"Well, here we go," McVries said at his elbow. "Good luck, everyone."
"Good luck to you," Garraty said surprised.
McVries said: "I need my f**king head examined." He looked suddenly pale and sweaty, not so awesomely fit as he had earlier. He was trying to smile and not making it. The scar stood out on his cheek like a wild punctuation mark.
Stebbins got up and ambled to the rear of the ten wide, ten deep queue. Olson, Baker, McVries, and Garraty were in the third row. Garraty's mouth was dry. He wondered if he should drink some water. He decided against it. He had never in his life been so aware of his feet. He wondered if he might freeze and get his ticket on the starting line. He wondered if Stebbins would fold early-Stebbins with his jelly sandwich and his purple pants. He wondered if he would fold up first. He wondered what it would feel like if-
His wristwatch said 8:59.
The Major was studying a stainless steel pocket chronometer. He raised his fingers slowly, and everything hung suspended with his hand. The hundred boys watched it carefully, and the silence was awful and immense. The silence was everything.
Garraty's watch said 9:00, but the poised hand did not fall.
Do it! Why doesn't he do it?
He felt like screaming it out.
Then he remembered that his watch was a minute fast-you could set your watch by the Major, only he hadn't, he had forgotten.
The Major's fingers dropped. "Luck to all," he said. His face was expressionless and the reflector sunglasses hid his eyes. They began to walk smoothly, with no jostling.
Garraty walked with them. He hadn't frozen. Nobody froze. His feet passed beyond the stone marker, in parade-step with McVries on his left and Olson on his right. The sound of feet was very loud.
This is it, this is it, this is it.
A sudden insane urge to stop came to him. Just to see if they really meant business. He rejected the thought indignantly and a little fearfully.
They came out of the shade and into the sun, the warm spring sun. It felt good. Garraty relaxed, put his hands in his pockets, and kept step with McVries. The group began to spread out, each person finding his own stride and speed. The halftrack clanked along the soft shoulder, throwing thin dust. The tiny radar dishes turned busily, monitoring each Walker's speed with a sophisticated on-board computer. Low speed cutoff was exactly four miles an hour.
"Warning! Warning 88!"
Garraty started and looked around. It was Stebbins. Stebbins was 88. Suddenly he was sure Stebbins was going to get his ticket right here, still in sight of the starting post.
"Smart." It was Olson.
"What?" Garraty asked. He had to make a conscious effort to move his tongue.
"The guy takes a warning while he's still fresh and gets an idea of where the limit is. And he can sluff it easy enough-you walk an hour without getting a fresh warning, you lose one of the old ones. You know that."
"Sure I know it," Garraty said. It was in the rule book. They gave you three warnings. The fourth time you fell below four miles an hour you were... well, you were out of the Walk. But if you had three warnings and could manage to walk for three hours, you were back in the sun again.
"So now he knows," Olson said. "And at 10:02, he's in the clear again."
Garraty walked on at a good clip. He was feeling fine. The starting post dropped from sight as they breasted a hill and began descending into a long, pine-studded valley. Here and there were rectangular fields with the earth just freshly turned.
"Potatoes, they tell me," McVries said.
"Best in the world," Garraty answered automatically.
"You from Maine?" Baker asked.
"Yeah, downstate." He looked up ahead. Several boys had drawn away from the main group, making perhaps six miles an hour. Two of them were wearing identical leather jackets, with what looked like eagles on the back. It was a temptation to speed up, but Garraty refused to be hurried. "Conserve energy whenever possible"-Hint 13.
"Does the road go anywhere near your hometown?" McVries asked.
"About seven miles to one side. I guess my mother and my girlfriend will come to see me." He paused and added carefully: "If I'm still walking, of course."
"Hell, there won't be twenty-five gone when we get downstate," Olson said.
A silence fell among them at that. Garraty knew it wasn't so, and he thought Olson did, too.
Two other boys received warnings, and in spite of what Olson had said, Garraty's heart lurched each time. He checked back on Stebbins. He was still at the rear, and eating another jelly sandwich. There was a third sandwich jutting from the pocket of his ragged green sweater. Garraty wondered if his mother had made them, and he thought of the cookies his own mother had given him-pressed on him, as if warding off evil spirits.
"Why don't they let people watch the start of a Long Walk?" Garraty asked.
"Spoils the Walkers' concentration," a sharp voice said.