At about one o’clock, Garraty takes stock: the walkers have covered more than 115 miles and may be headed all the way to New Hampshire. The late-morning heat turns deadly again after a quiet stretch. Tressler and other boys are shot after sunstroke, convulsions, or cramps leave them unable to keep pace, and Garraty realizes this is exactly how he himself could end. Baker, worn down by pain, angrily blames the Major, while Scramm keeps going despite a feverish cold. Olson, however, has become almost unreachable: he does not speak, drink, or react, and Garraty sees him as a warning of the empty, inward state waiting at the end of the Walk.

As the road alternates between woods and cheering crowds, Garraty feels too numb to wish himself elsewhere. At an intersection he sees Percy’s mother screaming for her dead son, and the sight jolts him into remembering Jan begging him not to enter the Walk. That memory forces Garraty to admit that Jan had understood the truth better than he did, yet he still cannot fully explain why he chose to come. Soon after, McVries joins him and says Barkovitch is finally weakening, but Garraty notices that everyone is limping and fraying.

Garraty, McVries, and Pearson talk about what survival even means now. Pearson argues that second place deserves something, because being the next-to-last boy left would be unbearable; Garraty says that at this stage simple survival would be enough for him. McVries rejects that idea and repeats his harsher belief that all of them came because, in some buried way, they want death, and that even the loser is cheated out of what he really wanted. As the temperature climbs, Garraty drifts through heat-hazed fantasies of water, rest, and Jan, while Baker and the others complain about Maine, the weather, and the impossibility of enduring both heat and distance.

Later, Garraty studies the shape of the field and notices Barkovitch still near the front, with McVries staring after him. A brief surge of hope returns when Garraty imagines reaching Oldtown and the smoother turnpike beyond it. That hope becomes immediate when a roadside man, Dom L’Antio, tries to hand out cold watermelon from a station wagon packed with ice. Troopers stop him, which enrages Garraty and the others, but Dom breaks free long enough to throw the fruit into the air. Several walkers catch pieces, and the cold watermelon gives the group a rare burst of joy, gratitude, and shared triumph, even as Stebbins stands apart from it.

By 2:30, the walkers have reached 121 miles and thunderheads are closing in. The weather turns suddenly cold and windy, and Garraty jokes with McVries about whether the rules cover an act of God. While they wait for the storm to break, Baker drifts into morbid talk about funerals, burial, and rats eating corpses, deepening Garraty’s sense that death has saturated all of their thoughts. Then the storm finally hits in force: lightning, thunder, hail, and sheets of rain batter the walkers. Jensen panics, runs blindly in circles, blunders off the shoulder, and is shot. Garraty presses on through the downpour with the others, and by four o’clock the rain is still falling.