The Troop

Q: Dr. Erikson, please describe the discussion between Dr. Edgerton and yourself regarding the selection of a human test subject.

A: I wouldn’t really term it a discussion at all. Edgerton said he was doing it and I could come along for the ride if I wanted.

Q: And you agreed?

A: In for a penny? But I also thought… maybe I could help things somehow. Keep it under control.

Q: You could have kept it under control by informing the police.

A: I could have.

Q: But you didn’t. Why not?

A: It’s a tough thing to describe. Now that I’m away from it, the answers are so simple. Men like Edgerton are obsessives. Notions of right or wrong have this awful way of draining away to irrelevance with men like that. The only things that matter to them are answers. Progress. Unlocking doors. And if you can’t unlock them, you just kick at them until they give. I guess I was sucked up in it, too.

Q: Tell me how Dr. Edgerton went about finding Tom Padgett, the first human test subject.

A: It wasn’t so hard as you might think. It’s amazing how many people are so down on their luck they’ll take just about any offer that’s flung at them. Edgerton went to bars. Not the campus bars where the fresh-faced, rosy-futured kids drank. The scumpits on the edge of town. He… trolled, is I guess the word. Threw his bait in the water and waited for a bite.

Q: He told Padgett his plan?

A: Not right off the bat. He did it in stages. I don’t know the exact run of their conversation. You’d have to ask Edgerton.

Q: Dr. Edgerton is not an easy man to get a straight answer out of.

A: Edgerton just brought Padgett back one night. Guy smelled like he’d been marinating in a tub of Old Grouse. Edgerton explained it all calmly and evenly. He’d take the injection and sit in the room. We’d monitor him. If things got out of hand, we’d call a doctor—never mind the fact that no doctor on earth had a cure for what Edgerton would stick him with. Edgerton handed him a nice fat envelope. I don’t know how much cash was in there. I guess it was enough.

20

THE COOLER was discovered two hundred yards down toward the shore. There was no physical evidence to indicate it had been dragged: no zigzag lines through the soft dirt or trampled weeds. This suggested it had been picked up and carried to its present spot. It lay overturned in a patch of purple-pink shrubs.

But the crude way that the food had been shredded did suggest an animal. The hot dog packages had been torn open. Raw rags of the granular pink meat lay scattered about the cooler, alit upon by listless late-October flies. M&Ms were strewn around like multicolored jewels.

Ephraim kicked dirt over a half-chewed hot dog. His jaw was set at a sideways angle, his eyes hooded.

“Fuck it. Boat’ll be here soon.”