The Troop

45

NIGHTFALL GREETED the boys as they stumbled out of the cavern. In the silvery fall of moonlight, Newton saw that he was soaked in gore from the waist down. Revulsion swept over him in a dizzying wave.

When Max approached with a handful of leaves—all he could find for Newton to clean himself off—Newton held his hand out.

“Don’t come near. It’s too late—they’re all over me.”

He could feel them inside his pants, prickling his skin with strange heat. They wriggled in the hairs he’d just started to grow down there.

Max said: “What can we do?”

“Get back to camp. I’ll wash up in the ocean. See if that helps.”

THEY MOVED through the woods without a flashlight. Chilling noises emanated from the lacework of tall trees: hoots and scufflings and a frenzied cackle that rose up and up until it dropped to an ongoing buzz like an enormous hummingbird trapped in a rain barrel. Whatever was making those sounds couldn’t possibly be any worse than the Shelley-thing back in the cavern.

When they got back, Max made a fire using shingles that had blown off the cabin roof. Newton went down to the water to wash. Max could just make him out past the moon-glossed shore. He sat cross-legged in the surf, scrubbing and scrubbing. He returned in only his underwear, which sagged wetly around his hips. There was a defeated hunch to his shoulders that freaked Max out.

“I’m hungry, Max.”

“I’m hungry, too, Newt.”

“I think I’m hungrier than you.”

SOMEHOW, THEY slept. In the witching hours, Newton sat bolt upright. His insides were alive and seething. He bit down on his lip until blood came.

An hour later, Max awoke as Newton puked into a thicket of poison sumac. He was curled up on his side, breathing in rapid little bursts.

“I took the mushrooms,” he said. “They do the trick.”

Newton pointed at the puddle of vomit. Nothing but a thin smear of liquid tinged purple from the berries they’d eaten. It was alive with wriggling whiteness.

“I figure one of the little buggers swum up my… my piss-hole.”

He realized there was a better word for it, a scientific word that he probably even knew, but he was too dog-tired to think of it. Besides, piss-hole summed it up best. It was a hole that your piss came out of. Newton laughed to himself. Hah! For whatever reason, he found it deliciously funny. Piss-hole. Hil-aaaa-rious! WWAMD? He’d laugh at piss-hole, too, because it was the funniest word on earth!

Maybe he was delirious. That, or those mushrooms had mind-bending properties. He tore out a clump of poison sumac and rubbed it on his leg.

“What are you doing?” Max said.

“It’ll give me something else to focus on. I can itch myself silly.”

NEWTON ATE the rest of the mushrooms and was violently, frighteningly ill. He vomited with such force that the capillaries burst in his eyes and even his nose. By the time the sun came up, he looked washed-out and haggard, as though his innards had all been wrung out like wet washcloths.

They lay together by the fire. Any time Max moved closer, Newton waved him back tiredly.

“You’re going to catch it,” he warned.

“I don’t care anymore.”

Heat kindled in Newt’s eyes. “You should care. Don’t be stupid. You should care.”

Max withdrew, wounded for reasons he couldn’t quite process.

SOMETIME THAT morning, the black helicopter cut across the postcard-pretty sky. It dipped low, rotors throbbing, panning a circle around them. It was so close that Max could see the sunlight flashing off the pilot’s visor.

“Help us!” he yelled as the blades whipped debris all around. “He’s sick! Can’t you see that? We need help!”

The pilot’s face remained impassive. Max picked up a rock, threw it on a pitiful trajectory. It wasn’t even close. The helicopter banked southward and returned toward North Point.

“Fuck you!” Max screamed as it retreated. “Go fuck yourself!”

Afterward he collapsed. The adults were supposed to act in the best interests of the children. They had to know what was happening. Yet stubbornly, they did nothing but stand idly by.

The adults were content to watch them die.

“I wonder who built them,” Newton murmured.

Max wiped his eyes. “Built what?”

“The worms.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I mean,” Newton said, “they seem too perfect.”

“They don’t seem perfect at all, Newt. They’re like the worst things on earth.”

“That’s what I mean, I guess. Maybe they are the worst things on earth. But that would make them perfect, wouldn’t it? Perfect at being what they are and doing what they do. Perfect killers.”

“They haven’t killed everyone. We don’t know about Kent.”

Newton’s eyes pinched up at the edges. “I hope he’s still alive. Really, I hope so.”

“He could have swum back.”

Max stared out over the slatey water and wondered if he really believed that.

“If anyone could have, it would be Big K,” Newton agreed, if only for Max’s sake.

“Maybe he’ll talk to the adults. They’ll finally come for us.”

“Anything is possible.”