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I did it all wrong.
Hank's throat was hoarse and yet he continued to scream out that point, desperate to make them understand but so bogged down with exhaustian and blood loss that he simply could not articulate how.
I did it all wrong.
In his final moments, Hank had realized the truth of this Walk. Stebbins had been wrong when he'd told Ray "he's lost his taste for the carrot." Simply put, there was no carrot. There never was.
I did it all wrong.
Surely, surely his fellow Walkers realized this! Ray, railing on the Walk from the start. Pete and Collie screaming, "Fuck the Long Walk! Fuck the Major!" At least half of his fellow Walkers knew the truth of the Walk, they knew it didn't matter, but Hank wasn't sure if they knew what did matter.
I did it all wrong.
When he'd tried and failed to kill that guard, Hank hadn't been thinking of himself. Hell, he hardly felt like he even had a self left. He was thinking of the twinkle in Art's eyes. The soft laugh from Collie when he liked a joke. The large, infectious grin on Pete's face. He'd been thinking of them. His friends. His friends were what mattered.
I did it all wrong.
Hank himself had nothing left. As he walked, he'd felt everything he'd left behind shedding away like dead skin. Clementine, love of his life, meant as much as a stranger. His parents might as well be dead, too. His house, his car, his library - all of those material possessions didn't mean jack shit. The only thing that had come to matter, the only reason he'd put one foot in front of the other, had been staying with his friends for one more moment. And that was still all that mattered.
I did it all wrong.
The wind howled in agony.
The road was far too quiet now. Nobody left wanted to run their mouth, leaving only the monotonous stomping of feet and whirring of the halftrack. Everyone was lurching and leaning awkwardly as they walked with blistered feet and weakened knees. Collie's long hair was blowing in his face, but he could not find the energy to push it away. The remaining cookie from his mother was merely crumbs in Ray's pocket now, yet the boy did not notice. Stebbins's newsboy cap had fallen a few miles back and he had made no effort to retrieve it.
Oh, what a miserable sight they made. These strong, passionate men reduced to shambling shells of their former selves, simply floating along the road like corpses bobbing in a river.
It made him feel sick. Sickness conjured to mind a faceless woman, carrying soup and a song as she insisted, playful yet stern, for him to stay in bed.
Collie heard the singing first. He could tell fromt the way that light suddenly returned to Collie's eyes. Gently, the wind blew the hair from his face as best as it could. The voice was soft, and quickly drowned out when Collie himself took up the tune. He didn't mind being overshadowed, though, especially when the rest of the boys began to sing. In fact, as the final choruses picked up, his voice swelled to match theirs, and though none of the boys spoke it aloud, they all craned their necks and swiveled their heads discreetly, looking for him.
They all knew that Hank was singing alongside them.
As the sun rose the next day, he knew it was time to reveal himself. He could sense that the boys, his boys, didn't have much time left on this Earth. Art was weak and wobbly. Stebbins was hacking like a choking dog. Collie, Ray and Pete might have been healthy by Walker standarads, but eventually, he knew they'd be worn down, too.
So the wind tickled the boys as it swept their hair into a mess and whispered, "Hey."
Immediately, Art knew what this was. There aren't many ghost stories in the Bible, but at this point, Art was so tired and disheartened that he could believe just about anything. So it was him that said, "Hank?" as the wind whispered in his ear.
The other four boys turned to him, but only Pete verbalized, "You hear him, too, then?"
"He's sayin' hi. Oh, Pete. Does this mean we're…"
"It's alright." The breeze soothed him. "You're all alright so long as you listen to me."
That got the group to stand a little straighter. He knew that they weren't all convinced that this was real. Stebbins was so sick that he might be considering this a hallucination, and Parker was still searching for a source of the voice without realizing that it echoed across the very road they stood on, carried by the wind: the only weak respite they got on the grueling Walk. Either way, every boy there was desperate. Every one of them was exhausted, again, despite Stebbins's insistance that they weren't. He didn't know as much about the Walk as he claimed to, but no one could blame him for grasping at the only control he could really get in this impossible scenario.
Hank's voice rang out clearly to the boys, but unbeknownst to them, the soldiers could only hear the loud and angry rush of wind. If they had focused on the scenery around them, they'd have seen soldiers clutching onto their guns and helmets for dear life, and tree limbs whipping violently, bent against the gale. "There is a Jeep on the side of the road. Only two soldiers stand beside it." The first drops of rain came from the sky. Nobody could recall when it had become so grey. The weatherman had been unbelievably unreliable today. "There's one guy at the wheel, but he doesn't have any weapons. If you all hurry at the first strike of lightning, you can overwhelm the guards and get the hell out of here."
"And go where?" Stebbins piped up. His voice was raspier than the last time Hank had heard him speak, and even that had been quite rough sounding. He was getting worse.
"Anywhere! Drive over the boarder and change your names! Speed across America until you lose gas and then build a hut in the woods! Dammit, Stebbins! Don't you want to live before you die!?!"
"I am living." The boy insisted weakly. He knew that Hank was right. They all did. And yet, none of them began to strategize. None of them began to move. The forceful winds he had been protecting them from broke through for a brief moment, knocking the boys a bit off balance and causing Art to receive a warning.
"Did you guys not hear me!?! I'm giving you a shot at freedom! A shot at a better life!"
"We'd be leaving our families behind, Hank." Ray said.
"Oh, fuck you, Garraty! You can swing by Freeport and pick up your mom if you're gonna be a pussy about it!"
"Ray's not the only one with a mom, Hank." Art said it with force, and yet no anger actually laced his voice.
"Well- fuck! Fuck!" Outside of their little bubble, a soldier's gun went hurtling from his arms. He made no effort to pick it up as he himself was clinging to a tree for dear life. How these boys were still walking steadily during all of this was astounding. "You already left them, Art! The second your name was fuckin' called and you - not the government, not your family, not the communists or whoever the fuck we're at war with - the second you chose not to back out, you left them! You left those fuckers behind, and all I'm askin' is that you don't leave these fuckers behind, because god-fucking-dammit, I don't wanna watch you all die like I did! You're all that's left!!!"
Art stared at the sky, glassy-eyed, but Collie backed him up. Oh, he knew that Parker would. "He's right. What, did you think that after this shit we could just fuck back home to our families and go back to the status quo? Our lives are fucked, Baker. At the very least, we could make a point." Confidence radiated from him despite the weariness in his eyes and the rain pressing his hair into his neck.
Ray nodded as Collie spoke. "We- so long as we can swing through Freeport. I know what he said but- well- my mom wouldn't have much of a life without me or Dad. I don't want her to lose her entire family to the Major."
Pete nodded. "I'll back that up. I mean, I dunno if we can fight with a ghost and all but… I'll chance it."
"I don't give a fuck what you guys do, I just want y'all to live!!!" Hank bellowed.
The silence that followed was deafening. The pouring rain was coming down so hard that it was nearly impossible for the boys to see in front of their own faces, and yet, they found each other. They'd huddled together and unanimously wondered whether it would still be pouring this violently when the lightning struck. The wind was howling in a way that brought to mind a pained wail.
When at last the boys on the road could see again, they found themselves tangled together, arms linked and hands intertwined in a desperate attempt to stay a united front. The windswept soldiers began a desperate scramble to gather their bearings and figure out who, if any had received warnings.
They never got that chance.
Lightning cracked, splitting a tree right beside the road and causing such a thunder that ringing pierced the ears of all who heard it. Yet, despite the temporary deafness, the Walkers all rushed together towards the Jeep.
Collie Parker was the first to reach the disoriented soldiers, wrenching the carbine out of the first one's hands with all the ferocity of a man finally uncaged. How long had he been forced to stare at those soldiers' unblinking faces as they swaggered through the city, as they spoke lies in classrooms, as they pointed their guns towards his fellow Walkers? How many hours of training had these men endured just to strip themselves of any semblance of humanity they might have had left. Collie prided himself on his empathy, but these men had proven themselves unworthy of it.
The gun didn't fire. The rainwater had clogged it, so, thinking quick, Collie bashed it against the soldier's head. He ran towards the Jeep before confirming whether the man was dead, and frankly, that was something he'd rather not know for sure. Right behind him was Pete, who skipped the middle man and simply decked the other soldier, the punch landing with a solid crack. A swift kick to the head and the other soldier was down. Ray caught up with Art supported on his shoulder, and together, the group piled into the Jeep. The third and final soldier had already been forcefully removed, and Parker now sat behind the wheel.
"Where's Stebbins?" He asked immediately.
Art poked his head from the car and saw the final boy standing, dumbfounded, in the rain. "Come on!" He hollered, but Stebbins didn't move.
"You go! They- they need their winner." Stebbins replied, sounding desperate for them to move before he regretted this.
"No! That's the whole point here!" Art cried out. The scuffle had only lasted a minute or two, and the soldiers on the other side of the track were suddenly realizing what had happened.
Many months later, Art would still be unsure if Stebbins's feet had moved of their own volition, or if they had been forced to move by the violent burst of wind that had knocked the soldiers off-balance. No matter what it was, Stebbins found himself piled into the backseat, being pulled into a seat by Art and handed a makeshift blanket by Ray. Huddling under the thin tarp, Stebbins suddenly an inexplicably broke down crying.
Nobody had time to even think to ask why or what had caused this reaction, because Collie was hurtling them down the road as fast as humanly possible, bumping and swerving like a bat out of hell. He swore later that he had heard Hank's voice in his ear egging him on for miles and miles until suddenly, he had realized that it had gone silent. Nobody was sure if this was true, but they all knew that when Art had rolled down the window to smoke as they exited Boston, they'd heard a gust of wind that sounded like it said, "I love you guys."