Nick Cutter - The Troop

Max goosed the throttle and piloted toward the distant lights of North Point. He’d driven boats before: his uncle was an oysterman and he’d often let Max take the helm of his boat while he dragged in the lines. It’s a lot easier than driving a car , he’d told Max. The ocean’s just one big lane, plenty of room for everyone .

Newton sat at the bow. He was wearing his Scouts sash adorned with the badges he’d earned. He wasn’t sure why he’d put it on—maybe he wanted to show whoever was waiting for them that he was a responsible person. An individual of value.

“Hey, Max?” Newt called out over the motor.

“Yeah?”

“I had this dream today. While you were gone. It was pretty weird.”

“Okay, so spill it.”

Wind whipped off the water. Newton nearly had to shout to be heard—the effort drained him.

“So, well, I was with my mom. We were on this trip. I didn’t know the city. We were in this hotel lobby. Very swanky, which is weird because we don’t have enough money to stay at swanky hotels. But we come through those rotating doors—those doors always kind of scare me, actually; I think they’re going to suck me between the glass and squash me—through those doors and there’s a couple arguing outside. A man and a woman.”

The swells grew larger as the shore receded. The boat skipped over the waves, salt spray licking up over the gunwales. Max squinted over the night water. Shapes loomed against the horizon.

“The man started hitting the woman. Right there on the street. Her head was snapping back. Blood was painted on her cheeks. Then this van stops on the sidewalk. These guys get out and start yelling at the other guy, saying he can’t do that. The guy says he wasn’t really hurting her, only teaching her something. So he wraps his hands around her neck as if to demonstrate, he wraps his hands round her neck and starts choking her right in front of these guys…”

The shapes were beginning to coalesce. A loose group clustered where the water met the night sky, blocking out the lights of home.

“One of the guys from the van puts the guy in a headlock. They drag him away from the woman and over to the van, like they’re going to throw him into it. Suddenly people are pouring out of doorways and out of office buildings. Carpenters and lawyers and deliverymen. The woman who was being choked starts screaming at the guys from the van, telling them to leave the guy who was choking her alone. Then one of the guys from the van punches the choker guy in the face. He goes down in a tangle, unconscious before he even hits the ground. He was wearing loose pants, I remember, and they fell down so I saw his underwear, which were blue and droopy with holes like mice had chewed them.”

Boats. Squat ones that had chased down Calvin Walmack’s cigarette boat. They were painted with some kind of special black paint that prevented the moonlight and starlight from reflecting off them. They floated silently, motionlessly.

“Things sped up. Everyone was getting punched or punching. Fights were spilling all over the street. I remember a tricycle getting crushed under the wheels of a speeding car. Then the choker guy who got punched out gets up and looks around all embarrassed and says, ‘Oh hell no!’ and he wades into this big huge fight—which was everywhere by then—hitching up his pants. And there were fires burning at the tops of the skyscrapers and sirens everywhere and I could tell, in that weird way dreams have of telling you things, that the violence was everywhere. Like a virus, Max. Everywhere .”

The boat drew nearer to the floating vessels. Max cut the motor and drifted with the current. Figures were massed along the decks.

Newt’s voice dropped as the wind dipped. “My mom got her hand on my shoulder. I shrugged it off. I didn’t want her touching me. And if she put her hand back on my shoulder—and I was thinking she might do that, Max, for the same reason that I wanted to shrug it off—then I might shove it off. Or bite her fingers. Violence was in the air, Max. We were all breathing it.”

A searchlight snapped on, pinning them in its cool glare.

The boys raised their hands slowly, like robbers who’d gotten caught inside a bank vault.

“We need help!” Max yelled.

Nobody answered.

“We’re okay!” He tried to smile. His filthy clothes flapped in the wind. “We made it. Tell them, Newt. Tell them we’re okay!”

Newton seemed unsure of where he was. One eye stared without recognition. He laughed—a weird, jittery laugh that bounced off the water and fled into the empty vault of sky.

Max thought: Oh no oh please don’t laugh like that, Newt…

Newton stood up in the boat. He held his hands out toward the light: a gesture of supplication.

“I’m fine! I’m aces ! But there is one thing.”

No Newt—

“I am very…”

No Newt no Newt—

“…so very very…”

No no nononono—

The wind rose to a shriek that sucked that final word out of Newton’s mouth.

A hole appeared in the back of Newton’s neck. A small hole that appeared as if by magic. Presto! The torn edges of his flesh blew back, creating a perfect little starfish.

Newton pitched over the side. He lay on the sea’s surface for an instant—like a water skimmer, those bugs that danced across the water’s skin—before the sea claimed him; Newt’s body went headfirst, bubbles trailing up from the new hole in his throat as he sank swiftly beneath the boat.

Max barely had time to cry out. He was staring down at the bright red dot hovering on his own chest.

From the sworn testimony of Lance Corporal Frank Ellis, given before the Federal Investigatory Board in connection with the events occurring on Falstaff Island, Prince Edward Island:

Q: “Hungry.”

A: Yes, sir.

Q: That’s the word you heard Newton Thornton say before you shot him?

A: Yes, sir, it was. He said he was hungry.

Q: He said it just like that?

A: No, sir. I suppose he said it more quietly. And there were some pauses in his speech. He said something like: I’m very very… hungry .

Q: If he said it so quietly, are you certain he said it at all? It was night, on the ocean. The weather reports for that evening indicated high winds.

A: That’s all true, sir. It was windy and choppy. But the Big Ears picked his voice up loud and clear.

Q: I’m sorry?

A: The Big Ears is what we call it. It’s a parabolic listening device: a big dish, basically. Looks like a satellite dish. It’s for long-range acoustical assessment, which is really just a prissy way of saying it helps us hear what we wouldn’t be able to hear naturally.

Q: And the Big Ears told you that Newton Grant said: I’m hungry ?

A: Correct.

Q: So what?

A: Repeat that, sir?

Q: I said, so what ? He was hungry. He’d been on an island for days. Nothing to eat. Wasn’t it reasonable that the boy might be hungry?

A: Yes, sir, he may have been. I suppose it was the way he said it.

Q: The way ?

A: Yes, sir. He said it in a way that sounded like he was somehow more than just hungry. Hungry as you or I would know it, anyway. Maybe those starving kids you see on TV pledge drives might know that kind of hunger. But even them, I’m not sure. He sounded like he’d eat his own arm off if he could just bring himself to cross that line.

Q: Pardon me, Lance Corporal Ellis, but that sounds paranoid.