And at the height of the excitement, at the top of the first hill on 202, overlooking the mobbed turnpike behind and the gorged and glutted town at their feet, two huge purple-white spotlights split the air ahead of them and the Major was there, drawing away from them in his jeep like an hallucination, holding his salute ramrod stiff, incredibly, fantastically oblivious of the crowd in the gigantic throes of its labor all around him.
And the Walkers-the strings were not broken on their emotions, only badly out-of-tune. They had cheered wildly with hoarse and totally unheard voices, the thirty-seven of them that were left. The crowd could not know they were cheering but somehow they did, somehow they understood that the circle between death-worship and death-wish had been completed for another year and the crowd went completely loopy, convulsing itself in greater and greater paroxysms. Garraty felt a stabbing, needling pain in the left side of his chest and was still unable to stop cheering, even though he understood he was driving at the very brink of disaster.
A shifty-eyed Walker named Milligan saved them all by falling to his knees, his eyes squeezed shut and his hands pressed to his temples, as if he were trying to hold his brains in. He slid forward on the end of his nose, abrading the tip of it on the road like soft chalk on a rough blackboard-how amazing, Garraty thought, that kid’s wearing his nose away on the road-and then Milligan was mercifully blasted. After that the Walkers stopped cheering. Garraty was badly scared by the pain in his chest that was subsiding only partially. He promised that was the end of the craziness.
“We getting close to your girl?” Parker asked. He had not weakened, but he had mellowed. Garraty liked him okay now.
“About fifty miles. Maybe sixty. Give or take.”
“You’re one lucky sonofabitch, Garraty,” Parker said wistfully.
“I am?” He was surprised. He turned to see if Parker was laughing at him. Parker wasn’t.
“You’re gonna see your girl and your mother. Who the hell am I going to see between now and the end? No one but these pigs.” He gestured with his middle finger at the crowd, which seemed to take the gesture as a salute and cheered him deliriously. “I’m homesick,” he said. “And scared.” Suddenly he screamed at the crowd: “Pigs! You pigs!” They cheered him more loudly than ever.
“I’m scared, too. And homesick. I… I mean we…” He groped. “We’re all too far away from home. The road keeps us away. I may see them, but I won’t be able to touch them.”
“The rules say-”
“I know what the rules say. Bodily contact with anyone I wish, as long as I don’t leave the road. But it’s not the same. There’s a wall.”
“Fuckin’ easy for you to talk. You’re going to see them, just the same.”
“Maybe that’ll only make it worse,” McVries said. He had come quietly up behind them. They had just passed under a blinking yellow warning flasher at the Winthrop intersection. Garraty could see it waxing and waning on the pavement after they had passed it, a fearful yellow eye, opening and closing.
“You’re all crazy,” Parker said amiably. “I’m getting out of here.” He put on a little speed and had soon nearly disappeared into the blinking shadows.
“He thinks we’re queer for each other,” McVries said, amused.
“He what?” Garraty’s head snapped up.
“He’s not such a bad guy,” McVries said thoughtfully. He cocked a humorous eye at Garraty. “Maybe he’s even half-right. Maybe that’s why I saved your ass. Maybe I’m queer for you.”
“With a face like mine? I thought you perverts liked the willowy type.” Still, he was suddenly uneasy.
Suddenly, shockingly, McVries said: “Would you let me jerk you oft?”
Garraty hissed in breath. “What the hell-”
“Oh, shut up,” McVries said crossly. “Where do you get off with all this self-righteous shit? I’m not even going to make it any easier by letting you know if I’m joking. What say?”
Garraty felt a sticky dryness in his throat. The thing was, he wanted to be touched. Queer, not queer, that didn’t seem to matter now that they were all busy dying. All that mattered was McVries. He didn’t want McVries to touch him, not that way.
“Well, I suppose you did save my life-” Garraty let it hang.
McVries laughed. “I’m supposed to feel like a heel because you owe me something and I’m taking advantage? Is that it?”
“Do what you want,” Garraty said shortly. “But quit playing games.”
“Does that mean yes?”
“Whatever you want!” Garraty yelled. Pearson, who had been staring, nearly hypnotized, at his feet, looked up, startled. “Whatever you goddam want!” Garraty yelled.
McVries laughed again. “You’re all right, Ray. Never doubt it.” He clapped Garraty’s shoulder and dropped back.
Garraty stared after him, mystified.
“He just can’t get enough,” Pearson said tiredly.
“Huh?”
“Almost two hundred and fifty miles,” Pearson groaned. “My feet are like lead with poison inside them. My back’s burning. And that screwed-up McVries doesn’t have enough yet. He’s like a starving man gobbling up laxatives.”
“He wants to be hurt, do you think?”
“Jesus, what do you think? He ought to be wearing a BEAT ME HARD sign. I wonder what he’s trying to make up for.
“I don’t know,” Garraty said. He was going to add something else, but saw Pearson wasn’t listening anymore. He was watching his feet again, his weary features drawn in lines of horror. He had lost his shoes. The dirty white athletic socks on his feet made gray-white arcs in the darkness.
They passed a sign that said LEWISTON 32 and a mile beyond that an arched electric sign that proclaimed GARRATY 47 in lightbulb lettering.
Garraty wanted to doze but was unable. He knew what Pearson meant about his back. His own spine felt like a blue rod of fire. The muscles at the backs of his legs were open, flaming sores. The numbness in his feet was being replaced by an agony much more sharp and defined than any that had gone before. He was no longer hungry, but he ate a few concentrates anyway. Several Walkers were nothing but flesh-covered skeletons-concentration-camp horrors. Garraty didn’t want to get like that… but of course he was, anyway. He ran a hand up his side and played the xylophone on his ribs.
“I haven’t heard from Barkovitch lately,” he said in an effort to raise Pearson from his dreadful concentration-it was altogether too much like Olson reincarnated.
“No. Somebody said one of his legs went stiff on him coming through Augusta.”
“That right?”
“That’s what they said.”
Garraty felt a sudden urge to drop back and look at Barkovitch. He was hard to find in the dark and Garraty drew a warning, but finally he spotted Barkovitch, now back in the rear echelon. Barkovitch was scurrying gimpily along, his face set in strained lines of concentration. His eyes were slitted down to a point where they looked like dimes seen edge-on. His jacket was gone. He was talking to himself in a low, strained monotone.
“Hello, Barkovitch,” Garraty said.
Barkovitch twitched, stumbled, and was warned… third warning. “There!” Barkovitch screamed shrewishly. “There, see what you did? Are you and your hotshit friends satisfied?”
“You don’t look so good,” Garraty said.
Barkovitch smiled cunningly. “It’s all a part of the Plan. You remember when I told you about the Plan? Didn’t believe me. Olson didn’t. Davidson neither. Gribble neither.” Barkovitch’s voice dropped to a succulent whisper, pregnant with spit. “Garraty, I daaanced on their graves!”
“Your leg hurt?” Garraty asked softly. “Say, isn’t that awful.”