Nick Cutter - The Troop

Kent trailed off, the words locking up in his throat. Tim dropped a hand on Kent’s shoulder. The boy’s eyes narrowed—in that instant Tim was certain he’d brush his hand off. When that didn’t happen, he said, “What we need is to remain calm and proceed with the established plan.”

“But it’s all different now. The plan is… it’s fucked .”

A shocked gasp from Newton. Nobody ought to speak that way in front of an adult—in front of their Scoutmaster . Tim’s eyes took on a hard sheen. His hand tensed on Kent’s shoulder, fingernails dimpling the fabric—close to but not quite a claw.

“Scout Law number seven, Kent. Repeat it.”

Kent wormed in Tim’s grip. His eyes held a bruised, hangdog cast.

“A Scout…” Tim said softly. “Go on, tell me. A Scout…”

Newt said, “A Scout obeys his—”

“Quiet, Newt,” said Tim. “Kent knows this.”

“A… Scout… obeys…” Kent said, each word wrenched painfully from his mouth.

“Who does he obey?”

“He obeys his Scoutmaster without…”

“Without what , Kent?”

“…without question. Even if he gets an order he does not like, he must do as soldiers and policemen do; he must carry it out all the same because it is his duty.”

“And after he has done it,” Tim continued, “he can come and state any reasons against it. But he must carry out the order at once. That is discipline.”

Tim forfeited his grip; Kent stepped back, rubbing his shoulder. Tim pointed to a pair of walkie-talkies on the table.

“You get into a jam, radio me. We’ve done plenty of orienteering together, right? This won’t be anything new. It’s a nice morning, no foul weather in today’s forecast.”

No other boy spoke against the Scoutmaster’s plan. Nobody wanted to be here, in this cabin, with… that . They were all too happy to invoke that particular license of boyhood, the one that stated: Let the grown-ups handle it . Events that seemed overwhelming and terrifying to their boyish brains were dispelled like so much smoke when the adults took over. Adults were Fixers; they were Solvers. The boys still trusted Tim, even Kent. So they would depart into the crisp autumn sunshine, their lungs filling with clean air; they would wrestle and run and laugh and enjoy their freedom from this strange responsibility, whatever it entailed. And when they returned, everything would be fine. They sincerely believed this because, up until that very point in their existence, it was a fact that had always held true.

It truly had been Tim’s intention to go with them. But he needed time to figure out what the hell was the matter with this man. The fact the spark plugs were missing was an additional worry—and not only because it cut them off from the mainland. What kind of man would incapacitate his only method of escape? A criminal? A hunted man, perhaps. Or a man on an extinction vector.

Once the boys had left, he’d go down to the ocean, roll up his pants, and search for those damn plugs. Anyway, the boys were resourceful. The island was safe. There were more hazards on the mainland: pellet guns, dirt bikes, Slick Rogers. They’d hike a few hours, complete their trail-craft requirements, and be back in time for supper—by which time he’d have this mess sorted out. He, too, believed in the power of adults.

Tim didn’t feel quite up to a hike today, anyway. He shot a quick look at the man on the chesterfield, hoping the boys didn’t catch the quiver in his eyes. The spot where the man coughed on his skin burnt with an edgeless heat; he pictured it eating right through his skin, a gaping hole in his cheek—the glistening connective tissues of his jaw, iron fillings winking in his molars—and shook his head, dispelling the image.

Could be he was coming down with something. A fever?

Starve a cold, feed a fever, right?

Yes, definitely a fever.

He picked up one of the walkie-talkies. After a short deliberation, he gave it to Max, ignoring Kent’s miffed look.

He gave the boys a curt salute. “You’ve got your marching orders, dogfaces.”

THE HUNGRY MAN. Patient Zero. Typhoid Tom.

Before he was known by these names, he was known by the one his mother christened him with: Thomas Henry Padgett.

Tom was born in St. Catharines, Ontario, 1,100 miles from Falstaff Island, where he would die thirty-five years later. Birth records from St. Catharines General show that Tommy was a healthy nine and a half pounds at birth.

“He was a chubby baby,” says his mother, Claire Padgett. “Chubby kid, chubby teenager. I’d take him shopping in the Husky Boys section at the Hudson’s Bay.”

She sits in her kitchen, leafing through a photo album. Her boy lies frozen in time under the laminated pages. Sitting in the tub as an infant, his mom working baby shampoo into his hair. Halloween as a toddler, dressed as a giant pumpkin. Tom had an open smile and unruly red hair. In one photo, he is captured building a sandcastle at the beach, his stomach hanging over the band of his swim trunks.

“He was a good eater,” Claire Padgett says. “As a kid, anyway. Then he got older and the shame set in. He didn’t like being big. Kids, right? They find the easiest soft spot and pick at it.”

Claire Padgett looks nothing like her son. It strikes this observer that she may subsist entirely upon Player’s Light cigarettes—she chain-smokes them ruthlessly, lighting each fresh soldier off the ember of the dead one. But hers is a flinty, chapped-elbow leanness—a body built for a mean utility.

“Tough kid,” she says of her son. “Some boys thought that because he was fat, Tom must be a marshmallow. But he could defend himself. After Tom busted a few boys’ noses, the wisecracks about his weight stopped.”

As cutting as those schoolboy taunts had been, her son has been treated far more cruelly in death. Consider his media-given nicknames. The Edible Man. Mr. Stringbean. Consider his legacy as the man who could have kick-started a toppling-domino contagion worse than the Black Plague. Consider the fact that Dr. David Hatcher, head of the Centre for Contagious Disease, memorably labeled him “a runaway biological weapon.”

Tom Padgett has been badmouthed by scientists and politicos worldwide for—for what ?

For being a pawn? For aligning himself with Dr. Clive Edgerton, who earned his own nickname: Joseph Mengele 2.0? For being the kind of scratch-ass petty criminal who might actually accept Edgerton’s offer?

No. Tom Padgett is hated in death because he ran . Because he failed to truly grasp the magnitude of what he was hosting and bolted. But mainly Tom is hated for the perception that he may have somehow thought he could prevail over the monster lurking inside of him.

Tom Padgett is hated for his ignorance of the fact that he was dead on his feet well before he reached Falstaff Island. His body just hadn’t gotten the memo yet.

“I guess some people must find it funny that Tom was a fat kid.” Claire Padgett smiles, but there’s not a drop of humor in it. “Yeah, I guess a certain type of person would find that deliciously ironic, considering how things came out in the wash.”

MAXIMILIAN KIRKWOODand Ephraim Elliot had been friends since they were two years old—although Max wondered if that was precisely true.