The Troop

by Nick Cutter

  The man hadn’t entered their thoughts directly, but he’d been hovering at the margins all day. His sick-looking face. His matchstick arms and legs. The sweet smell of the cabin.

  Ephraim’s streamlined and unconventionally handsome face took on a rare pensive aspect. “What do you think’s the matter with him?”

  Kent grabbed a stone and hurled it into the water with a vicious sweep of his arm.

  “Who knows, Eef? If it’s cancer, then it’s cancer—right? People get cancer.” Kent stared at the others with savage solemnity. “Maybe he’s got what-do-you-call-it . . . alpiners or whatever.”

  “Alzheimer’s,” Newton said.

  “What-the-fuck ever, Newt. He’s got that.”

  “He’s too young,” Newton said. “That’s an old people’s disease.”

  “You guys’re being babies,” Kent said, drawing the last word out: baaaaay-bies. “My dad says the most obvious conclusion is usually the right one. Ninety-nine-point-nine-nine percent of the time.”

  “So what’s the most obvious conclusion?” Shelley asked, his vapid face oriented on Kent. “His skin looked like it was melting.”

  The boys fell silent.

  “I just think the guy is sick, is all,” Max said after a while. “And I’ve been thinking about it.”

  “So have I,” said Ephraim.

  “And me,” Newt said.

  Kent snorted. “Tim’s a doctor, isn’t he? That’s his job, isn’t it? By the time we get back, he’d better have everything sorted out.”

  He kicked the fire apart, scattering bits of flaming driftwood.

  Before departing, Newton gathered the still-glowing sticks and doused them in the ocean. Scout’s Law number four: Honor and protect Nature in all her abundance.

  * * *

  EVIDENCE LOG, CASE 518C

  PIECE T-11 (Personal Effects)

  Counseling Diary of Newton Thornton

  Recovered from SITE T (34 Skylark Road, North Point, Prince Edward Island) by Officer Brian Skelly, badge #908

  Dear Dr. Harley,

  I’ll compose this like a letter, because I write a lot—I’ve got pen pals in Australia, England, and Dubuque, Iowa. Who doesn’t like opening the mailbox and finding a letter from a friend, even one you’ve never met in person?

  So . . . a confession, huh? You think I keep things bottled up, and confession’s good for the soul. Right? I’d talk more if people—I mean the other kids at school—gave two cruds what I have to say. Most times they’ll just laugh, call me a nerd, a geek, call me fat, call me a nerdy fatty-fat geek (which is overkill, right? Nerds and geeks are pretty much the same . . .). So I don’t talk much, except to my teachers and my mom. And now you.

  The thing is, you can be a different person in letters. On the Internet, too. Because there, you’re not YOU. Okay so yes, you are, but not the physical you. So not fat (it’s glandular), sweaty (it’s also glandular), weird (for North Point, anyway. I don’t like bow hunting or spearfishing or killing things, I’m too clumsy for stickball and I actually LIKE Anne of Green Gables . . . so yeah, weird!) and awkward and gawky and according to Ephraim Elliot sometimes I smell like rotten corn, like when you shuck an ear and it’s all black inside? (By the way, I hear you’re counseling Eef, too; you’re doing a good job—he hasn’t given me a Wet Willy, a Rooster Peck, or a Titty Twister in like a month.)

  But online I’m not that person. I can be my very best self. According to Mom I’m a sensitive boy. Also, I’m a polymath, which means I know a little bit about everything (which, okay, IS nerdy). Online I can be my brain without my body.

  So . . . the confession. Forgive me, Father . . . hah! Anyway, you won’t tell anyone. Patient-doctor confidentiality. I read about it.

  A year ago my cousin Sherwood died. He lived in Manitoba. He fell asleep in a field and a combine ran him over. He tried to run but those combines are like forty feet of whirring blades. At his funeral the coffin stayed closed.

  I loved Sherwood. We hardly got to see each other—we don’t have a lot of money (I don’t even know how Mom affords you) and Sherwood’s parents are farmers. But every summer they came for a visit. I’d take Sher to the ocean. No ocean in Manitoba, right? We got along great. When I told him a little nugget of info, Sher was genuinely interested.

  We stuck to the out-of-the-way places, the ones only I knew. I didn’t want to run across any kids from school—they’d call me lardbucket or tub-a-guts. I was scared that if Sher saw that he wouldn’t like me anymore. Which wasn’t really fair to him. Sher would’ve helped me, because blood is thicker than water, right?

  Sher was tall with wide shoulders and lots of muscle—farmboy muscles, he called them, laughing and telling me everyone had them back home, he wasn’t so special. But Sher WAS special. Handsome (I can say that about another boy, it’s not weird) and people just . . . they gravitated to him, is I think the word. Like a magnet drawing iron filings. Everyone wanted to be around Sher.

  Then he died, a stupid unlucky accident, and everyone was so sad. The world had lost a great light—everyone said so. I wondered what they’d have said if it was me who died? I didn’t really want to guess.

  After the funeral I dug out my box of photos. My mom bought me a Polaroid for my birthday and it got a lot of use. Mainly they were of Sher—I was the one snapping the photos, plus I don’t like how I look on camera.

  I was going to put up a memorial wall. On Facebook, right? Something to remember Sher by. My idea, sincerely. But somewhere along the line it changed.

  I scanned the photos, put them in a file on my computer. But instead of a memorial wall I . . . well, I created a person. I guess that’s what I did, yeah.

  Alex Markson. The boy’s name. I don’t know where I got it from, but it seemed a strong name—it fit well with the photos. Alex Markson had Sherwood’s face and body. Alex Markson had my words, my interests. Alex was me and Sherwood, combined.

  I put up the profile. I knew it was wrong. My heart hammered like a drum when Sher’s face went POP! up on the screen. It was . . . sacrilegious? I almost deleted it. Almost.

  I started posting stuff. Nothing much at first. Just things that interested me—the stuff kids around here pick on me for. My words pasted to Sher’s body.

  The super-weird thing is . . . Alex started to get friend requests. I mean, a LOT. People neither of us had met. Not weirdos either. Normal, cool people. Boys (and girls!) my age.

  At first I was scared to accept them—I saw Sher up in Heaven, shaking his head—but after a while I did. People posted on my wall and I’d post on theirs, as Alex. Sher’s face bloomed like a flower on strangers’ Facebook pages.

  But the thing is, Alex’s interests were mine. And people thought he was smart and funny and, well, COOL. Isn’t that weird? When I say those exact same things it’s nerdy, because people think I’m a nerd. Like, a self-fulfilling prophecy.

  So then—and this is really embarrassing—I sent some requests. To Max Kirkwood and Ephraim Elliot and Kent Jenks. I even sent one to Trudy Dennison, who sits in front of me in homeroom and is the most beautiful, funniest, and just all-around best girl in the whole entire world. Not that I’ve ever really talked to her, except for that time she borrowed a pencil in social studies . . . which she never gave back, come to think of it. Maybe she thinks “borrow” means “keep,” same as Kent does . . . probably she just forgot.

  Anyway, guess what? They accepted, even though they never met Alex. How could they, right? They just thought he was handsome, and loose, and cool.

  I thought: This is how it COULD be. If I wasn’t ME. If I existed in a different body, an acceptable body, a body everyone loved. If I didn’t live in North Point, where I’m like this train on rails: I know where I’m going, hate it, but can’t change course. This was who I could’ve been if the ball had bounced just a bit differently, you know?

  My own Facebook page has ten friends. My mom, a few uncles and aunts, my grandmother—“I bought you a new pair of jeans from the
Husky department at Simpson’s Sears in Charlottetown, Newtie!”—and a few pen pals . . . my pal from Dubuque de-friended me.

  Now here’s the big confession, Dr. Harley, the solid gold bonanza, the secret that says just about everything, I guess:

  Alex Markson isn’t friends with Newton Thornton. Not on Facebook. Not anywhere on earth or in this life.

  Sincerely,

  Newton Thornton

  * * *

  11

  IT WAS dark by the time they returned to the cabin. A fire flickered in a ring of rocks. Scoutmaster Tim was sitting on the far side. The tendons on his neck stood out in sharp relief: they looked like tiny trees all tenting inward.

  “Don’t go inside,” he told them.

  “My warm coat’s in there,” Kent said.

  “The fire’s warm. You’ll be fine.”

  “I’d rather have my coat.”

  “I don’t care what you’d rather have,” Tim said in a dead voice. “The man inside is sick. Sick in a way I’ve never seen before, at least not that I can diagnose here.”

  The boys settled themselves around the fire. Newton said, “Sick how?”

  “At first, I thought cancer. As a doctor, that’s always the first thought. But cancer is almost always typified by loss of appetite and . . .”

  Tim saw no good reason to tell the boys that the man had stirred that afternoon—lunged upward like a heart-staked vampire from its coffin. His eyes crawling with burst vessels . . . his tongue a knot of sinew as if something had sucked the saliva out of it . . .

  The man had sunk his teeth into the chesterfield and torn at the fabric with savage bites.

  The mindlessness of it had horrified Tim.

  Tim managed to sedate him before he swallowed too much. There was a good chance he’d choke to death on the chesterfield’s musty old foam. He’d cradled the man’s neck as he laid him down. The man’s head tilted back and his jaw hung open . . .

  Tim had seen something. If anything, it resembled a white knuckle of bone—the bone of a greenstick fracture except curved and gleaming. Visible only for a harried instant. Lodged in his throat below the epiglottal bulb. Gently ribbed and somehow gill-like . . .

  Next the man’s rib cage bulged in a bone-splintering flex as something settled.

  “ . . . and this man is very hungry,” Tim finished.

  “So what are you going to do about it?” said Kent.

  Tim ignored the boy’s cheeky defiance. “He may have some kind of internal sickness. By the time the boat picks us up, I believe he’ll be dead.”

  Newton said: “Can you operate on him?”

  Shelley said: “Cut him open?”

  Tim said: “I haven’t done a lot of surgery, but I know the basics. Max, has your dad ever had you help him out on the job?”

  Max’s father was the county coroner. Also its taxidermist: if anyone wanted his trophy bluefin mounted on a burled-oak backing, he was the one to call. An insistent voice in Tim’s head told him not to involve the boys—keep them clear of this. But a new voice, a silky whisper, told him no worries—it’d be just fine.

  You’ve got it all under control, Tim . . .

  He didn’t, though—he’d become hyperaware of this fact. This night would determine whether the man lived or died . . . maybe only a few hours of the night. This was why he would’ve bombed as a surgeon: Tim lacked the quick-cut instincts, that private triage room in his head. He was a thinker—an overthinker. Overthinking matters was just a harmless quirk in a GP but now, when swift action was needed, he could feel himself coming apart.

  “I’ve helped taxidermy animals,” Max said.

  “Helped in what way?”

  “Threading needles with catgut. Shining up the glass eyes and like that.”

  It’s an internship, said the voice in Tim’s head. Consider it an early residency. Max’s folks wouldn’t mind, would they? A man’s life is at risk, right? Max is smart, Max is careful—and you can protect him should anything happen.

  Tim pointed at the others. “You all stay here. No arguments. This guy . . . I don’t know what’s the matter. He may be viral.”

  Ephraim said: “Viral?”

  “Like, he’s catching,” Kent said. “You know, contagious.”

  “You sure, Scoutmaster?” Newt said. “I mean, Max is just a . . .”

  Boy was the word Newton swallowed. Just a boy and Tim was taking him into a cabin occupied by a man who was sick in some unknowable way.

  Tim’s left eye twitched, the nerve gone haywire. Plikka-plikka-plikka like the shutter on a camera. He squeezed his eyes shut, slowly counted to five in his head. A small, persistent, maddening voice deep within the runnels of his brain was now asking questions.

  What are you doing, Tim? Are you really sure, Tim? The voice’s cold, stentorian tone reminded him of HAL 9000, the computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey. It wouldn’t shut up, kept nattering on with icy certainty.

  Just what do you think you’re doing, Tim?

  He was dimly terrified that this was the voice of common sense—the logical voice that he’d listened to all his adult life—and that he was gradually abandoning it.

  “You don’t have to do this, Max,” Ephraim said. His gaze fell upon the Scoutmaster. “He doesn’t have to, does he?”

  Tim swallowed. He’d begun to do so compulsively—it felt like a pebble had gotten lodged in his throat. “No . . . no. But I don’t think I can do it alone. And we will take all precautions.”

  Max said: “It’ll be safe?”

  Tim swallowed, swallowed . . .

  Are you sure, Tim? Is this really—

  It will be FINE. You can HANDLE it.

  A new voice rose over HAL 9000’s prissy hectoring. A louder, more imposing voice, belonging to a man of action. It crowded out the other voice, which was just fine—Tim was tired of listening to it.

  “It’s safe,” Tim said.

  The new voice said, It’s safe enough, anyway.

  Tim hooked his thumb at Max. “Now come on.”

  12

  THE AIR inside the cabin was sickly sweet. Closing his eyes, Max could picture himself under a canopy of tropical fronds hung with fruits swollen with decay.

  Tim splashed rubbing alcohol on a long strip of gauze. “Press this over your mouth and nose. No matter what happens, Max, don’t take it off.”

  “Aren’t you wearing one?”

  “I don’t know if that matters so much now.”

  Tim had been busy. He’d already set up a crude operating theater on the table: suture needles threaded with filament, scalpels, hypodermic needles and vials, a bottle of scotch, and a soldering iron.

  “I scrounged that out of Oliver McCanty’s boat,” Tim said, pointing to the iron. “I might be able to cauterize the bigger blood vessels with it.”

  The cupboards hung open. Max saw empty hot dog wrappers and bun bags in the trash. A huge sack of oatmeal was torn open and most of it was gone. The trail mix . . . the beef jerky . . . their food for the entire weekend.

  Tim rubbed his palm over his face, gave Max a sheepish smile, and pointed at an orange plastic cooler.

  “The food in there I haven’t touched. Take it outside, please. Right now.”

  Max did as he was told, the numbness growing inside. He overheard Newton saying “What would our folks say about it?” and saw the questioning looks on his fellow Scouts’ faces; he put the cooler down and turned, ignoring them, heading back to Tim. A gust of wind pulled the cabin door shut behind him. He dug his feet into the floor—he didn’t want to be anywhere near the stranger.

  “Prop a chair under the doorknob,” Tim said, pouring scotch into a jelly glass. “I don’t want them coming in.”

  In the cabin’s light, Max now saw how much the Scoutmaster had changed in the hours they’d been gone. His chest was sucked inward where his rib cage met. His shoulders arrowed down and his neck stuck between them like a bean plant threading up a bamboo pole. His fingers spider-crept over the bottle—
they looked spiderish themselves.

  Max remembered something his father had said about Tim: Dr. Riggs has GP hands. Real meat hooks! He doesn’t have surgeon’s hands. A surgeon’s hands are weirdly delicate. Like they’ve got extra joints. Nosferatu hands—the sort of pale and freaky things you could imagine reaching out of the shadows to grab you!

  Well, Scoutmaster Tim had surgeon’s hands now.

  Tim caught the question in Max’s eyes. He said: “Yeah . . . I think so, buddy. He coughed something up on me last night. Rock slime, I figured, but since then I’ve lost . . . twenty pounds? In a day?” He spoke dreamily, with awestruck bafflement. “At least twenty. More every minute.”

  Max could tell his Scoutmaster was trying to stay calm—to look at this situation as a doctor—but his diminished body was trembling with insuppressible, jackrabbit fear. A single word looped through Max’s head: RunRunRunRunRun.

  He didn’t, though. Perhaps it had something to do with their long history, the innate trust he placed in his Scoutmaster. Maybe it was Pavlovian: when an adult asked for help, Max offered it. A man would have to be pretty desperate to ask a kid, wouldn’t he?

  Scoutmaster Tim upended the glass. Rivulets of scotch spilled down the sides of his mouth. He stared radish-eyed at the boy.

  “This is not just for me, Max. It’s for you and the others, too.”

  Max thought back to a night years ago when his father had gotten hurt on the softball diamond. His team was playing the police union’s team, captained by Kent’s father. Max’s father was the catcher and, on the final play of the ninth inning, score tied at ten-all, “Big” Jeff Jenks steamed around third base, chugging hard for home. The cutoff man got the ball to Max’s dad a good ten yards ahead of Jenks’s arrival—league softball rules stated the catcher didn’t need to apply a tag, so there was no earthly reason for a runner to plow into the catcher in hopes of popping the ball loose.

  That hadn’t stopped Jenks from smashing his 250 pounds into Max’s dad—who weighed 160 soaking wet—pancaking him at home plate.