The Troop (34 page)

47

WHeN max
got back, newton was awake. A patch of gauze was taped clumsily over his eye. The other eye stared at max balefully. “You left,” he said reproachfully.
“I got the spark plugs.”
“That’s good, I guess.”
newton looked thinner already. A jarring sight: newton Thornton, the pudgiest boy in school, with winnowed cheekbones that looked as if they’d been carved out of basalt. The wind blew his loose clothes around his body.
“Who needs Deal-A-meal cards,” he said, catching max’s look. “richard Simmons is a  .  .  .” newt managed to smile. “.  .  . a fucking
pussy.
”
He sat on a rock, humming a tuneless song, while max fiddled with the boat’s motor. night was already coming down; the cold seeped under their collars and iced the skin cladding their spines.
“I’m hungry like you wouldn’t believe, max.”
“You should try sucking on a pebble. my mom says that’s how the Indians used to control their hunger. When they were on a vision quest or whatever.”
newton plucked a pebble off the shore and popped it into his mouth.
“Salty,” he said. “And
stony.
”
They laughed a little. max turned back to the motor. He screwed the spark plugs into their holes and snapped the covers shut.
“I swallowed the pebble,” newton said.
“Oooops.”
“Suck on another one,” max said, struggling to maintain a casual tone of voice.
The jerry can of gasoline was where he’d dropped it yesterday. He unscrewed the motor’s gas cap and let the gasoline
glug-glug
down, making sure he didn’t spill any. He could hear grinding sounds over his shoulder. He was very worried they were being made by newton chewing on a pebble.
“You should gather whatever you need,” he said, not daring to look. “We should leave soon.”
“You don’t even know that the motor will start,” newton said tiredly. “It probably won’t.”
“Why would you say that, newt? Why wouldn’t it start—why wouldn’t you
hope
it’ll start?”
max turned and saw newton regarding him with tragic eyes.
“All I mean is,” newton said, dropping his chin and staring down, “even if it
does
start, you should go alone.”
“What a stupid—why would I do that?”
“Because I’m sick, max. And if I’m sick, maybe they won’t let you go back home. Because they’ll think you’re sick, too.”
“They meaning who?”
newton shrugged. “Come on, don’t be dumb. Whoever’s out there. The police. The army. The guys in the helicopter. Whoever is making sure nobody comes to rescue us.”
“Well, maybe I’m sick already too. Who cares? They can cure us.”
newton shook his head knowingly. “If you were sick, you’d feel it.”
max came over and set a hand on newton’s shoulder. The heat radiated through his clothes. That awful sweetness wasn’t so bad coming off newton. It smelled a little like Toll House cookies.
“I’m scared, max,” newton said softly.
“So am I, newt.”
max was afraid that if he left without newt, they—whoever
they
were—wouldn’t allow him to come back. Which meant newton would die here. Curled up inside the cabin, perhaps, or in the cellar, like an animal that sought the darkness to die. He would die in pain, but more important and much worse, he would die alone. newt didn’t deserve that. newt was a good person. He should live a long time. marry and have kids. Teach them all the nerdy things he knew. Be happy. That was the only fair outcome.
But if max left without newt, he was positive he’d never see him again.
This fear of abandoning newt was more profound, if less visceral, than that which he’d experienced back in the cavern: if newton died, it meant all the terror and frustration and rage they’d both experienced had been for nothing.
If they couldn’t leave together, what had they done any of it for?
max said: “You sit at the front of the boat, okay? I’ll sit at the back. We won’t touch. They won’t have any reason not to take me.”
newton smiled gratefully. “That sounds like a very good plan, max.”

48

iT Was
dark by the time max eased the boat off the beach into the slack tide.

It took a few hard cranks to get the motor going. Smoke belched from the engine housing. For one heart-stopping instant, it seemed the bearings would fry and the motor might seize . . . but after a few rough revolutions, it settled into an even cadence.

max goosed the throttle and piloted toward the distant lights of north Point. He’d driven boats before: his uncle was an oysterman and he’d often let max take the helm of his boat while he dragged in the lines.
It’s a lot easier than driving a car,
he’d told max.
The ocean’s just one big lane, plenty of room for everyone.

newton sat at the bow. He was wearing his Scouts sash adorned with the badges he’d earned. He wasn’t sure why he’d put it on— maybe he wanted to show whoever was waiting for them that he was a responsible person. An individual of value.

“Hey, max?” newt called out over the motor.
“Yeah?”
“I had this dream today. While you were gone. It was pretty weird.” “okay, so spill it.”
Wind whipped off the water. newton nearly had to shout to be

heard—the effort drained him.
“So well, I was with my mom. We were on this trip. I didn’t know
the city. We were in this hotel lobby. Very swanky, which is weird because we don’t have enough money to stay at swanky hotels. But we
come through those rotating doors—those doors always kind of scare
me, actually; I think they’re going to suck me between the glass and
squash me—through those doors and there’s a couple arguing outside.
A man and a woman.”
The swells grew larger as the shore receded. The boat skipped over
the waves, salt spray licking up over the gunnels. max squinted over the
night water. Shapes loomed against the horizon.
“The man started hitting the woman. right there on the street. Her
head was snapping back. Blood was painted on her cheeks. Then this
van stops on the sidewalk. These guys get out and start yelling at the
other guy, saying he can’t do that. The guy says he wasn’t really hurting her, only teaching her something. So he wraps his hands around her
neck as if to demonstrate, he wraps his hands round her neck and starts
choking her right in front of these guys . . .”
The shapes were beginning to coalesce. A loose group clustered
where the water met the night sky, blocking out the lights of home. “one of the guys from the van puts the guy in a headlock. They
drag him away from the woman and over to the van, like they’re going
to throw him into it. Suddenly people are pouring out of doorways and
out of office buildings. Carpenters and lawyers and deliverymen. The
woman who was being choked starts screaming at the guys from the
van, telling them to leave the guy who was choking her alone. Then one
of the guys from the van punches the choker guy in the face. He goes
down in a tangle, unconscious before he even hits the ground. He was
wearing loose pants, I remember, and they fell down so I saw his underwear, which were blue and droopy with holes like mice had chewed
them.”

THE TROOP 341

Boats. Squat ones that had chased down Calvin Walmack’s cigarette boat. They were painted with some kind of special black paint that prevented the moonlight and starlight from reflecting off them. They floated silently, motionlessly.

“Things sped up. everyone was getting punched or punching. Fights were spilling all over the street. I remember a tricycle getting crushed under the wheels of a speeding car. Then the choker guy who got punched out gets up and looks around all embarrassed and says, “oh
hell
no!” and he wades into this big huge fight—which was everywhere by then—hitching up his pants. And there were fires burning at the tops of the skyscrapers and sirens everywhere and I could tell, in that weird way dreams have of telling you things, that the violence was everywhere. like a virus, max.
Everywhere.
”

The boat drew nearer to the floating vessels. max cut the motor and drifted with the current. Figures were massed along the decks.
newt’s voice dropped as the wind dipped. “my mom got her hand on my shoulder. I shrugged it off. I didn’t want her touching me. And if she put her hand back on my shoulder—and I was thinking she might do that, max, for the same reason that I wanted to shrug it off—then I might
shove
it off. or bite her fingers. Violence was in the air, max. We were all
breathing
it.”
A searchlight snapped on, pinning them in its cool glare.
The boys raised their hands slowly, like robbers who’d gotten caught inside a bank vault.
“We need help!” max yelled.
nobody answered.
“We’re okay!” He tried to smile. His filthy clothes flapped in the wind. “We made it. Tell them, newt. Tell them we’re okay!”
newton seemed unsure of where he was. one eye stared without recognition. He laughed—a weird, jittery laugh that bounced off the water and fled into the empty vault of sky.
max thought:
Oh no oh please don’t laugh like that, Newt . . .
newton stood up in the boat. He held his hands out toward the light: a gesture of supplication.
“I’m fine! I’m
aces
! But there is one thing.”

No Newt—
“I am very . . .”
No Newt no Newt—
“. . . so very very . . .”
No no nononono—
The wind rose to a shriek that sucked that final word out of newton’s mouth.

A hole appeared in the back of newton’s neck. A small hole that appeared if by magic.
Presto!
The torn edges of his flesh blew back, creating a perfect little starfish.

newton pitched over the side. He lay on the sea’s surface for an instant—like a water skimmer, those bugs that danced across the water’s skin—before the sea claimed him; newt’s body went headfirst, bubbles trailing up from the new hole in his throat as he sank swiftly beneath the boat.

max barely had time to cry out. He was staring down at the bright red dot hovering on his own chest.

From the sworn testimony of Lance Corporal Frank Ellis, given before the Federal Investigatory Board in connection with the events occurring on Falstaff Island, Prince Edward Island:

Q:“Hungry.”
A:Yes, sir.
Q:That’s the word you heard Newton Thornton say before you shot him?
A:Yes sir, it was. He said he was hungry.

Q: He said it just like that?
A: No, sir. I suppose he said it more quietly. And there were some pauses in his speech. He said something like:
I’m very very . . . hungry
.

Q: If he said it so quietly, are you certain he said it at all? It was night, on the ocean.The weather reports for that evening indicated high winds.
A: That’s all true, sir. It was windy and choppy. But the Big Ears picked his voice up loud and clear.

Q: I’m sorry?
A:The Big Ears is what we call it. It’s a parabolic listening device: a big dish, basically. Looks like a satellite dish. It’s for long-range acoustical assessment, which is really just a prissy way of saying it helps us hear what we wouldn’t be able to hear naturally.

Q:And the Big Ears told you that Newton Grant said:
I’m hungry
?
A: Correct.
Q: So what?
A: Repeat that, sir?

Q: I said,
so what
? He was hungry. He’d been on an island for days. Nothing to eat.Wasn’t it reasonable that the boy might be hungry?
A:Yes sir, he may have been. I suppose it was the way he said it.

Q:The
way
?
A:Yes sir. He said it in a way that sounded like he was somehow
more
than just hungry. Hungry as you or I would know it, anyway. Maybe those starving kids you see on TV pledge drives might know that kind of hunger. But even them, I’m not sure. He sounded like he’d eat his own arm off if he could just bring himself to cross that line.

Q: Pardon me, Lance Corporal Ellis, but that sounds paranoid.
A: I suppose it does. I think a lot of us were jumpy.We kept hearing things.

Q: Out on the boat?
A: No, I mean internally. Rumors. Stuff was starting to leak out about that psycho doctor’s lab. They’d found some of those awful videos. The one with the poor gorilla or whatever.We were jumpy.That sort of stuff you can’t just aim a gun at and eliminate.

Q: But you did.
A: I did, yes. But the boy said one of our trigger words.

Q: Explain that.
A: We’d been given orders. The chief petty officer came into the sniper’s bunks and told us if anybody came off that island and spoke one of those trigger words, we had authority to open fire.
Hungry
was one of them.

Q:Any others?
A: I can’t entirely remember.
Worm,
I’m sure was one.
Infected.

Q:And so because a very hungry boy on a boat
said
he was hungry, he got himself shot.
A: He was infected, sir. That much was made clear in the aftermath. And from what I’ve heard about some of the others, a bullet was an easy way to go.

Q:You didn’t answer my question.
A: With all due respect, you didn’t
ask
a question, sir.You made a statement, sir. I’ll tell you this: I never trained as a combat sniper thinking one day I’d shoot a young boy on a boat.That’s not why men join up.We’re supposed to be doing it for God and country and . . . Jesus. It haunts me. I heard people use that phrase and I never quite understood. Honestly, I thought it was a bit histrionic. But I get it now. I know what it is to be haunted.That boy’s face haunts me, sir, and it will until the day I depart this world for whatever’s waiting for me.

From
Troop 52:
Legacy of the Modified Hydatid
(
as PuBlisHEd iN
GQ
MaGaziNE
)
By cHRis PackER:
M
aX KIrKWOOD IS the oldest-looking fifteen-year-old you’ll ever see.
his eyes fade into his head and their