The Troop

AROUND NOON, Newton told Max he was having a hard time seeing out of his left eye.

“It’s all fuzzy around the sides.” His laugh held a lacy filigree of hysteria. “It’s like staring at the world from inside a peach or something.”

Max leaned over and inspected Newton’s eye.

“It looks okay.”

Newton scratched at the purple stains on his legs from the poison sumac. He’d been scratching all morning. The flesh was raked open and bloody in spots.

“It does? Okay, well… jeez, it hurts. Maybe it’s not my eye. I don’t think there are any nerves in an eyeball. Maybe it’s behind it. You think?”

Max knelt closer. Terror was building in his chest, gaining a keener edge.

“Spread your eyelids with your fingers. I’ll look.”

“Okay,” Newton said dreamily. “Yeah. Good idea.”

Max held one hand up to shield his own eyes from the sun and squinted closely. Nothing. Just bloodshot whiteness.

“It’s fine, Newt. I can’t see…” His breath caught. “…can’t see…”

“What? What is it?”

It was nothing. Just a teeny-tiny quill. No bigger than an itty-bitty claw on a baby mouse’s paw. It sat at the bottom of Newton’s eye. It was probably just a trick of the light or a sty or something—until it moved.

“What is it, Max? I can feel it.”

The minuscule writhing worm lashed side to side as if stretching itself out in its new digs. Max reached out to grab it. Maybe he could tease it out of Newton’s eye the way his grandfather used to pull coddling worms out of a crabapple… until Max realized it was inside Newton’s eye. Swimming in the jelly.

No. The word ran through his head on an endless loop. No no no no—

It all at once went still. Then it seemed to flex toward Max—as if it knew, in the single vile atom it called a brain, that it was being watched.

“What is it, Max? Tell me. Tell me!”

46

AN HOUR later, Max was back at the cavern.

Newton had asked him not to go. Begged him. What if something happens, Max? Then we’ll both be alone.

Max simply waited until Newton fell asleep—the smallest kindness he could now afford. He’d found a signal flare in the cabin. The ones Scoutmaster Tim brought had gotten drenched in the storm, but this one—which Newton had brought personally, in a Ziploc bag—might still be okay.

Max prayed it would work. If not, it meant going down in the dark with the Shelley-thing still there. He’d have to paw around blindly for the spark plugs. What if he touched it instead?

Max had been happy enough to leave the plugs and try to figure out some other method of escape, but now, with Newt as sick as he was, he had no choice.

Listen, it’ll be no big deal, he thought, bucking himself up. Go on down, grab the plugs, and get the heck out of Dodge. It’s not even that far down: it just felt that way yesterday because you were in the dark. It’s probably not much farther down than the basement stairs at home.

The sun had fallen a few degrees in the sky. It shone brightly through the tree branches and into the cavern mouth. Bright as it was, after a few yards the sunlight turned spotty and that awful darkness took over.

He tore the strike strip. The flare burst alight with a heat so unexpected that it singed the hairs on his arms. They’d been standing on end, along with those on the nape of his neck.

He nudged his foot into the cave mouth. The shadow of the overhang cleaved across his boot. He tried to take the next step—but his back leg wouldn’t move. It may as well have been glued to the ground. The muscle fibers twitched down his hamstrings: antic, fluttering waves under the skin.

“Come on,” he whispered. “Come on.”

An act of profound concentration and willpower was required to budge his back leg. He finally threw it out in front of him in an awkward stagger-step that nearly sent him tumbling down the steep grade of the cave, but he checked his forward momentum in time.

“Don’t be a baby,” Max said to himself, though he had every legitimate reason in the world to act like one. Scout Law number three: A Scout’s duty is to be useful and help others, and he is to do his duty before anything else, even though he gives up his own pleasure, or comfort, or safety to do it.

The temperature dipped by ten degrees as soon as he entered the cave. The air came out of his lungs in short, popping breaths—it almost sounded like he was hiccuping, or on the verge of having a good cry. The fear was as strong as ever: that disembodied ball of baby fingers relentlessly tickling his guts.