Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

All this happened, more or less. The first walk and the last walk, anyway, are pretty much true. Billy really was shot that fifth night, out on the bridge. The last night, too he really did manage to walk away. And he really was the rabbit, all mechanical workings and inhuman desires, right up until all those moments when he learned he wasn’t.

Listen:

Billy Stebbins has come stuck in time.

It’s mile 326 when he realizes that he just can’t do it.

No- that’s not true. He’s known it for a while now. Since Freeport, watching Garraty clutching at his mother, at least, or whatever little town they had been in when they’d hit the hundred mile mark, and his coughing and sneezing had started. Maybe even since that morning at the starting line, when he’d tried to swallow down the tight feeling in his throat and found himself incapable. Since the moment he’d tried to chalk it up to nerves, when even deep down, he knew the truth.

Anyway, it’s mile 326 when he finally admits it to himself. He’s not winning this. Not when he’s watched Garraty and McVries lean on each other for mile after mile. Not when he’s seen his fathers cool indifference in the face of each boys death. Not when every step is sending white hot fire winding up his leg, and every breath feels like it might tear a hole in his chest.

Billy Stebbins was built to be a machine. To be unbeatable. To make his way all the way back to the majors door, and to walk down any boy who got in his way.

But that machine was beginning to fail -had been failing- for miles; maybe even hundreds of them. Nuts and bolts rapidly rusting and falling away not to reveal snapped wires and broken machinery, but flesh, torn and bruised and tired.

He’d thought himself unbeatable. Not just because he was the tallest, or the strongest, or because he’d been training for this stretch of days for his whole life. But because he wanted it -needed it- the most. He was willing to trade forty nine other lives for a chance at a moment to be with his father, and not a single other boy could say the same.

Well, no other but Garraty, and maybe that’s just why Billy couldn’t keep going. Somewhere between learning the height of his fathers apathetic walls and the depth of Garratys desires, he’d lost his appetite for the carrot that had dangled before him for so long.

They’re nearing Boston now. One of the longest Walks in history. Three hundred miles ago, that might have made his chest swell with pride. To have been apart of record breaking history on his way to win his fathers attention. Now the thought only makes him tired. Not that he could get any tireder. Any more tired.

How much longer, he wonders idly as his feet lope mechanically onward, would Garraty and McVries make it once he was gone? At the rate they’re going, leaning against each other, refusing to let the other misstep even once, they might make it all the way through the city. Maybe even as far as Quincy, or hell, even Taunton. It’s not like it matters anyway. He’ll be long gone by then, whether he’s going out of his own free will or not.

He finds himself turning to look at them, finally in line with him, heads bent together without so much as a word passing between them. He realizes at that moment, that if they wanted to, they really would walk all the way to Florida, just to stay together that much longer.

The Major’s jeep pulls ahead of them, darting up onto the bridge they’ve been approaching, and then suddenly the man is addressing them, saying something about bullshit and ballsacks that sounds fuzzy over the roaring in Billy’s ears. He lets his gaze fall on the jeeps bumper, trying to muster up some kind of anger, like Collie Parker, or acceptance, like Baker. All he can find is the pain in his chest, and in his legs, and in his feet and in his throat. Was there ever a world before all this pain? He almost begins to think that all he’s ever known is the road under his feet, and the pain above them.

“Shut the fuck up! Holy shit! I mean suck a dick why don’t you,” Garraty’s outburst pulls him out of whatever hole he’d burrowed back into, back into the present, back onto the bridge, with the dark clouds gathering above. McVries is laughing, and it takes a moment to register his own pained wheezing as something close to laughter as Garraty carries on, “I mean… just- you lotus eater- you old sack of shit! Just shut up!”

The Majors face cracks into an ugly grin that all three of them have seen before, in dozens of propaganda movies and posters, but wince at anyway. “That’s the spirit my boy! That’s a killer fuckin instinct. Take no prisoners. Flex that sac and go get that prize!”

Garraty and McVries break out laughing, and distantly, warnings ring out for both of them. Distantly, something painfully human and broken living in Billy yearns to join them. But breathing already hurts so much, and each wheeze is making it so much worse and-

“Warning, 38 Second Warning.”

He stares at his watch, as if he can will the reading to return to 3.1 miles per hour. As if there's anything it can do for him now, “Fuck,” Even getting the words out is painful now, “I’m done.”

That quiet admission, despite their laughter, and the Major in front of them, and the noise of the jeep and the half-tracks, gets their attention.

McVries looks at him, trying to get a read on his sincerity. After a moment he shakes his head, “Hey, what if we all were to slow down at exactly the same time? What then, huh?”

“There’s no way any three humans could measure and match exactness like this instruments,” Billy swallows thickly. Tries to clear his throat. Fails. Speaks anyway, “They have it down to a science, the increments-”

“How the fuck do you know so much about the Long Walk anyway?” Garraty asks, impatient even when looking death in the face.

He takes another step. And another. And another. “It’s all on record. You ever read a book? It ain’t too hard.”

“Come on, man.” He grumbles.

“No, come on. It’s almost over. Say something real.” And then McVries is looking at him with those damn brown eyes, that still look soft in spite of the everything they’ve gone through. And something deeper, maybe that broken, still human part of Billy, cracks, just a little further.

“I’m the rabbit.”

Garraty still looks at him like he’s grown two heads, “Huh?”

“I’m the fucking rabbit. You’ve seen ‘em. Those little gray mechanical rabbits the greyhounds chase at the dog races,” The words are pouring out of him now, more honest and more real than he’s been in years, “Cause no matter how much the dogs run, they never can quite catch up- cause the rabbit- the rabbit isn’t flesh and blood.”

He can feel their eyes on him, drinking in the words as they flow out of him. It’s cold, so cold, as they reach the top of the bridge.

“Maybe you're right Garraty. Maybe we should stop being rabbits and pigs, and goats and sheep, and just be- people. Real people. Who bleed.”

He coughs, loud and noisy and painful, and for half a moment considers spitting the clot of blood and mucus that ends up in his mouth at the jeep the just goes on driving in front of them. It would never make it that far. He turns his head away from the boys, hocks it out over the rail, trying to remember just what the hell it was he had been saying.

“You wanna know how I know so much about the Long Walk?” It’s a miracle that these words too, don’t stick in his throat, “The Majors my father. I’m his bastard.”

He fixes his gaze ahead again, on the jeep, on the Major. Tries to search for some ounce of feeling -an ounce of anything but indifference- behind those stupid mirrored sunglasses. Even when he knows, he won’t find any.

“I didn’t think he knew I was his son. That was my mistake. He’s got dozens of us,” Just like that, he’s answered their questions. He can go on and die peacefully -violently- now. He keeps talking anyway, “For my wish I was going to ask to be taken into my fathers home. To be invited for tea. But I guess this rabbit really is flesh and blood.”

Garraty’s hand lands on his shoulder, warm and comforting, and Billy wants to collapse under the weight of it. He can’t look at either of them. Can’t take his eyes off the Major. Because when he does, it’ll be the last thing he ever does.

“And this flesh and blood is failing me now. I can feel my liver going. My lungs filling with fluid. And I’d like to end this shit, with my head held high. Instead of crawling on my belly, like a reptile choking on my own mucus,” He lets himself glance up, at where the dark clouds are still circling above them, “Think it’ll rain tonight boys?”

Garraty considers this for a moment, his thumb sweeping absently -comfortingly- across Billy’s shoulder, “I don’t know, but it looks that way.”

“I always loved the rain.”

This too, is a quiet admission, and its not until it slips through his lips that he realizes that he’s actually said it aloud. It’s been so long since he’s spoken to anyone like this. Garraty’s hand is warm, so warm.

“Hey, hey,” McVries voice is a kind of gentle Billy can only ever remember hearing in the dream of childhood, and suddenly his eyes are back on the boys who have walked beside him for so, so long. McVries is looking at him intently, “I’m sorry.”

“It doesn’t matter now,” He almost laughs, and then chokes on the air. Garraty squeezes his shoulder as he rights himself, reaching out to him in turn, “There’s going to be crowds. They allow them when there's two. Just the real diehards. The ones who will walk with you. Who want to see the Major do the final kill.”

This of course, is another reason why he needs to stop, and stop now. Even if by some miracle, Garraty went, and McVries didn’t follow him, or if McVries went and Garraty couldn’t stop him; Billy couldn’t handle his fathers unaffected face on the other end of the gun.

“Just don’t stop, okay?”

Somehow the question feels desperate. Maybe it’s because it is. Maybe it's because in that moment, he really does want Garraty and McVries to go on walking forever. To keep doing what he can’t. To do it together.

“I’m glad its you two.”

“It was nice walking with you, Stebbins.” Garraty squeezes his shoulder, and Billy knows its for the last time, and secretly -foolishly- wishes it wasn’t.

“An honor.”

And then they’re walking on by him, and he stops. His final warning rings out hollowly. It feels like years since he stopped moving. A soldier climbs down from the half-track, carbine lose in their grip.

“Come on. Do me.”

He’s left, on the lip of the bridge, and the rain still hasn’t started. There’s got to only be something like thirty seconds until it’s over, and it might be the longest thirty seconds Billy has ever faced.

“Fucking do me!”

Without Garraty’s hand there, he feels colder than he has ever been.

Billy Stebbins blinks awake with a start. The aching in his limbs is gone. The sickly heaviness has left his lungs. His skull, which, moments ago he was so certain was in the process of shattering under the impact of a bullet, is in tact. Something is, most definitely, not right.

He’s back in the scratchy sheets of the shitty motel room he’d woken up in five days earlier. The room he’d all but begged for, despite being too many dollars too short of a full nights fare. The landlady had looked at him skeptically, and asked why she should let him stay. When he’d answered, full confidence, that in a few days time, she’d be able to boast hosting the winner of the latest Long Walk, she had, stupidly he now thinks, believed him.

But how had he gotten back here? How was there still air in his lungs? How was he any more than something left to be scraped off that bridge, 300 miles south of here?

A dream. That’s all it must have been. He sits up in bed, scrubbing his hands over his face, clean and stubble free for the first time in days, and tells himself that it was all just a dream. His mind playing tricks on him. His nerves playing up haunting ‘what ifs’. If he doesn’t think about it too hard, focuses on the walk to come, and not the walk in his head, the faces of the other boys blur away into the back of his mind. They almost become unrecognizable.

Outside, the sky is mottled and dark, the sun just barely starting to scrape up and over the horizon. The clock on the wall reports that its barely six am, Monday morning. Two hours before he needs to report to the starting line. He sits back in bed, running over a mental itinerary he’s been honing for months. Trying not to think of all the shots he heard ring out. Of how real it all felt. Whatever human part of him that he hasn’t tamped down or drowned out must be terrified. It’s a good thing Billy has spent a long time learning how to compartmentalize his fears so far away, they might as well be a distant memory. It’s a good thing Billy has spent a long time forgetting how to be human.

He lingers under the lukewarm spray of the hotel shower for longer than he intends to, thinking distantly about how much he’ll miss feeling clean and fresh in a few days time. By the time he gets out, gets dressed, and has packed and repacked his rucksack three times, its just after seven. Downstairs, the lobby is still mostly dark, the reception desk empty. He finds the various carafes of coffee and hot water he’d eyed the night before already set out on the side board next to the empty dining room.

It takes him a few moments of searching through the various artificial sweeteners and creamers pilled beside them to find a stray tea bag, and set about making himself a cup. After a moment of hesitation, he reaches for the jar of honey tucked at the back of the station, adding a generous spoonful to the still steeping tea. Billy doesn’t normal take his tea so sweet, but if there is any day for indulgences, it has to be this.

“It’s good honey, we make it ourselves-” Billy nearly jumps at the sound of the voice, turning to find a boy a good year or two older than him standing in the doorway leading off to what must be a kitchen, “Or- the bees out back do, anyway.”

“Thanks.” His voice doesn’t stick in his throat, and the words come out without any pain. Somewhere, this registers as strange.

The boy is carrying a wash bin full of ceramic mugs, and he moves by Billy easily to begin setting them out with the others on the counter. As he moves, he examines Billy up and down, as if reading an interesting article in the paper. As he finishes with the mugs, he says, “So you must be the one.”

It might be the first thing -other than the dream- that catches Billy off guard in years. He frowns, “I’m sorry?”

“The big winner.”

“No I didn’t- I didn’t win-” It takes him a few seconds longer than it should to add, “Yet.”

“Yet,” The boy nods seriously, before moving back towards the door, “Well, Ms. T left me with strict instructions to make you anything you’d like for breakfast. Seems she’s really looking forward for the extra traffic we’ll get if you really do manage to go and win.”

There’s a pit that suddenly opens in Billy’s stomach that seems to say that this too, is foolish on her part. Almost as foolish as giving him a room free of charge last night. It takes him a moment to realize he’s being waved at to follow, and a moment longer for his feet to actually move.

“I’m Joseph, by the way,” The boy -Joseph- moves fluidly through the kitchen, sliding the wash bin back into its place under a sink and turning to look at him. There’s a moment that passes before he flashes a good natured smile, “That’s usually an invitation for you to introduce yourself to me in return.”

“Right. Right. I’m Stebbins.” He moves to sit at the small table wedged into one corner that he gestures to.

“No first name with that?” It's meant to be humorous, that much Billy can tell, but it catches him in a way he doesn’t expect, pushing at some invisible bruise he didn’t quite know was there until just now. He tries to chalk it up to his nerves still being scraped raw from that damn dream.

When he never responds, Joseph changes the subject, explaining that he was going to start on eggs and sausage for the general motel breakfast, but that Billy is welcome to whatever he wants. Sipping on his tea and suddenly unwilling to impose, Billy decides that eggs are fine.

The eggs are powdered, and as he re hydrates them and fills the skillet, Joseph explains its cheaper and easier to feed a crowd that way. “Not that we get that much of a crowd these days. But they keep longer this way anyway.”

“You don’t get people in for the Walk?”

He looks at him, half amused over his shoulder, “Nah, no one’s got the money to travel, even for that these days. I mean look at yourself, begging for a room and your competing the in the damn thing. Surely they should put guys like you up somewhere. And if they don’t well- that’s plain wrong.”

Billy opens his mouth, ready to defend the Walks practices, but Joseph cuts him off, “Sorry- just forget I said all that.”

Eventually, a plate lands before him, filled neatly with scrambled eggs and sausage links, and toast with jelly, and Joseph disappears out the kitchen door to fill the trays on the hot plates. Billy reaches for the toast first, trying to comb his ruffled thoughts back into place, and tastes tart concord grape. He thinks of home for the first time in a long time. There’s bread and jelly sitting out of the counter, and all Billy can think about is jelly sandwiches.

When Joseph reappears, he asks after the bread and jelly, and if he might make something to take with him, craving something familiar for that long, barren road. Joseph nods and laughs something melodic, and says he’ll go find some foil to wrap them in, for safe keeping.

There's a dozen or so other boys already waiting at the drop off point when he gets there, milling about. A few stand around speaking to one another. Most sit in the shade at the edge of the pavement. One boy, looking young and even a little scared, is pacing. He gets his bag checked and goes to sit in the shade. He doesn’t bother speaking to anyone, even as a few of the boys attempt to meet his eyes. Billy had never been one to make friends, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to start now.

A few faces catch in the corner of his eye, looking far more familiar than they should. He tries to chalk it up to something in his subconscious. Eventually a scrawny boy with a snaggle tooth sits beside him. Well, not close enough to say beside him, but not so far as to be distant. The boy doesn’t move to speak, thankfully, instead pulling a small sheet of colorful paper from his bag and beginning to fold it methodically.

The morning wears on, and more and more boys appear, and get their bags searched, and find places to sit and stand on the asphalt. Billy finds himself given a free -and unwanted- front row seat to a short, raven haired boy with a sharp New York accent’s speech about how it’s all about planning and adjustments. It’s nothing Billy doesn’t quite know himself, he’s been preparing for this for practically his whole life now, hasn’t he? But still, does he have to sit so close by, and talk so loud?

Two final boys join the semi circle that has formed across from him, and when he feels eyes on him, Billy looks up to find faces that look distinctly familiar. Not just the vague wave of familiarity he’d had with the others, but a wave of deja-vu strong enough to make him question just how he knew the boys who sat across from him, already leaning into each other as if pulled by some force of gravity. He tries to swallow down the odd feeling sitting at the top of his throat.

“Hey, what’s your name?” The ginger asks.

It takes him longer than it should to grit out, “Stebbins.”

The loud mouth boy scoffs, gesturing at him up and down with the orange slice in his hand, “Well Jesus, Stebbins, you some kind of fitness nut?”

This too has a vague air of familiarity, but Billy pushes the idea down as he turns away. He’s not here to make friends. He’s here to walk and to win. His whole life has come down to the next few days before him, during which he will win, or he will die. Billy does not plan on dying.

He listens to them introduce themselves anyway.

Raymond Garraty.

Peter McVries.

Art Baker.

Hank Olsen.

The Major arrives, and Billy is almost disappointed to see that he’s only human. Then the Major begins to read off names and numbers with an almost mechanical zeal, and Billy realizes that there is nothing human about either of them.

When he steps up to receive his tag, Billy looks up at where the Major stands in the back of the jeep, trying to read his face. Trying to see something he himself can’t even name in it. The Major looks back at him, almost intently, and then opens his mouth to say something other than a name or a number.

“Good luck, son.”

The world almost shatters around him. Billy doesn’t let his footsteps falter on his way back to his spot, but his heart is suddenly pounding. It’s just a figure of speech. It’s just a figure of speech. The Major must refer to everyone as son, right? Only he doesn’t. He doesn’t speak any words to any of the other boys. Doesn’t say anything more but names and numbers, and numbers and names, until all the tags have been dispersed, and he calls for them to line up and receive their speedometers and ration belts.

The walking part, as it turns out, is a lot more boring than Billy expected. The Majors jeep disappears quickly once the Walkers reach the main road, and of course after that there’s nothing to do but begin to cover the miles and miles that lay between him and the end of this race.

Its easy enough to fall to the back of the group. Most of the boys maintain a speed of 3.3 or 3.4 miles per hour. Billy knows better. For as much as the rule book contains hints that mean almost nothing -none of that bullshit about athletic socks or tennis shoes is true, and this Billy knows for a fact- Hint #13 holds true. Why walk at 3.4 when 3.1 will do?

Ahead, closer to the middle of the pack, Garraty and McVries and their entourage are talking up a storm. Even from where he lingers closer to the half-track, Billy can make out bits and pieces of their conversations. Jesus, is Olsen loud.

Billy waits until a full mile and a half has elapsed before he takes his first warning, eyes glued to his watch as his slows his pace. Exactly ten seconds after he falls to 2.9, a mechanical voice rings out from one of the half-tracks.

“Warning! 38, first warning.”

He corrects immediately, of course, looking up and looking around to gauge the reactions of the guards. Other than the stares of the other walkers around him, he finds only one set of eyes on him: a disinterested soldier from the half-track that rolls along the middle of the pack.

He can hear Olsen’s little group talking about it whether or not it was a smart move. There are still a few boys eyeing him with equal parts awe and horror. He doesn’t need them to tell him whether or not it was a smart decision. He knows what he’s doing. He’s always known what he’s doing.

He takes the foil pack from his backpack, unwrapping the first sandwich half. Tart concord grape and soft, fresh bread. It’s still early, but energy is important, and he’d rather eat them now, still fresh, than soggy and sad fifty miles down the road.

Garraty eyes him again, calling back over his shoulder carelessly, dropping back without even fully realizing it, “You think it’s smart stuffing your face with those jelly sandwiches this early?”

Billy glares at him, taking another pointed bite before calling back, mouth full, “Fuck off.”

Barkovitch, a scrappy looking blond makes a big show out of stopping and taking three full warnings to get a pebble out of his shoe half a mile later. Billy steps around him, kneeling in the road, with a laugh.

Garraty and his friends drift back, their speed inconsistent compared to Billy’s own perfect rhythm. Again, he’s given front row seats to some heated discussion he wants nothing more than to not be hearing. It’s not until Garraty says something stupid about no one signing up for the walk that the can’t help but open his mouth. This boy is going to get his ticket before he even stop walking.

“It’s not smart to talk bad about the Long Walk. That’s dissent and it’s punishable-”

“So arrest me!” Garraty scoffs.

Billy opens his mouth to say something more, but McVries is turning around, hot on Garraty’s heels, “You gonna arrest him? Didn’t fuckin think so.”

Billy considers taking another warning just to put more distance between them, but their speed varies so much that it almost doesn’t matter. Before he can decide whether or not it would be worth it, they drift forward again, although not quite enough to be out of ear shot for another mile or two.

The first boy to punch his ticket -Adam Curley White, who looks too young to be there by more years than Billy can begin to imagine- goes down crying and yelling about a Charley horse just after they hit mile seven. Garraty, for reasons that baffle Billy completely, attempts to intervene.

Curley gets his final warnings and receives his ticket before Billy has even gotten past where he collapsed onto the ground, clutching his leg in pain.

When he goes to step around the body, his foot slides in some of the blood rapidly pooling onto the pavement. He leaves a trail of bloody footprints for half a mile before the last of it comes off.

By the time it does, the Major’s jeep has reappeared at the road side, and as they walk past he says some dispassionate words about Curley’s death, that Billy barely pays attention to. Instead he eyes the Majors face; tries to make sense of his words that morning.

The miles wear on. A boy with thick glasses and a notebook -Harkness. Billy paid more attention to the role call than he meant to- drops back and tries to ask Billy questions for the book he’s writing. He humors the first two about his name and his home state before growing impatient, and questioning Harkness right back. He only gets through two of his own questions about journalistic integrity and the ethics of pre death interviews before Harkness breaks off, irritated and upset.

At some point, he hears McVries foolishly declaring his group the musketeers. Another ticket is punched, this one due to some medical issue the screenings must not have caught. Billy studies the landscape as it passes, and tries to distance himself from the slow growing ache in his feet.

He watches the other boys, as well. Can’t help it, from where he takes up residence at the back. Watches as Barkovitch taunts Rank right into getting his ticket. As Ronald gets his, pants down, shit still spilling onto the pavement. As Tressler fidgets with his radio and Patrick flips through the same sixteen page nudie magazine over and over again. As more tickets are bought, a higher number than average for the first day, Billy knows. And he watches as night falls, and boys lean on each other, or drift wildly in their sleep.

He even catches a few winks himself, or he tells himself he does, somewhere in the space between blinks.

He’s wide awake again by the time they even come close to reaching the hill. Somehow, he knows he’s the only one on the look out for it. The only one who will be prepared. It’s a wonder that the rest of the boys meet it with shock, he thinks, when disparaged cries ring out as a sign about trucks using low gear comes into view. The route has been the same for twenty years. The road has not changed.

How little they have all learned about the Walk is almost shocking, but Billy has no time to think about it now. Here, as the incline grows sharp, he picks up the pace, keeping his breathing deliberately steady. Barkovitch yells something about racing to the top, and Billy knows he’s not the only one who wants to strangle him.

He catches up to Garraty, who even in the darkness looks haggard, easily. The words fall from his mouth before he can even think to conserve his wind, “A lot of you are going to die on this hill.”

Warnings are already beginning to ring out left and right.

“Maybe more than half. Happened once, six years ago. Twenty eight in total.”

Garraty swears loudly, and then the first of the gunshots ring out.

The hill is chaos incarnate, as boys take warnings and bullets, and scramble frantically to keep moving, and knock each other down in the process. Even Billy finds himself taken by the panic, for a moment, weaving between falling bodies, and fighting to keep air moving in and out of his lungs. He knows he’s above speed, and he knows he can’t slow down.

He watches almost from outside himself, as soldiers climb down from half-tracks and don’t climb back up, each gun trailing instantly after a new target, the moment the last has picked up speed, or gone down. He sees more than hears Barkovitch yelling, taunting Harkness and Garraty and Olsen. He hears more than he sees Harkness stumble, his ankle rolling and cracking, almost more deafening than any of the gunshots ringing out around them.

Billy is one of the first to actually crest the hill, and doesn’t let himself slow back to 3.1 until he’s sure that the road has flattened out once more. He schools his breathing back into check, and tries his best not to pay attention to who surfaces behind him, and who doesn’t.

Eventually, the sun rises. Billy is surprised to find Harkness limping along beside him, his face screwed up in pain. He studies him closely for a moment, his arms crossed tight over his chest, his fingers clenching around the denim of his vest with every other step. His ankle, twisted beyond recognition.

Word had been that they’d lost 18 in all last night, and Billy assumed Harkness had been one of them. Until now, when he drifts further and further back in the pack. Until he’s nearly in line with Billy. The twisted stump of his ankle leaves smears of blood on the pavement.

He’s strong, Billy has to give him that, but it’ll be over soon.

Up ahead, McVries is loudly declaring that everyone is buggy, and asks Olsen if he wants to go for a walk. Billy keeps watching Harkness, who isn’t even watching the road anymore.

For half a moment, he considers opening his mouth, saying something. Anything. But there’s no words for this. He’s known that for a long time now.

Harkness falls back by another half a step, in line with Billy now, and then back again. It’s enough to receive a warning. He gasps, like the mechanical voice is the straw the breaks the camels back, and maybe it is. He pries his eyes open, looking around for anyone close enough to reach, “My ankle- my ankle’s all twisted up.”

Something sick and twisted in Billy’s gut wants to ask him if he’s just discovered this. Billy keeps his mouth shut, and his eyes trained on the boy who’s walked all night on nothing more than a stump.

“Warning, Number 49. Second warning.”

Billy tears his eyes away. Something in him already knows that this will be excruciating. Garraty doesn’t even turn around as he calls out, “Come on Harkness, one foot in front of the other! You got this!”

Two young boys on bikes appear at the edge of the road, drawn in by the drawl of the bull horn. A soldier climbs down from the half-track that lingers behind them all, and the kids somehow have enough courtesy to suppress their cheer. They’re going to get a front row seat to the next ticket punched. If their lucky one of the soldiers might even turn a blind eye if they duck out onto the road, to pick up a souvenir.

Harkness pulls himself back up to speed. Back in line with Billy, just a few steps more. How much farther can he drag this out? How much longer can he cling on? How much longer can Billy stand to walk beside a boy who is so clearly already dying? Already dead?

Baker starts yelling at the kids, trying to shoo them away from the road as if there’s anything that could take their attention away now.

Harkness stumbles, another gasp of pain leaving his lips as he goes down, hard. Billy turns now, even as something buried at the back of his mind screams not to, as the final warning rings out. Harkness is still pushing, still dragging himself back up off the asphalt. He’s stronger than any of them. Maybe even stronger than Billy.

Harkness makes it back upright by something Billy is torn between labeling the grace of god and the last fight of a desperate animal evading a hunter. He makes it one step. Two steps. Then three. But not fast enough.

“I- I’m gonna...” He reaches out desperately for anything that's close enough. Could’ve grabbed hold of Billy’s sleeve if those few seconds of walking hadn’t separated them, “I’m gonna go-”

Billy schools himself, pulls himself to keep taking stride after stride. To get farther and farther. He doesn’t let himself look back. Not as Harkness keeps limping along, far too slow. Not when the shot rings out. Not when the body hits the ground, already drained of life.

In front of him, Garraty is yelling. Of course he is. He’s not cut out to keep seeing things like this, over and over and over.

“You’re too emotional, Garraty,” It’s the first time he’s spoken in hours, his voice comes out hoarser than he thinks it should, and he clears his throat, trying to correct it, “That’ll get you in the end.”

McVries turns wildly, glaring at him, “You know, you hardly talk, and whenever you do, it’s fucking garbage!”

He hears someone up ahead mutter something about someone cold like him winning the whole damn thing, and tries not to smile at the thought. It seems like 33 deaths is enough for the rest of the boys to start to catch on. You can’t win this thing if you let yourself get caught up in all the death. You get caught up in it, you start feeling each one, and by the end, you may as well be dead to.

This, Billy knows. The boy he saw win, all those years ago, he was too caught up in it. Too human, just like Garraty. Just like Baker. Just like Harkness.

Billy Stebbins has spent a long time making himself inhuman. The Walk only tears humanity away, doesn’t give it back. That’s why he’s going to win. He’s the only one built for the challenge.

The miles pass and keep passing, and Billy is horrified to realize that the group of walkers has thinned out so much that he couldn’t get away from Garraty and his friends chatter even if he tried. He listens to them drone on and on about the ridiculous and the absurd as open fields roll by, broken only occasionally by the scar of an old stone wall or a scant few trees.

Whatever it is that they grow here in the Maine soil, seems to be releasing more pollen into the air than Billy’s ever had the displeasure of breathing. It doesn’t take long for his sinuses to begin playing up, forcing him to dig out the hankie his mother had embroidered with his initials, god knows how long ago. The almost summer air is warm, and gets to Billy quickly, leaving him to shuck off his jacket, and let his shirt hang open, unbuttoned.

100 miles in, and the Major addresses them once more, looking over them indifferently from the back of a moving jeep.

“How does he always look so fresh?” Baker wonders aloud in front of him, “Is he even human?”

No. Not really. But that’s not the sort of answer he’s expecting, so Billy clears his throat, “It’s not a trick. The Major sleeps at night, after supper. He even showers.”

Baker glances over his shoulder at him, “Really? That don’t seem fair.”

“It ain’t about fair.” He says this with a laugh that breaks off into something much closer to a cough.

It’s Garraty’s turn to look back at him then, “You getting’ sick, Stebbins?”

“Wouldn’t you like that Garraty,” He scoffs, turning to spit. It’ll take a lot more than this to keep him from winning this race, “Just allergies. I get ‘em every spring.”

One boy makes a break for it, and the Major doesn’t so much as glance in his direction, let alone flinch, as he’s shot down against the door of a run down diner. The glass shatters, and Billy can’t tell if it’s under the impact of the body or the bullets. Either way, he supposes the diner will have to pay for the replacement themselves.

He’s beginning to feel the weight of all the miles he’s walked. The pain he can ignore, but the heaviness that’s begun to develop in each breath, that’s a little disconcerting. It doesn’t matter. He’s already walked down most of the competition. The ones that are left are tough, but he can already see some of them fading.

As mile after mile passes, Billy begins watching the other walkers more than the passing landscape. Begins truly weeding out who will be his real competition. Who it’ll come down to, in the end. He listens to them talk about wishes, and watches Olsen retreat further and further into himself.

McVries and Parker start up a chant declaring ‘fuck the Major’ and ‘fuck the Long Walk’, and it’s only a matter of moments before almost every other remaining boy takes it up. Billy doesn’t say anything about how reckless it all is. Somehow he knows it won’t stop anything. Tresslers radio picks up a signal for a few triumphant moments, and if Billy takes some private satisfaction in the whole thing, that’s for him to know.

They lose more in the night. Another hill, though not nearly as vicious, but just as much of a challenge for the already tired. In the heat of the next day, Patrick finally breaks, climbing a half-track, and paying for it by being left, screaming in pain as his last warnings slowly rang out.

Tressler goes not long after. Heatstroke, Billy suspects. By the time night falls once more, sending frigid chills through his body, there's only seven left, and Billy would put money on losing another real soon. Olsen hasn’t spoken all day. There’s only so much longer his body can go on moving mechanically without him.

Billy’s shoulders hunch against the cold in spite of himself. Garraty’s drifted close again, close enough for Billy to lean forward, to get his attention after clearing his throat once more.

“You tired Garraty?”

He looks at him as if he’s said the most ridiculous thing in the world, and Billy feels a wave of deja-vu stronger than any he’d had at the drop off. Garraty scoffs, “Am I tire… yeah. Yeah I’m a little tired.”

“Exhausted?”

“I’m getting there.” Garraty concedes, as if he’s willing to play into whatever power thing he thinks this is, if only to get it over with faster.

Billy shakes his head. Garraty doesn’t get it. Garraty doesn’t understand the depths of exhaustion, not yet. “No. You’re not exhausted. Not yet.”

“I don’t know why I bother talking to you man,” Garraty sighs, but makes no effort to break off, still looking at Billy like he’s trying to piece together a puzzle, “It’s like talking to smoke.”

“Olsen’s exhausted. He’s almost through now.” He doesn’t quite know why he’s telling him this.

He’s gathered McVries attention now, who gives him a sharp look over his shoulder. His voice is still strong, his gait even. He might be Billy’s greatest competition, he realizes now. “You’ve got balls talking about Olsen looking the way you look.”

Billy plows on. How he looks isn’t important right now. “He shit himself. You smell that? Even I can.”

“What the fuck are you driving at man?” Garraty snaps.

“Ask your hick friend Art Baker. The mule doesn’t like the plow, but he sure does love the tasty carrots,” Billy coughs, wet and deep and painful, “Watch Olsen. He might not know it yet, but he’s lost is taste for the carrot.”

Garraty breaks off, making his way over to Olsen. McVries stays there, looking at Billy for a long time. Billy wants to open his mouth. Wants to say something else that’ll scare McVries away, or add some new degree of difficulty to whatever mental math McVries is piecing through. He can’t bring himself to find the words.

Olsen pushes away from Garraty, stumbling the opposite direction. He makes his way past them. Back toward the half-track. His hat and bag drop dully on the ground somewhere along the way.

It’s drawn out, because of course it is. A gut shot, so that none of them get any ideas. Billy tells the others as much.

That doesn’t stop Baker from running back to him, or Garraty from running after Baker. Billy isn’t sure how they make it back up to speed. How neither of them punch their tickets, despite coming so close. Bakers jacket is soaked through with Olsen’s blood.

Parker starts talking about Olsen’s girl, once they reach the real light of day. Clementine, like the orange. Like the song. Billy listens to Garraty and McVries dream up a plan about giving her money from the winnings, and even agrees to it when asked. Why the hell not? It’s not like he was ever in it for the money anyway.

Half a mile later, Barkovtich punches his own ticket with a spoon to the throat, and Billy can’t help but wonder how much pushing it would take to bring him to the same desperate state. Surely a lot, but as he gets sicker, he can’t help but feel that his limit is drawing closer and closer.

Night falls, and Billy bundles himself into his jacket again. He’s just so damn cold. His stride is beginning to wear uneven, and he can’t make himself do anything about it. The pain in his feet, in his hip, is there, numbed under how cold he is, but still there.

As the last of the sun finishes slipping beyond the horizon, they come upon a burning car. The smoke makes Billy cough before they can even really reach it. Parker kicks a can wildly, and begins to sing, “In a cavern, in a canyon, excavating for a mine…” It’s a waste of wind, and they all know it. The others begin to sing along anyway.

Billy really must be tired, because he finds himself singing too, just a few lines.

“Oh my darling, oh my darling, oh my darling Clementine…”

But even that is too much for his throat, and he doubles over, coughing. The others just go on singing, and he rights himself to find Parker has slung an arm over Baker’s shoulders, and Garraty and McVries are just as close as ever. He lets himself be jealous for as long as it takes for the singing to die out, and then tells himself that it’s only because he’s so fucking cold, and together they must be warm.

When the sun rises, it brings Billy no warmth. He fumbles for his spare shirt, wrapping it around his neck, tucking it into the collar of his jacket. The rational part of his brain knows its a fever, and probably a high one at that. Sickness isn’t unheard of, on the Walk, but now, as he wracks his brain, he can’t think of a single sick Walker that ever made it to the end. He pushes the thought away as soon as it occurs. He has to win this. He can walk through the pain. He can walk through anything, hell or high water.

Freeport, Maine, is hardly bigger than any other town they’ve passed through yet. Somehow, the sight of buildings after spending so many miles wandering through farmland feels foreign. The sidewalks are mostly empty, save for a few stray people that Garraty almost refuses to look straight at. There’s military caravans parked along the sidewalks, and its not until they make it past one that he sees her for the first time.

Mrs. Garraty stands at the edge of the sidewalk, a handkerchief clutched in one hand. She already looks ready to cry at the sight of them. Her eyes go straight to Garraty’s bare feet, his boots broken and abandoned somewhere on their way into town. “Oh baby. Oh your feet…”

Her voice is quiet, barely audible over the constant rumble of the half-track, but Billy hears her anyway. She stands there on the sidewalk, looking helpless and gaunt, and like loss has been a part of her life for far too long now. Billy tries to imagine his own mother standing there, but can’t seem to summon a clear image of her face. He can only imagine her own voice, soft and airy in his ears, “Oh, Billy- sweetheart- what have you done?”

Mrs. Garraty reaches out towards her son as they pass, and Billy knows that Garraty must be breaking up inside, because he himself feels damn near it.

“Don’t slow down Ray,” McVries warns, reaching out to grab hold of his wrist gently, “Don’t slow down…”

It’s too late. Garraty is already breaking away, running back towards his mother desperately, McVries hot on his heels. Billy watches helplessly over his shoulder, as Garraty fights against McVries pulling him back. Mrs. Garraty steps back further on the sidewalk, out of reach of her sons searching hands. She’s screaming at him that its okay, that he has to keep going, even as he apologizes. Even as he begs for a hug.

Billy can’t even hear either of their warnings over the yelling as it echos in his ears. He drags in heaving breath after heaving breath. Why would she come? Why torment either of them like that? But he knows that even after everything, he’d give anything to see his own Mama again, just for a minute. Even if it meant breaking her heart. Even if it meant breaking his.

Somewhere in the infinite torment of the moment, he realizes. Realizes that long before he stepped foot on this road, he had forsaken his Mama for a man who didn’t blink in the face of death. Who wouldn’t blink in the face of Billy’s death. Why did he come?

McVries is dragging Garraty away, and Parker is cursing out any soldier who so much as looks at any of them. Billy keeps walking, because it’s the only thing left that he can do.

Something like six miles later, after Freeport has faded into the distance, Parker snaps while Billy is in the middle of proposing -nearly begging- for the remaining Musketeers to stop helping each other. It’s getting down to the wire, and Billy is beginning to realize that this whole thing must be much easier with someone to lean on.

Parker doesn’t respond when he calls his name. Instead he drops his bag and runs at the nearest jeep. It’s almost impressive, for the first few moments, when he shoots down one of the soldiers, and calls for McVries to join him. It doesn’t last long. He’s down on his knees, with blood on his hands by the time the rest have finished shuffling past.

His singing rings in Billy’s ears for miles, as Bakers nosebleed worsens, and he stumbles between Garraty and McVries for support.

“It’s an internal hemorrhage,” He hears his own, distorted voice saying, “Pretty common.”

“Stebbins, please. Come on.” Garraty’s voice is desperate.

Billy watches them say goodbye. Watches them comfort Baker in the end. Garraty and McVries don’t look back once Baker pulls himself away, but Billy does. Watches him trail across the road, almost drunkenly, until his time runs out, and the soldiers put an end to it.

They’re nearing Boston. One of the longest Walks in history. The fact should make Billy glow with pride. It even might have, 300 miles ago. He’s too tired and too cold to care anymore. He can’t do this anymore. He can’t out walk two boys who stopped being two and started being one after barley an hour on the road.

This thought occurs to him as the Major’s jeep pulls up onto the bridge in front of them. Garraty starts yelling, telling the old man to shut up. Calling him a lotus eater. The same familiar feeling washes over Billy again. He’s gotten this far before. He’s heard those words before, hasn’t he?

“Hey, what if we all were to slow down at exactly the same time?” McVries asks.

“There’s no way any three humans could measure exactness like these instruments.” His own voice sounds mechanical and foreign, and he swears this isn’t the first time he’s said these words.

Garraty is staring at him again. Garraty is always staring at him. “How the fuck do you know so much about the Long Walk anyway?”

“It’s all on record. You ever read a book? It ain’t too hard…” Even the deflection feels hollow. Billy can feel the bigger admission building inside him, ready to burst out even before McVries interrupts him.

“No- man come on. Come on. Say something real.”

He looks at them for a long moment. Why the hell not? Something deeply broken in his subconscious clearly wants to unload on them, and why should it matter? He’s going to be dead in a matter of a few minutes anyway. This, Billy knows.

“I’m the rabbit.”

Garraty stares at him, the way he did before Olsen punched his ticket, and suddenly Billy understands why he’d known that look all those miles ago.

“I’m the fucking rabbit. You’ve seen ‘em. The mechanical rabbits the greyhounds chase at the races. No matter how fast the dogs run, they can never catch up, because the rabbit isn’t flesh and blood. You’re right Garraty maybe we need to stop being pigs and sheep and rabbits and dogs and just be people. Real people. Who bleed.” The words pour out of him like a monologue he’d memorized and promptly forgotten until cued in again.

Garraty and McVries are still staring at him. He laughs deliriously, head thrown back. His skin feeling dangerously warm against the freezing cold of the night air.

“You want to know how I know so much about the Long Walk?” He looks up at where the jeep rolls along. Where the old man stands, watching, listening. Completely indifferent. “The Major’s my father. I’m his bastard. I didn’t think he knew I was his son. That’s where I made my mistake, he’s got dozens of us.”

There’s no point to any of this. Saying the words, they don’t lift any weight off his chest. It’s not some big revelation. Not when he’s suddenly so certain he’s told them this all before. Maybe that’s just the fever talking.

“For my wish I was going to ask to be taken into my fathers home. To be invited for tea,” Billy coughs again, heavy and horrible, and spits blood and phlegm and something he tells himself might be a piece of his liver up onto the metal of the bridge. It’s disgusting. He’s disgusting. Why did he do this?

There’s still words falling from his mouth, despite the blood. “But I guess this rabbit is flesh and blood. And that flesh and blood is failing me now. Has been failing me for a few hundred miles. God what the hell are we doing here?”

Now that, that at least, feels different. A break in routine.

“Hey, I’m sorry.” McVries voice is terrifyingly genuine, and Billy makes himself look away from the Major for the first time to find that his face is just as soft and real, despite the late night, and the haze of the half-track mounted lights around them.

Billy stumbles at the sight. Takes another warning. Was that his second, or his final? He can’t remember anymore. It doesn’t matter either way. The work is over. Garraty and McVries will go on, and try to kill themselves to let the other win. Of this, Billy is fairly certain.

“I’m glad it’s you two.” He spits out this final truth, and stops walking. Being out of motion makes him feel like the whole universe has gone off balance.

Garraty turns, tries to grab at him. Billy sees McVries put a hand on his arm to stop him as they keep moving away, makes out his soft voice over the sound of the half-track. He keeps looking at Billy over his shoulder, and Billy feels the warm weight of understanding. It’s something he hasn’t felt in a long damn time. “It’s okay. He’s done.”

“I’m done.” Billy can’t help but repeat, breathless.

He doesn’t hear his final warning. He might not even make it long enough to earn a bullet. His stomach heaves suddenly, and more viscera is spilling from his mouth as he hits the floor of the bridge.

Faintly, as the darkness closes in on him, he thinks it looks like it might rain.

Billy Stebbins blinks awake in the scratchy motel room sheets at six am, Monday May 1^st, for the third time. Something isn’t right. He’s certain of it now. He couldn’t have dreamed so vividly. Not the same thing twice. But then what the hell was happening? How many times can he go down this road? How many times can he prove to be nothing more than cannon fodder?

He throws himself out of the bed, mind whirling. This isn’t right. This isn’t right. He must be cracking under the pressure. The machine of his mind wearing out after so much weight placed on a span of so few days.

Billy finds himself staring at himself in the small mirror hanging over the chest of drawers that sits in one corner of the room. He looks half wild with panic. A thought hits him with a kind of clarity that cuts like a knife. He should be dead twice over. He should be nothing more than blood and bones being scrapped off of a bridge some 300 miles south of here.

What the hell is going on?

When he stumbles downstairs, hastily dressed, rucksack slipping down one shoulder, he’s met with a tired looking boy, standing in front of the front desk in the motel lobby. The boy -Joseph, though there’s no logical reason for Billy to know that- is leaning over to read a note that had been left on the counter. He must have only just stepped through the door, his keys still dangle from one hand along side a lunch sack.

“Joseph.” Billy doesn’t even realize he’s breathed the name aloud until the man startles, looking up at him.

They stand there for a long moment looking at each other. Joseph by the front desk, and Billy on the last step, his heart still hammering in his throat. What the hell is going on? Eventually Joseph glances back at the scrap of paper on the counter and seems to decide something, clearing his throat, “So you must be the walker then. Ms. T must’ve told you I’m the one fixing your breakfast.”

Billy must look about as bad as he feels, because he adds, “Are you alright?”

No. No he’s not alright. He’s walked to his death, woken up, and walked again, and died again, and woke up here. Nothing could possibly be alright. Either he’s really died and gone to hell, or he’s losing his mind.

But he can’t say any of that, can he? Instead he clears his throat. Grits out, “Yeah. Fine.”

What can he do at all? What can he do but let Joseph usher him into the kitchen with too kind words, and a too gentle smile? What can he do, but ask meekly for tea and toast, and try to parse together just what the hell is going on?

He arrives at the drop off exactly on time. It had taken nearly two hours of hovering behind Joseph in the kitchen to convince himself that it’s just a small, weak part of him, giving into the stress. Mental states become fragile on the Walk, it’s not uncommon for a Winner to crack under the pressure, Billy knows.

It’s just a little uncommon for that to happen before hand. It won’t matter, Billy tells himself as he scans the growing crowd of too familiar faces, he can sacrifice a little of his mind if it means winning this thing one and for all.

He stays away from the others this time, putting as much distance between himself and Olsen’s loud mouth as he can. The deja-vu is hitting him in massive waves now, with almost every word out of Olsen’s mouth.

It’s just his nerves. Just his brain latching on to something in the dark, and clinging to it. His mind making its own twisted escape hatch to disappear into once the real race has begun. This, he reminds himself of, over and over and over, as Curly paces, and Rank folds origami swans, and Garraty and McVries shuffle in to take their places with the other Musketeers.

He shouldn’t know any of those names. Not yet. But if he doesn’t linger on them long, he doesn’t have to bring himself to think any further on the why or the how of it all.

At 8:30, the Major appears, and Billy does his best not to look at him right up until the moment his has to. As his tag is placed around his neck, the Major looks down at him, and all Billy can see is that unflinching, uncaring face. The one that watched, disinterested, as Billy put his whole life into getting closer to him. The one who looked on, unbothered, when Billy was left on that bridge, 300 miles from here, demanding for an end.

“Good luck, son.” The words feel hollow in his ears. Like there’s no real weight to them. Maybe there isn’t, but Billy spends the next few minutes, as the rest of the names are called, inflating those 3 words with meaning. Telling himself that the Major is pulling for him. Praying to a god he never really believed in that that will be enough to get him through. Once, it might have been.

He walks, and he walks, and every time he hears a snatch of the Musketeers conversation, he’s hit with the same wave of deja-vu. The same wave of panic, and fear, and wondering what is happening. He walks, and every time they come into ear shot, he has to remind himself that his brain is playing tricks on him.

He finds himself toying with his lucky rabbits foot, running the pad of his thumb over its fur over and over again. He reaches for the foil pack of sandwiches, and eats his last one. Garraty stares at him over his shoulder, and says, “You’re gonna get jelly on that key chain if your not careful.”

That's not what he normally says.

The thought -and Garraty’s words- catch him so off guard he stumbles, earning a warning and losing the last half of his sandwich in the process. Garraty looks at him strangely for a long moment -the way he usually does, as if being presented with a problem he doesn’t quite know how to solve- and then turns around again.

Billy quietly mourns the jelly sandwich, and what is surely the last bit of his sanity.

Four days and 300 miles later, he’s sick as a dog, and nearly retreated as far in on himself as Olsen was. Only Garraty and McVries remain beside him, but he hasn’t taken much notice of them for a while now. They’ve been talking quietly between themselves. He thinks he might have choked out some shit about the Major and being the rabbit a few miles back, before Baker went, but he can’t be sure now. He went so long without talking to anyone, that even if he did, his voice might not have worked. Even if it did, the others might not have been listening.

The whole world has developed a fuzzy edge. There’s not much longer left now. Billy wonders idly, if his world will start over on Monday morning again, or if this was his last shot. The best two out of three.

He doesn’t have time to even begin pondering the question, because Garraty is shouting. He turns to see McVries on the ground, and Garraty above him, pulling at him, begging him to get up. McVries pushes him off, stays rooted to the ground. Lets Garraty get dragged away, and accepts his ticket quietly. That’s new.

Garraty is still yelling desperately, even as he walks further and further away from the body, “No! Me! Me! Shoot me!”

“Let it go,” His voice is hoarse and gravelly, and just barely audible over the rain. When did it start raining? “If there really is such things as souls, his is still close. You’ll catch up to him.”

Garraty looks at him for a long, hard moment. They keep trudging through the night. Billy isn’t sure how much longer he can do this, but he never made it this far before. Maybe if he can just make it a bit farther. If he can just make it til the crowd assembles. Maybe then he just might do it.

He feel warm, too warm, despite the rain, and the chill that had come over him at mile 218 that had refused to leave. Just a little further. Just a little further. He was certain now that if he could just out walk Garraty, if he could just win this damn thing, he wouldn’t wake back up in that motel room.

“Stebbins.” A burning hot hand lands on his shoulder.

It takes him a moment longer than it should to place Garraty’s gaunt face. He feels something deep inside of him give out. He reaches, clinging to Garraty’s shirt desperately. Not like this. Not like this. He’s so close.

“Oh Garraty!” Billy is certain they won’t even need to call warnings, or reach for a carbine, before he even hits the ground.

Billy Stebbins blinks awake in the scratchy motel room sheets at 6am, on Monday, May 1^st, for the fourth time and decides that he might be in hell.

Chapter Text

He’s being tested. He must be. There’s no other explanation. Nothing else that could possibly make sense. There are, of course, other possibilities, but every one of those points towards his being dead or in the process of dying, and he’d rather not think about that.

Pacing back and forth across the length of the shitty motel room, Billy becomes certain. If he wants to break this terrible cycle, he needs to win.

He uses his time at the drop off to stretch, paying extra attention to the hip that always becomes a problem in the last two days of the walk. He stays at the back of the pack, conserving his energy, and his wind, and biting down on every urge to speak out when something stupid leaves Garraty’s mouth.

He dies sometime during the third night, already feverish and near delirious, tripping over his own feet, having not spoken a single word to anyone, Garraty or otherwise.

The problem of course, he realizes, laying in the motel bed, lies in the fact that he’s spent his whole life preparing for this Walk. If there were something different he should be doing in order to win, he would have found it by now. Years upon years spent on research alone. On understanding the best strategies, on studying past winners and finding their weak spots. On insuring that those same weak spots did not lie in him.

So how can he coax his body into staying together a little longer? How can he beat out the sickness laying in wait in him somewhere?

The odds are stacked against him, that much is certain, but if there is any test that Billy can -needs- to pass, it’s the test of the Long Walk. This is his whole life, and he will not let that life be for nothing.

Billy walks and dies and walks and dies.

Progress is impossible to track. The miles he surpasses mean nothing, when his sickness sets in just differently enough each time to be unpredictable. The number of other boys he out walks, means just as little, when sometimes Harkness makes it up the hill and keeps writing for another four days, or when Parker snaps sooner, or later, or when Barkovitch doesn’t snap at all and is still going strong by the time everything else dwindles to just Billy, Garraty and McVries. He gets close, makes it to the final three consistently, except for all the times he doesn’t. Except for all the times he coughs himself to the point of suffocating on day two, or missteps on the rainy nights or nods off into a fever sleep at the wrong moment and steps off a bend in the road, unknowing.

He walks and dies and walks and dies.

The eleventh time he walks, Freeport becomes its own, terrible nightmare. He coughs something awful all morning, feeling his lungs tearing themselves apart with every heavy breath. Coughs until it’s not just mucus that surfaces in his mouth every time, but bloody bile that stings he throat even further. His body is still trudging on mechanically, because of course it is. At this point he’s not sure if he’ll ever be able to stop of his own volition. He hasn’t bee able to make himself stop since those first two times, not that he’s put much effort into trying.

They make it into Freeport just after 10am, Garraty kicking off his busted boots like clockwork. Billy barley notices it anymore. He’s too busy coughing, and spitting every few steps. Mrs. Garraty stares at them as they pass, and Garraty runs back to her, and Billy stopped watching five cycles ago. It’s not worth the heart break, he knows.

McVries has just managed to pull Garraty away when Billy barks up a particularly painful cough, doubling over, grinding to a halt at the force of it. McVries and Garraty are too busy getting back up to speed to even take notice of him, hunched in the road, earning a warning of his own.

But Ginnie Garraty, she sees. Lets out a gasp that strikes straight through to Billy’s core even as he’s hacking up blood onto the pavement.

“Oh sweetheart…” She sounds desperate. For a moment she almost sounds like his Mama, standing there, watching him in horror. He forces himself forward a few steps. He can’t do this. Not here. He can’t make her watch this.

“Keep walking! Come on, sweetheart, keep walking!” She sounds just as frantic as she had moments early, with Garraty, and for half a second Billy thinks the ginger has stopped moving again, but when he manages to look up for long enough, he sees this isn’t true. Garraty and McVries are still walking along ahead of him, staring back over their shoulders in horror.

So why is she yelling? Doesn’t she know Billy’s survival means her own sons death? She should be cheering. Getting ready to dance on his grave. She goes on yelling anyway, as more warnings ring out, and Billy’s knees hit the ground before he even realizes he’s falling.

“No! No! He’s hurt- please god- he’s hurt you can’t-”

He’s vaguely aware that someone must be dragging her back onto the sidewalk, but he can’t quite think clearly enough as to why that would need to happen. Half lidded, he watches Mrs. Garraty struggling against the soldiers, as if there’s anything to be done about it now.

He shouldn’t have made her watch this. He should’ve kept going. Should’ve made it around the next street corner. Should’ve made it anywhere but here.

For a brief, terrible moment, just as he’s sure a carbine is being raised to his temple, her eyes lock onto his. He misses his Mama something awful.

“I’m sorry…”

There’s no way she can hear him. Not over the half-tack and the soldiers, and his own terrible, sputtering breaths. He’s sorry anyway.

Billy wakes up after receiving his eleventh ticket, tears streaming from his eyes, guilt burning in his chest, and wishes desperately for some sort of reprieve from this torture. He lets himself lie there for longer than his normally does, until his tears finally dry up. Until he feels like he could continue.

His mind wanders, as he showers and dresses, wondering what it would mean if he simply didn’t show up at the starting line. Would it be enough to break the cycle? And even if it wasn’t, then it wouldn’t matter, in the long run, would it? He’d still wake back up here, on Monday morning, wouldn’t he? Surely, it would be worth it, if not for the extra rest it would afford him, but for the sake of the experiment. For all he knows, this will break the cycle, so he may as well try, right?

He talks himself out of it five different times before he’s even made it downstairs, where Joseph greets him warmly, as he always does. Billy lets the time pass easily, offering help in preparing breakfast, and listening to Joseph explain away little pieces of his life.

He’s just finished telling Billy about his brief time in the squads, when he’d learned to cook and clean and hate, when he glances up at the clock, “Christ, here I am talking your ear off and now you’re going to be late.”

“I’m not going.” The words leave Billy’s lips before he even has a chance to consider them. If anyone could understand turning their back on the walk, it had to be Joseph. In the long moment that followed, as Joseph looked at him, though, he was worried he didn’t.

Eventually, Joseph nods, “Okay. What’ll you do instead?”

Oh. Billy hadn’t thought that far. He shrugs, feeling uncharacteristically free and light, “I don’t know. Stay here with you maybe?”

This too is a reach, he knows. He might have spent nearly two weeks worth of mornings getting to know Joseph slowly, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t misread this whole thing. He braces himself, focusing back on the dishes he’s meant to be drying, waits for the terrible rejection. For the disbelief and the hatred.

Instead, Joseph laughs, rinsing another pan, “Well. I normally only stay until around noon to finish off some chores for Ms. T. I’ve got another gig at the diner across town, but with the Walk, I’ve got the day off,” He searches for Billy’s eye, and waits until he’s gotten it to lean forward and grin, “We could go wherever the hell we want.”

Neither of them points out the consequences that come with failing to arrive to the drop off. They flash in Billy’s mind for a brief moment, but he can’t bring himself to remind Joseph of them, to acknowledge them out loud. Maybe it’s better that way.

He helps Joseph with cleaning the kitchen and the lobby dining room, hauling trash out to the dumpster, and refilling cleaning supplies on the upper floor. Between the two of them they get through Joseph’s chores easily, ducking out the lobby entrance by 10. Billy tries not to think about how the walk is already well under way. About how Curly will be getting that charley horse any minute now. The thought sticks there in the back of his mind, right along side the danger he’s courting by missing the back out date and not showing up.

Joseph leads him out to the beat up old truck parked along one side of the building. It’s a junker of a thing, Billy can tell by just looking at it, but any car is better than none these days. They climb in, and Joseph grins at him, “Where to?”

Billy considers this for a moment as if he’d have any idea. Eventually, as Joseph fiddles with the radio, he admits, “I don’t know. I’d barely ever left West Virginia until this week, let alone come this far north.”

“Well then, I’ll show you something they don’t have down there,” Joseph puts the truck in gear, and waits until they’re out driving on the main road to ask, “You lived there your whole life?”

“My whole life,” Billy confirms, watching Joseph watch the road, “Just like my Mama. Well- she used to travel some, when she was younger but then…”

Joseph picks up where he trailed off, making a vague motion with the hand not on the wheel. “But then the War and the Squads and everything. I get it.”

“Something like that,” It’s all he means to leave it at, but then he finds his mouth opening almost of it’s own accord, half lost in the memory, “She used to make me these jelly sandwiches, everyday to bring to school. Concord grape, homemade. Used to have vines growing on the trellis out back.”

Joseph hums, thoughtfully, like he’s waiting for Billy to continue, but there’s nothing else he can say now. A lump builds in his throat, thinking about his mama, picking grapes and feeding the chickens after a long day of work. He turns his head to watch the forest pass, and Joseph doesn’t push.

Maine, as it turns out, is home to more than just roads and fields. Joseph parks the truck in a dirt turn off, and then leads Billy up a winding trail, through the trees, and past a stream of icy blue water. It’s nice, to walk along something other than the deserted highway, where shade is obtainable, and the terrain varies.

Before Billy knows it, they reach the top of the rise, where the trees give way to a clearing, overlooking the sleepy little town they’d left. If he squints, he swears he can just make out the scrap of highway he’s spent days upon days walking along. He’s playing a dangerous game, he knows that. Joseph produces an old, moth eaten blanket for them to sit on, from the backpack that had been half stuffed under the passenger seat of the truck.

Billy sits down beside him, closer than he’d dare. Close enough for their shoulders to brush. Close enough that he second guesses himself the moment he does it, until Joseph fixes him with another easy going smile.

“I’ve never done anything like this before.” Billy admits.

For half a moment, Joseph frowns, glancing pointedly at the space -or lack thereof- between them, “Like this?”

“Well yeah-” He feels ashamed, looking away, back out over the town, “I guess I meant more- doing nothing. Relaxing. I’ve spent my whole life preparing for this thing. Feels like I’ve already been walking for ages.”

Joseph lets out a noise, something between a laugh and a scoff. He gives Billy an incredulous look, “Waste of time that turned out to be, huh?”

Something in Billy smarts at that. Its a joke, he knows that, but it still pushes up a wave of self loathing and humiliation. Yes, Billy knows exactly how much of his life he’s wasted. He can feel every wasted year, every wasted second, with every ticket he punches. With every time he wakes up, back in that god forsaken motel. What was the point of all of it, if he couldn’t just do the one thing he was ever good for?

“Jesus- sorry. I didn’t mean it like that,” Yes he did. Billy knows what Joseph thinks of the Walk, and the Major, and the Squads, even if he’s never said it out loud in any of these loops. Joseph keeps talking anyway, “I just- can’t understand it. Why would you do that? You couldn’t have known you would be picked.”

“I signed up every year I was eligible, and even a few times when I wasn’t,” Billy drags his gaze back up off the dirt beneath them, looking at Joseph with an intensity he usually found himself reserving for Garraty, “And anyway, what else was I supposed to do? Run out and join the squads?”

Joseph cringes under the weight of the words, nodding and putting his hands up in surrender. His voice is tight when he says, “I see.”

They sit there in silence for a few long moments, looking at each other, Billy fidgeting with his rabbits foot. Eventually, Joseph looks away and speaks again, down shifting into safer conversation.

They talk about some of the trails that Billy used to walk back in West Virginia, and the different Maine mountains Joseph has summited, and try to pretend that they hadn’t stepped on sore nerves. Eventually, they split the sack lunch Joseph had packed, and a few other things that they’d swiped from the kitchen on the way out.

After they eat, Billy lays back, stretching out in the sun. He’s not sure what possesses him to speak on it again. Maybe it’s the way that laying here, watching the few clouds drifting over head, he doesn’t have to look Joseph in the eye.

“It was a foregone conclusion. The Walk. It was just something I had to do. Something I was going to win. Because- because I needed to. Before I had never doubted that I was going to win, but-” But then he hadn’t won. Hadn’t won eleven times over. Had done nothing but die, over and over and over.

He clears his throat, swallowing down the lump that had grown there, desperately, “I signed up for the walk, Tantalus thinking he could steal ambrosia from the gods. But I know how that story goes. And I don’t want to be stuck, reaching for something I can’t ever grasp, forever.”

Joseph doesn’t say anything. Just lays back beside him, his shoulder pressing against Billy’s. It’s all Billy can do to keep choking back the tears that threaten to leak from his eyes.

The Squad jeeps are waiting at the trail head for them. It’s not surprising. Somewhere, Billy is silently grateful that the Major’s men had the decency to wait for them to come down, rather than surround them while they were still at the top. They barely make it off the path before they’re being grabbed, Billy hauled off one direction as Joseph is forced down onto his knees.

The Major is there, because of course he is. It’s not like he makes more than a few appearances during the walk anyway. He grins that ugly grin down at them, “Billy Stebbins, you must think yourself one special son of a bitch.”

The Major is poking at a bruise he knows damn well is there. It ignites a fire in the pit of Billy’s stomach. Makes him furious. Because how dare he- how fucking dare he stoop so low. He has no god damn right. Almost as if they can sense it, the soldiers grip on him tightens.

The Major, sensing his discomfort, grins wider, before turning on Joseph, “And you. Joseph Millard. Here I was thinking I would never have to see the likes of a coward like you again, and yet here you are. And aiding a fugitive no less.”

Joseph meets his mirrored sunglasses with a scoff. He’s braver than Billy would have thought to give him credit for, “He’s hardly a fugitive.”

“You know as well as I that failure to arrive to the starting line of the Long Walk on time is a criminal offense. Of course, given your history, I find your aiding and abetting such a criminal to be unsurprising.”

“He had nothing to do with this,” Billy’s angry voice is startling, even to himself. He glares up at the Major, refusing to back down, “I chose to skip out on my own- I made him-”

“Can it, son.” The Major is already drawing his side arm, an old Colt that Billy has seen brandished time and time again. He chambers a round and clicks the safety off without even looking, “Mr. Millard you have been a thorn in my side for quite some time now, but I am going to give you one last chance to stand firm and pledge-”

“This has nothing to do with him!” Billy yells desperately, struggling against the arms that bind him like iron chains. As if he can do anything. As if anyone could.

He didn’t want this. Lord knows he didn’t want this. He just wanted a break. A moment of peace. God damn it why couldn’t he have gotten it without such a cost? The Major is still speaking, but Billy can’t hear him over the sudden roaring in his ears as he fights to get loose.

Joseph’s eyes flick between Billy and the Major, as the puzzle pieces he hadn’t known he was fiddling with fit into place. The resemblance is right there in front of his face. His brow furrows as he meets Billy’s eye one last time. It’s a futile attempt at communicating. Not that anything short of a few quick words could ever get across the barrel of a gun.

“I’m so sorry.” Billy chokes.

“May god have mercy on your soul.”

Billy wakes up nauseous with guilt, tangled in shitty motel room sheets, and with a vague memory of fighting like a rabid animal caught in a trap until a bullet had finally caught up with him. When he does manage to venture downstairs, he can’t look Joseph in the eye. Might not ever be able to manage to again.

Joseph, poor, sweet Joseph, shows him just as much kindness as he ever did, even when Billy knows he does not deserve it.

He’s still trying to swallow down his guilt by the time the starting gun is being fired, the foil wrapped jelly sandwiches that Joseph had insisted he take after he’d seen him eyeing the bread and jelly, threatening to burn a hole in his pocket.

He can’t keep doing this. The living and the dying and the watching the people around him die too. The being able to do absolutely nothing about it. Even on the day’s where he holds out against the sickness, where he’s in his prime for longer, he just can’t out walk Garraty and McVries.

Billy keeps walking anyway. Maybe this time. Maybe this time. Maybe this time.

He watches, as Curley’s leg cramps up, and Garraty sweeps in to the rescue. It’s not a smart move. It never is. They limp along together for a long time, Garraty pulling Curley’s weight, McVries and the others at their side calling encouragements. Eventually, the cramp must loosen, because Curely goes on walking on his own again, but still refuses to leave Garraty’s side.

Curley makes it farther than Billy has ever seen before, carrying on into the night having been absorbed into the musketeers with a kind of ease that strikes at something in Billy’s chest. He chalks it up to his oncoming pneumonia, and almost even believes himself.

His luck -Curley’s that is- can only last so long. It’s the hill that does him in. Of course it is. With Garraty and McVries spat -which happens less and less as the loops go on, not that Billy has paid any attention- the boy goes unnoticed in the chaos. Unnoticed by anyone used to helping him, anyway.

McVries is too busy trailing after Garraty, and Baker too busy half dragging an already flagging Olsen to notice his huffing and puffing. Billy watches the too skinny, too small frame dodge between falling bodies and bullets, stumbling and nearly miss stepping and gasping for air all the while. He’s never had to climb the hill before, Billy thinks idly. He’s long since stopped worrying over the hill. It’s a waste of energy when he knows he’ll either make it to the top, or just start over early.

He draws in line with Curley for a few horrible moments near the end. He doesn’t even realize that Curley has already gained so many warnings, and maybe Curley hasn’t either, until there’s a soldier trailing him, carbine at the ready. Billy can see his terrified face, haloed by the floodlights from the half-tracks. He looks so young.

Why would anyone in their right mind lie on their application when they had so much life left to live? Billy feels the bite of irony as soon as the thought crosses his mind. Curley turns to him suddenly then, still gasping for air, reaching out like there is anything Billy can do for him.

Billy still feels the hand gripping at his sleeve, for miles. For days. Even as the bullet enters his skull. Even as he wakes up, surrounded by scratchy sheets.

Billy walks and dies and walks and dies, and does not think about all the ways he might have helped Curely get up the hill, if he were just a little kinder.

Nine loops later, Billy watches Garraty pull the same risky stunt, grabbing Curley by the backpack straps and pulling him along. He’s watching from closer than normal, nearer to the middle of the pack, though not by choice. Harkness hadn’t let up with his questions, even when he’d tried to shoo him away, leaving him no choice but to speed up and leave him behind.

It’s clear from the beginning that there’s no coming back from this cramp for Curley. Not this time. Garraty sticks with him anyway, racking up warnings of his own. Billy can hear McVries desperate voice from where he walks a few paces behind.

“Not like this, compadre. Not like this.”

Billy sees the pained look Garraty throws back at his partner, “I can’t leave him, Pete. I can’t.”

“It’s not worth it Garraty,” It’s the first time he’s said more than a few words during the Walk in more loops than he can count. He’s almost startled by his own voice, “You can’t exactly walk him over the finish line.”

Ray gives him a long, hard look, before all but spitting, “Fuck you, Stebbins.”

It’s not the first time Garrraty has snapped at him, but it is the first time that Billy could actually feel the hatred behind the words. He reaches for his canteen, trying to hold on to some illusion of indifference as they drop further back.

McVries is still staring over his shoulder at Garraty, far too desperate over someone he’s really only known for a few hours now. It’s a ticket -a tragedy- given in slow motion. Garraty desperately yanking Curley back up to speed every time they fall below, even when each step is taken on borrowed time. The shots don’t ring out until a full five minutes later, when they have fallen back far enough to be completely removed from the group.

It’s the fastest he has ever seen Garraty get his ticket. McVries looks incomplete without the other man at his side. Billy gets a glance at his face and sees that McVries is feeling the imbalance just as much.

Once he realizes Harkness has become distracted questioning a surprisingly willing Barkovitch, Billy lets himself fall back, monitoring his speed carefully. As if the loss of Garraty pushed him into Billy’s orbit, McVries follows, almost thoughtlessly.

They walk together in silence for three or four miles. At the back of the group, there’s no sounds but the constant thunder of footfalls, and the rhythmic rumble of the half-tracks. Billy has only seen one without the other once, and never McVries with no Garraty.

McVries looks up, finds him watching, and doesn’t look the slightest bit surprised. He sighs, “Feels off kilter. Without him.”

“You met four hours ago.” Billy points out without meaning to.

McVries just shakes his head, “Feels like a lifetime.”

What was it that he had said to Garraty, all those loops ago? “You’ll catch up to him.”

“Man that’s one hell of a way to say you think I’ll punch my ticket.” There’s no malice to his voice, in fact it holds something Billy might call amusement.

“No I mean- you’re always together. Every time. You two might be the only god damn consistent thing in all of this.”

Now, McVries finally looks confused. He stares at Billy for a long moment, trying to make sense of the world. Eventually he shakes his head, “You sure you passed the psych evals?”

“Being frank, I’m not so certain I did anymore,” Billy fixes his own gaze forward, at the boys scattered in front of them. He’s not sure why he’s still talking. There must be something about McVries that magically ekes the truth out of him, “I keep waking up, at six am this morning, no matter how far into this damn thing I get.”

He can feel McVries looking at him. Finally, he shakes his head with a chuckle, “Man, you’re as crazy as Barkovitch.”

Billy nods solemnly, “Quite possibly.”

They carry on next to each other far into the night, sometimes in silence, sometimes talking more than Billy had ever dared. The musketeers are never formed. Baker and Olsen trudge along somewhere ahead, making friends with Parker and Harkness. He learns about McVries’s poetry, and his plans to simply sit down once he gets tired enough. In turn he finds himself telling him about how no matter how prepared he started, he can’t seem to win.

It’s pointless to tell him any of it, Billy knows. Still, he can’t seem to find any fault in it.

Eventually, night falls, and when he does manage to nod off, he feels Pete’s arm guiding him in the dark.

He wakes to the feeling of rainfall, and can tell with just a glance around at who’s still walking that they’re getting close to mile 50. Pete grins at him, still awake, arm still slung around him, “Ain’t this refreshing?”

“I always liked the rain.” It feels nice to say something so simple without blood and bile scratching at his throat.

Pete is still looking at him, eyes soft against the dark night, “Me too.”

It’s still raining when they make it to the hill. The pavement is slick with the rain, and then sticky with the blood, and Billy hasn’t had such a hard time since early on in this nightmare. They go down, slipping and sliding, clinging to each other, like any lifeline could save them now.

Billy goes back to his place at the back of the pack after that. He walks and dies and walks and dies and does not think of the warmth of McVries arm around him.

He walks and walks, and never seems to get any closer to winning.

He’s tired all the time now, even when he first wakes in the motel room after every ticket. It’s a different kind of tired. An exhaustion that begins to weigh him down from somewhere inside his rib cage. There’s only so much of this he can take.

Billy has learned how to deal with exhaustion. He digs in his heels, burrows in deeper. Lets his mind wander through any escape hatch it can create, and stay there, for as long as possible. His movements, mechanical, even when his body tries desperately to prove it is flesh.

Once, when Billy was younger- before any of this loop bullshit, when he still had an ambition of winning for the sake of being taken to tea, and not just to put an end to the nightmare. Once, when he was fifteen and angry, he watched the Major deliver someones final ticket.

When Billy was fifteen, he was angry at everything. At his mother, for getting sick, at the doctors, who were never doing their jobs. At the world, for all of it’s injustice to him. At everyone but his father; the myth of a man who sat on the other side of the dingy tv screen, beckoning him to come and walk.

He’d joined a group of boys who was riding up to see the final stretch, and paid a few hard earned dollars toward gas, and was rewarded with a window seat for it. They caught up with it at just the right time too, when the third place loser had fallen away, and spectators were finally allowed in.

He’d heard the half-tracks before he’d seen them, and then two ragged looking boys had appeared, trudging through the afternoon heat. They looked half dead, limping along, holding on to one another. One of the boys had lost his shoes. His feet looked like the mangled road kill they had passed on the highway on the way up. Billy had winced at the sight of them, but the boy just kept on walking.

Billy walked along the side of the road with them for two whole miles. Then the one boy had collapsed, flat on his face, and the other boy had stared at him brokenly. The whole crowd around them was cheering and chanting, and all Billy could focus on was the Major, as he climbed down from the jeep, and retrieved his sidearm, his old trusty Colt.

And Billy had stood there, at the roadside, watching the Major move like something out of a dream, as he said his piece, and chambered a round, and told the loser, “Luck to you.”

Once the blood was pooling the Major had turned, and given the crowd his ugly grin, and his eyes fell on Billy, and in that moment Billy knew. He was going to walk one day, and he was going to win. He knew it, and the Major knew it, he was certain.

The other boy, the winner, had started crying then, and threw himself down by the empty body, and sobbed and sobbed into the open shirt. The Major asked for his wish, and all the boy could do was sob and sob and sob.

Billy had stood there, at the roadside, and thought how foolish that boy must be.

He walks along the shoulder, one third day, not long after Parker and McVries’ typical decrying of the Major. The first time it had happened, it had almost been funny. What did these boys know of the Major? Were they looking to get their tickets early?

Now he’s too tired to be anything but weary of all of it. At this point, there’s nothing he wants more than one full night of sleep.

Billy steps off the road. At least this way, he can wake up free of pain, and fairly rested. If he doesn’t think about it too hard, it’s almost like going to sleep.

It’s all too easy to grow the habit. To step off the road, and go back to sleep for just a little while longer, any time he gets too tired, or too sick. Any time it becomes clear that he’s not going to win. Billy starts to think that maybe he won’t ever be able to cross that finish line.

Billy walks and dies and walks and dies.

He watches as Olsen turn into a vegetable, and as Tressler get sunstroke, and as Percy runs off the road. Watches as they avoid these things, only to get picked off a little further down the road. He thinks Barkovitch and Parker might win a few times, but he can never quite be certain. It doesn’t matter anyway. Nothing will matter until he crosses that finish line for himself.

He walks and steps off the road when he’s tired. He walks and dies inches or minutes or miles from winning it. He walks and he dies.

The thirty seventh loop, thirty eighth if he counts the time with Joseph, he makes it to the dawn of the fifth day, and watches Parker charge the guards a few hours ahead of schedule. Baker’s nose is only just starting to drip blood. It has to be one of the worst deaths, Billy thinks as they trudge on through the morning.

He’s sick, of course, though not quite as bad as on previous fifth days. His lungs still heave, and his throat still aches, and his nose is still running, but his skin doesn’t seem to burn with it’s typical fever. Small mercies, he supposes.

The miles roll on, and Baker begins to stumble, wandering back and forth across the road. It’s a slow, steady path towards the inevitable. The only times he hasn’t seen Baker, bleeding out through his nose are the times where he goes back to earn his ticket in tandem with Olsen. The musketeers had all earned their tickets like that, at one point or another, unable to accept Olsen’s fate as his and his alone.

Billy focuses back on the road, and the rhythm of his footsteps in chorus with the rumbling of the half-track, and walks and waits.

Bakers stumbling goes on and on, until finally, he’s braced between Garraty and McVries once more, speaking softly about his grandmother and ice cubes, and the Baton Rouge of his childhood. His bloodied rosary settles around Garraty’s neck, and Billy wonders if there's any version of this where he actually manages to get it back to her.

Finally, Baker stumbles away to meet his end. Billy has long since stopped watching it occur. As the shots ring out, Garraty shudders, and then freezes up, coming to himself, “Oh god… Oh god-” And then louder, reaching to clutch at McVries, “Oh god- Pete- this isn’t- we- oh my god-”

Beside him, McVries seems to be coming to the same realization, sinking in on himself. Billy almost wants to laugh. Of course they’d realize together. They really are intertwined. He wants the thought to feel bitter, but he can’t quite manage it.

“Warning, Number 47, Number 23, second warning.”

That startles Garraty enough to keep moving, speeding up and pulling McVries with him, even as he begins to fall in on himself. At his failure to react, Garraty rounds on Billy, frantic, “We’ve done this before! This isn’t our first time on this road- oh god-”

This time, Billy really does laugh. It comes out mangled, fighting with the heavy sap in his lungs. Garraty is staring at him mortified. Billy wheezes out a long breath, “More than thirty times by my count. It’s about time someone else took notice.”

Garraty’s mouth hangs agape for a long moment, as if Billy’s words are earth shattering. Maybe they are. Finally, he sputters, “What?! Jesus- what are we- how are we- what the fuck? What the fuck is going on? I’m losing my mind- I’m losing my fucking mind!”

“That’s what I thought at first, too.” Billy grins bitterly.

“This isn’t real. This can’t be real- holy shit!” His dragging McVries along might be the only thing keeping him from getting another warning. He stares ahead, shell shocked.

“Thirty eight times. Thirty eight times and no matter if I die first or if I die with just you two left, I wake up on Monday morning, all over again,” Billy spits out the words, angry, truly angry, like he’s fifteen all over again. Something in him cracks, and wishes desperately to hate them for it. For leaving him alone in this for so long, “Welcome to the fucking nightmare, Garraty.”

“Thirty eight times,” McVries repeats hollowly, his glassy eyes moving to meet Billy’s slowly, “You- you tried to tell me…”

“So what do we- what do we do? What have you done to break the loop?” Garraty demands, something like righteous fury burning in his eyes.

“What have I done?” Billy laughs again, bitter and angry, and almost manic, “To break the loop? Well gee, Garraty it’s not like I’m still stuck here or anything! I haven’t even been able to win- obviously nothing’s worked!”

Garraty doesn’t give up easily, turning to grab at Billy’s arm desperately, “Well what can we do differently?”

Billy shakes him off, bitter and angry and irritated, as he grits, “I am telling you, I’ve seen you go out at mile 7 and at mile 387. No amount of change is going to do anything. This is hell Garraty, try and get used to it. The rabbit hole is much deeper and darker than anything you could ever imagine.”

Warning, Number 23, third and final warning.”

Billy and Garraty both turn then, to find that McVries has stopped walking. Billy grabs Garraty’s arm without thinking, seeing the look in McVries eyes and recognizing it all too well, “Let it be. He’s done. You’ll see him again soon enough anyway.”

The fire in Garraty’s eyes is smothered. He’s too shocked to put up a fight. When McVries gets his ticket, Garraty cries out, like he’s the one in pain. He curls in on himself impossibly, “Oh god…”

“If it’s any consolation, that rarely happens.” He knows there’s no consolation in the words, even as he says them. He can’t even be sure if it’s true or not. What happens between the two of them, once he’s gone, is a mystery that he’s sure involves some slew of selfless sacrifices and desperate pleading.

Garraty stares at the pavement as it passes, his voice low, “It should’ve been me. It was supposed to be me. I can’t- I can’t see it like he can.”

It takes all of his willpower not to correct him. That he can’t see whatever ‘it’ is the way Pete could. It’s not like it matters anyway, he decides.

They trudge on in silence for a miserable quarter mile. Then Garraty looks up at him strangely the way he normally does, “You haven’t won?”

“Not once.” Billy sighs.

Garraty considers this for a long moment. Then, inexplicably, he stops, right there in the road.

“Warning, number 47, third and final warning.”

“What the hell are you doing?” Billy demands, stopping just as abruptly. The lack of motion throws him. He almost didn’t think he had the ability to stop in him anymore.

“Warning, number 38, second warning.”

Ray’s voice is gentle, even with the exhaustion bleeding in at the edges. He musters up a weak smile, that cuts at something deep in his chest, “Go get your tea, Billy.”

At 1:23pm, in the middle of the woods, on the fifth day, Billy Stebbins wins the Long Walk. There’s no crowd, not enough time had passed since McVries for them to amass. The Major isn’t even there, and it takes him a resounding twenty minutes to get from wherever the hell it was he takes his breaks back to where the convey waits on the road. Billy stands, swaying on his feet, for all twenty of those minutes.

When the Major finally does arrive, he grins down at Billy with a ferocity he didn’t quite expect, clapping him on the shoulder with enough force to nearly knock him down, “Congratulations, son. The cash prize is yours.”

“Thank you, sir.” Despite everything, Billy suddenly feels feverish. One of the soldiers has retrieved a hand held camera from one of the half-tracks that feels far more obtrusive than any of the big, mounted cameras ever did.

“Now tell me, what is your wish?”

It’s a faster process than Billy expects. In all, it only takes a few hours riding in the back of a long car to reach the Majors home, if it can even be called that. It looks more like a brick fortress than a home, and the Major doesn’t even stay there half the time. The ride passes in silence, other than Billy’s wheezing breaths.

The Major hadn’t even flinched at his request. Hadn’t denied his claims. Something about it makes Billy want to scream.

The dining room table is set and waiting for them. Billy sits where he’s indicated, at one end of the long table. The Major sits at the other. He doesn’t even remove his sunglasses. His wife, a gaunt, blond thing who reminds Billy of his Mama in a way that makes his stomach sink, stands just behind the Major’s shoulder, looking like a ghost.

He’s still sweating, and coughing, and he knows he reeks of blood and the road, and no one speaks a word about it. Not the Major. Not his wife. Not the servants, dressed in crisp black clothes who come and go from the room with pitchers and platters.

The Majors wife watches wearily as plates are placed before them. Billy can feel her eyes on him, even when he focuses down on the meal before him. Steak and potatoes and roasted asparagus. It might be the most appetizing thing Billy’s seen in his life.

He doesn’t dare pick up his utensils until the Major picks up his own, cutting into his steak with a fervor. He only manages a few bites of steak. His stomach is on edge. The wife's stare is cutting into him. The Major is chewing, and it might be the only sound in the room, and Billy has never been so on edge in his life.

“What’s the matter, son? You don’t like my chefs work?”

Billy flinches at the sudden question, his eyes flicking up to find the Major looking at him. He swallows down the bile that threatens to rise in his throat, “No, sir. It’s- I don’t want to risk re-feeding syndrome. My research said-”

“Your research,” The Major barks out a laugh that’s just as ugly as his grin, “You really may be my son.”

The wife seems to flinch at this, but Billy can’t be certain. He’s been too busy avoiding looking at those pale blue eyes that have been boring into him to even glance in her direction. Billy opens his mouth, though he’s not sure what to say, but then the Major is talking again.

“We’ll have you paternity tested, in the morning, of course,” The Major takes a long pull from his beer glass, “Can’t go publicly claiming you as my heir if you aren’t the real deal. You understand.”

Billy doesn’t understand, not really. He’d asked to be taken in for a meal, not taken in forever. He doesn’t know if he should be exhilarated or terrified at the possibility. Is this not what he wanted? Is this not what he trained for?

“Of course, then there would still be the matter of your mother-” The wife’s fists clench into the material of her skirt at this.

“What about my mother?” His voice is hard. Billy decides that the possibility is terrifying.

The Major sets down his cutlery, folding his hands before him on the table, “Well there are certain details concerning her that may need to be ironed out. Her job for instance. I may have paid to know a woman a time or two, but that’s not something I need reflected on my name, or yours for that matter, if what you say is true.”

“My mother is not a prostitute.” Under the table, Billy grips his rabbits foot tightly. Oh god, what has he done?

“In any case, we’ll resolve the matter once the test results come back,” The Major picks up his fork and knife once more, “Just know, it may be easier to renounce her than to carry on with a stain on your name.”

Billy wants to scream. He looks up to meet those pale blue eyes, and finds them just as helpless as he is.

The Major’s wife stays behind his chair through multiple courses, even as tea and dessert are served, never once moving, or eating a scrap herself. She keeps watching Billy, with a look he can’t place as pity or disgust. He supposes he can’t fault her for either.

After the dinner ends, he’s escorted to a guest bedroom containing the biggest, softest looking bed he’s ever seen. As soon as the door closes behind the young girl who had led him there, he falls down onto it, like a puppet with its strings cut. The bedding is warm, and smells faintly of detergent and fabric softener. He can’t bring himself to explore enough to find the promised en suite and shower, let alone get up and take off his sweat and dust coated clothing.

His feet ache, and he’s tired, and terrified and relieved all at once. He’s weeping into the pillows before he even realizes it, overcome with too many emotions to pinpoint and name a single one of them. It takes some time, but eventually, he drifts off, tears drying on his cheeks.

When he blinks awake, it’s not to soft sheets, but to a long familiar lumpy mattress. Billy squeezes his eyes shut as something inside of him breaks. He won. He won, and got his wish, and regretted it the way he always feared he would. And in the end, it wasn’t enough to wake him from this cycle of madness. Shouldn’t that have been the key? Shouldn’t he have gotten to move on, and live with the terrible consequences of his wish? To actually sleep and rest and not end up back on the same god forsaken road?

Frustrated tears sneak their way down his cheeks. He wants to scream. To yell. To break something. To go out and kill the Major the way Garraty never could. Why didn’t it work? Why?

He stays there, in the bed with the scratchy sheets, for so long that he nearly forgets about Garraty and McVries. He might have lost, and ended up back here, but they were finally awake. Maybe Garraty was right, maybe there was something they could do differently. Maybe they could end this nightmare, together.

He has to scramble out of the motel so quickly that he doesn’t even see or speak a word to Joseph. He’s dangerously close to being late when he arrives at the drop off. The last boy to check in by ten or more minutes. Garraty and McVries both turn to look at him from where they sit with the rest of the musketeers, as he comes in, breathing heavy.

There isn’t a single ounce of recognition in their eyes.

He sinks down onto the pavement, feeling completely and utterly defeated. He swallows back tears desperately, ignoring the strange looks he quickly gathers from the other boys around him. He barley makes it through going up to collect his tag. He’s spent nearly forty lifetimes, living and dying surrounded by other boys, and he has never felt so alone.

The Major gives his usual speech about ballsacks and walking and winning, and Billy can’t find it in him to listen to any of the words, let alone look at the man who had the audacity to insult his Mama. Bile burns at the back of his throat. He can’t find the strength to stand, let alone acknowledge the prompting and questions he gets from the soldiers and the boys around him. What the hell was the point of any of this?

The starting gun is fired, and Billy collects his warnings and punches his ticket, quickly, and without complaint.

Chapter Text

He wakes in the motel room, and glances at the clock that always seems to read 6am, and rolls over and goes back to sleep. When he wakes again seconds, or hours, or days later, the clock still reports 6am. He rolls over again.

What’s the point of getting up and going to walk to his death if he will just end up back here anyway? What’s the point of any of it? He’d won. He’d made it off the damn road.

There was no way out of this. Billy could see that now. And if there was no way out, then there was no point of suffering out on the road, day after day. He could suffer enough just by being stuck here in the motel, thanks.

Days and days pass in this manner. The time is meaningless, Billy knows, but it passes anyway.

It’s a meager existence. He doesn’t sleep, not really. When he does manage to nod off, the loop resets, and he wakes again. The time doesn’t pass in a dream, but in a haze of sleeping and waking, that isn’t peaceful enough to be meditative.

Meager as it is, it’s better than punching his ticket over and over and over again. Better than watching forty nine other boys punch theirs over and over and over again. Better than feeling the sickness creep into his lungs, or watching Harkness stumble on that stump of an ankle, or hearing Parker’s haunting death chant. Better than smelling Olsen walking in his own shit, or seeing Barkovitch tearing a hole in his own throat.

He wakes and sleeps and wakes and sleeps and countless days pass, and he thinks about all of these things so much that he may as well still be out on the road, watching and hearing and smelling and feeling.

Seven years ago, Billy had returned home from watching the Major punch the final ticket of the Long Walk, with determination burning in his chest. He’d always planned on Walking. Everyone did. But after seeing it so close, after watching his father, presiding over it all, the master of death, he was more certain than he ever had been.

His Mama was furious the moment he walked in the door. He could tell, not just from the hunch of her shoulders as she leaned over the ironing, but from the quiet intensity with which she pushed the iron across the church linens. She didn’t even look up at him. Instead she finished pressing the folds, and moved the fabric to the finished pile, and leaned over to pull the next piece from the laundry basket. Her hands shook, just slightly.

“Hey, Mama.” His voice had been quiet, and suddenly the extra height he’d gained from finally staring the Major in the face without a television screen separating them, dissipating suddenly.

“I hope you don’t think I didn’t know where you went,” Her voice was thin, tired the way it had been for most of his life, “Your manager stopped by to ask why you weren’t at work.”

“Tommy was supposed to cover my shifts.” It was a weak excuse. They’d both known it.

She set the iron up on its end, folded her hands in her lap. She still hadn’t looked at him, “Well I hope it was worth it.”

He had wanted to open his mouth. To tell her that it was. That he had seen the end, and he had seen how foolish that years winner was, and how he was so certain that he could do it. Wanted to tell her how the Major was hardly bothered by the noise of the crowd, how he’d readied his Colt without taking his eyes off the loser. How Billy had never been so certain of anything in all his life until that moment. He was going to walk, and he was going to win. The Major had seen him there, on the sidelines, but it wouldn’t be the last time his father noticed him. He was so sure.

When she had started to get sick, Billy’s mama had stopped watching the Walk. Stopped tolerating his talking about the Walk. Stopped bringing him to the library unless he promised to check out books about something other than the Walk. She didn’t understand it. Didn’t seem to see the way he needed it more than he’d ever needed anything else.

“It was.”

It was only then that she finally turned to look at him, still standing there in the doorway with his rucksack over one shoulder. She only needed to glance at him once. That was enough for her to see it in him, “It’s a big gamble, Billy. You know that.”

“You know I have to do it,” He dropped his bag, making his way across the room to her, “Please, Mama, you know I do.”

Billy’s Mama had looked up at him with big blue eyes, glossy with tears, “No, sweetheart. You don’t.”

Billy wakes up, checks the clock, rolls over, and sleeps on for a few, pitiful moments. He begins to think he can feel the moment when the time resets. Begins not to bother cracking his eyes open enough to even peak at the clock. It’ll read 6am every time. This, Billy knows.

He’d spent every hour that he wasn’t in school, or at work, or tending the chickens, to train. To walk. To learn the rhythms, and even out his gait, and build the muscle that would carry him far. He knew his Mama didn’t approve but there was nothing she could do about it. Not that there was anything she would do, anyway. They had all but stopped talking about the subject. Billy’s growth spurt, his hours spent away from the house, his constantly worn out shoes, went unspoken. Elephants gathering at the edge of every room he and his mama inhabited together.

Billy was stubborn, he always had been. He’d gotten it from her. The disagreement might have gone unspoken, but he wasn’t going to let up, and neither was she.

He was thinking about putting his name in for the next one, even though he’d be shy of the age requirement. He’d been nearly 16 then, but he looked older. If he could save enough money out of his paycheck, he could find someone to make up an ID for him.

That winter had been a brutal one. Not only had it brought his sixteenth birthday, but a cold that his Mama just couldn’t seem to shake. Billy had spent night after night, huddled under his old, soft worn quilt, listening to her hacking coughs ringing out from down the hall, and thinking about how unfair it all was.

She had been doing better.

Towards the end of it all, she called Billy into her room. Had pulled him into her arms, and tucked his head under her chin the way she had when he was young, and walking was just something that they did to get around. She hadn’t sounded mad that time, just far away, “You have to promise me, sweetheart. You have to promise.”

“Promise what?” Billy’s own voice had been hoarse, betraying all the upset he’d felt, watching her fade away.

“Don’t you go trying to walk to someone who won’t have you, you hear? You promise me you won’t. You can’t throw your life away like that, Billy, sweetheart.”

He was glad he couldn’t see her face. That she couldn’t quite see his. That neither of them would ever be able to see the world of hurt they inflicted on the other. Maybe there was no way around it. Maybe that’s just what mothers and sons were meant to do; to hurt and hurt, and never quite find a way to stop.

“I promise, mama, I promise.”

When applications for the Walk were released three and a half months later, Billy put his name in for the lottery. He filled out his application between his shifts at the plant, and his odd jobs, and packing up the house after a third missed mortgage payment.

Billy stays there in the bed at the motel, for so many loops that whatever malevolent force that started this whole thing seemed to grow frustrated. Maybe it was simply bored, now that he had stopped suffering so visibly for its benefit. Either way, he awoke one morning, not to the scratchy sheets, and unchanging minutia of the motel room, but to the sound of voices, and the feeling of pavement beneath him.

He opened his eyes to find the bright morning sun peeking down through the trees. He was already in his spot on the blacktop. Other boys already milled about. Rank already sat a couple of feet away, folding what looked to be a butterfly out of a purple sheet of paper. Olsen was already jabbering away, a few feet further.

As if he hadn’t been suffering enough. As if he needed some push to get out there and start walking again. As if he were willing to go out and start dying again.

“Hey, what’s your name?” Garraty was calling.

He leaned back on his hands, pushing out a sigh, “What’s it matter?”

Billy had missed Garraty’s voice, not that he quite understood why. He peeks his eyes open again to find McVries looking at him with a wry smile that tugs at something in his chest, “You know you can’t make friends if you don’t introduce yourself to no one.”

He looks at the pair of them, already sitting in each others space. Already falling into what has been routine for countless cycles now. He lets out a long breath, and tries not to think about what it might be like to join them. “It ain’t worth it.”

He stays there on the pavement, as all the names are called. Doesn’t retrieve his tag. Doesn’t join the lines. Ignores Harkness’s darting eyes, and Barkovitch’s taunts, and Garraty and McVries looks of genuine, unwarranted concern. As he collects his warnings, he hopes, faintly, that this time they find a way to win together.

He wakes up on the pavement, again, because of course he does. It seems his motel room days are over. Billy is delighted to find the foil pack of jelly sandwiches sitting at the top of his rucksack. He sits back and eats, and ignores the boys around him, and waits for it to be done.

His passive existence becomes harder. Waking and sleeping had been so simple. No distractions. Now the world stops falling into a haze of time passing. The world falls out of focus every time he punches his ticket right there on the pavement, only to come sharply back into focus moments later, when the loop resets.

Staying there on the pavement should be easy enough, in theory. He can’t bring himself to walk, not anymore. But seeing the other boys around him, hearing Garraty ask him his name, catching the concerned glances McVries sends his way, it tugs at something in Billy’s chest. Puts pressure on the bruise in an almost unbearable way.

No amount of trying to ignore them will stop Olsen from talking. No amount of trying to block them out will stop Harkness and Rank and Tressler and dozens of others from cheering on every word that the Major has to say. No amount of squeezing his eyes shut and hoping that it all goes away will stop Garraty and McVries desperately yelling at him to get up as the starting gun fires.

It’s harder this way, but it’s still easier than walking. That’s what Billy tells himself, anyway.

He stays there, dying the first death of the Walk without ever getting off the pavement, over and over and over. He tries not to talk to the others, not to answer their questions, because he knows it’ll only make it harder. Sometimes, though, sometimes, Billy can’t help himself.

When his mouth betrays him, it’s normally in response to one of Garraty’s questions. This usually prompts more questions, which makes it worse when it’s time for the rest of them to move on. Then Garraty actually has a reason to be invested. To call after him. To urge him up off of the pavement. Once he even attempts to haul Billy up off the ground. It takes Garraty two warnings, and probably Billy’s ticket to give up.

Sometimes it’s telling Olsen that preparedness can’t hold a candle to any of the shit he’ll see out on the road. This normally ends with snide comments, and side wards glances as he sits there on the pavement when the other boys start to move on.

A couple of times its even to look up at Curley where he paces beside him and tell him that he’d better sit down and conserve his energy. Once or twice Curley even listens, something that throws both Billy and Garraty whose mouth was already half open to ask Curley’s age, for a loop.

He tries not to think about whether or not Curley will make it any farther for it, as his warnings quickly begin to ring out, twenty minutes later.

He stays there, immobile, dying, over and over again for so long that, the universe seems to grow bored again. He blinks awake one morning, not to warm sun, and concrete and the chatter of the other boys, but to the heat of the road passing under him, mid stride.

He promptly trips over himself, and hits the ground so dazed and confused that it takes him all three warnings to realize what’s happened.

He doesn’t wake up on the road again. He finds himself back at the drop off again. Billy learns his lesson either way.

The only way out is by walking.

He picks his way to his feet the next time as his name is called, going to retrieve his tag for the first time in what may as well be countless loops. The Major looks at him from behind those mirrored sunglasses and says “Good luck, son.” And all Billy can think about is his seat at the Major’s table, and the conditions it had come with, and how much he’d hated it, even in that brief time he was there.

If he ever really were to win again, he’d need to find a new wish. It’s a good thing, he thinks idly, as the gun fires and he begins to move forward, mechanical already, that he was only able to win thanks to Garraty and McVries stopping before their time.

He’d always been of a one track mind when it came to his wish. Even with all the miles that stand between him and winning again, Billy can’t begin to fathom what he might wish for instead of the thing he’d been wanting after for all his life.

The walking is hard, in spite of -or maybe in part because of- the long rest he’d earned himself. It’s not that he’s winded, by any means. There’s just a weariness that has crept into his bones, that he hadn’t taken stock of until now, back out on the road. The jelly sandwiches, mysteriously earned without facing Joseph, at least provide some solace.

He’s on his last sandwich half when somewhere up ahead, Curley cries out in pain, hobbling and pushing back against his oncoming warning. Garraty is already performing his usual song and dancing of hauling the kid along by the backpack straps, and something deep in Billy’s chest aches at the sight of it. The same bruise smarts as he hears McVries and the others calling out encouragements, “Come on youngin’ you can do this!”

It’s painful. It always was, but somehow, seeing it again with fresh eyes, Billy almost feels it for the first time again. Watches Curley fall to his knees, and cry out about unfairness, and finds himself wishing that there was some other way out of this.

When the Major’s jeep reappears so that the man himself can make a dispassionate speech about Curley’s death, Billy feels something close to anger burning in his gut. Something in him almost wishes that he just once he could miraculously make it long enough to see Garraty pump him full of lead.

There has so be some other way out of this. Some end to this nightmare that doesn’t end in all this death. Maybe Garraty was right. Maybe he needs to try something new.

He’s walked and died and woken up back at the start. He’s walked and won and done the same. So what other choices can he make?

That night, when the hill looms over them, and chaos breaks out, Billy makes a run for it. For once he steps out off the road, not with the intention of resting the loop, but of finding some way to break it. He stumbles down the steep embankment that he’s met with, and hears shots ringing out behind him and doesn’t quite realize that he’s caught one of those bullets until he’s crashing to the ground, with white hot fire burning in his shoulder.

He spends an hour stumbling through the woods, trying to keep pressure over the wound before it’s over, but when he blinks awake on the pavement again, moments later, Billy has a plan.

It takes him three more loops before he actually makes it off the road and into the woods without getting a ticket for his troubles. He has to walk until the sun is beginning to rise, before the woods recede and a small New England town takes their place.

Billy’s not entirely sure what he’s doing, wandering through the sleepy town, but he’s exhausted and his feet hurt and somehow when he sees the unlocked doors of the church it seems to be the answer. He slips inside and tucks himself into one of the pews, rucksack wedged under his head like a pillow. He’s asleep before he can question whether or not that will trigger another reset.

When he wakes a few short hours later, it’s not to the sound of other boys out on the pavement, but to a hand shaking his shoulder. A middle aged woman with a round face stands over him, a concerned look on her face, “Are you alright, young man?”

“Yes, thank you- sorry I-” Billy sits up from where he had become sprawled along the length of the pew, “I didn’t mean to fall asleep.”

She gives him a tight lipped smile, “It’s alright. I imagine you’d be quite tired. It’s eight miles to Route One from here as the crow flies- and some 50 miles besides. It’s quite the feat.”

Billy starts at that. His gaze darts passed her. Is the Major already here? Has he already tracked him down for desertion again? His heart is pounding.

He’s already halfway to his feet when the woman lets out a chuckle, pushing him back down to sit, “Oh don’t you worry about that Walk business, it’s over now. For you anyway.”

It takes Billy longer than it should to find his voice. To put words -a word- to the thousands of questions that swim in his skull.“What?”

“Oh the first night was so bad this year they didn’t even bother listing off the dead as they went,” She waves a hand dismissively, “As far as anyone knows you earned your ticket a little after 3:30 this morning. And as long as we have anything to say about it, it should stay that way.”

“You’re…” He stops himself. He can’t bring himself to put a name to whatever kind of dissent helping him counts as. Not after Joseph. Not when the very idea of resistance, even a passive kind, has been foreign his whole life.

She smiles again, this time a gentle, reassuring thing, “Someone who wants to help.”

Billy stares down at his boots. Couldn’t meet her eye even if he wanted to, “You’d be risking a whole lot.”

“I’ve risked more for worse,” He can see the fond memory behind her eyes as she straightens, moving out of the line of pews, “My name’s Carla. We’ve got some food in the rectory, let me bring you a plate.”

“That’s alright- I can-”

She turns, giving him a stern look that has him sinking back down to sit without a word, “You’ve walked far enough.”

“I’ve walked farther.”

Carla brings him biscuits and lukewarm coffee, and talks idly about her job at the church. She doesn’t ask any questions of Billy, doesn’t force him to explain himself. By the time he’s finished eating -which isn’t long, he hadn’t realized his hunger until the plate was in his hands- he almost feels lighter for it. It takes a little convincing, but soon, he’s helping her with chores around the church.

There’s a radio in the rectory, playing commentary of the Walk as it continues on. Only ten boys had made it to full daylight. Billy tries not to register the relief that floods his system when he hears that number 47 and number 23 are still going strong among them.

They organize leftover Sunday school handouts, and polish silver, and start cleaning the floor before Carla seems to remember the radio with a gasp, reaching to change the station, “Oh dear- I am so sorry. I wasn’t even thinking.”

“Keep it on, please.” He’s not entirely sure he’s saying it until he does, and knows full well that keeping the broadcast on will just continue to feed the masochist that lives somewhere in his chest. He’s staring at the radio so hard it may as well burst into flames.

She releases it carefully, studying him for a long moment in a way that’s not unlike Garraty. After a moment, she just picks up her mop once more, but when her mouth opens to speak again, it’s not to say anything Billy was remotely expecting, “I’ve listened to it every year since it started. It never gets any easier, but, then again, I guess it’s easier than you boys have it.”

It’s quiet again for a while after that, other than the crackling of the radio. They clean the church, and sort donations, and Billy watches her fill out an order for more communion wine. They barely speak again until they find themselves sitting at a table in the rectory, eating tomato soup that Carla had pulled from an old chest freezer and thawed over the small gas stove.

“I have a number of friends,” Her words are measured, doled out carefully between sips of soup, “People who want to help boys like you, who could get you an exit visa, send you on your way.”

“Why?” The question escapes Billy’s lips before he can think to stop himself, “Why would they want to help me?”

She gives him a smile that holds as much pity as it does empathy, “Because some of us remember the old ways. Because you deserve to live a life outside of that Walk.”

Billy stares down at the table hard, swallowing around the lump in his throat, “What if I don’t?”

“Oh, sweetheart,” Something in his chest cries out at the name, “Of course you do.”

He chokes out the words, his voice thick with tears that threaten to brim over, “The Major’s my father. I’m his bastard. I don’t- I can’t live a life away from here- I can’t get away from it-” The words die as he chokes on a sob, and then he’s sitting, hunched over the table, crying like a child. Embarrassment burns nearly as brightly as his shame.

Carla reaches over, and lays a hand on his shoulder.

He meets other members of the church staff as the day goes on, and they too are senselessly kind to him. The radio coverage of the Walk stays on, and no one asks him to explain himself, and that in itself brings a strange sort of pained relief that Billy never could have imagined feeling.

The church is spotless, and Carla’s once endless list of chores has disappeared by early afternoon, and Billy finds himself seated around the table where the radio sits, listening with the others. One of the commentators says something about number 48 looking ready to drop, and Billy winces.

It’s going to be the shortest Walk in history. At the rate they’re going, the probably won’t even make it as far as Freeport. Billy wonders lamely whether that will be easier on Mrs. Garraty, or whether it will make the loss of her son sting that much more.

“God, I don’t understand how they can do it.” The girl who mutters the words is barley Billy’s age, exhaustion already lining her face.

“How couldn’t they?” Carla asks, her voice genuine and her eyes pointedly not on him, “They’ve spent their whole lives hearing this is the only way.”

“But there’s so much to lose.”

Billy shifts in his seat, fidgeting with his rabbits foot. It takes a moment before he can actually speak, “Lot to gain, too.”

“It’s easy to think about what you might win,” She fixes him with a long, hard look, crossing her arms over her chest, “They never think about what they’re going to lose. About what they’re going to leave behind.”

“I didn’t have anything to leave behind.” His voice is barely a whisper, that disappears in the flurry of noise as the announcers declare that Number 48, Collie Parker has earned his ticket.

Later, Carla pulls him aside to tell him that the girl, Alixandra, had lost her brother to the previous Walk. Billy doesn’t point out that he already agreed with her either way.

They eat dinner, and listen to the Walk, and eventually when the hour starts to grow late, Carla leads him to a room above the rectory with a cot, and promises to get more information about the possibility of an exit visa in the morning. She leaves the radio with him without asking.

The cot isn’t particularly comfortable, but it’s better than the pavement under his ass or the wooden pew under his back. Not that Billy has ever been one to complain anyway.
He changes into the clothes Carla let him pull from the donation pile, and climbs into the bed, and listens to the Walk as the hour grow later and later. He’s almost afraid to fall asleep once more. Wants to draw out this warm, nearly pleasant moment for as long as he can.

His listens as the miles pass, and keep passing, until the announcer, who previously had sounded bored, is suddenly delighted to comment on number 47 and 23 stopping in time, together, hand in hand. Billy presses his eyes shut and tries not to picture Ray and Pete, holding onto each other in the dark.

The announcer begins to describe the scene in excruciating detail, and Billy reaches out to flick off the radio before he can think about it too hard. He doesn’t need to hear the details. His mind is too busy filling in the picture for him.

When he manages to open his eyes again, he’s no longer laying on the cot, but sitting on the pavement, watching Garraty and McVries approach their usual group.

He tries running a few other times, a few other places along the route. None are ever nearly as successful. After five loops of running, and paying for it by dying in the woods, or in a field, or at the edge of the pavement, he decides its not quite worth his time.

Billy walks and walks, and gets sicker and sicker, and watches the boys around him drop like flies. He walks and dies and walks and dies, and can’t seem to manage to get anywhere for it.

Even the sight of the Major’s face is beginning to sicken him. How could anyone remain so callous and unfeeling? How had he ever been the model of a man that Billy looked up to? He can barely even remember the pride he used to carry; the awe of seeing the man in the flesh.

The Major is droning on about making it halfway, and the twenty or so walkers that are left don’t seem to be amused anymore. Billy is already coughing and hacking, sicker than usual a day and a half into this nightmare. Garraty has long since asked him if he was getting sick. He’s not sure it would even be worth anything to deny it.

He finishes a particularly wet cough to a mouth full of phlegm and in a moment of pure irritation, turns and hawks it hard at one of the soldiers riding along on the half track beside him. His aim is horrible, thrown off by the constant movement of his gait, but it still splatters messily onto the mans uniform pants.

The man grimaces, staring down at the phlegm for half a moment before reaching for the rifle in his hand. Billy can’t tell if it’s to bash his brains with the butt, or to give him a ticket, and he knows that it won’t really matter either way. He sighs, closing his eyes and preparing to stop walking one way or another.

He doesn’t get the chance to find out which is coming, because someone is grabbing his arm and dragging him out of the way before his fate reveals itself. Naturally, he goes stumbling again, as warnings ring out.

“Warning, number 38, second warning. Warning, number 23, first warning.”

He drags his arm out of McVries grip as he rights himself, his body automatically pushing back up to speed as soon as his footing is even.

“Easy there-”

McVries impossibly soft, kind voice is cut off by the harsh bark of the Major’s laugh, “That’s the kind of sac it takes to win this race, my boy! Let’s just hope you make it that far!”

Billy glares up at where he rides at the head of the column, untouchable even when the sun beating down, and the stench of the road and the bodies rising up around him. Not for the first time, he wishes Parker could succeed in wiping him off the Earth.

“Jesus fuck-” Garraty mutters somewhere to his left, “What a fucking asshole I mean- what a dick.”

“You said it compadre,” McVries sighs, but his gaze never quite leaves Billy, “You doin’ alright, Stebbins?”

“Peachy fucking keen.” The anger is boiling white hot in his gut. Better than Percy, he thinks, who has been eyeing the roadside longingly, and is surely going to bolt any moment now. They walk along in silence for a few steps, and try as he might, Billy just can’t find it in him to break off from them.

McVries reaches for his canteen and takes a long pull, and Billy can tell that he’s measuring his words carefully, even before he says, “You know, if you still coulda backed out, when you realized you were sick.”

Billy laughs humorlessly, which makes him cough, and spit more phlegm out onto the pavement. He doesn’t have the chance to say anything at all, because suddenly, Barkovitch is yelling, “Oh shit! He’s running for it!”

Billy doesn’t turn to watch as Percy sprints for the shoulder and is shot down, blood seeping into sidewalk cracks. Instead he watches the Majors unshakable face. Harkness must have made it through the night somehow, because he can hear a pencil scribbling against paper somewhere behind him.

He almost laughs again, something manic and desperate and the Major just keeps on standing there in the back of the jeep, watching all of them walk and die and walk some more.

“You getting all this, Harkness?” His voice is shaky and near thin, and it takes him a moment to recognize it as his own, “You see how he doesn’t even flinch? They say it’s that he’s too unshakable, or that he’s got hearing loss but you want to know the truth?”

He doesn’t quite pause, not long enough for Harkness to answer, even as the shorter boy hurries up to walk in line with him, “The truth is that he just doesn’t give a single fuck about any of this! About any of us! You want something to put in your fucking book?”

The words are spilling out of him now, hot and angry and even now when he can’t tear his eyes from the Major all he can see is Percy, sprawled against the diner doors, Ronald covered in his own shit, Patrick with his crushed legs, Curley- poor fucking Curley, clutching his knees and crying out.

“You want to know how I know so much about the god damned Long Walk?” He’s shouting now, maybe he has been since he opened his mouth. Every single Walker is staring at him, and he is staring at the Major, and he may have never been this angry in all his life.

“I know all about the Long Walk! I ought to! The Major’s my fucking father! I’m his fucking bastard!”

Harkness’ pencil stops scribbling. The Major keeps staring back at Billy, his face unchanging, as if Billy was yelling about something as uninteresting as the weather.

He turns then, wildly, and looks at all the other boys, and sees each and every time he’s seen each and everyone one of them with a bullet in their brains. He can feel the weight of Collie Parker’s stare, and decides yelling at a god who won’t listen has never gotten him far. Maybe it’s time to try something new.

Billy makes it four running strides through the tangle of boys and towards the Major’s jeep without a plan beyond giving his father what he deserves, before a bullet is catching up with him.

He wakes up on the pavement practically shaking with anger. When the Major appears, his blood boils, and he collects his tag glaring up at the man who ruined his life with enough vigor to knock him dead. Waiting for the starting gun to fire, he swears to do something worthwhile this time around. It might not break the loop, but it will certainly be satisfying.

He walks, and walks, and lets his anger simmer. He walks faster than normal, maintaining 3.3 miles per hour rather than his typical 3.1, with the express purpose of staying in line with Parker. Day bleeds into night bleeds into day once more. Parker doesn’t speak to him much, and he doesn’t mind that any. A sort of companionship forms anyway.

Boys fall and earn their tickets, and Billy, as always, walks steadily on towards his death.

Parker snaps a few miles after they leave Freeport, upset, as always, by the heart wrenching display put on by Garraty and his mother. Billy’s so tired, and so distracted by the sandpaper like feeling in his throat that he almost doesn’t realize until Parker is sprinting towards the jeep.

He follows, maybe five steps behind before he realizes how stupid this plan -or lack of a plan- really was. Parker wrenches the carbine from the nearer guard and shoots him down, and turns to call for the others and seems so genuinely shocked to find Billy there behind him that he nearly stumbles.

Billy’s seen this enough time that he knows what’s coming, “Parker!”

It’s enough time for the other soldier to bring his own carbine to his shoulder, even as Billy reaches up desperately to grab at the muzzle. He feels the shot ring out, more than he hears it, and the gunmetal grasped in his hand burns, and even as he tries to pull the barrel to point anywhere else, Collie is already falling to his knees.

Billy gets his own gut full of lead as Garraty and McVries and Baker hurry on, and Collie’s chanting starts. There’s blood spilling over the front of his jacket, and his hands foolishly come up as if to put pressure on the wound even as he’s falling back.

He watches Collie painfully hoist the stolen carbine to his chin, and- oh. Billy’s never seen it from this angle before. His face is stained with tears, and his hands with blood, and his eyes are lined with a kind of grief Billy has carried since this nightmare began.

“I’m sorry.” Collie croaks. And then he pulls the trigger, and sends his brains flying, and leaves Billy to bleed out on the road side as the jeeps and the soldiers move on, and Baker bleeds out further down the road.

Billy wakes up on the pavement and can’t tell if the ache in his gut is the phantom feeling of the bullet, or some feeling he never learned how to name. Collie sits in the shade a few feet away from him, fiddling absently with the bear claw pendant looped around his neck. He looks strong. Confident. If Billy didn’t know how this story goes, he might put his money on him.

Garraty lingers by his car, and hugs his mother for longer than normal, and somehow still winds up in step with McVries as their bags are searched. Baker flips through his bible, carefully, and Olsen is already talking to him, and Harkness and Rank, and everyone else within ear shot about how it’s all about making adjustments.

It’s so normal that Billy almost wants to scream. He cannot keep doing this.

He walks and dies, and walks and charges and fails, and walks and runs and sometimes makes it, and walks and dies again.

“Hey, what’s your name?”

It’s something like the tenth or eleventh time that Billy has blinked awake on the pavement since his first attempt at joining Collie in rebellion. It’s been a conscious effort to stop keeping count, but the vague awareness that he’s entered the double digits again is hard to shake.

He cannot keep doing this.

He will, of course.

Billy studies Garraty, sitting there, looking fresh as a daisy. He’s seen him grow tired and weary and worn from the road. How different is the boy sitting in front of him now, to the boy he left on the road, that first fifth night, all those cycles ago? He clears his throat, reaches for his rabbits foot, “Billy. Billy Stebbins.”

Garraty nods, and manages a smile almost like the one he typically first offers McVries, “I’m Ray Garraty. You nervous, Billy?”

He has no idea how to answer that question. His silence must stretch, because McVries offers him an easy grin, “Well I for one am fuckin terrified,” His expression cools somewhat as he turns to stare out down the road, “We’re all looking down the barrel of the rest of our lives right now. Every single one of us.”

Garraty huffs and nudges him in a way that is far too familiar for someone who met him only a few minutes before, “Come on, man.”

He shakes his head as if to dispel the idea, and smiles at Billy again, “I’m Pete. Peter McVries.”

Then, of course, Baker and Olsen get drawn in, and Billy gets the feeling they’ll leave him alone for a while.

But when the Major appears, and names are called, and tags collected, he finds himself assembled nearer to the musketeers than usual as watches and rations are distributed. For half a moment, he thinks to retreat, but then Garraty meets his eye, and musters up a smile that is almost encouraging, and Billy finds himself rooted to the spot as the Major begins his usual spiel.

He tries to stick to the back, at his usual speed of 3.1 miles per hour, but Garraty seems dead set on looping him in to their usual group, even if his place does still remain at the fringes. The musketeers linger far closer to the back than usual, and likewise, the usual few in their orbit -Pearson, Harkness, Collie and Zuck- fall back with them.

He doesn’t join their conversation, not really, but he does listen in more closely than normal. Every once and a while McVries will laugh and then glance back to where Billy walks, a few paces behind, as if to gauge his reaction.

The morning wears on, as do the first miles, and Billy can’t quite find it in him to be upset about the way they can’t seem to break off. He unwraps his first sandwich and ignores the questioning look it prompts from Harkness. Barkovitch kneels down in the road, bitching and moaning about a rock in his shoe, and gets closer to getting his ticket in such a way than Billy has ever seen him.

When he gets up, he pushes through the lose formed group of them roughly, to make it back up to speed. Collie glares at him, “Better not trip, fucko!”

Billy huffs a breath into his canteen as Barkovitch barks back a retort. Billy has seen Barkovitch do a lot of things, many of which never seemed to make sense, but what he has never done, is trip.

Garraty glances at him, side wards, his eyes crinkling, “You know something we don’t?”

“Only most things.” He tucks his canteen back into his belt with a smirk that’s meant to feel mean, but something about the way Garraty laughs tells him it doesn’t come off that way.

“What do you think about all this then, Billy?” He spreads his arms as if to gesture at the Walks, but in avoiding bumping McVries it looks more like he’s gesturing out to the landscape.

He glances out at the wheat field they’re passing and shrugs, “Nothing I haven’t seen before.”

“You from New Hampshire or something?” McVries asks, looking at him curiously.

“West Virginia,” Billy fiddles with the edge of the next tinfoil wrapped sandwich, “But I’ve uh- I’ve passed through here a lot.”

“Preparing for the competition?” McVries throws his head back in a laugh when Billy shrugs, and Garraty joins him, easily, and Billy smiles in spite of himself.

“Listen, I wouldn’t mind having some money, but there’s more important things,” They’re somewhere around mile six, and a few paces ahead of Billy, Baker has already gotten Garraty going on the notion of prize money, “The Walk doesn’t matter and the prize, well it certainly doesn’t matter either.”

Olsen and Baker stare at him, and McVries lets out a scoff, “You’re crazy, man.”

Billy huffs a little at the routine of it all, and can’t help but wonder if they have this conversation every time, even when he isn’t paying attention. Harkness tries to take notes as Garraty speaks as covertly as possible.

“Alright, well think of it this way- the system backs everyone into a corner, and then points at this escape hatch and says it’s the only way out,” He gestures emphatically as he talks, nearly losing his grip on the baseball in his hands, “Of course everyone is going to try to take it. We’ve been raised to think it’s the only way. I mean think about it. Only 50 of us ever get picked in a year, but do you know a single person who hasn’t signed up?”

Now, he’s met with the sound of foot steps, shuffling along. Not for the first time, Billy finds himself thinking that Garraty makes an unfortunately excellent point.
“You see? Literally, everyone puts in for it, even though it’s not required, so what does that tell you? Nobody signs up for this, not really.”

McVries’ head is already on a swivel, turning to glance at Billy as if he expects him to say something. Billy meets his gaze, trying to hide his amusement at the apparent deja-vu, “You got a problem?”

“No- no I just,” McVries shrugs, recovering surprisingly well, “Wondering what you think of all this.”

He makes a show out of considering Garraty’s words, before finally opening his mouth to call, “Canteen. 38 for a canteen.”

Garraty turns over his shoulder to look at him for half a moment, before bursting out laughing. It only takes McVries a moment to join him.

Curley makes it all the way to mile eight before his leg cramps up, something that Billy hasn’t seen in quite a while. When he cries out, Billy watches Garraty’s face contort, as if in pain. He’s already weaving through the other boys to get to Curley before McVries or any of the musketeers can say anything.

Billy lets out a sharp breath as a warning rings out for both of them, Curley’s second, and Garraty’s first. McVries shakes his head, but speeds up, and starts calling out encouragements to the kid.

Garraty manages to half coax, half drag Curley along for a quarter of a mile. It seems to take longer than normal for those first gunshots to stop ringing in Billy’s ears.

The miles keep pushing on, and Billy keeps walking, because it’s not like he has any other choice anymore. Pearson gets locked into some strange debate with Olsen and Baker. Harkness breaks off to head up the column, collecting names and numbers. With Collie ranging out, a few paces in front of Garraty and McVries, Billy, a few paces behind, is left with a front row seat to their musings.

He tries not to listen too hard. He knows that whatever bond it is that they share, it’s not like the ones they have with the others. They’ve always been special in this. Billy focuses his gaze on the small patch of road that passes between them.

“You just keep on dancing with me forever, compadre, and I’ll never tire. We’ll scrap our shoes on the stars and hang upside down on the moon.”

Garraty laughs, delighted, “You a poet, Pete?”

Something deeply human and wrong squeezes in Billy’s chest, as they look at each other, the way they always do.

“In day’s past I would’ve liked to be a songwriter,” McVries sighs, but the smile never leaves his eyes and neither do his eyes ever leave Garraty’s, “But it’s not those days, so I guess I’m stuck here, riffing for you.”

Garraty breaks eye contact first, he almost always does, and Billy hates the way he notes that, “I hope it’s not too bad.”

A few minutes later, the boys manage to merge once more, and McVries starts declaring something about Musketeers, and Billy wishes there was some way to drop back and get away from them. Something about Garraty’s laughter, and the crinkle of McVries’ eyes, and the constant chatter of the boys around them, tugs at something broken and bruised between his ribs.

Barkovitch yells something about being queer, and Billy startles back into the moment, his heart pounding until he realizes that it’s just the cagey boy’s usual taunts aimed at the Musketeers.

They walk and walk, and morning turns into afternoon, and more boys punch their tickets. Billy rubs the pad of his thumb over the fur of his rabbits foot, over and over and over. He wonders, idly, if it would be worth it, next time, to stop and pet the cat that usually presides on a row of mail boxes right around the mile mark where Rank dies, tripping or yelling or punching.

Afternoon burns away into evening, and then the sun is disappearing into the treeline. Soldiers move mechanically to hoist flood lights up onto the half tracks ahead of them and behind them, and Billy walks mechanically along the road in the not quite dark. Dusk brings a chill that has him tugging on his jacket, the way it almost always does.

The Major appears to spout some bullshit about walking through the night, and for the first time, no one seems to cheer for him. The road stretches out before them, unending in the dark.

Garraty makes it to the top of the hill by the grace of god and McVries guiding hands. Billy, a few paces in front of them now simply by virtue of knowing the hill better than the rest of them ever could, can hear them, speaking quietly between gasps for breath in the too early morning air.

“I’m sorry- Pete I didn’t mean it- you have to understand I didn’t-”

“That’s alright, compadre.” McVries voice has a stiff edge to it that Billy doesn’t know how to place. If he squints at the road ahead he can almost pretend to see the sun, low in the branches of the trees.

Garraty takes another gasping heave of air, “I’m- I’m going to try hard to stay alive.”

“That’s the idea.”

They lapsed into silence then, and managing to stay their pace behind Billy for once. It was almost jarring, to not be able to see them along the road in front of him. A few hours and miles later, when the sun was actually beginning to rise, McVries spoke again.
“Garraty?”

“Yeah, I’m here, Pete.”

“You ever seen the end of a Long Walk?”

Their heading down hill again. Every few steps Billy can hear Harkness gasping for air, somewhere just outside his peripheral. He’s seen Harkness walk on that twisted stub of bone for miles and miles on end. It never gets any easier.

“No- my dad uh- he hated the Walk. We watched it on tv if we watched it at all.”

“I saw it once.” Billy’s mouth is moving before his brain can quite catch up.

He can feel their eyes on him even as they hurry to fall in line with him. Olsen and Baker and Collie drift nearer too.

“What was it like?” McVries asks.

Billy keeps his eyes forward, reaching for his rabbits foot, “You don’t want to know.”

He frowns, “I asked, didn’t I?”

So Billy tells them about the first Walk he ever saw end. He tells them about road tripping up to New Hampshire, and about walking along with the final two, and about the terrible, horrible state they were in. About the winner sobbing into the dead losers chest. About the Major, lording over it all. The words threaten to strangle him, but he keeps going anyway, because it’s easier than describing the ends of this Walk.

When he finally trails off, seeing Garraty sobbing over McVries rather than those two boys whose names he suddenly couldn’t quite remember, they’re all still looking at him.

“Then what happened?” Baker’s voice is soft with something close to awe.

Billy stares down at his feet, passing mechanically over the pavement, and tries not to think about what must happen when it gets down to Garraty and McVries alone. His voice feels raw, “I don’t remember.”

He makes it well past the hundred mile mark before the heaviness in his lungs starts setting in with fuller affect. He coughs into his handkerchief and wishes distantly for just one loop where the pneumonia doesn’t set in at all. One particularly wet cough has a migraine poking into the corner of his eyes.

“You feeling alright, Billy?” He must have drifted back in line with Garraty and McVries at some point. Garraty is looking at him with a face full of concern.

He clears his throat again, “’m fine.”

“You certainly don’t look it, compadre.”

Billy coughs, and tells himself it’s not about the shock of being on the receiving end of one of McVries’ nicknames. When he straightens and finds them still looking at him, he shrugs it off, “It’s not like it’ll matter in the end anyway.”

Garraty turns his head away, as if looking at Billy is an impossible task, and stares out at the passing valley as he speaks, “You don’t think you’ll win?”

“Would you?” He doesn’t look at either of them. Doesn’t turn to see the discomfort written on their faces. If he wanted, he could get his ticket right now and start over barely sick. It wouldn’t matter anyway.

“I’m gonna wish for ten naked ladies.” Even now, countless loops later, Billy is still amazed how Olsen always manages to rouse from the nearly dead to contribute to this conversation.

McVries laughs delightedly, and starts ribbing him again, almost immediately. Billy falls in step with Collie without thinking much about it, hovering on the edge of the conversation.

“You said you were gonna be nice, McVries!”

“It is a pretty stupid wish, Olsen.” Garraty laughs.

“How is it stupid? You fruity or something?” Olsen turns, looking for an ally, “Come on, back me up, Parker.”

Collie scoffs, “Ten naked ladies? You’re on your own man.”

“Dude when you win you get like a gazillion dollars- you can buy whatever you want. You’re suppose to wish for something you can’t buy.” Garraty gestures widely, bumping McVries in the process.

Olsen scowls, “I don’t want to have to pay for my ten naked ladies.”

“You do realize,” McVries says, sidling up to him, “That if you wish for that, someone will have to pay the ten ladies to come to your house and get naked.”

Olsen is silent for a long moment. Billy can almost hear the gears turning in his head.

“Alright, I didn’t think of that.”

Collie snorts. Baker turns to McVries, “Well what would you wish for?”

McVries, for all his posturing with Olsen, gets introspective for a moment, “I had a wish for a while but… I think it’s changed. My new wish is that the Long Walk can have two winners, that way, for here on out, people can have hope that their friends just might make it.”

They’re not walking together. They’re not even looking at one another. But Billy can still feel the way the idea is meant for Garraty and Garraty alone. He suspects he’s not the only one, as Collie’s gaze bounces between the pair as McVries defends his wish.

“How about you, Garraty?” Olsen asks eventually.

“Nah, I’m not telling,” Garraty shakes his head exaggeratedly, “It’s like a birthday wish. I can’t risk it not coming true.”

The musketeers begin to argue, and Collie turns to Billy, “You got a wish?”

“Not really. Not anymore.”

Collie to his credit, doesn’t pry. He just nods and looks back at the road ahead of them, “I’d wish for my sisters to be able to go to college. They’re real smart, all three of ‘em but- well you know how it goes.”

“That’s a good wish.” Billy means it in every sense of the words, but he won’t turn to look at Collie either.

Up ahead, McVries nods at something enthusiastically, “You know what, you’re right Garraty. Fuck the Long Walk.”

Garraty laughs, “There you go, Pete!”

“Fuck the Major! Fuck the Long Walk!”

Collie grins, throwing his hand up, “Fuck the Long Walk!”

“That’s right Collie! Fuck the Major!” McVries whoops.

Other boys begin to take up the chant, and Collie looks at Billy for a long moment as Tresslers radio begins to emit static that’s close to music, and for once, he joins them.

“Fuck the Major! Fuck the Long Walk!”

He yells and yells with them, until his voice gives out, and then laughs til he’s choking on mucus once more. His laughter carries on, even when Tressler’s radio loses signal, and the chant has died out.

McVries turned to him, bemusement on his face, “What’s so funny Stebs?”

“They don’t really hate the Major, not yet,” He huffs out a breath, scrubbing a hand over his face, “Not til tonight. Not til tomorrow.”

“Oh yeah?” McVries raises an eyebrow, trying to prompt him further.

Billy nods, reaching for his canteen, “Even then, only Garraty ‘ll ever have as much reason to hate him as I do.”

That night, as they push 150 miles, Billy finds himself walking beside Garraty and McVries once more, through the dark and the rain. He’s pulled his jacket tight around himself, but even if the rain were to stop, he’s sure he’d keep on shivering for a long time.

Garraty has an arm slung around McVries’ waist, even though neither one of them are quite asleep. Billy watches them stepping in unison and lets himself be jealous of the warmth that’s almost radiating off of them into the night, for all of thirty seconds.

He’s only just turned away from them when Garraty raises his head, “Hey- Billy. How you holding up?”

Billy turns to look at him, “What’s it matter to you?”

He frowns, glancing back at McVries, “Just curious.”

“You ever read Alice in Wonderland Garraty?” He’s not entirely sure why he speaks, or why when Garraty nods, he keeps speaking. Billy tucks his thumbs into the straps of his rucksack and shivers, “That’s what this whole thing is. We’ve fallen down the rabbit hole.”

“You’re crazy, you know that? Just like that damn caterpillar- or no- the Mad Hatter.” Garraty shakes his head, but his face isn’t creased with irritation the way it always had been when Billy was involved early on in the loops.

Billy sighs, turning to look at Garraty, McVries half asleep on his shoulder, “It was the only book I ever cared for that wasn’t about the Walk or the War.”

Something in Ray’s face pulls at that. He adjusts his grip on McVries, carefully, “Really? I hated history books growing up, everything seemed so- unfair.”

“That’s all history is,” Billy sniffs, blinking rain out of his eyes, “You know I used to think I was the white rabbit but I don’t think that’s true. I think I’m Alice, and I’ve tripped through the looking glass, just like you.”

Ray looks at him for a long moment. Then he reaches out with his free hand to squeeze Billy’s shoulder in a way that makes his heart stutter, “At least we’re lost in wonderland together then.”

By the time they reach the third night, Olsen’s clock is running out faster and faster. Billy watches him withdraw, farther, and farther, and farther, until sometime around 3am, when he knows it really won’t be long now. It’s a shame, Billy thinks, watching the short boy shamble along. If Olsen had ever been able to keep up, mentally, he would’ve been a real contender. Billy can’t seem to remember a single loop wherein Olsen speaks more than four words after the second night.

“Garraty-” His voice is hoarse, and rough. He hasn’t spoke much lately either. Billy clears his throat and tries again, “Garraty.”

“Huh?” He glances over his shoulder at Billy, looking both relieved and surprised to see him there, still carrying on a pace behind.

“Olsen’s almost through now. You ought to keep an eye on him.” He draws up in line with him, almost without thinking.

Garraty eyes him wearily, “How can you say for sure?”

“Olsen’s a loud mouth, and he ain’t said shit all day,” Billy sniffs, rubbing at his nose, “The fact that he shit himself don’t help either. But you watch him, he’ll prove it.”

“It’s like I’m talking to smoke…” Garraty breaks off, in his futile attempt to rouse Olsen from the nearly dead once more. In his absence, Billy drifts closer to Pete without realizing it.

Pete studies him carefully, “You gonna make it much farther, Billy?”

“I’ll walk as long as I need to,” Billy turns, coughing into his elbow, “But it probably won’t be far enough.”

Ahead of them, Olsen pulls away from Garraty roughly, stopping long enough to drag off his hat, and drop his backpack to the side, before turning and making his way in the opposite direct as his warnings ring out.

The others- the six of them that are left, turn to watch. Collie starts to yell something about getting one of the soldiers, but the words die on his lips as shots ring out and Olsen crumples to the ground, blood blooming from his gut. The shouts of his name die with Baker and Garraty too, as he struggles along, pushing himself back up.

“I DID IT WRONG!”

Billy watches him struggle, watches as McVries grab hold of Baker the moment he looks like he’s going to bolt and holds him tight, dragging him along. It’s impossible to deal with. Olsen yells Baker’s name, over and over and over, and Baker cries into McVries jacket, and Billy feels just as hopeless as ever.

As the sun climbs into the sky the next morning, they talk about Clementine, and Barkovitch punches his own ticket. Hours and hours later, Collie sings, and the others join him. The miles pass, and Billy has almost mastered the art of not noticing as they go. His feet have long since gone numb.

They pass through Freeport early the next day, and Garraty is dragged away from his mother and a few miles outside the town limits Collie snaps, and no one joins him, and Baker’s nose begins to steadily drip blood.

Billy catches himself thinking about how routine it all is, and hates himself for it.

“What would happen if we all were to slow down at the exact same time?” It’s the most earnest McVries has ever sounded while asking the question. Like it’s not just a potential way out, but a real means to some ending that isn’t the inevitable one. They’re on their way into Boston again.

Billy shakes his head, swallows thickly, and tries to keep moving, “It wouldn’t work. They can measure down to the microsecond we stop at. Two of us would still bite the bullet.”

“It’s like you’re a fucking expert on the Long Walk,” Garraty shakes his head, “Unbelievable. How do you know all this shit?”

“It’s all on public record, all you gotta do is pick up a book.” The air feels surprisingly warm, and he can almost smell rain on the wind.

“Come on- come on man- It’s almost over. Say something real.” Pete is staring at him again, and for once, Billy doesn’t feel the need to stare his father in the face. For once he can ignore the impenetrable man riding in front of him, and just focus on the boys walking alongside him.

“I’m the rabbit.” It’s easy to fall into old routine.

Ray looks at him, the way he always does, “You’re what?”

“I’m the fucking rabbit. You’ve seen ‘em. The little mechanical rabbits the greyhounds chase at the dog races. No matter how fast the dogs run, they can’t ever catch up to the rabbit, because the rabbit isn’t flesh and blood and they are.”

He certainly has their attention now. The dark clouds keep gathering above them, the way they always seem to on this final night. Pete and Ray keep on looking at him equal parts confused and understanding.

Ahead, the Major rides on, and Billy can only glance at him before looking away again, “He fooled me… Maybe he even conjured me… changed me into the rabbit. You remember the one in Alice in Wonderland.”

Their conversation about looking glasses and rabbit holes and mad hatters seems like it was centuries ago. Suddenly Billy isn’t certain whether it even happened during this loop or not. He’s not quite sure that matters.

“I think you’re right, Ray. I think it’s time to stop being rabbits and grunting pigs and sheep and just be people… even if we never rise above the level of canon fodder, feeding their machine.”

He heaves in another soupy breath, shivering despite the sweat breaking out across his skin, “You want to know how I know about the Long Walk? I’m the Major’s bastard. He’s my father. I thought he didn’t know, but I was wrong-” Billy’s voice sticks here, and he clears his throat pitifully. There might be tears on his cheeks, but it doesn’t matter now, “Lord was I wrong. I was gonna spring it on him- but he knew.”

Garraty opens his mouth, starts to say something, closes it again. There’s no words for this. There never have been. Billy keeps talking, because no matter how many times he’s been here, saying these exact words, there’s something about them that always compels him to finish the story.

“But I keep learning that this rabbit really is flesh and blood. Flesh and blood that’s failing on me. And no matter how far I walk, I can’t ever seem to get far enough to win. But I’d rather go out with my head held high, rather than crawling on my belly like a reptile.”

In front of them the jeep rolls on. The edge of the bridge is coming up. Billy realizes suddenly that in all this, he’s never made it any farther than it’s end. For the first time he realizes that he wishes he could keep walking with Ray and Pete, just a little farther.

“You think it’ll rain tonight boys?”

“Yeah, I think so,” Ray spares a glance up at the sky before turning to look at Pete, who nods. Billy finds himself thinking how miraculous it is that they know each other, so fully, after only a few days, “It looks that way.”

Billy lets himself look up at the clouds gathering above them, dark and pendulous, and promising to wash them clean off the road if they just wait long enough for the rain to start, “I think so too. I always liked the rain, but…”

His voice fails him, then, but Pete picks up, his voice heartbreakingly gentle, the way it always is, at the end, “Well then, come on in out the rain.”

Billy pulls his gaze away from the sky. Somehow, in the space in which he was distracted, Ray has shifted around to his other side, pulling him between them. How did they manage that? They’re both looking at him, strangely, like for once they understand something he doesn’t.

“I can’t keep doing this forever.” He’s not sure if he means the walking and the dying, or the forcing himself to carry through it every time, or watching Ray and Pete find one another, over and over and over again.

“No one can, and that’s alright,” Pete puts a warm hand on his shoulder, pulling impossibly closer to him, “You did good, Billy.”

He feels more feverish at the words, looking from Pete to Ray and back again and trying not to get lost in the haze in between, “I did?”

Ray squeezes his hand, “Yeah. Real good, Billy.”

“No one’s ever said that to me before.” It should barley be audible, over the river below them, and their footsteps on the metal of the bridge, and the half-tracks rolling along.

“Then it’s a good thing we’re here to tell you.”

Billy feels so warm, pressed between the two of them. He really does hate to go, but he knows that if he doesn’t stop now, while he can, they’ll have to watch his body fail him even further.

He realizes at that moment, walking between them, that maybe this was all he was missing. That maybe he doesn’t have to suffer through this in silence. It might not end things, he thinks, but it might make them more bearable.

When he stops walking, a hairs breath from the lip of the bridge, it seems to take Ray and Pete by surprise. It takes him smiling weakly for them to release his hands.

The rain begins to fall in flat, misty sheets, and for the first time, Billy isn’t cold.

Chapter Text

The thing is, Billy has never been very good at making friends.

Blinking awake on the pavement once more, listening to the Musketeer’s chatter, he feels just like the little boy he used to be, standing at the edge of the playground, unsure how to be invited in. By the time he’d grown into his gangly limbs and sharp features, he was more concerned with learning everything possible about the Long Walk than he was with the kids in his class who finally seemed to notice him.

He’s so busy agonizing over what to say to the Musketeers that he doesn’t hear Garraty’s question until they’re all staring at him from across the pavement.

He swallows, skin prickling, “What?”

“You deaf, meathead?” Olsen snickers, even as he carefully gathers orange peel remains in his palm, searching the asphalt around him for any stray pieces, “What’s your name?”

“Stebbins.” His voice is short and clipped the way it usually is, and the way he knows that it probably shouldn’t be, if he wants to walk with them.

Olsen pops another piece of orange into his mouth, and speaks around it, the way he always speaks around the wad of gum, “You some kind of fitness nut?”

“It pays to be prepared, right?”

It supposed to be something like a joke. Only Billy doesn’t know how to make it sound like one, and it falls flat the moment it leaves his lips. Baker goes back to his bible, and Olsen goes back to his orange and Garraty and McVries go back to doing whatever it is that they do to continue reforging their unshakable bond. He ducks his head self consciously, suddenly aware that this might be much more difficult than he realized.

He walks on the fringes of the group, and with every passing mile, every passing minute, is painfully aware of the space between him and them. Suddenly, even when an opportunity to jump into the constant thrum of their conversations presents itself, everything he can think to say is wrong. He feels like a lesser version of Barkovtich, not quite scorned enough to be shunned outright, but still relegated to the farthest edges. Was it so hard when he became integrated with them last time?

Eventually, Billy begins to drop back subconsciously. It’s been a long time since he needed to glance at his watch to be sure of his speed. He’s dropped back by more than a few yards when Harkness turns, “Wait- where are you going? I haven’t interviewed you yet.”

His pace falters, for just a moment, before he speeds up again fractionally, eyes locked on Harkness, “What?”

“You’re Billy Stebbins, right? Number 38,” Harkness leafs through notebook pages, “I’m trying to get a little bit down about each of the guys, for my book.”

Billy draws in line with him, glancing over at the cramped, spidery handwriting, “They won’t let you publish the truth about all this, you know?”

Harkness shrugs, his tone light and almost laughter filled, “I’m just trying to write what I see.”

“There’s a reason not many other people get to see it.” He tucks his hands into his pockets, eyes forward.

Harkness barrels on, as if he doesn’t have a care in the world, shoving the thick frames of his glasses further up the bridge of his nose, “So, what’s your home state?”

Billy sighs, and answers anyway, “West Virginia.”

Dutifully, Harkness notes it down. He seems to have a whole page dedicated to each walker, Billy can’t possibly begin to imagine how many questions he’d need to answer to fill one, “Huh, I would’ve had you pegged for somewhere farther south. Why did you sign up for the walk?”

“I-” He cuts himself off, chewing on the question for a moment. It takes a few silent paces before he can bring himself to speak again, “I guess I was always going to. Like breathing. You just do it.”

This, Harkness scribbles down in a hasty set of quotation marks, “So you’d sign up again?”

“No.” Billy turns, and looks him dead in the eye as he speaks. It’s decisive enough to throw Harkness, his usual, cheery demeanor slipping away to be replaced with wide eyes, and a disbelieving look. He doesn’t ask any more questions. Instead he shuts his notebook and mutters out a thank you and breaks off to go badger Collie.

Billy watches him go, and can’t bring himself to be upset about it.

He holds his place at the far edges of the musketeers’ orbit, and tries to ignore the miles passing. The chatter comes and goes, the way it normally does, and he tries to hold off speaking unless someone addresses him first. It’s easier that way. Every once and a while, Garraty will glance back at him, or McVries will catch him chuckling at a joke, and he has to fight the urge to freeze up, like a deer caught in the headlights. Like he’s been caught enjoying something that was never meant for him.

Night pushes out day, and Billy walks and walks. The chatter dies out with the sun, the way it always does. Distantly, he’s aware of Harkness walking somewhere to his left, headlamp bobbing in the dark. It’s easy to burrow down into himself now, easier than it ever had been at the beginning, when the Walk was still new.

The only trouble is that now, with so much of his recent memory being relegated to only the road, he’s running out of places to burrow into. His life before the Walk feels distant. Hazy in a way that a memory of childhood might be.

Up ahead, he can hear Garraty and McVries murmuring to each other in the dark. The half-tracks rumble along ahead and behind. Billy lets his eyes drift shut, trying to remember the words to a song he’d heard over the radio in Joseph's truck, trusting his feet to keep him on the road, and uncaring of if they didn’t.

The road, as always, goes on and on, and Billy. As always, keep walking along it.

Garraty and McVries earn tickets together sometime during the third night. Billy had already started shivering, and coughing, and one minute they’re plodding along in front of him, and the next they aren’t.

He almost doesn’t hear the bullhorns mechanical drawl of, “Warning, Number 23, first warning” Until Garraty is suddenly stumbling over himself, alone, and McVries is on the ground, clutching his knee, teeth grit in pain.

“Warning, Number 47, first warning.” It’s inevitable. A car crash in slow motion, as Garraty throws himself back. Billy watches them as he goes past, and then turns, moving backwards. He couldn’t tear his eyes away if he wanted to.

“Pete, come on, you’re okay, come on Pete,” Garraty’s desperate voice nearly drowns out the sound of the few remaining walkers gasps. He tugs at McVries arms, uselessly, as if hauling him along could fix a broken joint on this god forsaken road, “Come on, just keep walking with me.”

He succeeds in hoisting McVries halfway off before more warnings ring out, and McVries howls in pain, “Leave me be! Get out of here, Ray, keep walking!”

“You gotta leave him, man.” Collie calls out, halfheartedly, as if he already knows how futile it is.

“No! No! Come on Pete-”

In the dark, half illuminated by the spotlight of Olsen’s head lamp, and the flood lights of the half-track, they almost look like they’ve fused into one. Garraty has his arms thrown around McVries’ middle. Their legs are tangled together. Billy can make out the unnatural bend of McVries knee. Distantly, his memory conjures Garraty’s voice recounting some Greek myth about people with two heads, four arms and four legs, but he can’t quite remember how it ends.

Olsen’s voice sounds small and broken, and barley makes it over the sound of McVries grunted cries of pain, “He’s good as dead, Garraty.”

In lockstep beside him, Baker’s face begins to drain of colors. He’s still twisted half around, watching the struggle. His mouth hangs open, but no words ever leave him.

Billy finds himself in a similar state. When was the last time he walked without Ray and Pete? It must be lifetimes ago now. Their third warnings ring out, and Billy feels something clench, deep inside him. He turns around, and pretends not to hear the gunshots ring out. Pretends the image of them there on the road isn’t burned into his memory with all the other times he’s seen them in similar positions.

It takes him far longer than it should to realize that the wet feeling on his cheeks is coming from the steady stream of tears pouring from his eyes. The walkers carry on through the night, and the tears continue to fall.

Eventually, the sun reappears over the trees and the fields, and they get closer and closer to Freeport, and Garraty is not with them. Billy feels uncharacteristically off kilter.

He tries to do a mental headcount. Ten fingers, ten toes. Feet so blistered that they’ve all but divorced themselves from his body. Jacket, buttoned to the neck. Spare tennis shoes, bouncing against his leg with every step. Collie, Olsen and Baker a few paces ahead of him. Barkovitch a few behind. They’re an odd final five, Billy has to admit.

He chokes down a ration tube that claims to have once been pot roast, and drinks through his canteen twice over before his throat feels even remotely close to human. He has half a mind to walk off the road and end it now, seeing as Garraty and McVries aren’t here, and how, try as he might, he might not be able to walk down Barkovtich. Even if he could, he’s not sure he wants what’s waiting for him if he does.

He keeps plodding along mechanically in spite of this train of thought, watching the other boys in front of him. Olsen is incredibly alert. Maybe more so than he’s ever been past the second day of the walk. Clearly, he’s still on edge from the events of the night, as if he’d been startled back into his body. He flits around Baker, attempting to talk to him as if that’s the way to alleviate the tension ringing between them all. Baker’s shell shocked gaze stays fixed ahead, stilted by the loss of McVries.

When Baker won’t answer, Olsen breaks off, irritated and muttering to himself. Billy shakes his head, amazed enough to mutter aloud, “I never thought I’d live to see the day.”

It’s just loud enough for Olsen to catch it, over the rumble of the half-track, and he turns wildly, “What is wrong with you, guy? I mean seriously, you’re worse than fuckin Barkovitch.”

Somewhere behind them Barkovitch makes a noise of discontentment, but doesn’t dare to comment.

Billy looks at Olsen, looking at him, for a few long seconds, and because there really isn’t any he can say, decides: fuck it.

“I’ve watched you and your friends die more times than I can count. No matter what I say, or do, I wake up back at the start of this thing. Even if I’ve gotten a bullet to the brain.”

Olsen, oddly enough takes this better than expected. That is to say, he doesn’t laugh in his face, or call him a liar, or break down over the idea of being stuck in some loop. His eyes narrow as he scoffs, “Yeah fuckin right man.”

“Do I look like I’m fucking joking?” Billy stares him down. He doesn’t know why he’s pushing like this. In a few days, a few miles, when one of them has won and the rest of them are dead, they’ll wake up at the start, and Billy will remember, and Olsen won’t and the whole thing won’t matter anymore, “I’ve never seen you make it this far. Normally you’re a walking corpse by day three.”

“Prove it.” Olsen pulls the wad of gum out of his mouth and tucks it securely into his pocket, before reaching for his canteen, as if settling in for a show.

Billy sighs, watching Baker trudge along before them, “What do you want me to do describe every loop where you drop back and get gut shot for walking at a tank? Tell you how Baker and Garraty run back for you almost every time? That the one time I’ve seen McVries go, you got your ticket together?”

He flinches minutely, before schooling his face into a mask of something uncaring, “Never thought you’d be one for tall tales, Stebbins.”

“You want me to tell you that normally we all get together and promise to send cash to your fucking widow?” Billy plows on without thinking, almost daring him to keep that unimpressed look on his face.

It’s the mere mention of Clementine that has Olsen blanching, his pace faltering for a few steps, “What the fuck did you just say?”

“You try not to talk about it, but you’re walking for her. For Clementine. For the baby that you shouldn’t be having.” The last is more of an inference than anything, but from the way that Olsen looks like he’s given his ticket, Billy can tell he hit the mark.

Olsen shakes his head, looking ten times older for it, “How the fuck do you know that?”

“I told you, I’ve been on this road before. We all have. I’m just the only bastard unlucky enough to remember it.”

They walk along in silence for a few long moments. Olsen seems to be trying to put the pieces together for himself. It shouldn’t add up. In fact, it nearly doesn’t. But it’s the truth, and Billy knows that, even if Olsen will never believe him. It’ll keep on being the truth when the Walk begins again, and again, and Billy remembers and the others don’t.

Olsen’s hands shake as he closes his canteen, “That shouldn’t be possible.”

“It shouldn’t be,” Billy agrees, tucking his hands into the pockets of his jacket, “But it is happening. And you’re all suffering with me, even if you don’t know it.”

“Even when you get your ticket?” He asks.

There’s nothing else Billy can say, because really, “It doesn’t.”

They walk along in silence, side by side, for a while after that. They make an odd pair, Billy has to admit. Olsen with his gawky gate paired with Billy’s own rarely faltering stride. He expected Olsen to ask more questions. But then again, there are only so many questions to ask when the only answer he can give is that he doesn’t know.

“Clemmy and I,” Olsen’s voice sounds rusty, and almost far away when he begins to speak again, “We always wanted kids. Even when we were younger we’d talk about it but- but her sisters all never could get pregnant so we thought- we weren’t careful. And then she was late and with how expensive everything is- it was this or an abortion, and-” He lets out a long breath, “And I couldn’t take that away from her.”

The woods had long since given way to a wide expanse of wheat filled fields. A breezes cuts across the road, making Billy shiver, and Hank sigh in relief. He doesn’t seem to be looking for Billy to answer. Just goes on talking like he needs to get the words out more than anything.

“And anyway I always thought I had this whole thing figured out. But now I’m- I’m not so certain. Well- I wasn’t so certain after McVries and Garraty... and then you started in on this fuckin Billy Pilgrim lost in time bullshit and now I’m definitely not certain.”

Now, Billy frowns. What Hank means about pilgrims, he doesn’t know, but the thought of Clementine, waiting at home for her husband, it suddenly makes him uneasy. How could she have let him go off to something like this? She must have known how slim the odds of his returning were. Then again, he’s seen full well just how stubborn Hank can be.

Hank must not see the look on his face cause he heaves a sigh so heavy his shoulders rise and fall with it, and tries his face into something a little less filled with despair, “Well. It’s not like I can stop now anyway, huh?”

Billy huffs in near amusement, “I hear it’s ill advised.”

It’s enough to get a laugh, a real laugh out of Hank, and somehow, Billy feels better for it.

They walk on through the fourth day, and as the miles pass, in front of them, Baker grows more and more unsteady on his feet, as if his brain has finally given up on piloting his body any further. He stumbles off the road sometime in the night, dazed and confused, and nearly taking Barkovitch with him.

Olsen watches him go, mutely, and asks Billy whether or not he’s seen it happen like that before. Billy can’t bring himself to admit that normally, Barkovitch has killed himself by that point. That normally, Baker’s death is prolonged and painful. Instead, he just shakes his head, and stares ahead into the night, ignoring Barkovitch’s feverish muttering behind them.

Eventually, the sun pries its way back up, and they pass through Freeport. Ginnie Garraty stands there on the sidewalk, wearing her drab yellow coat, and watches them go by silently. Her son is not with them. Her hands are clutched over her chest. Something about the look on her face tells Billy that she knew that, and came to see them anyway. A tight feeling fills his chest, and he doesn’t point her out to Olsen, still loping along beside him.

Barkovitch gets caught up in the spray of bullets that catch Collie, and Olsen swears wildly, turning to watch them bleed and bleed and bleed onto the blacktop. Billy glances between Hank and his watch and back again. It’s a no brainer.

“Warning, Number 38, second warning.”

Billy walks and dies and walks and dies. He walks at the fringes of the Musketeers group until he becomes a regular feature of their orbit. It’s almost like they expect him to join them too, after a while. It doesn’t make the road any less painful, but when Garraty calls him in to settle some debate or another, or McVries hears him chortle at some joke and shoots him an easy grin, when Collie tells him about his home in Sioux Falls, or Olsen goes tit for tat with him on some stupid matter, it lifts a weight off his shoulders he wasn’t even aware of before it was gone.

It gets easier, but it gets harder too. Harder when he watches them fall. Harder when they start reaching for him when he gets too sick and stops before it can get worse. Harder when they have to learn about him all over again, when he already knows so much about them.

He walks and dies and mourns the living boys around him before they even have the chance to die.

Sometimes, after a particularly difficult loop, he finds himself hanging back, unable to bring himself to join them. Sometimes, Garraty and McVries see him, and drag him into the fray anyway. Sometimes, they seem to sense the death that lingers in the air around him, and leave him alone.

He doesn’t quite know which is worse.

“I just think it’s a dumb book to have banned, especially since half of us already read it in school, and honestly, it wasn’t even that interesting.”

It’s mile thirty something, and Garraty is carrying on about some book about a green light that Billy is certain he’s never heard of. He walks on the shoulder of the road, watching Garraty gesture animatedly to an irritated looking Olsen. For once, McVries isn’t directly at his side, instead walking somewhere in the gap between him and Billy, watching, with a soft, amused look on his face.

“Fuck you mean it was dumb?” Olsen demands, “It was fuckin- generational. It was about love and prohibition and shit.”

“No- no I get that I just- I don’t think it was especially profound enough to warrant banning.”

The sun is beating down overhead, but there’s a pleasant enough cross breeze blowing. Billy watches McVries watching Garraty and can almost pretend that a few hours ago he didn’t see them clinging onto one another, on the brink of collapse.

Baker laughs, plodding along beside them, “Man I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I think Garraty’s right. It don’t sound too insightful.”

“Exactly my point! There was no reason to take it off the shelves!” Garraty launches into a monologue about the most recent rounds of book banning, that had pulled books directly out of the hands of high school students, and leaves Olsen staring at him like he’s insane.

Up on a half-track, a soldier leans on his carbine idly, listening to Garraty orate. Billy idly rubs at his rabbits foot, and Pete drifts closer to him, to spare him a glance and a grin as if to ask whether or not he was also listening to their friends foolishness.

Moments like these, Billy has to admit, make the weight of the road a little more bearable.

The first time he tells them, really tells them, it’s more out of boredom than anything else. Something like 70 miles in, the Musketeers have already burned through every topic of conversation they typically cover, and Harkness has already asked every interview question he can think of.

“What about you, Stebs?” Pete asks, turning and walking backwards to look at him, “You got any fun stories to keep us entertained?”

Billy thinks and clears his throat and opens his mouth to say something about Ray’s seemingly endless well of illegal stories, and then changes his mind. Finally, he says, “We’re stuck in a time loop.”

Olsen stops his chewing, turning over his shoulder to look at him, “The fuck did you just say?”

“We’re stuck in a time loop,” Billy says, hands in his pockets. It almost feels as mundane as reporting the weather, now that it has been his reality for so long, “We’ve all died on this road more times than I can count.”

For once, he seems to have reduced Ray to silence. Pete laughs, and it falls somewhere between nervous and amused, “What?”

“It doesn’t matter who wins, or when we get our tickets. I always wake back up at the start.” Billy explains. He tries to keep his voice matter of fact. Tries not to let on about how fucking miserable he is, even when he walks with them.

“You’re fucking with us.” Harkness decides, pointing at him with his pen as if he’s found him out. Baker nods eagerly at the idea, the hand tangled with his rosary betraying his uncomfortably with the idea of dying and dying and never quite making it to heaven or hell.

“I wish I was.” Billy says. He means it. They all keep trudging along, through the late morning air, and Billy can’t seem to get himself to explain further, and no one seems to want to think about it more than they have to.

Finally, Ray seems to come back to himself, dropping back slightly to walk in line with him, ignoring the warning that rings out, “So you mean to tell me that you’ve died- that we’ve all died, potentially hundreds of times over- and that you- the only person who seems to be aware of that fact, keep showing up and walking anyway?”

It does make him sound a little ridiculous when it’s framed that way. Billy shrugs, coughs, tries not to let them see the way Ray’s logic bristles him, “Don’t really have much of a choice.”

Olsen shakes his head, “Man you’re so full of shit.”

They drop it after that, dismissing it as some poorly made joke. Billy relegates himself further from the edge of their group, like a dog licking its wounds. Barkovitch collects a warning in order to fall back enough to make some snippy comment about it, and Collie shoos him off with little more than a glance in Billy’s direction.

When the sun starts to set on that second day, Pete pulls in line with him again, and they walk in silence for a few moments.

“It would make sense. At least, I think it would,” His words are careful, and Billy can see his glances up to where Ray walks in front of them, “Feels like we’ve known each other a lot longer than two days, anyway.”

“Much longer than two days.” Billy agrees, because what else can he say to explain the bond forged between them, time and time again.

He waits two loops before trying to tell them again, to similar results. Disappointing as it is, it becomes a routine. Sometimes they take it as a joke, sometimes they even humor him. Once they even laugh at him so hard he has to talk himself out of walking off the road and hoping that it wouldn’t be the first time they miraculously remember.

Slowly, they begin to take him more seriously, warming up to the idea the more times he tells them. How it manages to stick with them after every loop, Billy has no idea, but he supposes its not dissimilar to the way the Ray and Pete are always drawn to each other, or the way Collie and Harkness get roped in with the musketeers more and more frequently as the loops go on.

At a certain point, dozens of loops later, when he finishes telling them about waking back up at the start, they all stare at him with some mixture of disbelieving and confusion. That is, until Pete smiles and shrugs, and says something about it explaining away the deja-vu he’d been feeling all morning. Somehow, Pete’s assent brings the rest of them onboard without complaint, almost every time.

Of the Musketeers, it’s Olsen, oddly enough, who becomes the most helpful. The first to hear out his whole story, and to fully entertain the idea every time. Hank’s suspension of disbelief and wide breadth of knowledge becomes incredibly helpful in trying to parse together why exactly this is happening, why Billy seems to be the only one conscious of it, and how to put an end to it.

As helpful as he can be, his hypotheses are often curated around absurd fiction books that Billy has never read, that almost always get Ray up in arms about themes and subtexts.

“Olsen, my man, I’m telling you- it’s not a time travel book it’s an anti war book!”

It’s something like the eighth or ninth time that one of Olsen’s theories has been sidetracked by Ray’s seemingly never ending ability to sniff out a political agenda in a book that has been redacted, retracted, amended and reprinted more times than any of them can count. Billy vaguely remembers the colorful cover of the original book, and the day that it, along with many others in its section, were removed from the library for a thorough round of censoring.

“The whole thing is about him going back and forth in time! There’s a whole line about him getting stuck!” Olsen gestures wildly, as if the force in which he throws his arms around will somehow prove his point.

Ray, as always, doubles down, “Even if we ignore the anti war themes, you’re still wrong! Billy Pilgrim travels through time, he doesn’t get stuck in it! The line is about him getting unstuck!”

Billy winces at the unfortunate coincidence of names, and begins unwrapping tinfoil from his jelly sandwiches. He offers the first triangle of bread and jelly that emerges to Collie, walking on his right and thoroughly entertained by the bickering, who takes it gratefully. The second goes to Pete, who had drifted into Hank’s place on his other side as soon as the shorter boy had pulled forward to argue with Ray.

“How long does this normally last?” Harkness asks, gesturing between Hank and Ray with his pen.

“An hour at the most,” Billy chews his sandwich thoughtfully, “But I’ve never heard them bring up this particular book before.”

Pete shakes his head with a laugh, “Man you really have been stuck with these fools, haven’t you?”

Billy shrugs and reaches for his canteen, but can’t quite draw his gaze from the space of the road ahead of them, “Better than walking alone.”

It is better than walking alone, but it’s also worse.

That same night, Harkness breaks his ankle on the hill, and Billy and Collie spend nearly twenty miles walking along with him slung between them, crying in pain, until he finally begs for them to leave him. When Billy wakes up at the drop off two days later, he swears he can still feel Harkness’ hand griping his shoulder. Staying close to him and reaching out to steady every stumble becomes common practice more quickly than Billy is willing to admit.

Two loops later he bleeds out on the roadside at Collie’s side, and as he does so he catches a glimpse of Baker’s terrified face, blood already beginning to drip sluggishly from his nose. When he blinks awake it takes far longer than it should to reconcile that desperation with the soft, unknowing smile that greets him. Billy realizes, when Baker’s nose begin to drip again five days later, that there is nothing he can do to help him, and he hates himself for it.

Several loops after that Olsen’s mind finally gives out after nearly 270 miles, and instead of the yells of the others, Billy can only hear Hank jabbering about his superstitions a hundred miles back down the road. He reaches out and grabs at him before he can even begin to think about whether or not, sick as he is, he has the strength to catch him.

He’s stronger than he looks, and it’s all Billy can do to get a grip on his jacket and try to dig in his heels, earning a warning of his own as they go toppling down together. The asphalt meets them roughly, eating at the exposed skin of his arms and Billy hears rather than feels the resounding thud as his head makes contact with its rough surface.

“Let me go!” Olsen wails, wriggling and kicking desperately to be free of him, still pushing hopelessly towards the half-track as if there is some sort of haven to be found amid the soldiers and the guns that wait for him there.

If this had happened sooner, if he hadn’t been so sick and so tired, Billy might have been able to muscle him back up and to his feet, and forced him to keep walking. But as it is, with his numb feet, and his sandpaper throat, and his bone deep exhaustion, it’s all Billy can do to keep a grip on him, and hope, against all logic, that the musketeers will come back for Hank.

“Don’t be stupid-” It’s a miracle that he manages to wheeze out the words, and the odds of Olsen hearing them over the bullhorn are so slim, it almost makes him wonder why he’s wasting his breath.

“Warning, number 46, third warning, number 38, second warning,” Olsen lunges forward again, and Billy scrambles to grab at his backpack, at his jacket, at his ration belt, at anything that will keep him away from that gut shot. The bullhorn continues drawling on just as a new hand winds its way around his own arm, “Warning, number 47, number 6, first warning.”

The world seems to slow as Ray hauls him to his feet, tearing Olsen out of his grip before he can do anything about it. The sudden movement makes his head swim, and distantly, he thinks the bullhorn might keep sounding out warnings, but the numbers swim in and out of his head without sticking.

Baker yelling Hanks name is the only thing that seems to cut through the sudden fog in his head. Ray’s hands disappear from his arms just as Collie takes his place, yanking him back up to speed with a force that makes Billy’s world spin once more. He catches half a glimpse of Harkness’ dirtied converse, and Bakers gangling legs, before Collie is forcing him onward.

How many warnings are they on? How much longer does Hank have? Why aren’t they hauling him along instead of Billy? He’s only on two warnings. He has time that Hank doesn’t.

His mind races, and races, and then Pete is appearing on his other side, with an easy arm around his waist, and a smile Billy can see right through. “That’s it, that’s it, Billy,” He says, bracing against every stumble, “We’re just out here enjoying each others company, huh? You’re alright, yeah?”

Billy looks at him, and nods dumbly, because he can’t feel his legs at all anymore, but the fact that they’re still pushing along means they must be going at least 3 miles an hour, which means they’re still alive and that’s better than he can say for Curley, or Rank, or Ewing.

Pete smiles again, and in the dark it looks a little less broken, and then he looks around Billy at Collie, and asks, “They up yet?”

Billy feels Collie twist to look back, though his grip on his arms never falters, “Harkness is- oh god Olsen…”

He trails off there, and Billy can hear Ray yelling desperately about not losing someone too, and then, even with the distance that has been put between him and where they fell, the loudest sound he has ever heard rings out.

His head feels like it’s splitting apart, and he cries out in pain, doubling over even as Collie and Pete scramble to right him. He opens his eyes, and can’t quite see out of them, and wonders if this is like to be a dead man walking.

Hank is dead. Or at least, he must be, because when Billy manages to get his eyes to focus again, Art and Ray’s jackets are smeared in blood that isn’t theirs. He’s not sure when Collie and Pete let go of him, but he’s suddenly aware of the biting cold all at once, seeping into his bones and worsening the ache that sits within them.

Faintly he remembers arguing about his being able to walk, but he can’t be sure whether or not that was about his pneumonia, or his fall, or if it was this loop, or seven hundred miles ago. Thoughts dart in and out of his mind so quickly he almost can’t catch them to make any sense of them.

The throbbing in his head is constant, and when he reaches up sluggishly to rub at the side of his skull where the pain radiates from, he’s met with a wet mess of hair. Billy wipes his hand on his pants, and pretends he didn’t see it, and wonders faintly why and how it is that he’s still walking.

His lungs seem to remember their putrid, half full of fluid status, and all at once his chest heaves with a cough that makes the pound of his head all the louder, and the relentless rhythm of his legs stutter.

He’s not quite in line with anyone else. How is he still walking? Why is he still walking? Hasn’t he gone far enough?

“Warning, number 38, second warning.”

He has half a mind to stop, right there, but then Pete turns, dropping back just far enough to grab his arm, “Come on now, compadre, don’t go wandering off now.”

There’s enough familiarity to the action that it makes Billy wonder how long this song and dance has been taking place. Weakly, he tries to shake the hand away, rasping, “I can’t- Pete- I can’t-”

“Don’t talk like that Billy,” Ray is bracketing him in on the other side before he can even blink, throwing his arm over Billy’s shoulders, “You’ve just gotta keep walking, okay?”

Pressed in between them, Billy almost feels the chill leaving his bones. He can feel Ray’s thumb brushing back and forth across his shoulder, and the gentle pressure of Pete’s arm around his waist, pushing him back up to speed every time he seems to threaten to fall below again.

“I can’t- my body can’t take much more,” He coughs again, nearly doubling over against the arms that embrace him. He feels Ray and Pete stumble along with him, and draws in another desperate, ragged breath, clutching at Pete’s hand on his arm, “Don’t let me drag you down with me-”

Pete’s arm tightens around him, like a refusal to let go, “That’s nonsense, Billy.”

Distantly, Barkovitch jeers. The musketeers, the ones that are left, though Billy can’t quite get his eyes to focus enough to figure out which of them are left, close rank around them. He thinks he hears Art telling Barkovitch off.

“You gotta-” He heaves in another horrible, painful breath, and looks between them, desperate, “You gotta let me go.”

Ray shakes his head vehemently, refusing to take his eyes off of him, as if he looked away from Billy for more than a moment, he might slip away, “You gotta keep walking with us, okay? You just gotta keep walking.”

Billy almost laughs. Would laugh if it didn’t mean more torture on his torn lungs. If it didn’t mean jostling his poor head. What he wouldn’t give to go on walking like this, pressed between their warmth, if only he could.

“I’m already dead, Garraty, can’t you see that?” His voice is a low, harsh whisper. The sun is threatening to push in between the trees. The faint light makes his eyes ache.

“No- no, don’t talk like that- don’t fucking talk like that!” Ray explodes, his grip on Billy’s shoulders tightening, protectively, even as his shouting makes his head spin.

Pete winces, and squeezes Billy’s hip in something like an apology, and Billy wants to wail. Why are they so kind, yet so cruel? Don’t they realize what they do to him?

“I know it’s hard, baby, but you’ve gotta keep walking, just a little longer,” Pete speaks softly as if soothing a startled animal, and it takes Billy a moment to focus on the words, his head turning toward him listlessly. When he finally catches his eye, Pete smiles, and squeezes him again, and doesn’t seem to see the way it makes something in him shatter, “Just stay with us a little longer.”

Who is Billy to deny them?

In the end, they stumble along together until full daylight, when the light of the sun has him crying out in pain, and he can’t seem to make his legs cooperate smoothly for more than two steps at a time. He tells them its his time, or he tries to, the words getting garbled as he fights to get his mouth to cooperate.

Even then, Ray and Pete refuse to let him go, and all three of them earn tickets together, Billy tangled in their arms.

He avoids them for five loops after that. He walks and dies and does not watch the way Garraty and McVries throw arms around each other. Does not see how there is no space between them, and how wrong it was to have tried to make a place there. He walks and dies and walks and dies and does not think of the way those arms cradled him, until the end.

During two of those loops, he runs twice, and makes it down the hill once. He spends the day with Carla, in the church, not listening as the radio hosts chirp about the comradery between numbers 23 and 47. She catches him, looking at the radio and trying to fight off the ache in his chest, and is good enough not to question him about it.

Eventually, he rejoins the group, but only when the tugging in his chest becomes too hard to ignore, and even then, he hates the way that even just hovering at the edge of Garraty and McVries’ orbit seems to sooth the ache.

Occasionally, when he tells them about the loops, they ask about the things he’s seen. About their deaths. Usually it’s Hank who starts it, even as Art chastises him for it. Sometimes Collie or Harkness ask too.

He tries not to answer, and then when Olsen badgers him about it for miles on end, he tries to give them as few details possible. Usually, it’s enough to get him to lay off. Usually it’s also enough to get Garraty and McVries to break off, one or both of their faces twisted in a kind of pain that Billy understands all too well.

“What if- right hear me out on this now,” Olsen gestures wildly, and Collie winces, almost in preparation, “What if it’s the Major?”

Billy can’t be sure what mile they’re on, or how many loops they’ve been having these nonsensical debates. There’s a tired ache in his legs, and a scratching in his throat, and the others are beginning to look worse for wear. But his efforts to keep Olsen talking, to keep him from falling in on himself, seem to be succeeding, and that’s all Billy can really ask for, even if it means listening to the utter nonsense that he has a tendency to spew.

McVries doubles over laughing so hard he snorts, “Olsen what the hell is wrong with you?”

“No I’m serious! What if he’s doing this to torture you?”

Garraty shakes his head, barley able to speak over his laughter, “How- how would he be doing that? I mean- it just doesn't make any sense!”

“There’s higher odds that I’m brain dead in a coma, hallucinating you right now.” Billy monotones. Garraty and McVries burst into laughter again, even as Hank tries to sputter out more evidence to his point. Collie turns and looks at him, and Billy manages to hold a straight face for all of two seconds before they both crack, joining in on the others laughter.

When he can finally breathe again, Billy huffs, “In what world could he have invented time travel?”

“And a way to reverse death,” Baker points out, nudging at Olsen, “Let’s not forget that little detail.”

Harkness laughs again, “The same world in which we’re stuck in a time loop.”

“No, no, no,” Olsen sticks up his nose crossing his arms, “Stebbins is the only one who remembers. For all we know it’s his time loop. Don’t put that shit on me.”

Garraty looks at him for a long moment, before laughing again, “God, you’re such an asshole, Hank.”

“What’s the matter, you don’t want to be stuck with us?” McVries sing-songs, skipping around to throw an arm around Hank and pull him in tight.

“Not with you asshole-” He squirms and squirms, trying to get out of McVries’ iron grip, “God- let me go!”

Billy flinches.

Collie frowns, turning to him quietly as the squabble continues, “You good?”

“Yeah-” Billy clears his throat, turns to look out on the field they’re passing over, “I just- It’s fine.”

He backs off with a nod, and turns to join in ribbing on Olsen.

Once, loops and loops later, after watching Percy make it three steps across the sidewalk onto to be met with hot lead, Collie turns, fuming, and demands, “Have we ever fought back? Have we ever tried to make these bastards bleed?”

Billy coughs into his elbow, and tries to meet his eyes, “It’s never worked.”

“Why not?” He demands, watching the soldier who shot Percy climbing serenely back onto the half-track. Billy can see the gears turning in his head.

He joins him in watching the half-tracks inch along, and tries to think of a way to say it without outing the betrayal he’s watched Collie receive time and time again from the boys that have walked by his side. Eventually, he settles on, “It just hasn’t. You never- quite catch them at the right time.”

“Well what could we do differently?” When Billy doesn’t answer, he turns to him again, throwing his long hair over his shoulder, “Don’t bullshit me, Stebbins, I know you pay attention to all the little shit. What could we do?”

Billy watches the pavement pass under foot, and then the scant buildings left in the town move on by, and then anywhere that will keep Collie out of his direct line of sight. He looks down at his watch, and drops back, incrementally, and feels Collie follow him.

They’re not terribly far from the others. Not really. But only Baker is within hearing distance, and Billy is willing to take his chances.

“It doesn’t work because when you charge the half-track, no one ever follows you,” He keeps his eyes forward, pretending not to see the devastation that washes over Collie’s face, “Even when I’ve tried to- it’s just- it won’t be enough unless all of us are in it together.”

Baker’s head swivels towards them, just slightly.

Collie shoves his fists into his pockets, and starts to speak, and stops himself several times over when his voice breaks. They walk in silence for a while, and don’t say anything about the small, angry tears that have spilled down his cheeks.

“How do we get them in on it?” Collie asks eventually, brokenly.

Billy surveys the group of walkers that has made it through most of the second day. An even mix of their musketeers and the others. Garraty and McVries walk nearly in lockstep, their heads bowed together and Garraty whispers something that makes McVries erupt with laughter. Olsen and Harkness have taken Tressler under their wings, and take turns fidgeting with his transistor radio, as if one of them will have the right magic touch to make it work. Baker is still doing his best impression of not listening to them.

“I don’t know,” He admits, honestly, and then, considering their odds, “We need to wait for the group to thin out, at the very least. Less soldiers then.”

Collie nods, considering this, and then mutters something about trying to plan for it as he breaks off, making his way towards Baker.

A day and a half later, when the walk has whittled down to eight remaining walkers -the new musketeers, and Barkovitch, who just won’t quit- Collie makes a run for the half-track, and Billy follows in his wake.

It’s not until Collie has shot the first guard down, and Billy has made to climb up towards the next one, that he realizes that they aren’t alone. Miraculously, Baker scrambles up beside him, reaching for the next mans carbine as Billy struggles towards the driver.

It’s like a chain reaction, and he can’t tell if it’s from Baker’s being in on it, or whether or not Collie pleaded with each one of them, but when he hazards a glance back, Garraty is dragging Harkness out of the way and McVries is taking the carbine that Baker shoves into his hands.

In his distraction, Billy earns a devastating elbow to the ribs, sending him back across the cab of the half-track. He watches, almost in slow motion, as the driver reaches down, surely towards where a side arm of some sort waits.

In a moment of pure panic, Billy kicks at him wildly, succeeding only in slamming the gear shift into reverse. They’re not moving fast enough to cause any real damage, but suddenly all Billy can see is Patrick with his poor, crushed legs, and he scrambles back across the cab as more shots ring out.

When all is said and done, they’re left with two broken tv cameras, a set of half broken half-tracks, guns with no more bullets to fire, and four dead soldiers. One of the lenses of Harkness’ glasses has been shattered, and he sports a black eye. Baker’s palm is burned from gripping the muzzle of a rifle, and Hank’s eyes look dull, almost like he’s beginning to retreat in on himself again.

But they’re alive, and what’s better, they aren’t walking, and there’s no one left to punish them for it.

Billy slumps against the side of one of the half-tracks, trying to deduce what pain is from the fight, and what is from the road. He coughs and coughs, and ignores the jabs of pain each heave of his lungs sends through him.

They’re in uncharted territory now, and Billy has to admit to himself that the thought of doing something just differently enough to break the loop takes a weight off of his shoulders.

“Don’t get too comfortable,” Collie warns, his face caught in a sad, satisfied smile, “We need to get out of here.”

“And go where?” Barkovitch is, somehow, untouched and unbothered by everything that’s happened. Billy is almost certain he did nothing but duck and cover. He’s the only one, aside from Garraty, who hasn’t dropped to sit and rest, “Not like we can just waltz into the next town.”

Harkness turns to Garraty expectantly, “What do you think, Ray?”

Garraty frowns at this and hums, and paces the width of the road with enough fervor that his shoe heel comes clean off. They’re still ninety miles or more from Freeport. Billy laughs in spite of himself, and waves away the questioning glances it earns him.

“Well,” Ray says eventually, staring southward down the road, “We’re still pretty far from Freeport, but- maybe we could…”

He trails off, and the idea makes Billy sober. He knows exactly what Ray is suggesting, and can’t stand the thought of bringing this kind of trouble to Mrs. Garraty’s door. He begins the painful process of hauling himself to his feet.

“There’s some people in a little town, a ways off from here,” He starts, reaching for the spare tennis shoes that have dangled from his rucksack for so many miles, and beginning to unknot the laces, “They could help us.”

“They’d really help us?” Collie asks skeptically.

At the same time, Art looks up at him, “How far from here?”

Billy turns to Collie first, “Do you trust me?”

As soon as the words leave his mouth, and he looks around the group, he realizes that they have absolutely no reason to do so. They only met him a little less than four days ago.

Pete looks at him anyway, and nods like it’s the surest thing in the world, “Of course, compadre.”

Again, a weight seems to fall from his shoulders.
“Good. It’s-” The words hit him before they can come out of his mouth and he laughs again. Laughs hard enough to catch the others off guard. It takes him a moment before he can right himself, and draw a less painful breath and continue, “It might be a bit of a long walk.”

They can’t take the main road, so they cut through the woods, and the fields, and get so hopelessly lost that its almost funny. Billy falls back and lets Garraty take the lead the moment he seems to have an inclination of where they’re going.

They walk and walk, and have to take breaks frequently, and Billy thinks its a miracle that they cover any ground at all. He gets sicker and sicker as the day burns on, or at least, the ache in his chest gets worse and worse the more miles they track through the sticks.

They walk through the night, and by some minor miracle, stumble upon the edge of the town a few hours after day break.

Billy doesn't need to try not to think about how impossible it all is. He’s too busy trying to keep his breathing from sounding too ragged, and his coughing from sounding too painful. It’s too late for him, he’s certain of that much, but as he catches sight of the church spire in the early morning sunlight, he’s sure that it’s not too late for the others.

He plants himself firmly against a tree near the edge of the woods, a good a place as any, he thinks, for the end. Coughs up more blood, the way he had started sometime in the night. It only takes a few paces worth of movement for Garraty, all the way at the head of their column, to somehow sense that he’s not with them.

He turns back with the same kind of frantic look that’s usually reserved for McVries, and when he catches sight of Billy, his face pales, and Billy feels his own heart sink.

“Head to the church,” He coughs. Sees spots. Doubles over. Rights himself by the grace of god, before Ray can even put his hands on him, “Carla will help you.”

“She can help you too, compadre.” Pete insists, pushing through the others to make his way back to him.

Billy shakes his head, pulling out of Ray’s grip, “She’ll get you somewhere to stay- and food and- exit visas.”

“Come on, Billy.” It’s Collie who speaks now, looking at him brokenly.

He shakes his head, and coughs out more bloody phlegm and pretends the world isn’t spinning, “It’s too late for me.”

“Please.”

They shouldn’t be looking at him like this. They shouldn’t know him like this. Shouldn't know him well enough to mourn him. To fight to keep him alive.

He slides down to land roughly on the ground, before any of the sets of hands that stretch in his direction can actually reach him. From the cold earth, he waves them away once more, “Give it a rest. I’m done.”

Billy Stebbins dies at the edge of the woods, surrounded by boys who he’s known longer than they’ve known him. It’s not the worst way to go, he thinks absently, as the dark begins to press in around his vision. For once he isn’t cold.

And as it all slips away, he hopes, now that he’s gotten them off the road, now that some semblance of safety is within their grasp, that the loop can finally come to an end.

Chapter Text

Billy Stebbins blinks awake on the pavement at the drop off, and feels a deep well of despair open in his gut. He can’t keep doing this. He can’t.

Around him, boys are talking, pacing, doing whatever they can manage to prepare for the death sentence that is the open road before them. Billy’s shoulders hunch, as a sob threatens to work it’s way through his throat.

He’d gotten them out of there. He’d gotten the Musketeers, and Barkovtich of all people, off of the road, and to some semblance of safety. He’d gotten them out. So why the hell is he still here? Hasn’t he been through enough? Hasn’t he walked enough miles to prove he’s not the same foolish boy he was at the beginning of all of this? Hasn’t he made and lost enough friends to prove he’s capable of connection? Hasn’t his body failed so spectacularly, so many times as to prove that he was never the mechanical rabbit at all, but pitifully human flesh and blood?

Will any of it ever be enough?

“Hey, are you okay?”

The only reason he knows it’s directed at him is because Curley’s pacing has already disappeared from beside him. He glances up and sees Ray’s face, full of unwarranted concern. He doesn’t have it in him to croak out an answer. Instead he hums dismissively and spends a few moments too long watching Ray’s face, and wonders whether or not, should their places be swapped, Ray would be able to handle being the one doing the remembering.

Ray only frowns at him, and starts to turn away to say something to Hank, who, with only a glance at Billy, seems to be able to tell that today is not the day for some wisecracking comment.

Beside them, Pete is looking at him strangely. Almost scrutinizing. Like he’s trying to see through his skin, and read him from the inside out. When he meets his gaze, Pete cocks an eyebrow, but doesn’t look away, like whatever is running through his head is too important.

For once, he looks away first, and pretends he doesn’t feel Pete’s eyes on him, as he busies himself with checking over the contents of his rucksack, as if they haven’t been one of the many constants in his miserable, looping life.

Billy has never been more grateful for the Major’s arrival.

Pete keeps hazarding glances his direction throughout the duration of the Major’s spiel, and then seems to wait, watching and listening for something. By the time his number is called, Billy is ready for it all to be over already, and when he strides up to the front, he doesn’t wait for the tag to be placed around his neck. He pulls a page directly from Ray’s book, and snatches the tag out of the soldiers reaching hand, glaring daggers at his father all the while.

When he turns back to return to his place, Pete is still watching him intently. For a moment, Billy thinks there is something almost akin to recognition in his eyes.

But then he sits down, and drops the tag around his neck, and secures his rucksack, and tells himself how he can’t afford to start thinking like that. Hope, even the little of it he’s ever had since this nightmare began, can fail on you. This, Billy knows.

The starting gun sounds, and the walking begins and he falls into his old place at the back of the herd. Ahead, the musketeers fall into old habits. He’s not ready to face them again, not yet. Maybe not ever. He’d gotten them out, and for what? What was the point of any of this? Surely this cannot be eternity. Surely, if he is condemned, there is some other place, some other way, he can serve out his eternal punishment.

Billy walks, and walks, and daydreams up a place far, far away from this god forsaken road, where he and the others can finally be free. A place where the only walking he does is to get where he wants to go. A place where he can build a life, a real life, around anything but the Long Walk, if such a life could ever truly exist for him.

Then a sharp peel of laughter from up ahead, pulls him out of his head, and Billy has to remind himself how foolish it is to dream.

The day begins to fall open in a far familiar pattern. He could almost set time by the figures they pass along the road, and the snatches of conversation that drift up from the musketeers. It all flows along like a song he has heard time and time again until his is as much a part of the melody as the melody is a part of him.

Billy tries to recount the plots of one of the books that always had Ray and Olsen up in arms to himself, and keeps getting stuck on details he can’t be sure belong to one book or another.

Curley lets out a startled grunt of pain shortly after they cross the seven mile mark. It’s not a shock. Billy thinks mildly about how he’s right on time, and then scolds himself for it. He’s seen Curley fall early, and he’s seen Curley fall late. He’s seen Ray help him, to no success, and he’s seen him help him along for miles on end. Usually, it doesn’t make a difference.

So when Ray loses his grip on the boy, and he totters along for a few steps before crashing to the pavement, clutching his leg, it’s no surprise. It’s just another day. It’s just another loop. Billy knows that.

What is surprising, though, is the way he speeds up anyway, without thinking, weaving through the others, as Ray and Pete and everyone around them stare at Curely in horror as his final warning rings out in the clear morning air.

He’s not sure why he does it. Maybe there’s only so many times a person can take watching a fourteen year-old’s brain paint the pavement.

Before the soldiers can even approach him, Billy has him, stooping and hauling him up by the armpits, barley breaking his stride. Curley cries out in pain, flinching so violently that Billy nearly drops him.

“Lean your weight on me.” He doesn’t give himself time to think about the words, and they come out just as harsh and clipped as he usually sounds, even as he adjusts his grip to throw one of Curley’s arms over his shoulder, one of his own wrapping around the boys middle to support him. To carry his weight.

“It hurts.” Curley whimpers, and Billy realizes just how out of his depth he really is. He’s not good with people his own age, let alone kids younger than him.

Billy pulls his gaze away from the boy tucked into his side to find Ray still trudging along backwards, staring at him in disbelief. Pete’s guiding hand sits high enough on his shoulder to brush the base of his neck, and Billy elects to stare at that junction where skin meets skin while he tries to shake the sudden thought of those same faces, riddled with exhaustion and bullets, so many miles down the line.

Ray seems to shake something loose in his head, and then he’s at Curely’s other side quickly, “I know, I know. But you gotta keep walking, okay?”

Between the two of them, they’re practically carrying him, but Curley bravely tries to keep up with their stride anyway, even as tears stream down his face. He cries out mutely every time his left leg hits the ground with too much force.

The soldier strides along, just behind them instead of returning to his half-track. The only mercy Billy can see is in the way the carbine rests in his lowered hands, instead of braced against his shoulder. That gives them more time to get up to speed, if they slip up again.

He takes another look at the kid tucked under his arm, as Collie and Hank and Barkovtich of all people, start cussing at the solider, and decides that he won’t let them slip.

“Deep breaths, deep breaths.” Ray says, shooting Billy a pleading look that he cannot even begin to decipher.

“You’re alright, youngin, you’re alright.” Pete chimes in from just a head of them, still looking over his shoulder at them, his eyes wide.

Even with his resolve to not let Ray down again, Billy feels a million miles away, all at once. What the hell did he think he was doing? When had dragging someone who was already meant to die ever gone well for anyone? He knew first hand how poorly it went for everyone involved. How much longer can he carry Curley along if his cramp doesn’t loosen and he’s not able to walk on his own? How much longer can he delay the inevitable?

Something nagging in the back of his brain decides: forever, if he has to. Forever, if it means he won’t watch Curley die ever again. Forever, if it means keeping that devastated look off of Ray’s face.

There’s something tight and panicked clenching in his chest, but at this point, there’s nothing Billy can do but to continue to pull Curley along. The world fades farther away. Distantly, he can hear Ray and Pete’s soft, soothing words to Curley, and the road passing underfoot, and the chatter of the rest of the boys as the story spreads up and down the column, but it almost feels unreal.

He hears Curley say something about the cramp loosening, his voice still breathy with tears. He thinks he might say something lame and mechanical about drinking water and easing more weight onto it slowly, but it feels almost unfocused.

Over the course of what could be minutes and what could be miles, Curley puts more and more weight on his leg until he’s walking on his own once more. Billy barley feels present for any of it. It’s as if one minute he’s walking along, hauling Curley’s weight and the next the boy is walking along on his own beside him.

In a drifting thought, Billy misses the warmth tucked against his side. Curley goes on walking just beside him, close enough that their arms bump into each other at every other step, as if he’s worried his warnings will catch up to him again if he breaks off. On his other side, Ray looks almost grateful for that fact. Somewhere, Billy finds a relief in it too.

Eventually, when enough miles pass, the soldier trailing them goes back to the half-track, and Billy knows it’s a weight off of all of their shoulders. Pete watches him go, and then mutters something to Ray, who gives him a skeptical glance before beginning to break off.

“Hey, youngin, why don’t you head off with Ray for a second, I need to talk to Stebs bout something.”

Curley glances up at Billy worriedly. It’s all he can do to shrug, sending the younger boy heading off towards Ray. Pete, even for all his staring at Billy this morning, has never given him a reason to distrust him.

They walk on next to each for a few steps of silence before Pete shakes his head and sighs, “I feel like I’m going crazy, man.”

“You have to be crazy to be on this road.” Billy turns, in an attempt to study Pete’s face, only to be met with Pete looking at him dead on already.

Pete shakes his head, but carries on anyway, “All this morning, I keep getting this feeling. Like somethings off. Like I’ve seen most of these guys before, somewhere.”

He looks away from Billy as he talks, glancing around at the walkers, and then out at the landscape as it passes. He weighs the words carefully before he speaks, “Like I’d seen you before somewhere.”

Billy stays silent, and tries not to let himself hope, or believe, or -god forbid- wish.

“And then- with Curley- I watched him go down like I knew it would happen, but then-” His voice grows shaky, and he stops, clearing his throat. It takes a few more steps before he continues, “But then you hauled him up off the ground, and all I could think was ‘he’s never done that before’.”

Billy watches Pete watch the ground pass underfoot. Eventually, when he raises his head to meet his gaze, there’s something desperate in his eyes, something that Billy’s never quite seen before, “So I need you to tell me what the hell is going on here.”

It’s not a full remembrance. Not by a long shot. It’s barely even recognition. For all he knows this is just another cruel trick. For all he knows this will be some crutch to help him along through this Walk that will only get dragged away as soon as the next one begins.

Pete’s still staring at him expectantly, and it takes him a moment to clear his throat, which suddenly feels like sandpaper all too soon, “We’ve been on this road before.”

He throws his head back and laughs. Laughs hard enough for Ray to glance back at them over Curley’s head. It must make an odd sight. Billy’s grim face next to Pete’s near hysteric one.

When he finally stops laughing, he pulls in a shuddered, near panicked breath, “Either we’re both crazy or…”

“Or I’m telling the truth, which I’m inclined to believe I am,” Billy reaches up to rub at the bridge of his nose, where a pressure is already forming between his eyes, “We’ve done this more times than I can count.”

Pete draws in another haggard breath, his eyes hopelessly tracking Ray’s movements ahead of them. He sounds so tired, “How does it end?”

Billy squeezes his eyes shut and pretends he isn’t thinking about all the awful times its come down to the three of them. He swallows thickly, trying not to follow his line of sight, “That doesn’t matter, does it? At the end of the day we all end up back at the start.”

“Come on man.” It’s the same imploring tone he usually reserves for the end, when they’re both half dead and Billy is about to spill his guts.

Pete doesn’t remember all of it. He can at least keep him from some of the worse details. He shakes his head again, “Knowing isn’t going to do you any good.”

“Come on-”

“Jesus wept, McVries,” His voice comes out so loudly and so suddenly that Pete backs off in an instant. Again, Ray’s head is on a swivel to look at them. He raises his hand in an apology, before turning back to Pete and continuing in a hiss “Knowing how Garraty goes isn’t going to help you get through when it happens this time. It’s never helped me.”

Pete stays quiet for a long time then, staring at the ground as it passes under his feet. There might be tears in his eyes, but his head is bent at such an angle that Billy can’t quite know for certain. For his own part, Billy tries to keep on staring resolutely ahead, telling himself that Pete has dealt with harsher words than his. All around them, the Walk keeps trudging on.

“What do we do about it, then?” Pete asks eventually. His face is carefully blank, the deep, exhausted look in his eyes being the only place where his emotions bleed through, “How do we break the loop?”

Billy tries to meet his gaze steadily, but something in him seems to break halfway, and he turns, looking out at the fields, “Nothing.”
“Fuck you mean, nothing?” He starts to turn as if he can force Billy to look him in the eye, before seeming to remember that it won’t go well if he wants to keep speed.

“I’ve done everything. I’ve tried not walking. I’ve tried running. I’ve tried fighting. I’ve tried some dumb ass shit Olsen was convinced would work. There’s no getting off of this road.”

Pete frowns at that, “Olsen knows? How the hell…”

“He doesn’t. Not right now anyway,” Billy sighs, watching Hank walking along, just ahead of Ray. His gait is still even. He hasn’t had enough time to wear himself down yet, “He’s the first one of you who ever believes me when I tell you.”

His frown deepens as he mutters, half remembering, “The musketeers….” and then, after a moment of pondering Billy’s words, “Were you planning on telling us this time around?”

Billy considers lying for half a moment, then decides that it won’t matter, not in the end, “No.”

“No?” Pete raises at eyebrow, his arms crossing over his chest.

He wants to laugh, bitterly. Instead he shakes his head, “Not after last time. I need a break from getting my hopes up.”

“It’s like when you talk all you can say is some bullshit nobody can understand.” Pete grumbles.

Billy considers the faint row of trees that seems to boarder the field, some quarter mile down down the road. It would be nice to sit in the shade of one of them, even if it were only for a moment.

“I thought- I thought we’d ended it,” He keeps his eye on the trees as they grow steadily closer, picking out one particularly sturdy looking oak and faintly dreaming of a moment at home in its shade, “Collie put up a fight and Baker, and you- all of you- the musketeers- w- everyone made it off the road. Somewhere safe. I thought it would be enough, even if I didn’t make it all the way with you but...”

He trails off, and the trees get closer, and out of the corner of his eye, Pete waits, ever patient. Billy clears his throat, and finally tears his gaze away from the trees to look at him, “Clearly it didn’t work.”

Now it’s Pete who looks away, considering this. It’s a problem with no solution. The fact that they had all made it off the road, and mostly unharmed was a miracle enough. Finding someway to make the equation balance, and end the nightmare once and for all, it’s impossible.

“So you’re just gonna roll over? Keep walking forever?” Pete asks eventually.

Billy sets his jaw, reaching for his rabbits foot, “Not like I have much of a choice.”

“Now that, is fucking sad.” Pete determines, shaking his head.

They’re moving past the trees now, and Billy mourns them before they’re quite gone.

“You stay right here, compadre,” He looks around, as if doing a head count of everyone in their vicinity before starting to break off, “We’re gettin’ out of here, whether you gave up on it or not.”

Before Billy has the chance to question of protest, he’s gone, speeding up to mix with Hank and Art and Collie and the rest of their friends. Ray turns to meet him, face painted with concern, even as he shoots a glance further back at Billy. Their heads bend together almost as soon as their back in step, and Billy watches Pete’s mouth moving quickly.

Olsen turns to look at the pair suspiciously, and Billy hears him make a comment about sharing with the class. That seems to pull the rest of their attention, and Pete goes on talking, and Billy cannot even begin to imagine how he is explaining their conversation. Eventually, Collie breaks out in a grin, his eyes darting back to where Billy walks, alone.

Slowly, the musketeers, all six of them, and Curley drift back. If Billy speeds up to meet them, he doesn’t let himself think about it. He’s swallowed into their ranks so easily that it tugs at something in his chest.

Pete gives him a tired but determined grin, “Well compadre, it seems we’ve all got some questions, but aside from that, we’re in.”

Billy frowns, “What?”

“We’re getting off this damn road.” Ray says with all the certainty in the world. As if it has only ever been that simple.

Collie claps him on the shoulder, “So, what’s the plan?”

Whether he’d care to admit it or not, Billy knows each and every step of this road, from the starting line, half a mile south of the border, to that god forsaken bridge on the outer edges of Boston’s city limits. He knows when the soldiers switch shifts, and when the Major is most likely to appear. He knows the benefits of waiting until the herd thins, and the how the mass of the group can provide cover.

He knows that their only choice, their only chance, is the Hill.

It’s the only way to guarantee none of them will drop before they have the chance to act. It’s the only way to insure that they won’t have to fight. The only thing they’ll be risking is their lives, but when has it ever been any different?

The plan largely consists of running. Both Collie and Ray wish desperately for something more heroic than that, something to exact some kind of revenge for all of the things they don’t remember, on men who have done the same things to countless boys for countless years. Baker points out that fighting has a higher chance of leading to dying, and they drop it, but there’s something grim and determined in both of their eyes.

Billy tries to remember all the times he’s plunged into the darkness at the side of the hill, and the best path to take, and describes it to them as best as he can. He should be the one to lead them down the path, he knows that, but the thought of leaving the road without knowing if the rest of them have made it sets something uncomfortable crawling about under his skin.

He tells them every detail he can think of. Not just the rough terrain of the hill, but the things that normally lead them there. The deaths they may still have to witness. The miles it will take to get them there. How long it will take the soldiers monitoring their watches to realize what they’re doing. How long it will then take for the foot soldiers to take up their guns.

“They’re trained for close range accuracy.” Billy eyes the man who rides along the nearest half-track, some hundred yards in front of them. He leans lazily against his carbine. It’s nearing noon. Most of what Billy remembers doesn’t come from the now banned books he used to take out from the now defunct library. Most of what Billy remembers comes from hard won experience.

He clears his throat, “The farther away you are, the less of a target you give them. But the second you’re out of their normal range, they’ll aim at any part of you they can find.”

“Can’t be too hard.” Harkness forces out with a laugh. Ewing has already demonstrated the soldiers usual response time, and habit of head shots at point blank range.

Billy runs his thumb over the fur of his rabbits foot, and tries not to look at any of the boys surrounding him too closely, “Once you get into the woods, there’ll be more cover, but then they’ll fire at any movement they see, no clear aim.”

“So even once we’re off the road, they could still…” Hovering at his elbow, Curley gulps.

On Curley’s other side, Ray opens his mouth to say something, but Billy knows there’s no good in lying to the kid. He puts a hand on Curley’s shoulder, almost without thinking about it, “It’s possible, yes. You just need to get as far down the hill as you can as fast as you can.”

From where he ambles along in front of them, Art turns, giving Curley a sure smile, “We’ll be alright, you’ll see.”

“I don’t know if they’ll follow us or not,” Billy says, honestly. It makes Ray gawk, and Hank frown. He wishes there was something else he could do about it, but he’s only ever run off on his own. One lone boy is not nearly as significant as eight, “They’ve never come after me before, but then again, it’s easier to slip out as one. If the hill’s chaotic enough, they might not notice, but that depends on a lot of things.”

He tells them about the conditions of the hill as they most often are. About what makes the climb worse. About the rain that can make even the surest step slip, and about the times where only nine or so boys made it until morning.

The more walkers that make it to the hill, the better, Billy decides. It’ll give them more cover. So far, it’s too early to tell. It’s noon, and they’re still something like 48 strong, but there’s fourteen hours and many times more miles until they reach the hill. 48 boys might not mean 48 down the road. An overcast sky hanging over the road in the distance might not mean rain that lasts into the night.

The floodlights that will be mounted on the half-tracks become Billy’s next area of worry. He explains when they usually go up, around dusk, and how their blinding light will give them away quickly and mercilessly. He finally finishes his talking, and for as much as he tries to think a way around them, he comes up empty.

Hank picks up for him there, posing his usual one million hypotheticals, some of which even sound like feasible ways to circumnavigate the lights. The plan grows in depth, though the simple theme of running remains. In the end it’s Pete who determines that Olsen’s plan of strategically slowing down ahead of time is their only choice.

He leads them in a vote, and it’s decided, seven to one. Billy doesn’t vote. Pete includes him in the total count anyway.

Harkness carefully copies down the vague directions he conjures about how to get to Carla’s church, and the names of the people there who should be able to help them, and then copies them again and again onto clean notebook pages, and hands each of them a torn sheet of paper, in case they get separated.

In case some of them don’t make it.

They rally so quickly they don’t even seem to care when Barkovitch begins to hover on the edges of the group. They rally so quickly, that something lodges in Billy’s chest, and refuses to come loose.

After it’s all decided, they lapse into silence for something near a half a mile. Billy wrestles with the feeling in his chest, and almost convinces himself that he’s hungry. He’s halfway through unwrapping his jelly sandwiches, half mushed and soggy from being ignored most of the morning, when Curley of all people, speaks.

“How did you realize? About the loop I mean?” He looks up with Billy with big eyes, as if he doesn’t quite expect an answer.

He keeps unpeeling layers of tinfoil, if only so he doesn’t have to look right at any of them. All around him, the musketeers have perked up, waiting for answers, “First time, I couldn’t quite be sure. Thought I’d had some god awful nightmare. Forgot most of it. But then, I woke up again, after the second time, and I kept thinking that I knew what was going on just before it happened. Like deja vu.”

The first sandwich finally emerges, and looking at it, Billy suddenly isn’t hungry anymore, “Then at the end. When it was me and Garraty and McVries again, they did something they hadn’t done before and I-” He stops, the vivid image of Ray tugging helplessly at Pete’s body crossing behind his eyelids. He offers the sandwiches out, letting them go into the first hands that reach for them. Suddenly he remembers what Pete had said earlier.

“And I thought ‘well that hasn’t happened before’. And then I got my ticket and woke up at the start again.” He sniffs, finally looking up at the group of slack jawed looks around him.

“What did we do differently?” Ray asks, hesitant, like he doesn’t know who it’ll hurt more, himself for hearing it, or Billy for speaking it.

“It’s not-” He wants nothing more just then, than to melt away into the road. To forget, and to have this whole thing be forgotten, “It’s not normally one of you. Normally it’s me. To go first, I mean.”

“Oh.” Is the only thing Ray manages to say.

A minute stretches into something longer, and in all that time, the only sound among them is their feet moving along the road.

“Jesus, you know how to kill the room Garraty,” Hank grumbles eventually, shoving his way closer to where Billy walks at the center of their cluster, “What I want to know is how you’ve never tried getting us all together like this before.”

This, he winces at. Judging by the way Pete seems to flinch, he must not have told them everything. Billy clears his throat, and lifts his head, and tries to summon some amount of courage, or, at the very least, apathy, “Last time it didn’t turn out so well. And nothing I’d ever done had made a difference, anyway.”

“Last time?” Collie asks, the same moment that Harkness turns and repeats, “Nothing?”

He elects to focus on Harkness, if only to avoid thinking about how close he got. How sure he was. How trapped in this nightmare he really is. “I’ve run before, and woke up at the start. I’ve fought before, and woke up at the start. I won once… but that didn’t matter either.”

“Well I tell you what,” Ray seems to have recovered, because now he stares at Billy with an intense kind of conviction, “If this does work, the next time you wake up on that pavement, you get us all together like this again. We’ll try this again and again until we get out of here.”

Billy looks at him for a long moment, and then in a desperate attempt to stop thinking about it, and to get everyone else to just shut up about it, he says, “What I can’t understand is how in so many times around, Olsen never tells half of y’all about his wife.”

There’s a single moment of quiet before the outburst begins, and Hank flushes red, suddenly surrounded by the onslaught of questions and teasing. He bats away Pete’s hands, grimacing at Billy, “What the hell is wrong with you man?”

Billy laughs over the sound of all the questions and jabs. Harkness already has a new notebook page open, and Art eagerly contributes interview questions. Ray seems to be earnestly asking whether or not he considered the consequences of signing up. Collie and Pete start waxing poetics almost as crude as the jokes that slip into the gaps.

After yelling at them several times to shut up, Hank begrudgingly begins to answer questions about Clementine. As the day goes on, Billy learns more about her, and details about the others families, than he has ever heard before.

Slowly the sun sets. Something like anxiety builds in Billy’s gut with every mile further they trek into the dark. Somehow, it all feels more real than ever. At his side, Curley slips in and out of a restless sleep, and he reaches over to steady him instinctively.

He watches the young boy for a long moment, in the glare of the flood lights. Just ahead of them, Ray and Pete lean into each other, whispering quietly. Art, Collie and Olsen clump together somewhere on their left, though he hasn’t heard them talk in some time. Distantly, he can hear Harkness behind him, occasionally flipping notebook pages, and speaking quietly to Barkovitch, who surprisingly, lets him.

There’s only a matter of a few hours left, and Billy has never been so weary of not having something go according to plan. He can’t have gotten their hopes up for nothing.

No, if this goes wrong, they’ll never know it. It’ll just be Billy, and his guilty conscious, and the road.

He can’t keep doing this.

Two miles out from the hill, he wakes Curley with a squeeze to his shoulder. The boy grumbles, but reaches up to rub grit from his eyes, and glares down at his feet, as if they’ve betrayed him by carrying on without him. When he looks up at him, his eyes are filled with a kind of fear that Billy has seen in them far too many times before, “I’m- I’m scared.”

Billy looks down at him and tries to muster any words that could even remotely be the right thing to say. Around them, the musketeers begin to rouse themselves, fighting back against the ever growing fatigue settling into their bones. Ray, to his credit, gives Curley a reassuring smile, and begins telling him about a lullaby his mother used to sing that he had been dreaming about. Billy tries not to think about all the times he’s heard those words.

“We should ditch these.” It’s Collie at his other side, motioning to his watch.

Billy looks down at his own, and realizing for the first time that for all the things that he does know about the Walk, there are still dozens of things that he doesn’t, “Probably. But not until after we drop back. I don’t know what’ll happen if we try to take them off.”

Collie nods, and passes it along to the other boys as they begin to form their huddle around Billy and Curley. His skin crawls, though with nervous energy or claustrophobia he’s not sure which. Up ahead, the hill waits.

He checks his watch and then slows down deliberately, only by about 0.2. The others follow suit. There’s not a warning between them. Around them, other boys slip ahead, just slightly.

They’re already near the back of the column. Something like 30 boys walk around and ahead of them. The sky is dark with clouds that threaten to break, but Billy can’t quite smell any rain in the air. It’s not perfect, but it might work.

They slow again, measured, until their just in line with the half-track that rides along at the end of it all. The machine slows, just slightly. At the head of the column, the steep grade sign appears out of the dark, and a series of groans and wails begin to go up along the other boys. Out of the darkness, the hill looms.

For a single moment, he allows himself to hope.

It seems to happen in spurts and flashes.

The first round of warnings go up in a flurry so fast, Billy can’t be sure when one number stops being called and another starts.

One moment he’s in line with the front of the half-track and the next he’s along side it’s treads. Not quite stopped, but just barely moving.

Above them the bullhorn thunders.

He feels Curley tense at his side. A hand clutches at his jacket sleeve.

The half-track keeps rolling along. The beam of the floodlights slide farther and farther away.

His mind whirls uselessly. A half formed string of please, please, please making it halfway to his mouth before he can remember how pointless it is. How the only thing that will get them off the road is themselves. How no amount of pleading as ever done him any good.

Art is the first person off the road. In the dark, Billy can barely see him. Pete follows, urging Curley along. It’s not until he’s disappearing into the leaves that Billy realizes the grip on his arm is gone.

His watch clatters to the ground, along with the others.

The others begin to follow, crashing their way down the hill in the dark.

Up ahead, boys pant and boys cry out and warnings ring and bullets fire.

His pulse hammers in his throat, louder and louder, thundering in his ears.

Billy watches them go, frozen in the road, until only Collie and Ray linger, for just a beat.

Soldiers begin to slide from the half-tracks, and then the bullets aren’t just ahead of them.

The first spray goes out into the leaves as the first one descends. In the dark, there’s no use in aiming. In the dark, there’s no telling what they might hit.

Billy can’t distinguish the cries from the boys ahead from any of those in the woods.

Ray and Collie turn back, and Billy barely seems to catch it.

He needs to run. They need to run. Why won’t they run?

Collie’s on the first soldier before his boots hit the ground.

It’s a miracle Billy sees it at all in the dark.

For a moment it’s almost like that first fifth day. Collie and the element of surprise. Collie and the spray of bullets. Collie and the brief moment of victory.

And then the world keeps moving, and Ray is shouting, and his pulse is thundering so loudly in his ears that he can’t seem to hear any of it.

His legs go to lead,

and a hand clamps its way onto his arm,

and another soldier is climbing down,

and he

can’t

move.

The sounds of carnage follow them down the hill, but the bullets, mercifully, do not.

They go tripping and falling and stumbling over rocks and roots.

Ray has a vice grip on his arm until the ground finally levels out and their running peters to a stop.

The musketeers stand there, breathing in the dark, for a long few moments.

It still takes him a few seconds to release him. The moment he does, it all seems to catch up with Billy.

They’re tired, and worse for wear, but they’re off the road, and it doesn’t sound like they’ve been followed and Billy can’t tell if he wants to collapse or wail in relief.

Instead of doing either, he stands there in the dark, and tries to ignore the creeping thoughts that already wonder how long it will take for the loop to reset once more.

Harkness fiddles with his headlamp until a dull beam appears, and passes it wordlessly to Billy.

No one dares to speak as they begin the long trudge on through the night.

It’s just breaking dawn when the trees begin to thin. He freezes at the edge of the woods, a wave of dread rolling through him. The rest of the boys gather behind him.

“The hell are we doin’?” The sound of the grumble is the first indication Billy has that Barkovitch has joined their number. Distantly, he wonders if that could have been the missing link. If this time, it’ll work.

Someone shushes him. Pete’s hand lands on Billy’s shoulder, and he flinches in spite of himself, but when he turns, he sees the same, half remembered look in Pete’s eyes.

“You alright compadre?”

Billy clears his throat, pushing the thought away. He doesn’t have time to dwell on that now. He draws in a ragged breathe, turning to look at the rest of them and nodding, “Yeah. Yeah its- You should stay here.”

Ray frowns and starts to open his mouth, but Collie beats him to it, fixing Billy with a dry look, “Like hell you’re going alone.”

“It’s not safe-”

“And neither is staying here. This is uncharted territory, even for you, right?” Ray crosses his arms over his chest, almost daring him to deny it. He keeps his mouth pressed in a hard line, and Garraty, accepting that as the closest thing to the truth he’ll receive, continues, “We’re not taking any chances here.”

“I don’t know how this is going to go,” Billy glances back at the still sleeping town, and then at the boys gathered around him. He can’t mess this up. He can’t mess this up again.

Hank’s brow furrows his hands stilling where they were fiddling with his ration belt, “Yeah but why would that matter?Neither do any of us.”

Pete seems to sense his defeat before he can even open his mouth, his hand landing heavily on Billy’s shoulder with a laugh, turning him to lead the way out of the woods with a laugh, “Well that’s that then. Come on now, boys.”

With momentous effort, Billy keeps walking. They slip down the quiet streets, as the first rays of the sun begin poking over the rooftops. The doors of the church are unlocked, and the boys file in quickly. Curley collapses onto the nearest pew before the door has even closed, letting out a sigh of relief. The rest move to follow suit, but no matter how much his aching legs yearn for a break, Billy knows he has handled worse, not letting himself sit before Carla has been found.

The rectory is still mostly dark when he pokes his head in. A kettle sits on the stove top, steam just beginning to rise from its spout. She’s nowhere to be seen, even when Billy ventures further in. He moves through the room carefully, glancing through the side doors as he goes.

His voice feels hoarse when he calls carefully, “Carla? Are you around?”

A set of footsteps sounds from somewhere out in the church, as a frazzled voice calls, “Yeah, yeah I’m here. That’s not you, is it Joseph?”

Billy makes it to the doorway of the rectory at the same time Carla steps through one of the doors behind the alter, her arms full of linens, like the ones his Mama used to wash for the church back home. She takes in the odd assembly of boys in the pews for a long moment, “Oh dear.”

“Not Joseph,” Billy clears his throat, and her eyes jump to him, lingering in the other doorway, “But I have reason to believe you’ll help us.”

She settles into the idea surprisingly easily. Ray explains the situation, the others jumping in here and there to add bits and pieces, as Carla puts together a breakfast for them. Billy sits stiffly in one of the mismatched chairs that ends up crowded around the table, listening. She moves back and forth between the stove and the counter with an infinite level of patience, plating up biscuits and gravy and posing questions as tactfully as she can.

After they’ve finished eating, -a chorus of ‘thank yous’ follows Arts initial gratitude- she begins to lead them up to the room above the rectory. Billy lingers at the table for a moment as they begin to disappear up the stairs, before standing and beginning to gather the abandoned dishes.

Upstairs, he can hear Carla directing the boys to where cots and additional blankets could be found, and promising to be back once her morning duties were done. He already has the dishes soaking in one side of the porcelain sink by the time she comes back down the stairs, “Oh, you don’t have to do that.”

“It’s the least I can do,” Billy keeps his eyes on the dishes as he reaches for a sponge, “You’re putting yourself in a lot of trouble for us.”

“No such thing as trouble in a situation like this.” Even as she says it, she lets out a weary sigh, appearing at his side with a dry towel just as soon as he’s able to produce the first rinsed plate.

He cleans another plate, and passes it to her, and tries to sort out the tangle that has taken root in his mind. It takes a moment before he manages to say, “It won’t be easy.”

“It won’t be,” She agrees, stacking the next dish, “But that doesn’t mean you boys deserve to be left to figure it out on your own.”

“That’s not-”

Carla cuts him off, reaching over to still his hands. She doesn’t speak until he finally turns to meet her gaze, “Sweetheart, the way I see it, as long as I’m alive and able, it’s my job to help people. This place- this country, is my home, but that doesn’t mean I am going to stand by and watch it grind innocent lives under its heel. Kids like you deserve to have grown up without all of this, but as it stands, you have, and the only thing we can do about it now is make sure that it doesn’t catch up with you any more than it already has.”

Billy squeezes his eyes shut against the sudden sting that springs into their corners, forcing a ragged breath in and out. He couldn’t find the right words, even if he tried. It seems impossible to have earned this kindness. Impossible for the kindness to still exist in the world, and yet he has seen it from her every time he has made it far enough to collapse at her door. Carla squeezes his hand one more time before releasing it, and going back to the dishes.

By the time the last of the dishes have been put away, the sun has finished rising. Carla tolerates him following her around and helping for the first two and a half chores on her list before she finally turns to implores him to go and get some rest.

“I can’t-” The words falter as soon as they leave his mouth, at the weight of her dry stare, arms crossed over his chest. In the end it takes very little convincing on her end to corral him to the stairs with strict instructions to take it easy, and a promise of telling him the moment she was able to speak to her friends about the exit visas.

Upstairs, he’s greeted with a kind of quiet he never thought he associate with the musketeers. The boys have assembled themselves across the room like puppets with their strings cut. Curley had easily laid claim to one of the cots, and Barkovitch to another, leaving Olsen and Art squashed together awkwardly in the remaining one. If the snores rising from both of them were anything to go buy, it wasn’t that bad. Harkness and Collie took up residence in another corner, their heads bent together as if they had been talking right up until the moment they’d fallen asleep.

Ray and Pete sit in the opposite corner, leaning against one another. Were it not from the quiet murmuring coming from them, and the way that Pete raises his head when he enters, Billy would’ve thought they were dead asleep.

He settles quietly, his back pressed against one wall. Exhaustion tugs at his bones, even as he reminds himself that he has been awake for longer. That he has walked for many more miles. Fear of waking up at the start once more tugs at him harder, his head jerking back up defiantly every time sleep threatens to pull him under.

He sleeps in fits and starts, and never for more than ten minutes at a time. Every time he threatens to drift off too far, a sharp panic spikes somewhere in his chest, dragging him awake once more. After a few long, miserable hours of this, Billy is left with an aching back and a crick in his neck, just as tired as ever.

Mercy -if it could even be called mercy- comes in the form of the sounds of movement downstairs, as the rest of the church staff begins to arrive. Carla slips up stairs with more food and water, and a quiet plea for the boys to be patient. The others seem to balk at the idea of being found out. Billy’s just glad that the sound of voices laughing and talking as chores are completed, give him something to focus on, something to keep his exhaustion addled brain from dropping off to sleep and sending him back to the start.

By the time Carla reappears for more than a few fleeting moments, the sun has already begun to sink into the trees. Billy feels just as restless as Barkovitch looks, picking through his bag and glaring at anyone who looks at him for a moment too long. He moves to stand the moment she appears in the doorway, his joints stiff and aching.

“I made dinner for you boys, so come on down, and I’ll explain what’s going to happen.”

After being cooped upstairs for so long, the Musketeers practically go tripping over themselves to follow her back down the stairs and into the main kitchen of the rectory, which is filled with what just might be the best thing Billy’s smelled in what seems like years.

She waits until they’re crowded around the table, plates full, to speak, “It’s going to be a process, one that we can’t guarantee will be a fast one. Like I said earlier, exit visas may not be enough to get you safe crossing, and even then, you’ll still need to have your cases processed.”

“Cases processed?” Ray frowns, his fork halfway to his mouth, “You mean we can’t just enter as political refugees?”

“It’s not that simple, these days. Even if you do enter immediately as refugees, it could take time before you gain citizenship status. Given the nature of your situation -the fact that it will be punished as desertion- we need to take extra precautions in your boarder crossing, and therefore, everything else.”

She clasps her hands in front of her as she speaks, somehow not even the slightest bit unnerved by being on the receiving end of nine sets of stares. Billy looks down at his plate, collecting another bite of roasted chicken.

“Later tonight, once it’s full dark, you’ll be moved somewhere else,” This earns a clatter of confusion, particularly from Curley, who looks oddly upset at the idea, “There’s too many people in and out of here everyday. The place we have lined up might be a tight fit, what with the nine of you, but it’ll be safe.”

It’s Collie who comes around to the idea first. He’d been quiet through most of the day, silently putting the pieces together. He sets down his fork, nodding, “When do we leave?”

In the end, they squeeze their way into an old station wagon, driven by one of Carla’s friends who introduces himself as Rick, a few hours after dinner. The ride is long, following a winding road out of town and into the woods. Billy has to fight against the soothing motion of the road, still terrified at the prospect of drifting off. Wedged firmly against his side, a mostly asleep Curley takes to using him as a pillow.

Eventually, they pull off the road and weave their way through a farm property until they reach an outbuilding so far removed from the road that Billy doubts you can even really see it from the main house.

Ray rouses Curley with a shake to his shoulder, trying to peel him away from Billy, “Come on Curls, we’re here.” He grumbles, but eventually moves, finally allowing Billy to climb from the car.

The house is small, and unassuming. Rick explains that they should be able to find everything they might need, and that he’ll be back in the morning, and then disappears, back down the winding drive toward the big house.

As the others begin to break off and argue over who will share rooms and beds with who, Billy takes time to explore. Somewhere between his poking around of the small, but well stocked kitchen, and the living room whose shelves contain some less than legal literature, the arguing dies out. A quick pace of the hallway reveals four doors, one of which leads to a small bathroom, and another to a small office with a small sofa bed that Ray and Pete seem to be in the middle of converting.

They both look up at him as he passes. Pete starts to open his mouth, but Billy doesn’t let himself linger long enough to listen to what he has to say. From one closed door, he can already hear Hank’s snoring.

He goes back to the living room and paces long enough for the blisters on his feet to cry out in pain, and then does a loop of the hallway again for god measure. Through a crack in one bedroom door he can see Harkness and Collie sprawled awkwardly in bed. Beyond them, he can make out Barkovitch, curled surprisingly comfortably on a pallet that’s been made up on the floor. He watches for a few moments, as they breathe in the dark, and then turns to the next door.

His investigation turns up Hank, Art and Curley, sleeping soundly, Hank and Art cramped in one twin bed, and Curley sprawled on the other. The door to the office is still open when he passes. Ray is pressed tightly into Pete’s side. One of Pete’s hands is fisted in Ray’s shirt.

Billy returns to the living room, and resigns himself to sitting up in an armchair, fighting sleep, once more.

He wakes to a quiet chatter, and for a moment of pure panic, thinks he’s back at the start. It’s just Pete and Art in the kitchen, trying to make coffee. Billy swallows, and his throat feels like sandpaper, and his heart hammers in his chest.

By the time Hank drags himself down the hall a few minutes later, Billy still feels on edge. Despite everything it feels wrong. It’s too real. Too mundane. Is this not what he’s dreamt of and wished for cycle after cycle?

Before the rest of the house can wake and leave him feeling even further suffocated he slips out the front door, dropping to sit on the steps. The sun is rising steadily, but the in the shade of the trees, the morning is still cool and damp. It doesn’t help as much as he hoped.

Eventually, Rick returns with a notebook full of carefully copied paperwork processes, extradition laws, and public services information. If he knows how long they will be waiting, he doesn’t say anything about it. Billy leafs through the book several times before bringing it inside to the others, and telling them to study up. He suspects it could very well take weeks before they actually get any other answers.

The time moves sluggishly from one day to the next. The others talk and argue and make up games to amuse themselves. Billy spends as much time as he can out on the steps, trying to ignore the growing pressure in his sinuses, the heaviness in his lungs. No amount of weakly brewed tea seems to disrupt the growing sickness. He sits up at night, on the sofa, trying to convince himself that it won’t be as bad as it would be out on the road. Trying to convince himself that a few hours of sleep won’t start this nightmare over.

Four days into their confinement, early one morning, he sneezes so loudly that it startles Ray, halfway between the door to the office and the bathroom. He frowns, shuffling down the hall towards him, “You feeling alright, Billy?”

“It’s just allergies,” He almost feels nauseous at the words, and he can’t tell if it’s because of the sickness, or because of how many times he’s told the same lie before, “I get ‘em every spring.”

Ray gives him a weary look, but backs off anyway. It’s something he’s noticed in the past few days. All he has to do is say the right words in the right tone, and the others will back off like he’s something broken, to be avoided. Where on the road, there had been dozens of questions about past loops, everyone seems terrified to bring them up now. Maybe they’re just as worried as he is about the whole thing collapsing on itself, and sending them back to the beginning.

The ache behind his eyes becomes persistent. It doesn’t come on as quickly as it would out on the road, but it’s clear that this sickness will always plague him. Billy drinks cup after cup of tea, and raids the bathroom’s minuscule first aid kit and pretends the weak painkillers that he finds will do enough to ward it off. He’s not sleeping, not in any amount that matters.

It all comes to a head on the sixth day. He wakes, coughing and choking on his own mucus, and barley makes it upright before the world is swimming around him. The heaviness in his lungs comes with the fleeting panic that his legs aren’t moving- the his warnings must be building. His heart is pounding too raggedly in his ears to make out what warning he’s on.

He lurches to his feet, and barley makes it a few steps before his knees are threatening to give out. He’s going to get his ticket- he’s going to get his ticket- he’s going to-

There’s a set of cold hands bracing him by the arms before he can quite hit the ground, and a voice that’s tired and calm and tense all at once is saying, “Easy there, compadre. You’re burning up.”

He tries grit out that he’s fine. That he doesn’t need help. That he certainly doesn’t need pity. If he’s getting his ticket here he’d rather get it over with. Get it over with and get back to the start, where the fever and the pain can’t touch him. Somewhere between the ragged, torn feeling in his throat, and a mouth that suddenly won’t cooperate, the words don’t quite make it past his lips.

“Come on now, one foot in front of the other. We’re almost there.”

Distantly, he can hear another familiar voice -is that Garraty? Why should Garraty care? All Garraty wants is to walk him down- calling McVries name, and asking after Billy.

It takes the narrow hallway longer than he thinks it should to come into focus. The panic still grips at his chest. Pete still hauls him along, and lamely he thinks about what a strange pair they make. Where are they going? What the hell are they doing? Why won’t Pete just let him down, let him die?

Half formed words of protest are still babbling from his lips as Pete all but wrestles him down onto a lumpy bed. Billy grips at his sleeve, unsure whether to pull him closer or shove him away.

“I know, I know,” Pete runs a cold hand over his face, still trying to cajole him into staying still, “You’re tough as hell, Billy, but you gotta let us help you.”

He coughs, violently, curling in on himself with the force of it. The cold hand on his shoulder moves, stroking up and down his back with a kind of tender care that makes him want to wail, even as Pete’s panicked voice is calling out in the other direction for Ray.

Ray- oh god Ray. What happened now? Was he on his last warning? Was his ticket coming down the barrel of the gun? It’s not supposed to happen like this. Billy is supposed to be long gone before they have to choose between themselves. It’s not supposed to-

There’s a cold, damp towel being pressed against his forehead, and for a few fleeting moments it’s a heavenly kind of relief. Then his nervous system flips a switch and he’s shivering, reaching up blindly to try and pull it away.

A strong hand catches his wrist before he gets the chance to dislodge it, “No- we need to get you cooled down, Billy, okay? Pete can you-”

The weight at his other side shifts, “I’ve got him.”

He’s in and out for what could be hours and what could be weeks. The time feels just as meaningless as it ever did out on the road. The world shrinks to the unfamiliar bed he’s been relegated into, the steady stream of cool towels packed in around him, and the gentle brush of kind hands that make him shiver with every moment of contact.

How long has it been since he was sick like this? Ten years, at least. Not since the same winter his Mama- No. Only days ago, when the walk had his insides tearing at themselves, until his lungs and his liver were coming up his throat. This was something else.

Whatever it been, that he’d brought home from school- some kind of pneumonia, surely- it didn’t knock him down the same way. Not the way it had to his Mama. Only, her body was already weak with everything else, already. Billy’s body was weak now, torn apart again and again by the road.

He can still hear her deep, painful coughs. Can feel the weight of them in his chest. Is this how she had felt? He had spent a long time trying to tell himself it was painless. That in the end, if must’ve been for the better. Did it hurt then, like it does now?

Billy comes to himself enough for a spike of fear to grow in his gut. What if this is what takes him out? What if this is what resets the loop? He’s on borrowed time, isn’t he? How could he ever have been so foolish as to think he could've done it? To think he could have gotten off the road for good? 

There’s a crack in the ceiling above him that seems to run nearly perpendicular to the wall. A soft hand lands on his upper arm, the thumb brushing back and forth across his skin, soothingly. A highly concentrated effort to turn his head brings an exhausted looking Ray into view.

He’s slumped on the edge of the bed, looking a kind of weary Billy has never seen before. This was a boy who hadn’t seen 300 miles of the road, so why does he look so haggard?

“It’s not gonna start over, Billy,” Ray’s voice is small, and scared in a way he can’t begin to understand, “I promise.”

He shakes his head weakly, and tries to fight back against the way it makes the word spin, “You don’t know that.”

Ray shushes him, and raises a glass of cool water to his lips. It’s like heaven on his throat. Before he can quite gulp down all of it, Ray presents him with a pill. When he swallows it, clumsily, he’s rewarded with a gentle hand carding through his hair, lulling him back to sleep.

It takes five days and a full round of antibiotics for his fever to break. He never learns where the boys got the medicine. He wakes late one morning on the pull out couch in the office, cold and alone for the first time in days, but feeling remarkably better. His body still feels like it’s been run over by a half-track, but he is, unequivocally, alive.

When he staggers out to the living room, he’s met with a mixed bag of relieved gasps, and raucous laughter at the state of his dishevelment. Hank starts claiming that he’s remembered at least a dozen loops, and has never seen Billy look so bad.

Billy bites down on a retort about him never making it far enough to see him that bad, and instead decides on, “Must not have remembered enough if you don’t know I only look half as bad as you ever did.”

Collie’s still snickering as he slides a cup of tea across the kitchen island to him as he makes his way to sit at the table with Ray, Pete and Harkness.

Pete hands him a flimsy ID card and it takes him a long moment to recognize the photo it bears as his own, although, the accompanying name is different, “What the fuck is this?”

“Your new Canadian identity,” Harkness leans over to look at Billy's card laughs so hard he snorts, “Don’t worry we all got one.”

When he looks up, Ray is already nodding in confirmation, “Just to get across the border. Once we’re sure your not on the brink of death, we’ve got the go ahead.”

There’s a flurry of emotion in his chest, and he can’t bring himself to identify any of them. He looks at the ID and the fake name for a long time, and the chatter around him resumes.

Later, he sits out on the steps, turning the ID over and over in his hands. There’s still a lingering fear in the back of his mind, warning him that all this could very well be temporary. That he could always end up back on the road.

Somewhere, he thinks that he’ll be leaving a whole life behind. Then again, his life has been nothing but the Walk for so long, before he even stepped foot on the road. Maybe it’s not much to leave behind. He’s proved enough out on the road, hasn’t he?

Behind him the door to the cabin opens and closes, and the Ray and Pete are sitting on either side of him.

“You alright, Billy?” Ray asks, his hand warm on Billy’s knee.

Pete leans in just as close, “Yeah, compadre you didn’t have a lot to say in there.”

“Yeah,” Billy lets out a breath, a smile tugging at the corner of his lips. Everything is beautiful, and nothing quite hurts in the way that it did, “Yeah, I’m good.”

Somewhere out in the forest, a bird is singing po-tee-weet.