The Troop Read Online Free

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 yellowtinted 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’s
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.
“Go to sleep, fellas,” Scoutmaster Tim said. newton thought he
could glimpse signs of strain on his Scoutmaster’s face: a vaguely panicked cast to his eyes. “Big day tomorrow.”
The door shut. Wind raced over the sea, howling around the cabin’s
edges. The logs groaned, a melancholy note like the hull of an old
Spanish galleon buffeted by ocean waves. The boys lay in their bunks,
breathing heavily. ephraim whispered:
“Gurkhas gonna get you, newt.”

5
    Tim HeaRd the man before he arrived. Heard him coming at a tortured shamble like a disoriented bear stirred from hibernation.
    By nature, Tim was calm and unflappable—a valuable personality trait for a doctor, whose day could swing from soothing and treating a boy with a simple case of measles to inserting a tracheal stent in the throat of a girl who’d gone into anaphylactic shock following a bee sting. He’d spent nearly a year in Afghanistan with Doctors Without Borders—had he been rabbity by nature, there was no way he’d have lasted that long. His mind naturally gravitated to the most likely causes, and from there coolly cataloged the possible effects.
    Fact one: a boat had arrived. Could be one of the boys’ parents— had newton forgotten his asthma inhaler? likely not, seeing as newt rarely forgot anything. Could be a ship had gone down—had a trawler capsized while netting pollack in the westerly seas?—and the boat contained its bedraggled survivors.
    Tim’s mind snapped into triage mode: if that were the case, they’d need medical attention; he’d stabilize them here, on the beachhead if need be, and radio for a medevac chopper.
    or it could be a drunk from the mainland who’d lost his way on a night-fishing jaunt. unlike the drunks in Tim’s hometown who’d hit the fleshpits once the bars shut down, the good ole boys around here hit the water. Slewing across the ocean in open-motor skiffs, bellowing like bulls as they skipped across the waves—that, or they’d drop a fishing line and low-cycle the motor, trawling at a leisurely pace. A few years ago, a winebag named lester Hamms froze to death on his boat; Jeff Jenks, north Point’s chief of police, discovered lester seven miles off the Cape, skin crystalline with frost like a piece of unwrapped steak in a freezer, his ass ice-welded to the seat, a pair of frozen snot-tusks poking out his nostrils. lester’s boat was still puttering along; before long it would’ve hit the tidal shelf and been carried out to sea—Tim pictured his frozen corpse bumping along the shore of Greenland like a grisly bit of driftwood, a polar bear giving it a curious sniff.
    Whoever it was, Tim was sure he or she posed little threat  .  .  . ninety-nine percent sure.
Fact Two: he and the