Nick Cutter - The Troop

Newton set his jaw off-kilter and touched his lip to his nose. “Okay. Forget it. It was nothing.”

THE TRAPproved a lot harder to build than they had figured.

Newton had found a diagram for a “sapling spring snare” in his field book. He claimed to have built one in his backyard—Scoutmaster Tim had come over and certified it, awarding Newton his Bushcraft badge.

But the saplings in his backyard were limber. The trees edging the game trail were old or dead: they snapped as soon as the boys bent them. When they finally found one that might do and tried to bow it down—the “spring” part of the trap—the natural tension of the wood was simply too much.

“This might make an okay wolf trap,” Newton said with a shake of his head. “But a small animal would get catapulted into the sky.”

They retired to the bluffs overlooking the game run. They sat with their feet dangling over the bluffs. The air smelled of creosote. The clouds lowered like a gray curtain coming down.

Newton said: “You don’t feel sick, do you?”

Max said: “I don’t know what sick should feel like.”

“Hungry.”

“Well, okay yeah, I am hungry.”

“Yeah,” said Newton, “but not hungry -hungry, right?”

“I guess not. I guess it’s bearable.”

Newton looked relieved. “Good. I mean if we were really that hungry—that crazy—we’d know it… right?”

Max rubbed his chin, wondering if Ephraim’s knuckles would leave a bruise—wondering, more gloomily, if he’d live long enough for that bruise to heal. He gave no answer to Newt’s question. What was there to say? If that particular hunger fell upon them, crazy hunger , nothing would really matter anymore. It’d be far too late.

Night birds sang in the trees: haunting, melancholy notes. Newton’s foot went to sleep. He stood to walk the tingles out of it, wandering to the edge of the valley where the soil gave way to a flat expanse of shale. Gentle waves slapped the shore. The water was the gray of a dead tooth, liquefying into a sky of that same unvarying gray.

Newton squinted into a tide pool. Something popped up on its placid surface. Whatever it was, it had the coloring of an exotic bird’s egg. It vanished again.

“Max! Come over here.”

They peered down. Their breath was trapped expectantly in their lungs. There —whatever it was popped up again. Bubbles burst all around it. Then it was gone.

“It’s a sea turtle,” Newton said.

THEY CREPTdown to the shore. The tide pool was hemmed by honeycombed rock. How had the turtle gotten in? Maybe there was a gap in the rocks underwater. More likely it had gotten carried in with the high tide and was trapped until the tide came in again.

“Could we eat it?” Max said. His voice was raspy with excitement.

“We could.” Newton’s voice held the same anxious rasp. Something about the idea of meat —even turtle meat—was insanely appealing.

They doffed their boots and socks and rolled their pant legs up past their knees. A light wind scalloped the water, spitting salt water at their naked legs.

The tide pool sloped steeply to a bottom of indeterminate depth. The turtle’s shell was the size of a serving platter—they could just make out its contours when the turtle poked itself above the surface. Its head was a vibrant yellow shaded with dark octagon-shaped markings. Its eyes were dark like a bird’s eyes. It had a wise and thoughtful look about it, which was pretty typical of turtles.

The boys patted their knives in their pockets. Max had a Swiss Army knife. Newton had a frame-lock Gerber with a three-inch blade.

“How should we do it?” Newton whispered with a giddy, queasy smile.

“We have to do it fast. Grab it and drag it out and kill it, I guess. Fast as we can.”

“Do they bite?”

“I don’t know. Do they?”

Newton pursed his lips. “It might if we aren’t careful.”

They waded gingerly into the pool. The water was so cold it sapped the air from their lungs. The water rose to the nubs of their kneecaps.

The turtle was a darker shape in the already dark water. It swung around lazily, unconcerned. As it rose up the boys caught sight of its shell: a mellow green patina flecked with streaks of magenta. Strands of sea moss drifted off it like streamers on a parade float.

It swam right up to them, totally unperturbed. Maybe it was curious—or maybe it was hungry, too, and thought the boys might make an easy meal. It swam between Newton’s split legs. He trembled from the cold and from the fear that the turtle might snap at his thighs. But it swam through serenely enough.

It had four flippers. The two at the front were long sickles, sort of like the wings on a plane. The two at the back looked like bird talons, except with webs of tough connective tissue. The skin on all four flippers was iridescent yellow overlaid with dark scaling. It was a beautiful creature.

Max gritted his teeth and plunged his hands into the water. His fingers closed around the edge of the turtle’s shell, which was as slimy as an algae-covered rock. The turtle kicked forcefully—its strength was incredible. Suddenly Max was on his knees in the freezing surf. The rocks raked his shins. The turtle’s small ebony claws dug into his thighs. He opened his lips to cry out and when he did the sea washed in, leaving him choking and sputtering.

The turtle slipped out of his grip. He splashed after it blindly.

“Newt! Get it before it gets away!”

Newton hobble-walked to where the turtle was throwing itself against the tide pool barrier. He grabbed one of its rear flippers. It was slippery and tough like a radial tire slicked in dish soap. The turtle swung around and snapped wildly at Newton. Its head telescoped out on its wrinkled neck farther than he’d thought possible: it reminded him of that game Hungry Hungry Hippos. Newton let out a fearful holler as its jaws went snack-snack-snack inches from his face. He caught the briny smell of the turtle’s breath and another, more profound scent: something hormonal and raw.

He reeled back and nearly tumbled face-first into the water. The turtle went back to flinging itself at the rock. Max was breathing heavily through gritted teeth. Water hissed between the chinks with harsh hsst! sounds. The bitter tang of fear washed through Newton’s mouth. This situation had developed horrible potential, though he wasn’t quite sure how that had happened.

“You grab one flipper,” Max said, his eyes squeezed down to slits. “I’ll grab the other. We’ll get it up on shore. It won’t be so tough on land.”

They took hold of its back flippers and dragged it out. The turtle’s front flippers paddled in useless oarlike circles. Its head thrashed, sending up fine droplets of water. Max’s whitened lips were skinned back from his teeth—more a funhouse leer than a smile. A look of horrible triumph had come into his eyes.

They heaved the turtle up onto the sickle of rain-pitted sand. It tried to scuttle up the beachhead but it was hemmed in by steep shale. The boys hunched over with their hands on their knees—their kneecaps chapped red with cold—to collect their breath. The sky had gone dark: an icy vault pricked with isolated stars. A fingernail slice of the moon cast a razored edge of brightness over the sea.

“We should build a fuh-fuh-fire,” Newton said, his teeth chattering.

“First we have to kill it.”

A painful tension had sunk into Max’s chest: the pressure of a huge spring coiled to maximum compression. He was angry at the turtle for its mute will to survive and for its defiance of his own needs. He was frustrated that the turtle had scared him. He’d have to kill it for that transgression alone.