The Troop

Before, there had been light. He’d been following it. Moth to a flame. Now it was gone. Just this insane eye-clawing darkness… and the hunger.

The man crawled up a stony beach, skidding on the water-smooth pebbles. The rocks were slick with cold, snotlike algae. He scooped it up and shoveled it into his mouth, sucking the dark green strings through his lips like a child slurping egg noodles.

There! Skittering along, its exoskeleton glossed in the moonlight. A sand crab. His hand closed over it—its ocean-coldness wept into his flesh—and stuffed it between his lips. He felt it dancing along his tongue with its hairy little legs. He bit down. A gout of salty goo squirted in his mouth. Its pincer snipped the tip of his tongue in a death spasm, bringing the penny-bright taste of blood; he swallowed the twitching bits convulsively, the spiny exoskeleton tearing into the soft tissues of his throat—which felt so thin now, nothing but a fleshy drainpipe, the skin stretched tight as crepe paper over his esophageal tube.

A path materialized, tamped down through the waist-high grass. A black-bodied spider sat on a blade of grass. He pinched it between his fingers before it could get away and ate it up. Very nice, very nice. Succulent.

He squinted. A box sat angled at the hillside, its shadow tilting against the shapeless night. Its geometries were too perfect for it to be anything but man-made.

A feeble pinprick of light emanated from within.

4

“YOU GUYS ever hear about the Gurkhas?”

Ephraim Elliot’s face hovered in the flashlight’s glow like the disembodied head of a sideshow oracle. The other boys lay propped up on their elbows, listening intently.

“They’re these elite soldiers, right, from Nepal? Little guys. Five foot tall. Munchkins, practically. Crazy buggers. They’re trained from the time they’re infants to do one thing and do it well—to kill. The Gurkhas are crack-shots with a rifle. They can peg the pollen off a bumblebee’s ass at a hundred yards. They are masters with the kherkis, too—a long curved knife they keep wicked sharp. They can split a human hair with their knives… split it into thirds.”

“Seriously, Eef ?” said Newton Thornton, his pillow-messed hair sticking up in tufts.

“You bet,” Ephraim said soberly. “What hardly anyone knows is that a planeload of Gurkha warriors went down off the coast. They were on their way home after a very hairy mission—trench warfare, heads spiked on sticks, that sort of thing. These guys were driven half-crazy by the blood, right? The government of Nepal would probably have locked them up in a funny farm so they wouldn’t kill and maim anybody… but they never made it home. The plane went down over the ocean right around here.”

Shelley Longpre listened intently. The usual gray of his eyes—which most often resembled chunks of dirty ice—were now hard and bright with interest.

Ephraim said, “They could even be here. This island. It’s isolated, quiet. Hardly anyone comes to Falstaff Island except the odd fisherman or, well… us. The scouts of Troop Fifty-Two.”

Max Kirkwood raised three fingers of his right hand and recited solemnly: “I promise to do my best, to do my duty to God, the queen, and to obey the laws of the Eagle Scout troop.”

“Their bodies were never found,” Ephraim said, smiling at Max. “If they’re still alive, they would be total batshit madmen by now. But even if they were here, stalking this island, there’s a way to save yourself. The Gurkhas attack at night, okay? Always. They sneak into your cabin silent as death. They hover over your bed and feel your bootlaces. If they’re laced over and under…” Ephraim drew his thumb across his throat, a slitting motion. “But if they’re laced straight across, same way the Gurkhas lace them, they’ll let you live.” He yawned. “Well, good night, guys.”

His flashlight snapped off. Soon afterward, a body thumped onto the floor. Ephraim’s flashlight pinned Newton in a halo of stark light, lying in a heap beside his boots.

Ephraim said: “I knew you’d crack, Newt!”

Newton sat up awkwardly, rubbing his knees. His skin was even pinker than usual in the flashlight’s glow: piglet-pink.

“Jeez, well…” Newton bowed his head, rubbing his eye sockets. “You ought to be ashamed, Eef, telling that creepy stuff…”

Kent Jenks cried, “Newt, you bed-wetter!”

Shelley merely watched with an owlish expression, large yellow-tinted eyes staring from the milky oval of his face. Not smiling or laughing with the others—a blank test pattern of a face, expressive of nothing much at all.

“Boys, hey! Come on, now,” Scoutmaster Tim said, stepping into the room. “It’s all fun and games until someone falls out of bed. What say we call it quits for the night, okay?”

Newton stood, still rubbing his eyes, and heaved his bulk into the top bunk—but not before checking his bootlaces to make sure they were laced straight across.