The Troop

Ephraim thought about those little white tubes bending toward him in the cabin. He’d stood mesmerized, swooning in fear as those shimmery strands floated toward him. Ephraim’s heart-blood had seized, veins feeling like they’d been pumped full of quick-dry cement. He hadn’t moved an inch. None of the other boys had stepped in to save him, either. Scout Law number two: A Scout is loyal to the king, his country, and his fellow Scouters. Well, fuck that. Ephraim’s fellow Scouters hung him out to dry, even his so-called forever friend.

But he wasn’t mad at them, really. Would he have stepped in if those threads had drifted toward Newton—even Max? He blamed himself for acting like a stupid stunned cow. That inward-looking anger crystallized into rage, which then transformed quite suddenly into fear.

Ephraim was as terrified as he’d ever been in his life. Something was inside of him—he was almost positive of that now. Locked up behind his skin. Incubating. That something had become somethings. Multiplying and feeding and breeding. That was how any living entity increased its numbers, wasn’t it? They were having sex inside of him, like those disgusting snakes in the rocks. Things were fucking inside his skin right this instant.

He’d never had sex himself. Sure, he’d gotten his hand up Becky Scott’s skirt on the baseball bleachers behind the Lions Club before she’d protested about being a good Baptist girl—of course, she’d taken his hand and put it there in the first place. Ephraim realized girls couldn’t be understood the way boys could be, but still, he’d been looking forward to touching a girl again, to reexperience that light-headed sensation of his heartbeat shivering every inch of his skin. But that seemed less likely now. Because of the stranger, and the Scoutmaster. And Kent. And now himself?

Their sly squirming infested his ears. The surface of his flesh trembled as they moved beneath it—or was that just the dappling of the sunlight on his arms? No: they were there. But they were being sneaky about it. Burrowing inside of him like rats in the walls. Chewing away at the insulation and gnawing at the foundation.

He stared at the crook of his elbow. A fat blue vein pulsed there. He put his thumb on it to stop the blood flow. The beat of blood through his vein seemed out of line with the beat of his own heart. Like something else had commandeered it.

We could share. Ephraim directed this desperate plea into his body like a phantom radio signal. Share ME—my body. Okay? But like, you can’t do to me what you did to Scoutmaster Tim. You really shouldn’t have done that. Maybe you can’t help yourselves? I get it. I have control issues, too. We could—what’s the word? Like, live together. But you can’t… you better not… don’t you fucking eat me!

Ephraim screamed—the sound of a nail levered out of a wet plank of wood. What a colossal fucking idiot. Trying to reason with these things. May as well reason with the tide, with a fucking salamander. He wondered if the Scoutmaster had resorted to that—if in the final hours and minutes he’d sobbed out an entreaty, wishing for mercy. What the fuck would it matter?

Ephraim wished they’d just go away. Could he flush them out? Could he dig them out?

“Eef?… Ephraim?”

His name, coming from his backpack. He lifted the flap and found the walkie-talkie. Dazedly he said: “Yeah?”

“You guys left without me.”

“We couldn’t find you, Shel.”

“It’s okay, I’m not angry. How’s it going?”

“I’m by myself. Max and Newt left.”

Silence. Then: “Really?”

Ephraim sniffed. His sinuses were full of snot, like when he used to cry—he couldn’t remember the last time he’d cried. When he’d seen that repairman blown off his cherry picker by a burst of electricity, maybe?

“They had to get food. I was holding them back.”

The air crackled, full of static. “Real friends wouldn’t leave you. Sorry, Eef, but that’s the truth.”

“Would you have left, Shel?”

Silence again. Then: “I’m not really a friend, Eef—am I?”

Ephraim stared at his pointer finger. The milky crescent under the nail—the lunate, that part is called. How did he know that?

“No, Shel. I guess you’re something else.”

“How you feeling? You don’t sound too hot.”