That had been the only dead person he had ever seen before all of this, and it had been a clean, neat dead person. Nothing like Ewing, or the boy in the loden trenchcoat, or Davidson with blood on his livid, tired face.

It’s sick, Garraty thought with dismal realization. It’s just sick.

At quarter to four he was given first warning, and he slapped himself twice smartly across the face, trying to make himself wake up. His body felt chilled clear through. His kidneys dragged at him, but at the same time he felt that he didn’t quite have to pee yet. It might have been his imagination, but the stars in the east seemed a trifle paler. With real amazement it occurred to him that at this time yesterday he had been asleep in the back of the car as they drove up toward the stone marking post at the border. He could almost see himself stretched out on his back, sprawling there, not even moving. He felt an intense longing to be back there. Just to bring back yesterday morning.

Ten of four now.

He looked around himself, getting a superior, lonely kind of gratification from knowing he was one of the few fully awake and aware. It was definitely lighter now, light enough to make out snatches of features in the walking silhouettes. Baker was up ahead-he could tell it was Art by the flapping red-striped shirt-and McVries was near him. He saw Olson was off to the left, keeping pace with the halftrack, and was surprised. He was sure that Olson had been one of those to get tickets during the small hours of the morning, and had been relieved that he hadn’t had to see Hank go down. It was too dark even now to see how he looked, but Olson’s head was bouncing up and down in time to his stride like the head of a rag doll.

Percy, whose mom kept showing up, was back by Stebbins now. Percy was walking with a kind of lopsided poll, like a long-time sailor on his first day ashore. He also spotted Gribble, Harkness, Wyman, and Collie Parker. Most of the people he knew were still in it.

By four o’clock there was a brightening band on the horizon, and Garraty felt his spirits lift. He stared back at the long tunnel of the night in actual horror, and wondered how he ever could have gotten through it.

He stepped up his pace a little, approaching McVries, who was walking with his chin against his breast, his eyes half-open but glazed and vacant, more asleep than awake. A thin, delicate cord of saliva hung from the corner of his mouth, picking up the first tremulous touch of dawn with pearly, beautiful fidelity. Garraty stared at this strange phenomenon, fascinated. He didn’t want to wake McVries out of his doze. For the time being it was enough to be close to someone he liked, someone else who had made it through the night.

They passed a rocky, steeply slanting meadow where five cows stood gravely at a bark-peeled pole fence, staring out at the Walkers and chewing thoughtfully. A small dog tore out of a farmyard and barked at them ratchetingly. The soldiers on the halftrack raised their guns to high port, ready to shoot the animal if he interfered with any Walker’s progress, but the dog only chased back and forth along the shoulder, bravely voicing defiance and territoriality from a safe distance. Someone yelled thickly at him to shut up, goddammit.

Garraty became entranced with the coming dawn. He watched as the sky and the land lightened by degrees. He watched the white band on the horizon deepen to a delicate pink, then red, then gold. The guns roared once more before the last of the night was finally banished, but Garraty barely heard. The first red arc of sun was peering over the horizon, faded behind a fluff of cloud, then came again in an onslaught. It looked to be a perfect day, and Garraty greeted it only half-coherently by thinking: Thank God I can die in the daylight.

A bird twitted sleepily. They passed another farmhouse where a man with a beard waved at them after putting down a wheelbarrow filled with hoes, rakes, and planting-seed.

A crow cawed raucously off in the shadowy woods. The first heat of the day touched Garraty’s face gently, and he welcomed it. He grinned and yelled loudly for a canteen.

McVries twitched his head oddly, like a dog interrupted in a dream of cat-chasing, and then looked around with muddy eyes. “My God, daylight. Daylight, Garraty. What time?”

Garraty looked at his watch and was surprised to find it was quarter of five. He showed McVries the dial.

“How many miles? Any idea?”

“About eighty, I make it. And twenty-seven down. We’re a quarter of the way home, Pete.”

“Yeah.” McVries smiled. “That’s right, isn’t it?”

“Damn right.”

“You feel better?” Garraty asked.

“About one thousand per cent.”

“So do I. I think it’s the daylight.”

“My God, I bet we see some people today. Did you read that article in World’s Week about the Long Walk?”

“Skimmed it,” Garraty said. “Mostly to see my name in print.”

“Said that over two billion dollars gets bet on the Long Walk every year. Two billion!”

Baker had awakened from his own doze and had joined them. “We used to have a pool in my high school,” he said. “Everybody’d kick in a quarter, and then we’d each pick a three-digit number out of a hat. And the guy holdin’ the number closest to the last mile of the Walk, he got the money.”

“Olson!” McVries yelled over cheerily. “Just think of all the cash riding on you, boy! Think of the people with a bundle resting right on your skinny ass!”

Olson told him in a tired, washed-out voice that the people with a bundle wagered on his skinny ass could perform two obscene acts upon themselves, the second proceeding directly from the first. McVries, Baker, and Garraty laughed.

“Be a lotta pretty girls on the road today,” Baker said, eyeing Garraty roguishly.

“I’m all done with that stuff,” Garraty said. “I got a girl up ahead. I’m going to be a good boy from now on.”

“Sinless in thought, word, and deed,” McVries said sententiously.

Garraty shrugged. “See it any way you like,” he said.

“Chances are a hundred to one against you ever having a chance to do more than wave to her again,” McVries said flatly.

“Seventy-three to one now.”

“Still pretty high.”

But Garraty’s good humor was solid. “I feel like I could walk forever,” he said blandly. A couple of the Walkers around him grimaced.

They passed an all-night gas station and the attendant came out to wave. Just about everyone waved back. The attendant was calling encouragement to Wayne, 94, in particular.

“Garraty,” McVries said quietly.

“What?”

“I couldn’t tell all the guys that bought it. Could you?”

'No.”

“Barkovitch?”

“No. Up ahead. In front of Scramm. See him?”

McVries looked. “Oh. Yeah, I think I do.”

“Stebbins is still back there, too.”

“Not surprised. Funny guy, isn’t he?”

“Yeah.”

There was silence between them. McVries sighed deeply, then unshouldered his knapsack and pulled out some macaroons. He offered one to Garraty, who took one. “I wish this was over,” he said. “One way or the other.”

They ate their macaroons in silence.

“We must be halfway to Oldtown, huh?” McVries said. “Eighty down, eighty to go?”

“I guess so,” Garraty said.

“Won’t get there until tonight, then.”

The mention of night made Garraty’s flesh crawl. “No,” he said. Then, abruptly: “How’d you get that scar, Pete?”

McVries’s hand went involuntarily to his cheek and the scar. “It’s a long story,” he said briefly.

Garraty took a closer look at him. His hair was rumpled and clotty with dust and sweat. His clothes were limp and wrinkled. His face was pallid and his eyes were deeply circled in their bloodshot orbs.

“You look like shit,” he said, and suddenly burst out laughing.

McVries grinned. “You don’t exactly look like a deodorant ad yourself, Ray.”