They passed into Oldtown around midnight. They switched through two feeder roads, joined Route 2, and went through the center of town.
For Ray Garraty the entire passage was a blurred, sleep-hazed nightmare. The cheering rose and swelled until it seemed to cut off any possibility of thought or reason. Night was turned into glaring, shadowless day by flaring arc-sodium lamps that threw a strange orange light. In such a light even the most friendly face looked like something from a crypt. Confetti, newspaper, shredded pieces of telephone book, and long streamers of toilet paper floated and soared from second- and third-story windows. It was a New York ticker-tape parade in Bush League U.S.A.
No one died in Oldtown. The orange arc-lamps faded and the crowd depleted a little as they walked along the Stillwater River in the trench of morning. It was May 3rd now. The ripe smell of paper mill smote them. A juicy smell of chemicals, woodsmoke, polluted river, and stomach cancer waiting to happen. There were conical piles of sawdust higher than the buildings downtown. Heaped stacks of pulpwood stood to the sky like monoliths. Garraty dozed and dreamed his shadowy dreams of relief and redemption and after what seemed to be an eternity, someone began jabbing him in the ribs. It was McVries.
"Wassamatter?"
"We're going on the turnpike," McVries said. He was excited. "The word's back. They got a whole sonofabitchin' color guard on the entrance ramp. We're gonna get a four-hundred-gun salute!"
"Into the valley of death rode the four hundred," Garraty muttered, rubbing the sleepy-seeds out of his eyes. "I've heard too many three-gun salutes tonight. Not interested. Lemme sleep."
"That isn't the point. After they get done, we're gonna give them a salute."
"We are?"
"Yeah. A forty-six-man raspberry."
Garraty grinned a little. It felt stiff and uncertain on his lips. "That right?"
"It certainly is. Well... a forty-man raspberry. A few of the guys are pretty far gone now."
Garraty had a brief vision of Olson, the human Flying Dutchman.
"Well, count me in," he said.
"Bunch up with us a little, then."
Garraty picked it up. He and McVries moved in tighter with Pearson, Abraham, Baker and Scramm. The leather boys had further shortened their vanguard.
"Barkovitch in on it?" Garraty asked.
McVries snorted. "He thinks it's the greatest idea since pay toilets."
Garraty clutched his cold body a little tighter to himself and let out a humorless little giggle. "I bet he's got a hell of a wicked raspberry."
They were paralleling the turnpike now. Garraty could see the steep embankment to his right, and the fuzzy glow of more arc-sodiums-bone-white this time-above. A distance ahead, perhaps half a mile, the entrance ramp split off and climbed.
"Here we come," McVries said.
"Cathy!" Scramm yelled suddenly, making Garraty start. "I ain't gave up yet, Cathy!" He turned his blank, fever-glittering eyes on Garraty. There was no recognition in them. His cheeks were flushed, his lips cracked with fever blisters.
"He ain't so good," Baker said apologetically, as if he had caused it. "We been givin' him water every now and again, also sort of pourin' it over his head. But his canteen's almost empty, and if he wants another one, he'll have to holler for it himself. It's the rules."
"Scramm," Garraty said.
"Who's that?" Scramm's eyes rolled wildly in their sockets.
"Me. Garraty."
"Oh. You seen Cathy?"
"No," Garraty said uncomfortably. "I-
"Here we come," McVries said. The crowd's cheers rose in volume again, and a ghostly green sign came out of the darkness: INTERSTATE 95 AUGUSTA PORTLAND PORTSMOUTH POINTS SOUTH.
"That's us," Abraham whispered. "God help us an' points south."
The exit ramp tilted up under their feet. They passed into the first splash of light from the overhead arcs. The new paving was smoother beneath their feet, and Garraty felt a familiar lift-drop of excitement.
The soldiers of the color guard had displaced the crowd along the upward spiral of the ramp. They silently held their rifles to high port. Their dress uniforms gleamed resplendently; their own soldiers in their dusty halftrack looked shabby by comparison.
It was like rising above a huge and restless sea of noise and into the calm air. The only sound was their footfalls and the hurried pace of their breathing. The entrance ramp seemed to go on forever, and always the way was fringed by soldiers in scarlet uniforms, their arms held in high-port salute.
And then, from the darkness somewhere, came the Major's electronically amplified voice: "Pre-sent harms!"
Weapons slapped flesh.
"Salute ready!"
Guns to shoulders, pointed skyward above them in a steely arch. Everyone instinctively huddled together against the crash which meant death-it had been Pavloved into them.
"Fire!"
Four hundred guns in the night, stupendous, ear-shattering. Garraty fought down the urge to put his hands to his head.
"Fire!"
Again the smell of powder smoke, acrid, heavy with cordite. In what book did they fire guns over the water to bring the body of a drowned man to the surface?