The Troop

The Troop (2014) is a horror novel by Nick Cutter. Troop 52, consisting of five teenage boy scouts and their Scoutmaster, Dr. Tim Riggs, goes on an annual camping trip to a remote, uninhabited island in the province of Prince Edward Island, Canada. There, a strange, sick man approaches their cabin and introduces them to a deadly, bioengineered virus. Just as dangerous as the virus itself are the crumbling group dynamics and morality once the horror is introduced.

This guide refers to the paperback edition published by Gallery Books in 2016.

Content Warning: The Troop and this guide mention graphic violence and gore.

Note: For clarity, this guide refers to the fictional documents and clippings that are interspersed throughout the novel as “interludes.”

Plot Summary

An omniscient third-person narrator tells the novel’s main events in the past tense, and the text is peppered with documents such as (fictional) news articles and lab notes. Boy Scout Troop 52, consisting of Scoutmaster Dr. Tim Riggs (a general practitioner) and five teenage boys (Max, Ephraim, Kent, Newt, and Shelley), go on their annual camping trip to the remote and uninhabited Falstaff Island, off the coast of Prince Edward Island. They don’t have cell phones or a boat—only an emergency radio—but are scheduled to ride back at the end of the weekend.

At night, once the boys are in the bedroom, a strange man drives a stolen boat to Falstaff Island and approaches Tim, asking for food. The man is clearly sick. Unbeknownst to Tim, this man is named Tom Padgett and has just escaped a scientist named Dr. Edgerton, who was using Padgett as a human test subject for some tapeworms that he bioengineered, allegedly with the goal of developing a fast-acting diet pill. Tim brings the man inside to feed him and help him, but the man coughs on Tim, destroys the radio, and lashes out, necessitating sedation. The next morning, Tim still doesn’t know what’s wrong with the man, and he sends the boys out on a hike alone. When the boys return, Tim is sick, though he only confesses his illness to one boy, Max, who he also asks to assist him with investigatory surgery on the stranger. Tim cuts the man open, and giant worms crawl out, strangling the stranger to death. Tim then tells the rest of the boys what happened, but not that he’s sick. However, the boys soon discover it and lock him in the closet so they don’t catch what he has, only for Kent to take a sip of Tim’s whiskey, unknowingly contracting the worms as well.

The next morning, their remaining food has been eaten—the boys find the empty cooler on the beach. Kent ate it because he’s sick, but he doesn’t confess. However, Shelley witnessed his theft and informs the others. The boat scheduled to pick the troop up doesn’t arrive, but a cyclone does, so the boys shelter in the cellar while leaving Tim in the closet, where he dies. The boys allow Kent into the cellar under the condition that he sits underneath a tarp. After the storm, the boys lock Kent in the cellar for safekeeping. Shelley hides until Ephraim, Newt, and Max leave on a hike to find more food and also hopefully mushrooms to purge Kent. Shelley plans to kill everyone on the island. Once the other boys are gone, Shelley torments Kent and feeds him more tapeworms. Meanwhile, Ephraim refuses to keep hiking because Shelley convinced him he has the worms too (he doesn’t). Newt and Max go on while Shelley calls Ephraim on the Walkie-Talkie and convinces him to start cutting the nonexistent worms out of himself.

Newt and Max find some berries and laxative mushrooms, then a turtle, which they kill. However, the turtle is in so much pain that they’re no longer hungry, and they bury the turtle instead of eating it. Meanwhile, Shelley drowns a weakened Kent in the ocean and contracts the worms. Soon after, Newt and Max find Ephraim covered in blood from self-inflicted wounds and convince him to return to camp and eat laxative mushrooms rather than cutting more. However, once at camp, Shelley convinces Ephraim to set himself on fire, and he dies. Max attacks Shelley, suspecting he’s behind the deaths of Ephraim and maybe Kent, who is missing. Shelley stabs Max. Newt saves Max, and they drive Shelley away into the woods. Shelley knows he’s infected, but he views the worms as his babies instead of as parasites, and his impending death as a transformation. He now wants to kill Newt and Max not for fun, but because they’re a danger to his children, and as a father, it’s his job to protect the worms. He takes cover in a cave.

Max remembers that he saw the stolen boat’s spark plugs in the stranger’s stomach, so he and Max surgically retrieve them, avoiding infection. Shelley then steals the spark plugs, using them to bait the boys into his cave. In the cave, the boys attack each other, and Shelley’s stomach ruptures, killing him. As the worms pour out of him, Max and Newt flee without the spark plugs. Newt has contracted the worms, so Max is forced to return to the cave and get the plugs. Leaving immediately now becomes important—maybe the adults back home have a cure for Newt. Max also finds gas for the boat and fills its tank. Newt doesn’t want to leave with him because he knows civilization won’t accept an infected person back, but he goes with Max to make him feel better. As soon as they reach home, Newt is shot because he says he’s hungry. Max is “spared” and sent to live in a clinic for several months.

The news articles and Federal Investigatory Board (FIB) reports suggest that Dr. Edgerton was not developing a diet pill, but a biological weapon for the military. Furthermore, the military purposely released Padgett and sent him to Falstaff Island, sacrificing the teenagers as unwilling human test subjects. Although Max is eventually allowed to leave the clinic and return to his house, he’s not allowed to go to school, and everyone either avoids or bullies him now. He feels just as lonely and isolated as he did on Falstaff Island, so he returns there at the very end, finding it apparently empty and desolate after the military’s efforts to eradicate any remaining life forms left behind.