The Troop

He swept the water with his forearm, trying to propel them away. His fear was unlike any he’d ever known; it made him desperate. Water fanned up, each droplet alive with wriggling white, landing on his arms and neck and lips. He snuffled salt water up his nose, sputtering on it.

He felt them inside his underwear. Some were so thin that they passed right through the weave of the fabric, needling inside, finding the sensitive skin at the bulb of his penis, the little hole where the piss came out.

Kent’s body floated out past the breakwater. Threads continued to spill from it, sifting down through the water. The stars played their metallic light upon the waves. Kent was a silver shape dressed in the brightness of the moon. Smaller shapes—inquisitive fish—darted at his appendages, fussing with his fingers and hair.

LATER, SHELLEY dragged himself back to shore. He shambled up the beachhead in hesitant steps. His lower lip hung slackly, a globule of spit suspended from it. The glob stretched until it snapped, splashing the rocks.

Tiny white things thrashed in the wetness.

He returned to the campfire and stared into its dead embers. The walkie-talkie was there, but the game with Ephraim was a distant concern.

He could resume it when Ephraim returned… if.

A gray curtain draped over Shelley’s thoughts—but beneath it and around its edges, things jigged and capered.

His hand kneaded his crotch anxiously. The pleasure he’d experienced earlier with Kent was gone. Now that area itched and burned. Could be a case of crotch crickets. Shelley had once overheard a construction worker saying that to his buddy while clawing ruefully at his groin. Shelley was pretty sure this wasn’t crotch crickets—it was a burn, a painful one, inside of him now. It’d raced up his piss-pipe like lit gunpowder, a bright and lively pain that ebbed to a strange hum inside his skin. Now he felt it spreading through him in slow, sonorous waves.

He bit his lip. He’d made a mistake. A big one, this time. Gotten carried away with his games. Lost sight of the danger.

It was only for a second, though, an internal voice whined. Just a heartbeat.

He sat cross-legged on the dirt. The burn receded. As the moments passed, it didn’t feel so bad at all. A comforting numbness coursed through his limbs, his veins filling with some wondrous warm nectar.

His stomach, though. That was grumbling, revving up—roaring.

Shelley’s hands clenched, tearing up clumps of dirt. Without realizing or truly caring, he filled his mouth with the contents of his hands. He chewed methodically. Grit and shell shards ground between his teeth. It sounded like he was eating handfuls of tiny bones.

“Bleh,” he said, letting the half-chewed mess fall out of his mouth. His tongue was a blackened root. He looked like a ghoul who’d been eating his way down to a coffin.

“Noooooobody loves me, everybody hates me, I’m going to the garden to eat worms—to eat worms…”

Shelley began to laugh. A high, piercing sound like the scream of a gull. It stripped out over the water, touching not one pair of human ears.

SHELLEY SAT that way for a few hours. He did not speak. He was motionless—except for a brief spell where he shook uncontrollably, unable to control his limbs.

When the sky reached its deepest ebony, Shelley began to feed in earnest.

33

NEWTON BUILT a fire on the beach using the driftwood he and Max gathered. It took quite a while to get it lit: his fingers were shivering badly.

After it was going, they huddled on the sand with their shoulders touching lightly. Both of them had stripped to their skivvies—Newton’s field book advised against staying in wet clothes. The water dried on their naked flesh, leaving a whitened sheen of salt. Their internal temperatures inched back up.

They hadn’t spoken since burying the turtle, which they’d done before building the fire. Every so often, their gazes drifted to the spot on the beach where the sand had been smoothed by their trembling palms.

Newton’s eyes found Max’s above the fire. “Do you think it will go to Heaven?”

“The turtle?” Max’s shoulders lifted imperceptibly. “I really don’t know. It could. If there is a Heaven, I guess it ought to—I mean, right? What would that turtle ever have done to deserve not to go to Heaven?”

Newton’s shoulders relaxed, then stiffened again as a worried cast came over his face.

“What about the Scoutmaster?”

Max frowned. “Why are you asking me?”

“Your dad’s the county coroner. He works with the priests and pastors, yeah? I figured he’d know.”

For all of Newton’s smarts, he could be incredibly thickheaded. “I don’t know, Newt. I’m not the one who makes those choices, am I? Nobody really knows. Not my dad or the priests or anyone. I guess when we die, we’ll know who was right about everything.”

“But Scoutmaster Tim was a good person.”