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
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.
“Back to the land of the living,” Stebbins said as he caught up.
“Sure,” Garraty said numbly. He felt a sudden wave of resentment. They would have gone on walking even if he had bought his ticket. No tears shed for him. Just a name and number to be entered in the official records-GARRATY, RAYMOND, #47, ELIMINATED 218th MILE. And a human-interest story in the state newspapers for a couple of days. GARRATY DEAD; “MAINE’s OWN” BECOMES 61ST TO FALL!
“I hope I win,” Garraty muttered.
“Think you will?”
Garraty thought of the blond soldier’s face. It had shown as much emotion as a plate of potatoes.
“I doubt it,” he said. “I’ve already got three strikes against me. That means you’re out, doesn’t it?”
“Call the last one a foul tip,” Stebbins said. He was regarding his feet again. Garraty picked his own feet up, his two-second margin like a stone in his head. There would be no warning this time. Not even time for someone to say, you better pick it up, Garraty, you’re going to draw one.
He caught up with McVries, who glanced around. “I thought you were out of it, kiddo,” McVries said.
“So did I.”
“That close?”
“About two seconds, I think.”
McVries pursed a silent whistle. “I don’t think I’d like to be in your shoes right now. How’s the leg?”
“Better. Listen, I can’t talk. I’m going up front for a while.”
“It didn’t help Harkness any.”
Garraty shook his head. “I have to make sure I’m topping the speed.”
“All right. You want company?”
“If you’ve got the energy.”
McVries laughed. “I got the time if you got the money, honey.”
“Come on, then. Let’s pick it up while I’ve still got the sack for it.”
Garraty stepped up his pace until his legs were at the point of rebellion, and he and McVries moved quickly through the front-runners. There was a space between the boy who had been walking second, a gangling, evil-faced boy named Harold Quince, and the survivor of the two leather boys. Joe. Closer to, his complexion was startlingly bronzed. His eyes stared steadily at the horizon, and his features were expressionless. The many zippers on his jacket jingled, like the sound of faraway music.
“Hello, Joe,” McVries said, and Garraty had an hysterical urge to add, whaddaya know?
“Howdy,” Joe said curtly.
They passed him and then the road was theirs, a wide double-barreled strip of composition concrete stained with oil and broken by the grassy median strip, bordered on both sides by a steady wall of people.
“Onward, ever onward,” McVries said. “Christian soldiers, marching as to war. Ever hear that one, Ray?”
“What time is it?”
McVries glanced at his watch. “2:20, Look, Ray, if you’re going to-”
“God, is that all? I thought-” He felt panic rising in his throat, greasy and thick. He wasn’t going to be able to do it. The margin was just too tight.
“Look, if you keep thinking about the time, you’re gonna go nuts and try to run into the crowd and they’ll shoot you dog-dead. They’ll shoot you with your tongue hanging out and spit running down your chin. Try to forget about it.”
“I can’t.” Everything was bottling up inside him, making him feel jerky and hot and sick. “Olson… Scramm… they died. Davidson died. I can die too, Pete. I believe it now. It’s breathing down my fucking back!”
“Think about your girl. Jan, what’s-her-face. Or your mother. Or your goddam kitty-cat. Or don’t think about anything. Just pick ’em up and put ’em down. Just keep on walking down the road. Concentrate on that.”
Garraty fought for control of himself. Maybe he even got a little. But he was unraveling just the same. His legs didn’t want to respond smoothly to his mind’s commands anymore, they seemed as old and as flickery as ancient lightbulbs.
“He won’t last much longer,” a woman in the front row said quite audibly.
“Your tits won’t last much longer!” Garraty snapped at her, and the crowd cheered him.
“They’re screwed up,” Garray muttered. “They’re really screwed up. Perverted. What time is it, McVries?”
“What was the first thing you did when you got your letter of confirmation?” McVries asked softly. “What did you do when you knew you were really in?”
Garraty frowned, wiped his forearm quickly across his forehead, and then let his mind free of the sweaty, terrifying present to that sudden, flashing moment.
“I was by myself. My mother works. It was a Friday afternoon. The letter was in the mailbox and it had a Wilmington, Delaware, postmark, so I knew that had to be it. But I was sure it said I’d flunked the physical or the mental or both. I had to read it twice. I didn’t go into any fits of joy, but I was pleased. Real pleased. And confident. My feet didn’t hurt then and my back didn’t feel like somebody had shoved a rake with a busted handle into it. I was one in a million. I wasn’t bright enough to realize the circus fat lady is, too.”
He broke off for a moment, thinking, smelling early April.
“I couldn’t back down. There were too many people watching. I think it must work the same with just about everyone. It’s one of the ways they tip the game, you know. I let the April 15th backout date go by and the day after that they had a big testimonial dinner for me at the town hall-all my friends were there and after dessert everyone started yelling Speech! Speech! And I got out and mumbled something down at my hands about how I was gonna do the best I could if I got in, and everyone applauded like mad. It was like I’d laid the fucking Gettysburg Address on their heads. You know what I mean?”
