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McVries was the first one Garraty saw as they marched through the town.
His eyes had been playing tricks on him ever since the 40-mile mark, when the blisters on his feet started going bad, but it wasn"t just a mirage. It was McVries all right, walking up ahead of him, and he looked a little worse for wear. He was wearing a sweat-stained shirt and a pair of cut-off dungarees. His shoulders were slumped and there was this big, ugly purple blister on his cheek, like someone had kicked him just below his scar. He was staring straight at Garraty.
"Garraty?" he said. "Garraty? I can see you. Is that really you?"
"I think so," Garraty managed.
McVries shook his head, but he didn"t stop staring.
"It can"t be you," he said. "You"re in a pine box, chum. And that"s a fact."
Garraty"s mother had followed the box to the cemetery and watched while they lowered him into the ground. His mother had held a man"s hand. It had begun to rain. Garraty could remember the way the sound of the raindrops hitting the coffin"s top had reminded him of summer popcorn, the faint thud-thud-thud, the sound of moisture touching hot oil. And then he had heard the clods, and they had sounded like slow machine-guns.
He opened his mouth and screamed, a long sound that went on and on. His feet kept moving.
One of the guards yelled, and then shot him a warning. "Warning! Warning 47!"
Garraty didn"t stop screaming, however. It wasn"t a sound he had ever made before in his life. It was a sound he had never imagined that he would ever make. The scream was coming from somewhere in his soul, that dark and shadowy place that men do not like to light up and explore. He knew now what his soul was, and the knowledge made him scream.
His soul was the part of him that went on walking even after the rest of him was dead.
"Last warning!" the guard bellowed, and put the carbine to his shoulder.
The guard fired and something plucked at Garraty"s shirt. A moment later the bullet buried itself in the earth a good two hundred yards beyond where Garraty was.
"Do you want to buy the farm, fella?" Barkovitch"s voice sneered. "Just say the word."
"Let him be," Collie Parker said. "Can"t you see he"s just having himself a little fit?"
But Barkovitch and Parker were dead. Even Scramm and Abraham and Baker were dead. They were all ghosts, and ghosts couldn"t help him. Only McVries was real.
"Ray!" McVries was saying.
"Ray, it"s all right. Come back. Come on back, Ray. It"s not so bad. We"re together. Come on back. Don"t buy a farm if you don"t have to."
He walked over to Garraty and took his hand and patted it. His hand was warm. His face was haggard. It was a face that had seen the elephant and didn"t like the sight. But it was real.
"That"s right," McVries said. "That"s just right."
"It"s no use, Pete," Garraty said. "We"re all dead."
"Sure," McVries said. He let go of Garraty"s hand. "You"ve got a bad sunburn, that"s all. Just a little touch of heatstroke. You"ll be all right."
Garraty shook his head. It was no use. None of them understood.
"Warning! Warning 47!"
The halftrack slowed beside him and the captain looked down.
"Garraty?" he said. Garraty didn"t say anything. There was nothing to say. "You"re walking in your sleep, Garraty. Do you know that? I can"t keep the others from warning you, but if you get to ten you"re out. Understand me?"
"Yes," Garraty said.
"All right, soldier. You can wake up now."
-
"I"m awake," Garraty said. "I"m awake."
He had come back from the dead and the walk was over.
He had dreamed the last hundred miles, all the way from the 60-mile mark to the border. It had all been a dream, and it had all been horribly, horribly real.
"What happened?" McVries asked. He was lying on the next cot, his left foot bandaged.
"You tell me," Garraty said. "Is it—is it over?"
"Sure," McVries said. "It"s almost sunset."
Garraty sighed and laid his head back against his pillow. "Then I guess we"re still alive."
"That"s the ticket."
"I had a dream, Pete. At least, I think it was a dream."
"Dreams aren"t so bad. If it wasn"t for dreams, I wouldn"t be here. What did you dream about?"
"The rest of the walk," Garraty said slowly. "All the way to the end."
"Oh," McVries said. His eyes shifted away, and he examined his nails with great interest. "How far did we go in the dream?"
"To the border."
"How far was that?"
"Two hundred miles."
"Jesus," McVries said reverently. "No wonder you"re tired."
Garraty had won. McVries had won. Garraty and McVries had won. All alone. Together.
That"s what the reporters had been shouting as the stretchers were being carried toward the ambulances. That"s what everyone was going to be shouting for the next two or three days, until the next big story came along to shove this one into the limbo of the used-up and forgotten.
"We won," Garraty said suddenly.
McVries didn"t reply for a long time. The only sound was the soft pad of footsteps as the soldiers paced up and down the ward. The soldiers were there to protect them against the crowds.
"Yeah, I guess we did, didn"t we?"
"Yeah. But we lost, too,” Garraty said. "Are you mad?"
"Hell, no," McVries said, looking over at him. "Are you?"
"A little," Garraty said.
McVries began to laugh. His laughter was cracked and crazy, and it set Garraty off. Soon they were both laughing like loons.
A nurse came over. "Mr. Garraty?"
"We won!" McVries shouted at her, and laughed some more.
The nurse"s lips thinned. "I"ll have the doctor give you something to make you sleep, Mr. Garraty."
"Oh, goodie," McVries said. He winked broadly at Garraty. "Gosh, I love my country. Don"t you?"
"Gosh," Garraty said.
-
McVries was the first one Garraty saw as they marched through the town.
They were walking down the main street, the boys who had survived the walk and the boy who had dreamed the walk, and the people that were cheering them. Garraty"s eyes had been playing tricks on him ever since the 40-mile mark, when his feet had started going bad, but it wasn"t his eyes. McVries was really there, walking up ahead of him. He was wearing a sweat-stained shirt and a pair of cut-down dungarees. He looked a little the worse for wear. His shoulders were slumped. His eyes were hollow. He had a big, purple blister on his left cheek, just below his scar, like someone had kicked him. He was staring straight at Garraty.
"McVries?" Garraty said.
McVries shook his head, but didn"t look away. "Garraty, you"re not real," he said.
"I am."
"You are," McVries said, "my own personal hallucination. Maybe I"ve been having a little fit myself."
"I"m real."
"How do you know?"
"Because—I won," Garraty said.
McVries shook his head again. "I don"t believe it."
"Then why are we both here?"
"To punish you, I guess," McVries said.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean you"re dead, Ray."
Garraty didn"t say anything. They passed a barber shop, and Garraty could see his reflection in the window. He didn"t look dead. He didn’t look like a ghost either. His hair was just a little long. He looked like he could have just finished a hard flu.
"I died right at the border," McVries said. "They told me my name and everything. I just went out."
"Then why are you still walking?"
"You"re the doctor," McVries said.
"You’re not making any sense."
"Look at them, Ray." McVries gestured at the crowd.
A young woman was staring at Garraty, a woman with big, empty eyes and a small red rosebud mouth. Her hand crept across her flat belly. She was pregnant, and she looked as if she were going to give birth to a stone.
"We"re dead," McVries said. "The game is rigged. Everybody plays, nobody wins."
”Warning! Warning 61!" one of the guards called out, and the halftrack slowed down.
"If you"re a hallucination, how come they"re warning you?" Garraty said.
McVries grinned. It was a ghastly grin. "I think I"ll rest a little bit, okay?"
McVries grabbed onto his forearm and Garraty held onto his, as if to stop him. "Do you feel that, Ray? Do I feel real?"
"You"re dead," McVries whispered. "Go away."
"Warning! Warning 47!" the guard called again, and a second guard joined in.
-
Garraty opened his eyes. He was in the hospital. He could remember the end clearly, if only because he had relived it so often in his dreams. There had been the sound of the ambulance siren and the voices.
"Get an orderly, quick."
"Check his feet."
"Get him inside."
"Where"s the other one? Stebbins?"
"Stebbins?"
Garraty lay in his hospital bed, he had been waiting for the doctors to tell him when he would be well enough to leave. He knew it wouldn"t be soon. It might not be ever.
The bottoms of his feet had been torn and bruised and bloodied, and his toes looked like a row of little deformed mushrooms. One of the toes had rotted and had had to be removed, but the doctors said the rest of his feet would heal. His heart was another matter. He had been told that there were some things that no amount of healing could ever heal.
-
Garraty"s feet had responded just enough so that the nurses were letting him take short wheelchair-walks around the hospital floor. They had moved him from the convalescent ward to a single.
Garraty sat on the edge of his bed. The blinds were open, and the room was filled with bright sunshine. The trees were coming out, birds were chirping. A nice spring day, a perfect day for a walk.
His mother and Jan were coming to visit today. It would be the first time he had seen them since that time at the end. They would all cry and laugh together. It would be good.
Garraty rolled down the hall to the pay phone and called his house.
"Hello?"
"Jan, it"s me."
"Ray!" Jan cried. She was a little girl again, the little girl he had left behind, instead of the little girl who was just a couple of years from becoming a young woman.
"You guys still coming up today?"
"Oh yes," Jan said, and Garraty could hear her voice thickening. "We were just getting ready to leave."
"How"s mama?"
"She"s fine. We"re all fine. How are you, Ray?"
"Fine," Garraty said.
"Your face is all over the TV. You look terrible."
"Thanks. How"s the Major?"
"Who cares," Jan said fiercely.
"Have you seen the others?"
"No," Jan said. "But that McVries guy I’ve seen on a magazine."
"Yeah," Garraty said, and felt an unreasoning surge of jealousy. He thought of McVries"s fitness and how girls might swoon over him. How Jan might’ve.
"He"s dead," Jan said, almost as an afterthought.
"What?"
"He"s dead, Ray."
"Dead?" Garraty was thunderstruck. "You mean—you mean he"s in the hospital like me, or—"
"No, he"s dead," Jan said. She sounded impatient.
"Jan," he said slowly, "how much of the walk do I remember?"
"The last hundred miles or so, I guess. That"s the way you always tell it."
"And the others?"
"Olson and Baker died in the 50s," she said. "Collie Parker, he got hit in the 40s."
"And McVries?"
"McVries and Scramm and Abraham—“
"Stebbins," Garraty muttered.
"Scramm and Abraham and McVries got killed near the border."
”See you later, Jan," he said.
"Ray?—“ she said, but Garraty had already hung up the phone.
He rolled back to his room and sat on his bed, his hands folded loosely in his lap.
"It wasn"t a dream," he told himself.
McVries had died, had really died.
"But I won.”
He put his head in his hands and silently cried.