As the walkers leave Augusta behind, Ray Garraty realizes that the city’s enormous crowd has affected them more deeply than they wanted to admit. Augusta feels less like a place than a monstrous collective force demanding spectacle and sacrifice. When the Major appears ahead in his jeep and salutes, the remaining walkers erupt into wild cheering despite their exhaustion, but the frenzy becomes physically dangerous for Garraty, whose chest starts hurting. The cheering only ends when Milligan collapses and is shot, reminding everyone how quickly excitement turns back into death.

After Augusta, Collie Parker talks with Garraty about fear and homesickness. Parker envies Garraty because Garraty will soon pass close enough to see his mother and girlfriend, even if the rules still keep a barrier between them. McVries joins them and argues that seeing loved ones without truly reaching them may hurt even more. When Parker moves on, McVries shocks Garraty with crude, teasing sexual talk; Garraty is rattled, partly because he desperately wants human contact and partly because he does not understand whether McVries is joking, testing him, or trying to provoke himself.

Pearson, nearly broken by pain, says McVries seems driven to invite punishment. Garraty notices how badly everyone is deteriorating, including himself. Wanting to confirm a rumor that Gary Barkovitch is failing, Garraty drops back and finds Barkovitch limping, talking to himself, and still clinging to his old belief that everyone else will die before he does. Barkovitch fantasizes about replacing his ruined feet with plastic ones, and Garraty, suddenly savage and triumphant, tells Barkovitch that no one will miss him and that the others will be glad to see him dead. The outburst disgusts Garraty as soon as he says it, and when two other walkers are shot moments later, Garraty irrationally feels like a murderer because of his cruelty.

Garraty catches up with McVries, and their talk turns philosophical. McVries says the Walk has become a cheat: once a person builds a whole life around some goal, reaching it may reveal it to be empty. Garraty reflects on Olson’s hair seeming to turn gray and wonders if the walkers are trapped in a warped kind of immortality, suspended outside ordinary time. As they continue uphill toward Lewiston, Garraty explains the route ahead through Lewiston, Freeport, and eventually U.S. 1, the road that will carry them to the end.

Then Barkovitch finally breaks completely. After another gunshot makes the walkers think he might already be dead, Barkovitch starts shrieking, throws up his hands, and tears at his own throat while still walking. The others recoil in horror until Barkovitch collapses and is shot. Pearson becomes sick, McVries says he almost wishes he were insane, and Garraty studies the same horror on every face. Barkovitch’s death feels different from the others: not just another elimination, but proof that the Walk is destroying minds as well as bodies, and that the road ahead will only get darker.