The Troop

11

IT WAS dark by the time they returned to the cabin. A fire flickered in a ring of rocks. Scoutmaster Tim was sitting on the far side. The tendons on his neck stood out in sharp relief: they looked like tiny trees all tenting inward.

“Don’t go inside,” he told them.

“My warm coat’s in there,” Kent said.

“The fire’s warm. You’ll be fine.”

“I’d rather have my coat.”

“I don’t care what you’d rather have,” Tim said in a dead voice. “The man inside is sick. Sick in a way I’ve never seen before, at least not that I can diagnose here.”

The boys settled themselves around the fire. Newton said, “Sick how?”

“At first, I thought cancer. As a doctor, that’s always the first thought. But cancer is almost always typified by loss of appetite and…”

Tim saw no good reason to tell the boys that the man had stirred that afternoon—lunged upward like a heart-staked vampire from its coffin. His eyes crawling with burst vessels… his tongue a knot of sinew as if something had sucked the saliva out of it…

The man had sunk his teeth into the chesterfield and torn at the fabric with savage bites.

The mindlessness of it had horrified Tim.

Tim managed to sedate him before he swallowed too much. There was a good chance he’d choke to death on the chesterfield’s musty old foam. He’d cradled the man’s neck as he laid him down. The man’s head tilted back and his jaw hung open…

Tim had seen something. If anything, it resembled a white knuckle of bone—the bone of a greenstick fracture except curved and gleaming. Visible only for a harried instant. Lodged in his throat below the epiglottal bulb. Gently ribbed and somehow gill-like…

Next the man’s rib cage bulged in a bone-splintering flex as something settled.

“…and this man is very hungry,” Tim finished.

“So what are you going to do about it?” said Kent.

Tim ignored the boy’s cheeky defiance. “He may have some kind of internal sickness. By the time the boat picks us up, I believe he’ll be dead.”

Newton said: “Can you operate on him?”

Shelley said: “Cut him open?”

Tim said: “I haven’t done a lot of surgery, but I know the basics. Max, has your dad ever had you help him out on the job?”

Max’s father was the county coroner. Also its taxidermist: if anyone wanted his trophy bluefin mounted on a burled-oak backing, he was the one to call. An insistent voice in Tim’s head told him not to involve the boys—keep them clear of this. But a new voice, a silky whisper, told him no worries—it’d be just fine.

You’ve got it all under control, Tim…

He didn’t, though—he’d become hyperaware of this fact. This night would determine whether the man lived or died… maybe only a few hours of the night. This was why he would’ve bombed as a surgeon: Tim lacked the quick-cut instincts, that private triage room in his head. He was a thinker—an overthinker. Overthinking matters was just a harmless quirk in a GP but now, when swift action was needed, he could feel himself coming apart.

“I’ve helped taxidermy animals,” Max said.

“Helped in what way?”

“Threading needles with catgut. Shining up the glass eyes and like that.”

It’s an internship, said the voice in Tim’s head. Consider it an early residency. Max’s folks wouldn’t mind, would they? A man’s life is at risk, right? Max is smart, Max is careful—and you can protect him should anything happen.

Tim pointed at the others. “You all stay here. No arguments. This guy… I don’t know what’s the matter. He may be viral.”

Ephraim said: “Viral?”

“Like, he’s catching,” Kent said. “You know, contagious.”

“You sure, Scoutmaster?” Newt said. “I mean, Max is just a…”

Boy was the word Newton swallowed. Just a boy and Tim was taking him into a cabin occupied by a man who was sick in some unknowable way.

Tim’s left eye twitched, the nerve gone haywire. Plikka-plikka-plikka like the shutter on a camera. He squeezed his eyes shut, slowly counted to five in his head. A small, persistent, maddening voice deep within the runnels of his brain was now asking questions.

What are you doing, Tim? Are you really sure, Tim? The voice’s cold, stentorian tone reminded him of HAL 9000, the computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey. It wouldn’t shut up, kept nattering on with icy certainty.

Just what do you think you’re doing, Tim?

He was dimly terrified that this was the voice of common sense—the logical voice that he’d listened to all his adult life—and that he was gradually abandoning it.

“You don’t have to do this, Max,” Ephraim said. His gaze fell upon the Scoutmaster. “He doesn’t have to, does he?”