“Okay.” Baker flipped his dime higher, caught it more deftly and, Garraty was sure, palmed it on edge.
“You show first this time,” Baker said.
“Nuh-uh. I showed first last time.”
“Oh shit, Abe, I showed first three times in a row before that. Maybe you’re the one cheating.”
Abraham muttered, considered, and then revealed his dime. It was tails, showing the Potomac River framed in laurel leaves.
Baker raised his hand, peeked under it, and smiled. His dime also showed tails. “That’s a dollar fifty you owe me.”
“My God you must think I’m dumb!” Abraham hollered. “You think I’m some kind of idiot, right? Go on and admit it! Just taking the rube to the cleaners, right?”
Baker appeared to consider.
“Go on, go on!” Abraham bellowed. “I can take it!”
“Now that you put it to me,” Baker said, “whether or not you’re a rube never entered my mind. That you’re an ijit is pretty well established. As far as taking you to the cleaners"-he put a hand on Abraham’s shoulder-"that, my friend, is a certainty.”
“Come on,” Abraham said craftily. “Double or nothing for the whole bundle. And this time you show first.”
Baker considered. He looked at Garraty. “Ray, would you?”
“Would I what?” Garraty had lost track of the conversation. His left leg had begun to feel decidedly strange.
“Would you go double or nothing against this here fella?”
“Why not? After all, he’s too dumb to cheat you.”
“Garraty, I thought you were my friend,” Abraham said coldly.
“Okay, dollar fifty, double or nothing,” Baker said, and that was when the monstrous pain bolted up Garraty’s left leg, making all the pain of the last thirty hours seem like a mere whisper in comparison.
“My leg, my leg, my leg!” he screamed, unable to help himself.
“Oh, Jesus, Garraty,” Baker had time to say-nothing in his voice but mild surprise, and then they had passed beyond him, it seemed that they were all passing him as he stood here with his left leg turned to clenched and agonizing marble, passing him, leaving him behind.
“Warning! Warning 47!”
Don’t panic. If you panic now you’ve had the course.
He sat down on the pavement, his left leg stuck out woodenly in front of him. He began to massage the big muscles. He tried to knead them. It was like trying to knead ivory.
“Garraty?” It was McVries. He sounded scared… surely that was only an illusion? “What is it? Charley horse?”
“Yeah, I guess so. Keep going. It’ll be all right.”
Time. Time was speeding up for him, but everyone else seemed to have slowed to a crawl, to the speed of an instant replay on a close play at first base. McVries was picking up his pace slowly, one heel showing, then the other, a glint from the worn nails, a glimpse of cracked and tissue-thin shoeleather. Barkovitch was passing by slowly, a little grin on his face, a wave of tense quiet came over the crowd slowly, moving outward in both directions from where he had sat down, like great glassy combers headed for the beach. My second warning, Garraty thought, my second warning’s coming up, come on leg, come on goddam leg. I don’t want to buy a ticket, what do you say, come on, gimme a break.
“Warning! Second warning, 47!”
Yeah, I know, you think I can’t keep score, you think I’m sitting here trying to get a suntan?
The knowledge of death, as true and unarguable as a photograph, was trying to get in and swamp him. Trying to paralyze him. He shut it out with a desperate coldness. His thigh was excruciating agony, but in his concentration he barely felt it. A minute left. No, fifty seconds now, no, forty-five, it’s dribbling away, my time’s going.
With an abstract, almost professorly expression on his face, Garraty dug his fingers into the frozen straps and harnesses of muscle. He kneaded. He flexed. He talked to his leg in his head. Come on, come on, come on, goddam thing. His fingers began to ache and he did not notice that much either. Stebbins passed him and murmured something. Garraty did not catch what it was. It might have been good luck. Then he was alone, sitting on the broken white line between the travel lane and the passing lane.
All gone. The carny just left town, pulled stakes in the middle of everything and blew town, no one left but this here kid Garraty to face the emptiness of flattened candy wrappers and squashed cigarette butts and discarded junk prizes.
All gone except one soldier, young and blond and handsome in a remote sort of way. His silver chronometer was in one hand, his rifle in the other. No mercy in that face.
“Warning! Warning 47! Third warning, 47!”
The muscle was not loosening at all. He was going to die. After all this, after ripping his guts out, that was the fact, after all.
He let go of his leg and stared calmly at the soldier. He wondered who was going to win. He wondered if McVries would outlast Barkovitch. He wondered what a bullet in the head felt like, if it would just be sudden darkness or if he would actually feel his thoughts being ripped apart.
The last few seconds began to drain away.
The cramp loosened. Blood flowed back into the muscle, making it tingle with needles and pins, making it warm. The blond soldier with the remotely handsome face put away the pocket chronometer. His lips moved soundlessly as he counted down the last few seconds.
But I can’t get up, Garraty thought. It’s too good just to sit. Just sit and let the phone ring, the hell with it, why didn’t I take the phone off the hook?
Garraty let his head fall back. The soldier seemed to be looking down at him, as if from the mouth of a tunnel or over the lip of a deep well. In slow motion he transferred the gun to both hands and his right forefinger kissed over the trigger, then curled around it and the barrel started to come around. The soldier’s left hand was solid on the stock. A wedding band caught a glimmer of sun. Everything was slow. So slow. Just… hold the phone.
This, Garraty thought.
This is what it’s like. To die.
The soldier’s right thumb was rotating the safety catch to the off position with exquisite slowness. Three scrawny women were directly behind him, three weird sisters, hold the phone. Just hold the phone a minute longer, I’ve got something to die here. Sunshine, shadow, blue sky. Clouds rushing up the highway. Stebbins was just a back now, just a blue workshirt with a sweatstain running up between the shoulder blades, goodbye, Stebbins.
Sounds thundered in on him. He had no idea if it was his imagination, or heightened sensibility, or simply the fact of death reaching out for him. The safety catch snapped off with a sound like a breaking branch. The rush of indrawn air between his teeth was the sound of a wind tunnel. His heartbeat was a drum. And there was a high singing, not in his ears but between them, spiraling up and up, and he was crazily sure that it was the actual sound of brainwaves-
He scrambled to his feet in a convulsive flying jerk, screaming. He threw himself into an accelerating, gliding run. His feet were made of feathers. The finger of the soldier tightened on the trigger and whitened. He glanced down at the solidstate computer on his waist, a gadget that included a tiny but sophisticated sonar device. Garraty had once read an article about them in Popular Mechanix. They could read out a single Walker’s speed as exactly as you would have wanted, to four numbers to the right of the decimal point.
The soldier’s finger loosened.
Garraty slowed to a very fast walk, his mouth cottony dry, his heart pounding at triphammer speed. Irregular white flashes pulsed in front of his eyes, and for a sick moment he was sure he was going to faint. It passed. His feet, seemingly furious at being denied their rightful rest, screamed at him rawly. He gritted his teeth and bore the pain. The big muscle in his left leg was still twitching alarmingly, but he wasn’t limping. So far.
He looked at his watch. It was 2:17 PM. For the next hour he would be less than two seconds from death.