Nick Cutter - The Troop

THE COOLERwas discovered two hundred yards down toward the shore. There was no physical evidence to indicate it had been dragged: no zigzag lines through the soft dirt or trampled weeds. This suggested it had been picked up and carried to its present spot. It lay overturned in a patch of purple-pink shrubs.

But the crude way that the food had been shredded did suggest an animal. The hot dog packages had been torn open. Raw rags of the granular pink meat lay scattered about the cooler, alit upon by listless late-October flies. M&Ms were strewn around like multicolored jewels.

Ephraim kicked dirt over a half-chewed hot dog. His jaw was set at a sideways angle, his eyes hooded.

“Fuck it. Boat’ll be here soon.”

The boys walked down to the shore. They hadn’t packed their bags—none of them wanted to go inside the cabin, though none of them spoke those words. The air was crisp, with a soft undernote of peppermint. The face of Newt’s Timex Ironman read 8:23. The boat was scheduled to arrive at 8:30.

Kent slumped on a boulder carpeted with moss that resembled the fuzz on a tennis ball. When he was sure nobody was watching, he pinched some moss and stuffed it into his mouth. He didn’t know why he’d do such a thing. It shamed and disgusted him.

He was just so damned hungry.

Newton sidled up. Cautiously he said: “You okay, K?”

“I’m fine.”

“You look a little green.” Newton gave him a chummy smile and pointed to the water. “Like me when I get seasick. The rest of my family have great sea legs, but not me. When the boat gets swaying, I just toss my cookies. Lose my lunch every time.”

“Newt, screw off.” Kent gave Newton a look more pleading than threatening. “Okay? Please?”

He turned away and caught Shelley gawping at him. That same vapid look as always—was it, though?

Kent had been sure the others were asleep when he’d woken last night. The growl of his stomach had drawn him out of a deep slumber: an aching burr like a chain saw revving endlessly. He’d sat up with his hands reflexively clawing his belly.

His eyes had darted to the cooler. Next he’d glanced at the other boys, scrutinizing them carefully. They were asleep, Newton snoring loud as a leaf blower.

His gaze had been drawn helplessly to the cooler. The hunger was like nothing he’d ever known. Beyond an ache. More like an insistence. A summoning . There was a big, dark pit inside of him—something that had started out as a pinprick hole but had rapidly grown into a vortex, the equivalent of a violent tornado, but instead of the random objects that a twister pulls into its funnel—trees and mailboxes and lawn mowers—the one inside of him was sucking at his own insides, his liver and kidneys and lungs and stomach, with the incredible pressure of industrial machinery.

Kent had been terrified that if he let it go on much longer, the hole would suck clean through him— out of him.

He’d stood silently and crept to the cooler. His heart beat a staccato hi-hat behind his rib cage. His bladder was so tight he thought he might piss himself. Kent had forced himself to exhale softly—otherwise his breath would escape in shrill peeps like a baby bird calling for food. And what did baby birds eat? Worms. Their mothers chewed them up in their flinty beaks and regurgitated them. Worms just like the one that still lay on the cabin floor next to the dead man. Except not that big. And not so maggot-white. It would take a million birds to eat a worm that huge.

Kent’s hands had crawled over the cooler’s lid. The pebbled plastic reminded him of summer picnics. An ice-carpeted cooler with the brown necks of Coke bottles poking up. Watermelon sliced two inches thick. He’d bite through its pink flesh and spit the black seeds… seeds that looked a little like blood-swollen ticks, now that he thought about it.

His hands flirted over wieners and buns and teardrops of chocolate wrapped in silver foil. Surely one couldn’t hurt? It was his anyway. One-fifth of this food was earmarked for him. So what if Kent wanted to eat his share in the middle of the night?

He’d plucked a Hershey’s Kiss from the bag with trembling fingers. A runner of drool stretched into a glimmering ribbon in the firelight. He’d unwrapped the chocolate quickly and popped it into his mouth. Chewing and swallowing…

Before his mind could catch up to the mechanical movements of his fingers, the bag was empty. He’d lost track of things. His fingers and lips were streaked with brown chocolate. Brown —Kent’s gorge rose with quick revulsion—brown like the muck pooling out of the dead man’s stomach.

With swift, silent movements, he carried the cooler down near the shore. Things went hazy from there. Kent could only recall brief glints and flashes. Tearing and rending. Shoveling and swallowing. He may have wept while doing it.

At some point he’d glanced up and saw Shelley watching. Shelley, who should have been sleeping. Shelley, whose face had gone wolfish in the moonlight.

Go on , he’d mouthed to Kent. Keep eating. Enjoy it .

When Kent came back to himself, the cooler was empty. The persistent internal suck had ebbed to a muffled quaver in his gut. It was more than he’d eaten in his entire life. Guilt settled into his bones like lead. He pictured his father hovering over the scene with an accusatory eye.

You don’t get it, Daddy , he’d wanted to say. You don’t understand what I’m going through .

I understand weakness, son. Prisons are full of weak-willed men .

Afterward, Kent had stepped into the ocean to clean his hands and face. The cold water pinkened his fingers. Even at that hour, the mainland was a flurry of light and motion. He cupped water in his hands and walked back to the cooler, wiping his chocolaty fingerprints off the handles.

On the way back to the fire, he’d found Shelley lingering beneath the leaves of a weeping willow. Kent curled a fist and settled it under Shelley’s chin.

“Say anything and I’ll kick the shit out of you,” he whispered.

“If you say so.”

Kent took a step back. Something in Shelley’s placid expression nearly made his knees buckle.

“You know what, Kent?” Shelley said. “Your breath stinks like shit. Like cotton candy that someone took a big piss on. Can’t you smell it?”

Kent could smell it. The treacly-sweet stink with its ammoniac undertone nearly made him gag.

“I mean it, Shel. Keep your lip zipped.”

Kent plodded back to the fire and struggled into his sleeping bag. But by morning, despite his devouring the cooler’s entire contents, the hunger pangs had already returned.

NEWTON GLANCEDat his Timex again: 9:02.

Stanley Watters’s skiff should have puttered up to the wharf a half hour ago. It was not like Mr. Watters to be late. Before his retirement, he’d been the logistics coordinator at the local FedEx depot; the time of day was practically imprinted in his blood. Watters’s favorite parlor trick was to look at his bare wrist when you asked what time it was—Watters never wore a watch—and give it to you to the very minute. Freaky. He might be a minute or two off nowadays but still, for him to be a half hour late? That was a rare occurrence indeed.

“You think something happened?” Newton said. “Mr. Watters is what, seventy?”

“Do you think we could swim back?” Ephraim said.

Newton scoffed. “Are you nuts? With these currents? They run the Atlantic Ironman Triathlon off Baker Beach.” He pointed in the general direction of North Point. “I went with my mom once to watch it. Guys were staggering out of the ocean. Their teeth were bashing together so hard I could hear it. Most of them puked, they were so exhausted. And those were athletes . Grown-ups. And it was only a thousand meters. From here to shore is three miles.”