Nick Cutter - The Troop

I didn’t know , was all Max’s dad could say. If I’d known I’d’ve never… I got carried away .

Max thought of this now, in relation to what they’d done to Scoutmaster Tim.

They’d gotten carried away, was all. It happened to adults, too. When you got angry and frustrated and scared enough, it was so, so easy to get carried away.

“I never seen a dead person before,” said Newton. “My hamster died. Yoda. He got out of his cage and got his neck broke by getting caught in a sliding closet door. He was just a hamster but man, he died in my hands. His neck hung all funny. I couldn’t stop crying.” Newton swabbed his wrist across his eyes and fetched a deep sigh. “We buried him in a shoe box in the backyard. I made a cross out of Popsicle sticks. That’s kinda dumb. Jeez. Don’t tell the other guys, huh? They’ll rag me a new one.”

Max’s father had buried the birds in a shoe box, too, lining it with lush coffin velvet. “It’s not dumb, Newt. It was the right thing to do, I think.”

“Yeah?” Newt smiled, but his expression darkened by degrees. “Do you think we could let the Scoutmaster out?”

“Kent’s the only one who knows the lock combination.”

The boys squinted at the pinpricks of light on the mainland. There appeared to be more than usual. Smaller lights zipped back and forth beneath its awning like phosphorescent ants pouring out of a neon anthill. A remote sense of calm settled over Max. A sense of Zen forbearance, even, as his body marshaled its remaining strength—as if it knew, in advance of his mind, that he’d need every ounce of it over the coming hours and days. Distantly, Max wondered if this was how men felt in a war. Even more distantly he wondered about his parents: in bed, probably, sleeping soundly with no earthly idea what was happening.

“Do you really think the boat will show up?”

“Shut up, Newt. Please.”

Lead news item from CNN.com, October 22:

As of 7:15 a.m. the tiny (18-square-kilometer) island of Falstaff, 3 miles off the northern coast of Prince Edward Island, has been officially quarantined.

A memo released by the Military Attaché office cites the cause as “a biological incident of unknown origin.” This could mean an outbreak of contagious disease, fungal infection, parasite, or a water- or airborne contaminant that poses a significant risk to human and animal populations.

The military continues to mass in the small town of North Point. Sources indicate the military is working jointly with the Public Health Agency—specifically the Centre for Contagious Disease.

As yet no information has surfaced regarding either the specific cause behind the quarantine or the nature of the biological threat.

According to the military, the island is currently unoccupied.

THEY HADlocked him in the closet. Their Scoutmaster. The town’s only doctor. Almost unbelievably, this had happened. They’d ganged up. Kent and Ephraim, and Shelley with his ball-bearing eyes. Even Newton and Max had joined in.

You deserved it, Tim , HAL 9000 chastised. You put the boys in danger. Knowingly or not, but they were your responsibility. Remember the Scout Code .

How was it my fault? Tim asked himself. Had he invited the sick man onto the island? Had he purposefully, maliciously set events on an extinction vector? No, no . He’d acted out of kindness. He’d done what any caring person would do. He’d tried so hard, under such desperate circumstances, to make the right choices—how was he to know it would turn out so horribly wrong?

It ended in this: Tim locked in a closet, alone with his thoughts. And his hunger. And the sick sweet stink of his body.

He was resigned to the fact he’d forever be known as the Scoutmaster who’d been mutinied by his own Scouts. That ought to make “Big” Jeff Jenks bust a gut.

Tim sat with his spine flush to the closet wall and his knees drawn tight to his chest. He tested each joint for weak spots. No luck. Solid wood nailed at inflexible angles.

A thin bar of sunlight wept under the door. Tim ran his fingers along the dissolving edge of light. Hugely comforting. A link to the world outside the closet. To the mainland and the sureties it held. To his cold cellar and its shelves stocked with preserves. To the glass canister of tongue depressors in his examination room.

He breathed heavily and focused. He could untwist a coat hanger and thread it under the door and… what? Jab someone in the ankle? Trip one of the boys? Why bother? Maybe he deserved to be here.

There’s no maybe about it, Tim , said HAL 9000.

He was trapped. Impossibly, inescapably. Maybe it was for the best. Fact: he was ill. The boys may have been right to lock him up. It hurt tremendously that they’d done it—a sudden feral act that made a mockery of all those years they’d been together, a close-knit group under his command. And now, cooped up in here, he couldn’t help them anymore—and that scared him profoundly.

Were you helping them, Tim? Really?

“Shut up, HAL,” he croaked, sounding like a drainpipe clogged with sludge. “You’re not my pal, HAL .”

You’re becoming irrational, Tim. This conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Good-bye .

“Good. Scram. Get lost.”

Tim’s thoughts returned to his Scouts. They were running wild, a quintet of lost boys. Did they have any inkling of the peril they were in? How could they, really? Boys didn’t process fear the same way as adults, especially when it came to sickness. Their scabs healed like magic, their coughs dried up overnight. But Tim knew the frailty of human bodies; he’d seen how even the stoutest ones could collapse into a sucking pit of disease and death.

Not to mention the fact that they’d also laid their hands all over him while doing the deed. They had breathed in the air he’d exhaled in fear-sick gusts. He may have even spit at them. Dear God, had he actually spat on the boys?

Part of him—a shockingly large part—was okay being in here. Perhaps he was unfit for command. Fact: he was paralyzed with hunger. He kept catching whiffs of cotton candy from someplace. His eyes blinked uncontrollably. He kept hearing his mother, dead six years now, calling him home for supper. Timmy, chowder’s ready!

Eat , said this funny little voice. It wasn’t HAL or the Undervoice. This one was different—sly and insistent, like baby rats clawing the insides of his head.

But there’s nothing to eat in here , he told the voice.

Sure there is. There’s always things to eat, silly .

The rats kept clawing, clawing; before long they’d claw through the soft meat of his brains and scratch through the bone of his skull. Tim pictured it: his skull bulging, his scalp and hair stirring with antic life, the skin splitting with the sound of rotten upholstery as a tide of hairless pink ratlings spilled from the slit, slick with blood and grayish brain-curds, squealing shrilly as they sheeted clumsily down his face, past his unblinking eyes, bumping and squalling over his lips spread in a vacant smile.

Okay , he answered that funny niggling voice. But what should I eat?

Oh, eat anything , it said with cold reasonableness. Any old thing you can find .