He just wants to go home.
Parker has taken over as the vanguard. It's just after four in the morning, it's cold and damp and goddamn it all he just wants to go home. Fuck the prize, fuck everyone else, he just wants to go back to Joliet where he knows his way around the busy streets and not have to tramp his way through all these goddamn fucking trees. He doesn't know if it's the delirium of losing at least three day's sleep or some other crazy unseen force that's screwing with his mind but he thinks that if he does end up outwalking all these other poor sons-of-bitches his prize will be to get all these trees burnt to the fucking ground so he doesn't have to see them ever agai-
No. He needs to keep his head together. He doesn't want to end up like Barkovitch. That poor, crazy bastard.
No 15- or 16-year-old boy should ever have to go through something as crazy and desperate as ripping his own throat out. And no boy should ever have to witness something crazy as that.
Even though it was only a matter of hours since it had happened, it still plays like a distant memory; even the pang of guilt he felt after knowing that he had contributed to the boy's death seems like something that happened long ago. That being said, there's still the clear-as-day vision of that damn Gary Barkovitch clawing at his neck and managing to pull something out amidst the spurt of blood and the frantic scrabbling and still walking, just as Olson had before, continuing to walk after he had ripped his own throat out-
Collie has to struggle with the will to vomit all over himself for a second, and ultimately wins. Sometime ago, Pearson bought a ticket a little while after doing just that. What a way to go. Covered in vomit and crying like a bitch.
He ultimately decides that he will get the rest of these bastards out of here or die trying. Hell, he hasn't got a lot in him left. His legs hurt. His head hurts. Everything hurts. He suddenly realises that he's scared - scared of knowing that eventually, he's gonna go out like a lot of the guys before him, simply by giving up.
Hank Olson - now there was a guy who could go out in style. Even in the state he was in by the end of his short, pathetic life he could scale the side of a half-track and fire a rifle. That was something to be admired.
Maybe if Collie can… "re-enact" Olson's crazy suicide attempt (with a touch of rebellion thrown in for good measure) then maybe, just maybe, he can get his friends - or Musketeers… it sounds stupid as hell but hey, they're his friends - all out in one piece.
And if he can't? Then he's gotten himself out. He feels that even at the end, going out with a bang will be enough to prove to himself that he did well.
Going home in a bodybag is better than not going home at all.