In Stephen King’s novel The Long Walk, the winner is Ray Garraty.
Raymond “Ray” Garraty is the central participant in a deadly endurance contest in which teenage boys must keep walking at a minimum speed. Contestants who fall below the required pace receive warnings, and those who cannot continue are killed by the soldiers supervising the event.
The novel follows Garraty’s physical exhaustion and his relationships with fellow walkers, especially Peter McVries. The story’s tension comes less from a conventional monster than from the contest’s rules, social pressure, and the participants’ diminishing hope.
King wrote The Long Walk under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. It was published in 1979 as Bachman’s first novel, although King had written it earlier. Ray Garraty is sometimes confused with McVries because both are major characters, but Garraty is the boy who ultimately wins the walk.