by Nick Cutter
At irregular intervals, a black van would show up at his house. Men in hazmat suits would get out. More tests. More needles. They collected his blood and fluids and solids in sterile pouches. It made Max laugh to think that some scientist in a white lab coat would be picking apart his shit with tweezers, frowning and tutting as he searched for clues—well, it almost made him laugh.
MAX HAD bad dreams. Those were the only dreams he had anymore—most nights it was just blackness. He closed his eyes and bang! Black. Eight hours later, the black went away. He woke up. Those were the good nights.
On the bad nights, his dreams were still black. But the blackness was infested with sounds. Squirming. Always this squirmy-squirmy noise in the blackness. And when he woke up, Max would be drooling like a baby.
His mom kissed him good night on the forehead now. Used to be on the lips.
He tried to return to the life he’d known, but that simply didn’t exist anymore.
He wasn’t allowed to go to school. The parents of many students didn’t feel right having Max in the same airspace with their kids. Nothing against Max personally. He was a good kid. A survivor.
But the things Max had encountered on the island were survivors, too. The parents had read the newspapers. One of Dr. Edgerton’s videotaped experiments had leaked online. Everyone knew what those things could do—objectively they did, anyhow. Everyone had seen things, clinically, but those things hadn’t touched them. Not in any tangible way. So people knew in their brains but not inside their skin, and there was a difference.
Everybody thought they knew what had happened on that island. Everyone was an expert. But they didn’t really know. What they thought was bad. What really happened was a lot worse.
Max studied at home. The teachers sent assignments to him in paper envelopes. He had to send his answers back via e-mail, as the teachers expressed concern over actually handling the papers he’d touched.
One morning he found a poster tacked to his front door. It was supposed to look like a carnival poster—like, for the Freak Tent.
The Amazing Worm Boy, read the blood-dripping type underneath.
His mother made sweet-and-sour pork for dinner one night. The smell was so familiar to Max—that high stinking sweetness—that he started to scream. He didn’t stop until his father tossed the pan of pork outside in a snowbank. It took him a while, on account of the fact he limped real bad; the MPs had shattered his right kneecap after he and Kent’s dad stole Calvin Walmack’s cigarette boat.
Max kept to himself. No choice, really. He wandered the woods and down by the sea.
He thought about his friends: Kent and Eef and Newt, especially. He’d recall the strangest, most trivial things, like Cub Kar rally night. One year, his car had lost to Kent’s car in the finals—except everyone thought Kent’s dad helped him build the car. Its wheels were thin as pizza cutters. Eef’s mom had said it was cheating. Newt’s mom agreed. Things got pretty heated. Kent’s dad kicked over the canteen of McDonald’s orange drink and stormed out. Eef’s mom’s eyes had popped out and she’d said: And that man is our police chief.
Max missed them all so much.
It was weird. They’d all had other friends. But now, Max couldn’t think of any friends who’d mattered as much.
He’d give anything to have one more day with them. Even one of those piss-away ones they used to have in Scouts: roaming the woods on a fall day with the smoky smell of dead leaves crunching under their boots. Playing King of the Mountain and Would You Rather? while nerdy Newt collected samples for some dumb merit badge or another. Stealing away with Ephraim to stare at the stars and dream their crazy dreams. And they would all be just like they were before. Not skinny or hungry or trying to hurt one another.
There was nothing Max wouldn’t give to have that again. Just one more day.
And Shelley? Well, Shel wasn’t in these daydreams. If Shel popped up at all, it was in his nightmares.
Max had a shrink now—the same one Newton and Ephraim used to visit. When he’d told Dr. Harley about wishing for one more day with his old friends, he’d been advised against wishing for things that couldn’t happen. Harley called this negative projection. Max thought Harley was an idiot.
If there was one thing he wanted to tell his lost friends, it was that lots of adults didn’t have a goddamn clue. It was one of the sadder facts he’d had to come to grips with. Adults could be just as stupid as kids. Stupider even, because often they didn’t have to answer to anybody.
Of course, Harley wore a face mask during their sessions, same as a doctor would wear when he’s operating—same as Scoutmaster Tim had worn, probably.
Sometimes Max wanted to rip it off and cough into his stupid sucker-fish face. The Amazing Worm Boy strikes again!
50
ONE EVENING, Max borrowed his uncle’s boat and piloted it toward Falstaff Island.
His heart jogged faster as the island came into view, rising against the horizon like the hump of a breaching whale. It was charred black. Nothing but the odd burnt tree spiking up from the earth. The water had the sterile chlorine smell of a public pool. It was the most desolate place he’d ever seen. It echoed the desolation inside of him.
The emptiness . . .
The emptiness?
Max leaned both hands on the gunwale. A nameless hunger was building inside of him. It gnawed at his guts with teeth that called his name.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you to my father, who read the rough manuscript and said: “Son, you may have something here. I don’t know what that something is, to be honest, but something.” To my agent, the kick-ass Kirby Kim, who wasn’t repelled enough by the subject matter to dismiss it out of hand. He may have even said something like: “We could actually have something here . . . possibly.” To my editor, Ed Schlesinger, who put the manuscript through the proverbial wood chipper, gathered the shreds, and helped me put them back together, then said: “Hell, we just may have something here.” To Scott Smith, who kindly read the manuscript and offered some fantastic suggestions, all since implemented.
Thank you, Ian Rogers, who proofed the typeset pages and caught all of my goof-ups. And to Derek Hounsell for creating the Thestomax ad.
I’d like to thank Stephen King, whose first novel, Carrie, was a great inspiration to me while I was writing. The use of newspaper clippings, interviews, and magazine profiles seemed a perfect way to tell not only Carrie but also The Troop, where so much information is unknown to the main characters yet must be related to readers. Seeing how artfully Mr. King employed these devices, I figured I’d . . . uh, borrow . . . that structure. Steal? Lord, I hope not. Let’s just say I found the narrative chassis of Carrie to be perfect for my uses, and grafted my own story on it. If you’ve read this book and are now reading this, hopefully you’ll agree that the plot of Carrie—a story about a telekinetic girl with a really bad mom who rains death and destruction on her small-minded hometown—and the plot of The Troop are about as dissimilar as any two books could be. That said, I want to honor the master. So, honor paid.
Finally, I want to thank Colleen, the love of my life (corny, sure, but it also happens to be the literal truth) and Nicholas, our son. There was a time when I wrote almost solely for myself. I don’t anymore. I write for our family, and I’m deeply grateful to be able to do so.
NICK CUTTER is a pseudonym for an acclaimed author of novels and short stories. He lives in Canada.
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2014 by Craig Davidson
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First Gallery Books hardcover edition February 2014
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Interior design by Ruth Lee-Mui
Cover design by Black Kat Design
Cover photo by Stefano Vigni/ Millennium Images, UK
Author photograph by Kevin Kelly
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
ISBN 978-1-4767-1771-5
ISBN 978-1-4767-1775-3 (ebook)
CONTENTS
Epigraph
Part 1: The Hungry Man
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Part 2: Infestation
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Part 3: Contagion
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Acknowledgments
About Nick Cutter