Nick Cutter - The Troop

His fingers picked along his arms, plucking at the downy hairs there. A small, timid smile sat on his face. His gaze was set in a misty, vacant stare—as though his eyes themselves were not connected to his mind at all, but were just sitting loose in their sockets like a couple of green marbles.

What would you rather?

His twitching fingers set themselves to new purposes he could not discern. Slowly and without being fully aware of it, Ephraim reached again for the knife.

MAX ANDNewton hiked nearly an hour before coming across a patch of wild blueberries. They clung to bushes that grew in the shade of a rocky parapet. Many berries were so withered they almost looked freeze-dried; many more had rotted to hunks of bluish fuzz. But a few bushes must have bloomed late in the season—these ones were clung with overripe but edible berries.

The boys picked them with trembling fingers, not believing their luck. They gorged on berries until their lips and fingers were stained a pale blue.

Afterward they sat with their backs against the parapet. Newton belched loudly and shot Max a slightly embarrassed glance. His shirt was stretched across his stomach. His belly button peered out from the tight fabric like a sightless eye.

Newton pulled his knees up and encircled them with his arms. He closed his eyes and found himself back in the cabin where they had discovered Scoutmaster Tim. As he’d watched those worms waver back and forth making those pfft! pfft! sounds, he’d been sure things would only get worse. The odds were very sharply aligned against them, weren’t they? But he remembered something his mother once said: The only way you’ll ever really know people is to see them in a crisis. People do the worst things to each other, Newton. Just the worst. Friendships, family, love and brotherhood — toss it all out the window…

And though he’d desperately wished he were home, some deeper part of his psyche recognized that rescue was not an immediate probability. Something bad had happened and they were trapped in the middle of it. All they could do was hang tight until the adults figured things out.

That was the biggest part of survival, Newton realized: maintaining a belief in the best-case scenario. It was when you started to believe the worst-case one that you were doomed.

The boys gathered an extra pint of berries to take back to Ephraim. Max rolled them up in a kerchief and stashed them in Newton’s backpack.

The land dipped gradually. The gentle downslope led into a narrow valley. Pine trees bent over facing precipices, casting long shadows. The lowering sun burnt without heat behind gunmetal clouds. A cold breeze skated through the natural wind tunnel to pebble their arms with gooseflesh.

Newton crouched next to a lightning-cleaved tree. The stump was ringed with toadstools. Pale orange in color, each stem shaped like tiny moose antlers.

“Coral mushrooms,” Newton said. “They’re safe to eat, but also a powerful laxative.”

“What’s that?”

“They give you the shits.”

“Not poisonous?”

“The antler-shaped ones are okay. Those do look like antlers, yeah?”

Max squinted. “Yeah.”

Newton picked a few and put them in his pack. “When we get back to camp, we can boil them. Make a tea. Then Kent can drink it. Clear him right out.”

“You think?”

“You got a better idea?”

Max smiled. “You know what? You’re a real fun guy.”

“What?”

“It’s a joke Mr. Lowery told in science class. What did one mushroom say to the other? You’re a real fungi.”

A slow smile broke over Newton’s face. “Oh, I get it. Fungi. Fun guy. That’s funny. That’s really, really funny.”

Max frowned, and Newton immediately felt bad. It was just like him to suck all the funny out of a joke. He was a humor vampire. He thought about his Facebook persona, Alex Markson. Cool, handsome, suave Alex Markson. What Would Alex Markson Do—WWAMD? Not what Newton had just done, that’s for sure.

Max said: “Mr. Walters told another joke that he got in trouble for.”

“What?”

“How do you make a hormone?”

“How?”

“You refuse to pay her.”

Newton cocked an eyebrow. “I don’t get it.”

“Neither do I. But Shelley repeated it to his mother. That got Mr. Walters in some deep shit for a few days.”

Max squinted at an area about ten yards past the tree stump. A trail was tamped through the grass.

“Animal trail,” he said.

Only a foot wide, maybe less, so it couldn’t have been made by a very big animal. A fox or a marten or a porcupine.

“How did animals even get on this island?” Max wondered aloud. “You figure someone built an ark?”

“The Department of Game and Wildlife might have dropped them off,” Newton said. “They would have surveyed the land and, y’know, figured out what species would live best.”

“How’s it feel carrying around that big-ass brain of yours all day?”

Newton’s eyes darkened. “Don’t make fun of me, Max. Not now.”

“I wasn’t—”

“Yes, you were. You were starting up on it, anyway. Just quit it, okay?”

Newton huffed back snot and raked the back of his hand over his nose. Was he about to cry? Max had never seen Newton cry. Not even after the most merciless teasing sessions. Not after an endless round of “Keepaway” with his Scout beret—a game that often ended out of pure apathy: someone would simply drop Newton’s beret and the jeering circle would dissolve, leaving Newton to grope pink-faced in the dirt for his hat.

“Don’t be an asshole, Max.” Newton’s eyes blazed from the reddened flesh of his sockets. “Not now.”

Max took a step back as if Newton had physically struck him. He held his hands out in a penitent and pleading gesture.

“Really, Newt, I wasn’t—”

The following words came out of Newton in a hot rush, like a bottle of soda that had been shaken so hard and for so long that the cap had finally blown off.

“I like weird stuff, okay? So what? And I’m fat. I know that, obviously. I wish I wasn’t but it’s not like I eat like a pig. I mean, yeah, I like ice cream but so do lots of guys. Mom says it’s glandular. A slow metabolism. She even ordered me a pack of Deal-A-Meal cards from that guy on TV who wears those glittery short-shorts.”

Max was stunned. Newton had never spoken this way to him—to anyone , as far as he knew.

“You know what’s hilarious?” Newt said. “I was skinny as a baby. Like, I-could’ve-died skinny. I couldn’t put on weight. A total shrimp. I slipped four percentiles, Mom said. The pediatrician told her to feed me butter—pure warm butter.”

Max wanted to apologize. To say, more than anything, that it wasn’t really Newton’s fault. Max and the other boys didn’t pick on him because they despised him… it was more a case of boys needing someone to single out. A fatted calf to sacrifice. They had to turn someone into that bottom rung on the ladder if only so they didn’t have to occupy it themselves. Boys weren’t very inventive, either. The simplest flaw would do. A lisp. An overbite. Dental braces. Being fat. Add to it a few glaring idiosyncrasies—such as being a know-it-all bookworm who was fascinated with mushrooms—and presto! One made-to-order sacrificial lamb.

Max gave Newt a look of cautious empathy. “Sorry, okay? I wasn’t trying to, like, be a shithead or anything.”