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It happens like this: Curley never gets a charley horse. His muscles don’t cramp, and he survives to hear James Ewing get shot – not to see it happen, because Ray doesn’t let him, but he hears the strangled gasps of the choking, seizing boy, and the gleeful crowing of Barkovitch, and the crack of a gunshot, and then silence.
The silence is the worst part. It’s the voice of death, whispering a prayer over the dead boy’s form.
“You gotta keep walking, Curley,” Ray insists, gripping so tight on to Curley’s arms as he marches him forwards that the soreness lingers later on like a brand. “Just one foot in front of the other, and you keep on like that, alright? Don’t stop, don’t look back, not for anything. Just keep going. You gotta promise me, okay?”
“Okay,” Curley tries to say, but the word doesn’t escape beyond the shape of his mouth, no shuddering breath passes over trembling lips. It catches on the lump in his throat, and dies there, unspoken.
Ray hears him anyway.
The Walk goes on. The Major praises Ewing’s death, and the Walkers chant his name. Ray tells Curley to walk a few steps ahead of him; if he slows enough to get a warning, Ray will be right there to pick him up.
“I want one of us behind him at all times, you hear me?” Ray tells his fellow Musketeers. “I’m not saying you've got to pick up a warning for him, but I don’t want him falling behind us.”
“Yeah, I hear you,” says Pete.
“Poor kid,” says Art.
“Dumbass kid, more like,” says Hank, but he doesn’t argue.
Curley ends up walking besides Collie Parker. They’d sat next to each other at the drop off, until Curley got up to pace. He’s a familiar face, a comforting presence. They walk next to Rank and Barkovitch, and it’s peaceful for a while, until Barkovitch gets bored.
“What kind of a name is Curley?” he asks. “Ain’t no way your fucking momma named you that.”
Curley is used to boys of Barkovitch’s age teasing him, so he takes it in stride. He’s learned by now not to rise to the bait, and knows how to poke enough fun at himself that Barkovitch gets the entertainment he was looking for and happily moves on. There’s no real malice in his question: he’s just trying to copy the others. Pete makes a joke at Hank’s expense at drop off, Barkovitch tries the same; Stebbins gets praised for his plan, Barkovitch tries to impress the boys with one of his own; the Musketeers insult each other and deepen their friendship, Barkovitch tries to follow their lead to make his own friends. He’s all bark and no bite, until Rank fails to match his energy, and like a dog with a bone Barkovitch just can’t let it go.
The tentative bond between the now-trio shatters at the same time as Rank’s skull.
Accusations and insults fly as Barkovitch scrambles desperately to clear his name. Curley spends most of that time with his hands over his ears, fighting back tears and hyperventilating as the hostile atmosphere presses down on him like a blanket, suffocating.
“Hey, kid,” says Barkovitch later on, when things have settled down enough that Collie no longer feels the need to stick to Curley like glue. “You saw what happened, right? You know I didn’t kill him, I never touched him. Like, I didn’t know he was gonna...” Barkovitch’s hands make jerky movements like he wants to slap himself again, and he flinches as though he actually does more than once. “I mean, it’s his own fault for coming at me, yeah? I never meant for him to...”
From their place behind them, the Musketeers can see Barkovitch leaning in conspiratorially to talk to Curley, but can’t hear what he’s saying. They heckle him while encouraging Curley, but though their words clearly affect Barkovitch, he stays where he is, waiting anxiously for a response.
“Yeah, I know,” Curley answers after a moment of consideration. He has to turn towards Barkovitch and hold his gaze for several seconds before he seems to be convinced.
“That’s good. Good that you know that. Smart kid, you are,” he responds, nodding to himself, before glancing nervously at a still-nearby Collie and retreating to the other side of the road.
Night approaches, and anticipation lays thick in the air. Harkness decides to use the last vestiges of daylight to make some final notes for the day.
“So, why’d you sign up?” he asks Curley, who attempts to keep up the charade that he’s eighteen for all of thirty seconds before giving up.
The truth is, after all, that he’d signed up alongside several other boys in his school who were nowhere near old enough. With the Long Walk being a highly scrutinised military operation, no one seriously thought they had any chance at being selected. It had been more a game of chicken than anything else.
“That’s some shitty luck, kid,” notes Hank.
“Wasn’t luck at all,” claims Stebbins. “They chose you on purpose to keep everyone going – no one wants to get shown up by the fucking kid.”
Harkness scribbles furiously in his notebook. Curley, meanwhile, is frowning.
“But selection’s by lottery. Isn’t it random?”
“Sure,” Stebbins agrees, “for most people. After they get the ones they need first.” He lapses into silence after that, leaving the others bewildered. They don’t know he has a good reason to be so certain: as far as Stebbins is concerned, if he – the son of the Major who has trained his whole life for this moment – was chosen purely at random, he’ll step off the road right now and end it himself.
There’s always two parts to this: both carrot and stick. Something to strive for, and something to avoid. They walk away from the guns, and towards the prize. Curley is the fire that’s been lit under them; Stebbins is the mechanical rabbit they’ll never stop chasing.
At the thirty-five mile mark, the Major stands there in his jeep, comfortable and well rested, and Stebbins looks at the man he could call ‘father’ and thinks maybe he’s not the only rabbit in this race.
Darkness falls at last, and then clings, sticky like tar. Even with the floodlights and Harkness’s headlamp, the blackness closes in on them, leaving them claustrophobic despite the wide expanse of fields on all sides. The sky above them is open, but the artificial lights are bright enough that they can’t even see the stars.
Most of the boys spend the first few hours dozing, stumbling along only by sheer habit, too tired to think clearly. A few others can’t sleep at all, adrenaline keeping them wide awake. When they arrive at the incline and the gunshots begin, not a soul remains asleep. Panic drives them forwards like animals. They are boys no longer – just the survivors and the dead.
Most don’t even have the breath to give voice to the terror they all feel, so any sound any of them do make stands out even more, setting everyone on edge. Barkovitch in particular makes a nuisance of himself, taunting anyone he can. Curley is the only person he makes a point to leave alone.
Curley survives the hill, and then the rest of the night. Nothing special happens to make this so; he just walks like all the others and, in the end, his luck holds out. Nineteen boys make it to sunrise, and Curley just happens to be one of them.
One day down, and over half the boys are already dead. It’s a hell of a realisation. Some poor fool voices the hope that this means the whole ordeal will be over by the next morning. Stebbins shoots that hope down as swiftly and remorselessly as the soldiers with their carbines.
Pete tells Ray about what he’s been thinking, about how the competition is more than just physical strength.
“So don’t you go thinking you ain’t got no chance, boy,” he tells Curley. “Just keep on moving, and you’ll be right there at the end with the rest of us.”
And so he keeps on walking. They hit the hundred-mile mark. The endless monotony is broken when someone makes a run for it, but then it’s back to dull mile after dull mile.
Eventually, the topic of wishes comes up. Art wants to go to the moon. Hank voices and then scraps the idea of ten naked ladies. Pete wants to set up the future generations with two winners each.
Curley doesn’t know what to wish for. Most boys spend the time between signing up and their names being pulled day-dreaming about a future as the winner of the Long Walk. Curley hadn’t believed his name being pulled was even an option, and so had neglected this particular chain of thought.
He would have thought about it while walking, but the odds of him surviving are so slim that he's yet to see the point in it.
An uncomfortable silence falls for a moment, and then Hank says, “Maybe you should ask for the age limit to be put up. I mean, not that it’ll fuckin’ stop ‘em, clearly,” he gestures as Curley, “but they’ll have a hell of a time trying to pass a kid off as fuckin’ twenty-one or something.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Curley says, non-committal. It’s clear he still doesn’t think it’s worth it to even consider a potential prize.
“Hey, quit it,” Ray orders him. “Stop acting like you’re dead already. You’re here with us, aren’t you?”
“Yeah,” chimes in Barkovitch. “If you’re so convinced you’re gonna die, you might as well sit down right now.”
There’s a sudden clamour of overlapping voices as Barkovitch is shooed away by the others, but Curley thinks he might have had a point (although whether he meant it that way or not is up for debate).
Maybe – like the others think – he’s telling Curley to hurry up and kill himself and get it over with. Or maybe he’s saying that if Curley isn’t willing to sit down and die right now, then some part of him still thinks he has a chance.
Curley doesn’t sit down. He keeps on walking.
It happens like this: Stebbins gets sick.
“You were supposed to die first,” he tells Curley, “and I was supposed to win this fucking thing. But you know, I think I’m alright with it ending this way.”
Stebbins gets his ticket, and Curley is left walking with Ray and Pete. Two boys both willing to die for the other, and the kid who was never supposed to be here.
Just three people left. Every footfall is agony. The Walk is nearly over, and each pace seems worthless. Why not just stop it now, and save everyone the trouble?
“They say heavier guys get tired quicker,” Pete announces, echoing the first conversation he ever had with Ray. He’s talking mostly for Curley’s benefit. “I bet you ain’t even tired at all. But, man, I’m fucking exhausted. How about you, Ray?”
“You know what, Pete?” replies Ray. “I think you’re right. I don’t think I can walk another step.”
With Curley walking his Ray-mandated few steps ahead, he doesn’t see the moment the other two stop. People have walked for hours after claiming they couldn’t go any further. He doesn’t realise this is different until the warnings are called.
He turns back, quick as anything, but not fast enough. He gets his first warning, but it’s too late. The others will run down their time first. Two boys who love each other get to die in each other's arms, neither having to live without the other, and Curley is left alone.
“Congratulations,” says the Major. “You’ve done well, son. Younger than the lot, and you beat them all! Truly an inspiration – you'll get everyone watching this up off their asses. They’ll sing your name in the streets, my boy, with the way the workforce will pick up this year.”
Curley can hear the mutterings of the soldiers and crowds all around him. Now that he’s the winner, it’s safe for the soldiers to share his true age. A child on a death march is a horror, but a child who has won it is a hero.
And he realises with a sickening clarity what this will mean. Countless boys too young to sign up will try anyway now they have someone to look up to, and with the precedent set for their survival, the military won’t have to hide it when they accept them. It’s been done before; it can be done again.
It’s like Stebbins said: no one wants to be shown up by a fucking kid. All the Major cares about is erasing the so-called epidemic of laziness he claims is taking over the country. He won’t care how many children he has to sacrifice in order to reach his goal.
There’s no way he’ll allow Curley to up the minimum age limit now.
“Now, tell me: what’s your wish?”
Curley can’t answer him. He can’t talk. He can’t breathe. But the Major is asking him and the cameras are recording his every move, broadcasting to everyone across the country. And he doesn’t know what to wish for, can’t even think what to spend his winnings on, and then he thinks of Hank’s wife Clementine, and Ray’s mom watching on the sidelines, unable to even hug her son one last time, and he says, “I want the money to be divided equally between the families of everyone who was in this year’s Long Walk.”
“Including your own, I suppose?” the Major confirms. “Not bad. You’ll still come away with a tidy profit.”
They drive the Major’s own jeep right up to Curley – can't let the winner walk another step until he’s recovered – and they’re surrounded by an honour guard of soldiers.
One of them ruffles Curley’s hair as they congratulate him. They seem almost fond of him now, like he’s the young son of one of their friends or something.
Curley plays on it. He swipes someone’s hat, wearing it crooked on purpose, like a boy playing dress up.
“Could I hold one of the guns?” he pleads, offering a grin he remembers others calling boyish. “Just for a minute?” Someone acquiesces, and Curley looks down at the carbine in his hands, stares at the thing which should have killed him but didn’t.
The cameras are still on him as he aims it and pulls the trigger.
***
It would be nice to say he managed to fulfil Ray’s wish as a final show of respect for the boy who saved his life. But Ray’s wish was for Pete’s ears only, so Curley never knew it, and even if he had he wouldn’t have had it in him to kill another person.
Instead, the country watches as a child too young to even be there shoots himself on live television, bringing the number of dead up to an even fifty. It’s different, somehow, to the deaths of the others. All over, parents gasp in distaste, and make the decision that no child of theirs will be watching the Long Walk ever again.
For the first time ever, the Long Walk has no winner. It’s unprecedented, which is incredibly dangerous for this totalitarian regime. Their absolute control is brought into question; the possibility of their incompetence is considered.
“Damn kid,” the Major growls in frustration. “Someone like him should never have been allowed on the Walk in the first place. Too immature for an honour of this calibre, that’s for damn sure. In fact, this whole lot was too sentimental, and it was all because they decided to look after him.”
“Sir,” says one of the soldiers, “should I launch an inquiry into the screening team? See what went wrong with the vetting process?”
“You do that,” the Major confirms. “I don’t know whose bright idea it was to let a child in, but you’re going to see that it never happens again.”
“Yes, sir,” the soldier salutes. No one mentions the order that had been handed out by the Major himself to ensure a suitably young person was selected.
“Damn kid,” the Major mutters once more, before climbing into his jeep alone and driving away.