He squeezed his eyes shut, saw stars for a moment. Then he opened them again and said, “Alright, fine, flip the—”
The soldier on the half-track next to them had fallen asleep. First his eyes closed, then his head lolled over, the gun in his hands going slack. Garraty froze, forgetting for a moment that he had to keep walking, and stared at the soldier. He always assumed that, like robots, the soldiers never needed to shit or sleep. They operated on cold, hard sadism, getting their rocks off whenever they shot a Walker in the head. But apparently not this soldier, who remained asleep. There was no one with him—and there was no one else around Garraty or McVries, aside from Stebbins, who had lapsed into a kind of sleepwalk.
Garraty felt a hand on his shoulder, and McVries’s voice rang in his ear:
“Go. Go, Garraty, fucking go.”
McVries watched the soldier with the look of a frenzied madman, his eyes wide and wild. Garraty turned to look back at the other Walkers one last time as they shuffled along the road, heads down. He wished he could take them all with him, that they might escape together, but he knew he and McVries only had one shot. The wind kicked up. The clouds swirled into a mass that signaled an impending storm, the air thick with humidity. He wondered briefly how far they’d make it before the rain unleashed. Or worse, before the soldiers caught them.
He caught McVries’s gaze. It was urgent, pleading. Go. Go. He grabbed Garraty’s hand.
Even with burning, aching feet, Garraty somehow found the strength to run.
How long they’d been running, Garraty couldn’t tell. It seemed as though they had gone double the length of the Walk, but also like they’d hardly gone anywhere at all. Somewhere in the middle of a thick, wooded forest, McVries stopped, bending over his knees.
“Fuck,” he said. “I’m fucking exhausted.”
“Yeah,” was all Garraty could say. He was equally as winded.
With a shaky index finger, McVries pointed at Garraty’s chest. “Your number, Ray. You have to take off your number. Otherwise, they’ll find us faster.”
“Right, oh shit, yeah,” Garraty said, taking off the number that had bound him since he’d put it on those fateful few days ago. He felt something like release when he tore it into pieces and dropped the remains on the ground. McVries’s scraps fell beside his. He kicked some dirt over the paper.
Several more miles of alternating between running and walking led them to the road again, but it wasn’t anything like the highways they’d left behind. This was a desolate, country road, a real backroad. The sort of road you’d drive on to take a shortcut through town or you’d end up on if you took a wrong turn. McVries looked across the street, grabbed his shoulder, and shook it aggressively.
“We’re saved,” he said, half-delirious. “We’re fucking saved. Look, Garraty, just look at her.”
“What are you talking—oh.” A squat motel stood lonesome on the side of the road, surrounded by a few trees and not much else. Its sloping roof threatened to collapse at any moment, and a flickering neon sign on its front read, ‘Open.’ Still, it looked like paradise right about then to Garraty. “Oh.”
They jogged to the motel’s entrance, somehow able to keep going after everything they’d been through. The throbbing in Garraty’s feet had only intensified since they escaped, but he knew it would all be worth it when he could finally fucking sit. They walked inside. The lobby was a single cramped room, with peeled yellow paint and a smell like dust and mildew. Dim light filtered through the windows. A TV sat in the far corner propped up on a stand—a sight that made Garraty’s heart freeze for a moment—but its signal was broken, the screen nothing but ceaseless static. Garraty sighed, glancing over at the owner, who was asleep at the counter.
“’S’cuse me, sir?” McVries spoke with uncharacteristic politeness, but his voice was still a little gruff and biting. He reached out to shake the owner’s shoulder. “Sir?”
The owner let out a cut-off snore, then opened his eyes. “Whozzat?”
Garraty stepped up to the counter. “Uh, we’d like a room.” He paused. “Please.”
The owner’s gaze darted back and forth between them like a wild rabbit, both a little frightened and a little surprised. Like he couldn’t believe there were even people in the motel. Garraty wondered if he’d wet himself in shock.
“Sure, yeah, yeah, alright,” he said, stuttering. “Sure. I got rooms. Fifty bucks, it’s yours for the night.”
He reached under, opened a drawer, and fished out two metal keys on a ring. He slid them across the counter. Garraty stared at McVries, wondering how the hell they were going to pay for this room, but as soon as he thought it, McVries had already reached into his pack and pulled out a small stack of cash.
“Where did you—?” Garraty started to say but stopped himself.
“Came prepared,” was McVries’s response.
The man took the cash, shoved it in his drawer. “Room 34,” he said.
McVries and Garraty looked at one another, then headed down a cramped hallway to their room. Number 34 was a dingy, dusty room with stained carpet that smelled like piss. A lamp on the end table flickered while a moth circled around its bulb. Outside, a steady rain tapped the windows and walls, and trickles of water came down through a hole in the ceiling.
“Good shit,” McVries joked.
It was only once they stepped inside the motel room that the full weight of his exhaustion hit Garraty. His feet throbbed, and his muscles drooped and filled with lead. Tentatively, he sat down on the double bed, sighing in relief at the sensation of not being on his feet. Then he reclined back, allowing his head to hit the pillow.
“Man,” he said. “I don’t think I’ll ever move again.”
Five seconds later, McVries lay down next to him. “Yeah, I don’t think I will either,” he murmured, the side of his face jammed into the pillow. His body heat warmed Garraty up, and they unconsciously moved closer to one another, careful not to touch.
Garraty’s eyelids fell. He wanted to sleep for a very long time.
He flitted in and out of consciousness, of nightmare and reality. Blood. Lots of blood. Barkovitch ripping his throat out, he ripped his throat out. Olson on the road, guts everywhere. Then he saw Stebbins, the walking machine, the rabbit the rabbit the rabbit, run run run. Face grinning, grinning like the goddamned Cheshire Cat. And Pete, there he was, he got tired, so tired, and he sat down on the side of the road like a world-weary monk, just like he said he would, and Garraty shook him—“Move, move, you stupid sonofabitch!”—but he wouldn’t, he just stayed still with eyes closed until the soldier raised his gun, cocked it—
Bang.
Garraty woke up with a yell, trembling and sweating underneath cheap sheets. Beside him, McVries stirred for a moment, then jerked upright, pressing a hand to Garraty’s shoulder.
“Garraty? Ray, are you alright?”
Garraty thrashed, unable to control his shaking muscles. He couldn’t stop shivering, couldn’t stop seeing McVries dead on the side of the road, just like the others, bleeding until nothing remained inside. He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes, creating bursts of color, desperate to make it all stop. Hands wrapped around him and rubbed up and down his back.
“Shh, it’s just me. It’s just me, it’s Pete. We’re safe here. We’re okay.”
Gradually, the trembling subsided, and Garraty started to remember where they were. They were in a shitty motel somewhere in Maine. There was no Walk anymore. They were safe here, for the moment. He focused on the details of the room, the cracks in the wall behind McVries’s shoulder, the musty smell. His breathing evened out. McVries reached over and flicked on the lamp, filling the room with dim light.
“Thanks, Pete,” he mumbled. “Sorry about that.”
“It’s alright, Ray,” he said. He let out a weak laugh. “I slept like shit, too.”
Garraty wasn’t sure when they’d eased into this different sort of intimacy, where they called each other “Ray” and “Pete” instead of solely by their last names. He supposed that when you cheated a death sentence, all bets were off. They were just Ray and Pete now; number 47 and number 61 were long gone, abandoned somewhere in the woods of Maine.
“D’you think you could help me out with something, now that you’re conscious?” McVries asked, hesitant.
“If you ask to jerk me off again, I’m leaving,” Garraty cracked, feeling his good spirits returning. They had escaped the Walk. There was no immediate danger—he just had to keep reminding himself of that.
McVries laughed. “No, maybe later. If you’re offering.”
Garraty rolled his eyes.
“Actually, I have these blisters. Hurt like a motherfucker.” McVries pulled off his socks, revealing bruised toenails and a legion of blisters underneath his feet. He unzipped his pack, which was still attached to his hip—he’d fallen asleep with it on—and pulled out a couple safety pins. “Help me drain them?”
“Christ, you’re like Mary Poppins. You got anything else in that pack?”
“Shut up and help me.” McVries wiggled his toes, then winced.
Garraty laughed, feeling like their roles had been reversed. For once, it was him doing the shit-talking and McVries being the serious one. He didn’t mind it so much. Garraty took the safety pin and reached for McVries’s foot, gently working it under one of the larger blisters on the arch. McVries flinched as fluid drained from the wound.
“How does one person have so many blisters on their feet?” Garraty moaned as he worked slowly through the constellation of blisters.
“Well, you know,” McVries said. “Walked a long way.”
“Bit of an understatement,” Garraty mumbled, casting his eyes down.
“You know, it’s funny.” When Garraty glanced up, McVries had his forehead scrunched together. “When I signed up for this shit, I thought… I thought I knew what I wanted.”
“What do you mean?”
“I wanted to die.”
Garraty froze, his chest tightened. “What changed?” Why did you want to escape so badly? Why did you take me? he thought, but couldn’t make himself ask the questions.
McVries shrugged. “Just found there might be something to try and live for after all.”
The smile on McVries’s face was unusually soft. Like someone drained all the roughness and ragged edges from his features, smoothing out the scar and the ugliness associated with it. And when he looked at him, something stirred in Garraty, like an epiphany—or maybe he was just lonely and horny.
But it was more than that, wasn’t it? They’d survived hell together. They’d almost died next to one another, and they had watched their friends get shot one by one. Even now, Garraty knew they were operating on borrowed time, watching as sand in an invisible hourglass trickled down until the Major found a way to give them their ticket, even if it was later than intended. That nightmare he’d had where Pete died… the idea of that reality made Garraty shiver involuntarily. It all meant something more.
Impulsively, he shifted forward so they were nose to nose and cradled Pete’s face with both hands as he pressed their lips together. McVries made a startled sound in the back of his throat, but slowly began to respond, threading his fingers through Garraty’s hair and pressing into the kiss. As their hands started to roam, there was a sudden urgency that pushed Garraty to dig, to press further into his mouth, to see how much skin he could touch. It was nothing like the times he’d kissed Jan, when it felt as though they had all the time in the world to lazily explore one another.
Garraty pressed a hand to McVries’s chest to push him down onto the bed beneath him, their bodies slotting together like two perfect goddamned puzzle pieces, like they should’ve been doing this the entire time instead of marching to their deaths like fools. McVries let out a groan. When Garraty moved to press his mouth to the scar, McVries, his mouth now freed, chose to pipe up with, “So how about that hand job? Not exactly practical during the Walk, but now…”
Garraty was grinning now. He pressed a kiss to his throat. “Fuck off.”
“Ah, such all-American charm. You kiss your mother with that mouth, Ray?”
“No, but I kissed yours.”
McVries laughed, then reeled Garraty in by the collar, rolling him over so he was now on his back. McVries moved down, down his body until he reached the hem of his shirt, kissing the skin there and tugging the cloth up. Garraty reached behind and pulled it off, McVries following suit, and there was that desperation again, like they’d never get another chance to do this again. They crashed back down onto the bed, and Garraty tried to memorize everything—the touch, the sounds, the way it felt. The way he felt, kissing McVries.
When they finally pulled apart, too exhausted and worn to do anything more, Garraty sat on the edge of the bed, facing the window. McVries was behind him, arms wrapped over his shoulders and around his chest. It was nice, warm. Comfortable.
“They’re going to catch us eventually, you know,” McVries said quietly. His eyes searched Garraty’s face.
“Yeah. I know,” he said.
Garraty glanced outside the window. Through scratchy, yellow curtains, he could tell it was nighttime. The rain had stopped some time ago, and now the moon cast shadows that ran up the walls. Neither one of them bothered to turn on the light. He wondered briefly what was happening out in the world. Had the Major sent out a search party yet? Were there bounties placed on them? He imagined soldiers trampling through the woods, tracking their footprints, clutching their guns. Then, as he turned back to McVries, who looked up at him with a curious but affectionate expression, he found he didn’t care anymore.
He took Pete’s hand in his, giving it a firm squeeze. He squeezed back.
Some part of himself understood that his decision to sign up for the Walk was irreversible, like permanent ink or a bullet to the head. He and McVries would never be free; they would always be walking eternally towards an inevitable death, forever a pawn in the Major’s sick, twisted game. But for now, it was enough to just exist in the bubble they had made for themselves, floating above the fucked up world they’d left behind, daring it to come and find them.