Nick Cutter - The Troop

15

FIFTEEN MINUTESlater, Scoutmaster Tim would be locked and shivering inside the cabin’s utility closet.

It would be Kent’s idea. He would suggest that the boys lock their Scoutmaster up for a rational reason—but ultimately he would do it simply because he could . There was something thrilling about leading the others in such an enormous act of rebellion.

KENT SEToff from the fire at a determined clip. He figured Tim may try to stop him, but more and more it seemed he lacked the resolve. Tim was scared. He’d said so, practically blubbering his guts out around the fire.

Kent wasn’t scared, though. Hell, no. It wasn’t any part of his character. They needed a proper leader right now, not a big ole ’fraidy-cat.

The other boys would follow. Kent was positive. All it required was for him to take that first step. Who the hell was Tim, anyway? In the view of Kent’s father, Mr. Timothy Riggs was a lonely middle-aged fairy. Not a pedo—Jeff Jenks would cut his own balls off before he’d leave his kid in the woods with one of those . No, according to “Big” Jeff, Tim Riggs was probably just a willowy, sorrowful queer who lived alone in his big house on the bluffs.

You’ve got every right to see what’s inside that cabin, son — every legal right! Kent heard his father saying. Don’t let this noodle-wristed flamer make that decision for you. Not now, with the stakes this high. Don’t you see what he’s done? The quack’s cut open a complete stranger —gutted him, field-dressed the poor bastard like a five-point buck; he’s admitted as much — and now he wants to cover up his act. A man is dead, son! It’s up to you to get this under control. What, Tim’s going to stop you?

“Listen, Kent, it’s a total mess in there,” Max said from behind. “I mean, a dead guy. No joke. Why the hell do you want to see it so bad?”

“I wanna see it, too,” came Shelley’s voice from someplace in the dark.

Kent laid his hands on Max’s shoulders the same way his father did when one of his deputies got a case of the jitters.

“Max, I need to see. Okay? If I don’t see what the problem is, how can you expect me to deal with it?”

Max’s brow furrowed. “Yeah, but—”

“But nothing. We have every right.”

“Okay, but you better put gauze over your mouth and eyes.”

“Why?”

“Infection.”

Kent nodded somberly. “Yeah. Good thinking.”

Tim had nearly caught up. Kent heard his labored breathing like a sick Pekingese. “Kent Jenks! If you set one foot inside that—”

Kent shouldered his way through the door. The smell hit him like a ball-peen hammer. Sweetly fruity top notes, rancid decay lurking underneath.

The man lay on the chesterfield with his wrists and ankles bound. His shirt was slashed open, his white flesh glazed with sludge. He would look almost peaceful if not for those skinned-back lips setting his mouth in a horrible leer. He looked like a man holding a carnal secret.

A segment of the worm lay on the floor. To Kent, it looked like a much bigger version of the condom he and Charlie Swanson had once found under the football bleachers at Montague High. Charlie had poked the condom with a stick. Sluggish late-summer flies took flight, their drone thick in Kent’s ears. What is it? he’d said. Charlie said: You’ve never seen a ’domer? You pull it over your wick before you screw a chick so you don’t get her preggers .

Charlie had two older brothers. He knew things. Kent remembered feeling vaguely ashamed of his innocence. Also, a little sick.

But the sight of the man stunned him now. He was dead . Maybe Kent had expected it to be like his grandmother’s funeral: Grandma lying restfully in a mahogany coffin in the beige parlor while a pianist played “Nearer My God to Thee.” Serene with her eyes closed and her cheeks gently rouged.

This man was graceless in death. A ring of purple bruises encircling his neck. A brown shitlike mess leaking out of his side. One eye wide open, the other at half-mast like he was tipping a dirty wink. Fruit flies shimmering over his wound to drink the sweet filth. The man had died unloved and without dignity.

Kent wished he could act as his father would have right now. He’d cordon off the area and call for a forensic appraisal. He’d grab a bullhorn and calmly say: Disperse, people. Nothing to see here .

But that wasn’t true, was it? Jesus, there was everything to see here.

Fear stole into Kent’s heart like a safecracker. It embarrassed him—he’d pushed for this outcome, hadn’t he?—but right then he wanted to take it all back. He wished he were on the mainland, safe in his bed with his Labrador retriever, Argo, sleeping soundly beside him. He wished for that with every atom of his body.

Tim plowed through the throng of boys, splashing rubbing alcohol on the fronts of their shirts.

“Pull them over your mouth and nose! Hey—do it! Now! ”

The boys obeyed. Their gazes were fogged with shock above their pulled-up collars—all except Shelley’s, whose eyes held an excitable glittery quality.

Tim shoved Kent. Both hands planted in the boy’s chest. Kent went down so hard his ass bounced off the floor.

“I told you to goddamn well stay out of here, didn’t I, Kent?”

Tim hunched over the fallen boy. He grabbed his shoulder roughly and shook him. Kent’s body rag-dolled in his grip.

“This is the site of a disease ! Now you all run the risk of infection!”

Tim ran his hands through his hair, which stood up in smoke- and sweat-hardened spikes. His mouth hung open like a panting dog’s, the flesh drawn tight over his cheekbones.

You’re acting irrational, Tim , HAL 9000 said coolly. You’ve harmed a child now — and is it really the first time you’ve harmed a child tonight?

“Worms spread by contact ,” he said, ignoring that voice. “Do you understand? If you eat something full of worms or worm eggs, then you get worms. There’s nothing for you to do , Kent. There’s nothing to be fucking fixed . If your dad, the mighty Jeff Jenks, tried his dick-swinging act here, he’d end up just like that guy over there. Okay?”

Tim pictured Jenks the senior: his blue uniform stretched over his gut, buttons taxed to their tensile limit, hairy-knuckled hands hooked through his belt loops as he surveyed the scene with a caustic eye. Wellsy wellsy wellsy, Doc, what’s the rhubarb here?

“Don’t you talk about my dad like that,” Kent said weakly.

“Shut up!” Tim slumped heavily at the kitchen table. “Just shut… up! I mean it, Kent. If you pull any more shit, I will truss you up like a Christmas turkey. Do you know one goddamn thing about contagion—any of you? We don’t know what we’re dealing with here. Could be orally borne. Could be waterborne. Jesus, it could be airborne.”

“Then why cut him open?” Shelley said, covering his mouth so his words were muffled by his fingers. “Why drag Max into it? Or us?”

Tim looked from boy to boy to boy, seeing nothing he could recognize anymore: only disdain and suspicion and slowly kindling rage. That trust he’d worked so hard to build up, an undertaking of many years, had worn down to a brittle strand. The possibility that it could snap at any moment left him paralyzed with fear.

He pointed to the cleaved segment of worm on the floor. “That is like nothing in nature, boys. Do you understand me? These things should not exist . It’s nothing God ever made. So we have to be incredibly careful. We have to step very lightly.”