“When you get a whole new wardrobe every day, I guess it’s best that they’re made out of paper,” he says with a wry smile.
Max Kirkwood was spared. His fellow troop-mate Newton Thornton was not. Why? That is as yet unknown. Recent revelations at the tribunal trial of Admiral Stonewall Brewer—chief tactical commander of the Falstaff Island event—indicate that the thinking may’ve been that Max would be a good candidate for study. There is a possibility he was spared because if not, there would have been nobody left to gauge the effectiveness of the worm. It is shocking to believe such thinking may prevail at the upper echelons of the military establishment.
Max is well clear of that now. In fact he seems to remember little of his experience on Falstaff Island. It is entirely possible, of course, that he doesn’t want to remember—that his mind, seeking peace, has simply jettisoned these memories. Who could blame him if that is the case?
He speaks about the others in clipped, jagged sentences. They are the only aspects of the ordeal that he claims to truly recall, and by and large he recalls them with great fondness and care.
Of Tim Riggs, his Scoutmaster: “Dr. Riggs was the coolest adult I ever knew. But he didn’t try hard to be cool. He was actually sort of not-cool, with the way he dressed and his fussiness. But he was cool because he treated us the way he’d treat grown-ups.”
Of Ephraim Elliot: “Eef was my best friend. You could count on Eef. He always stuck up for you. He had a really big heart. I just think that, on the island, something crawled into his head and he couldn’t get rid of it.”
Of Kent Jenks: “I still have a hard time believing he’s gone. I mean, he was like Superman—really, he was. If anyone could have swum back to North Point, it was Big K.”
Of Shelley Longpre: “There was something the matter with him. I’m not so sad about Shel, to be honest. That’s a shitty thing to say, but whatever.”
Of Newton: “Newt would have been a great dad. The best, I just know it. He knew so much. The strongest of any of us. I really wish we hadn’t ragged on him so bad.”
When I ask him what else he can remember, his face grows distant, as if his mind is sprinting away from my question.
“There was a turtle,” he says finally.
He grows silent. Then the words pour out in a shocking flood.
“Do you know how hard it is to kill something? Nothing wants to die. Things cling to their lives against all hope, even when it’s hopeless. It’s like the end is always there, you can’t escape it, but things try so, so hard not to cross that finish line. So when they finally do, everything’s been stripped away. Their bodies and happiness and hope. Things just don’t know when to die. I wish they did. I wish my friends had known that. Sort of, anyway. But I’m glad they tried. That’s part of being human, right? Part of being any living thing. You hold on to life until it gets ripped away from you. Even if it gets ripped away in pieces. You just hold on.”
He grows silent. His head dips. When he looks up again his eyes are red at their edges and he’s near tears.
“I killed a turtle,” he says simply.
It seems the most wretched admission he’s ever made. I want to reach out and hug him—but I can’t because a thick barrier prevents it and anyway, there may still be something inside of Max that could kill me.
An orderly leads me away shortly after this. Max has been overstimulated. He needs to cool down.
I walk out to my car. The sky is gray with the threat of rain. I try to put myself in Max’s shoes on that island. I picture being confronted with a faceless hungering threat that he never truly understood. And it amazes me that he—that all the boys—hung tough together. They didn’t abandon each other—maybe it never entered their minds that they could. Those ideas come with the dawn of adulthood, and all the cruelties implicit in that stage of life.
To: Alex Markson
Subject: Hi…
Message:
Hey Alex,
We don’t even know each other really, so maybe this is weird. But I don’t know what’s happened to you—you vanished off Facebook! I hope you’re not gone for good. :( I’d miss all your great posts. So weird, I know, because you’re a stranger. But it doesn’t feel that way. I guess I was just thinking about you, maybe even a little worried, because of what’s been happening lately in my little town. It’s been crazy. Not good crazy. Scary-crazy. Anyway, this is silly. I’m sure you’re just taking a break. But still, I hope you’re OK. Sincerely (is that weird?), Trudy Dennison.
49
SOME NIGHTS, Max Kirkwood would climb the bluffs on the outskirts of North Point and stare out over the water toward Falstaff Island.
This was after it had all happened. After the arrival of the hungry man; the madness of the island. After he’d stood at the prow of Oliver McCanty’s boat with the glowing red dot—a sniper’s laser sight—pinned to his chest.
After the military decontamination, they had transferred him to an isolated clinic. He was toxic, after all. Infected.
Or maybe not.
They had poked and prodded, drawn pints of blood, endoscoped him, X-rayed him, done MRIs and cranial maps, dosed him with every vaccination known to mankind.
After all that, they adjudged him to be clean.
It felt strange returning to North Point. Everything was the same, but everything was different. His Scouting friends were gone. Those who’d been his friends before now kept their distance. People treated him differently. Most of them pitied him. Some, though, felt that he must have done horrible things on the island to have survived. Others crossed to the opposite side of the street when he came walking down it.
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.