“No,” Garraty said. “I don’t think so.”
“Let it go, then,” Stebbins said, and smiled winningly. “If there are such things as souls, his is still close. You could catch up.”
Garraty looked at Stebbins and said, “I’m going to walk you into the ground.”
Oh, Pete, he thought. He didn’t even have any tears left to cry.
“Are you?” Stebbins said. “We’ll see.”
By eight that evening they were walking through Danvers, and Garraty finally knew. It was almost done, because Stebbins could not be beaten.
I spent too much time thinking about it. McVries, Baker, Abraham… they didn’t think about it, they just did it. As if it were natural. And it is natural. In a way, it’s the most natural thing in the world.
He shambled along, bulge-eyed, jaw hanging agape, rain swishing in. For a misty, shutterlike moment he thought he saw someone he knew, knew as well as himself, weeping and beckoning in the dark ahead, but it was no use. He couldn’t go on.
He would just tell Stebbins. He was up ahead a little, limping quite a bit now, and looking emaciated. Garraty was very tired, but he was no longer afraid. He felt calm. He felt okay. He made himself go faster until he could put a hand on Stebbins’s shoulder. “Stebbins,” he said.
Stebbins turned and looked at Garraty with huge, floating eyes that saw nothing for a moment. Then recognition came and he reached out and clawed at Garraty’s shirt, pulling it open. The crowd screamed its anger at this interference, but only Garraty was close enough to see the horror in Stebbins’s eyes, the horror, the darkness, and only Garraty knew that Stebbins’s grip was a last despairing reach for rescue.
“Oh Garraty!” he cried, and fell down.
Now the sound of the crowd was apocalyptic. It was the sound of mountains falling and breaking, the earth shattering. The sound crushed Garraty easily beneath it. It would have killed him if he had heard it. But he heard nothing but his own voice.
“Stebbins?” he said curiously. He bent and somehow managed to turn Stebbins over. Stebbins still stared at him, but the despair had already skimmed over. His head rolled tonelessly on his neck.
He put a cupped hand in front of Stebbins’s mouth. “Stebbins?” he said again.
But Stebbins was dead.
Garraty lost interest. He got to his feet and began to walk. Now the cheers filled the earth and fireworks filled the sky. Up ahead, a jeep roared toward him.
No vehicles on the road, you damn fool. That’s a capital offense, they can shoot you for that.
The Major stood in the jeep. He held a stiff salute. Ready to grant first wish, every wish, any wish, death wish. The Prize.
Behind him, they finished by shooting the already-dead Stebbins, and now there was only him, alone on the road, walking toward where the Major’s jeep had stopped diagonally across the white line, and the Major was getting out, coming to him, his face kind and unreadable behind the mirror sunglasses.
Garraty stepped aside. He was not alone. The dark figure was back, up ahead, not far, beckoning. He knew that figure. If he could get a little closer, he could make out the features. Which one hadn’t he walked down? Was it Barkovitch? Collie Parker? Percy What’shisname? Who was it?
“
Was it Scramm? Gribble? Davidson?
A hand on his shoulder. Garraty shook it off impatiently. The dark figure beckoned, beckoned in the rain, beckoned for him to come and walk, to come and play the game. And it was time to get started. There was still so far to walk.
Eyes blind, supplicating hands held out before him as if for alms, Garraty walked toward the dark figure.
And when the hand touched his shoulder again, he somehow found the strength to run.
