Nick Cutter - The Troop

“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 .”

THE AIRinside 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.

Max heard the high sweet crack! which lingered under the vapor-halogen spotlights. His father stood woozily, his arm hanging at a funny angle: bent back at the elbow, the lower half dangling like a cooked noodle. A shard of bone protruded from the joint, shining wetly under the lights.

The second baseman had driven his father’s car to the ER. Max sat in the backseat, his father in front. He leaned over the seat rest, smiling gamely. It’s okay, Maximilian. It’s just a flesh wound , he said, repeating a line from one of their favorite movies. At the hospital, Max’s dad sat on a bed encircled by a white curtain. Max wasn’t allowed to sit with him because, as his dad said, This is bound to be gross . So he’d only heard the rattle of the bone-setter’s tray and the crisp, blood-jangling click! as his father’s broken bone was set back in place. When the curtain withdrew, there he was, his arm in a sling and a tired, doped-up smile on his face.