Opening
The troop fractures beyond repair as Max Kirkwood and Newton Thornton return to camp and stumble into a nightmare they can’t undo. One friend vanishes, another burns himself alive, and their most dangerous companion turns predator—just as shadowy interludes expose the worms’ man-made origin and a military decision to erase the island. Survival stops being a waiting game and becomes a brutal, two-on-one fight against a boy who no longer sees himself as human.
What Happens
Chapter 36: A Singing Snap!
Back at the cabin after hours away, Max and Newton find chaos: Kent has escaped the cellar, Shelley Longpre is missing, and they lay the broken body of Ephraim Elliot on a picnic table. On the beach they debate Kent’s fate—did he try the freezing swim to mainland?—and feel the isolation clamp down. Max’s mind drifts to how fear works: adults harden and shatter when confronted with the unthinkable, but kids adapt because they expect monsters. Then a scream slashes the sky from the direction of the cabin.
An interlude shifts to testimony: Dr. Nathan Erikson swears he believes he’s making a diet pill with colleague Dr. Clive Edgerton. He’s blindsided by evidence of a second, larger payment from T.N.O. Printz Mauritz—a military firm—and learns the “diet worms” are a bioweapon. The interrogator outlines their strategic value: chaos, panic, collapse. Erikson reels, and the island’s horror locks into place as human-made.
Chapter 37: You Have to Say Please
With Max and Newton gone, Shelley climbs out of the cellar, feverish but exultant. He finds Ephraim delirious, mumbling about the worm inside him, and decides to “help.” He toys with Ephraim’s terror, saying he can see the parasite behind his eyes, then draws his Buck knife and methodically slices Ephraim’s face and scalp under the pretense of extraction. Ephraim, lost to psychosis, thanks him.
Shelley escalates: he drains gasoline from the generator into a mason jar and tells Ephraim the only cure is to burn the worm out. Ephraim accepts with serene relief. He produces his own Zippo, calls Shelley his best friend—the only one who understands—and soaks himself in gasoline.
Chapter 38: The Ultimate External Emotion
Max and Newton sprint into the clearing as Ephraim ignites. A cone of flame devours him; he becomes a “swiftly charring effigy,” lungs pulling fire inward until nothing remains but a misshapen husk. Max tries to smother the blaze with a sleeping bag, but he’s far too late. The boys stand over a body their minds can’t recognize.
Shelley steps from the edge of the clearing, gaunt and bloody. Max smells gasoline, puts it together, and surges with fury. “What did you do, Shel?” he demands—then doubles over as Shelley’s knife plunges into his abdomen. Before Shelley can finish the job, Newton grabs a heavy length of wood and clubs Shelley in the back of the head, dropping him cold.
Chapter 39: We Got to Bury Him
Shelley staggers up, laughing and promising to kill them both. He hocks a wad of mucus that writhes with tiny worms—proof he’s become a carrier. Max hurls rocks; one smashes Shelley’s knee, and Shelley crawls into the woods.
Newton tends Max’s wound with dwindling supplies. Together, they dig a grave by the fire ring—first with a collapsible shovel, then with their hands—and lower Ephraim in. Newton offers a simple prayer. Grief and fury swamp Max as he realizes no adults are coming. He collapses by the fire and sleeps.
Another interlude: Admiral Stonewall Brewer details the official response. The island is an “iceberg”—threat unknown—and the order is “total neutralization.” The navy enforces a hard quarantine: snipers kill any escaping animal, “Blue Death” poisons the surrounding waters, and four napalm strikes render the island “biologically sterile.” The boys are already written off.
Chapter 40: A Great Daddy
The perspective drops into Shelley’s mind. In a slick black cave, he decides he isn’t sick—he’s transforming. The worms inside his distended belly are his “babies.” The imperative is simple and constant: eat, protect, reproduce. He will kill Max and Newton so he can “give birth in peace.”
Ravenous, he prowls and gorges—woodlice, termite eggs, a rotting sea carcass—then sneaks to camp. Newton, awake and watchful, raises Shelley’s own knife and warns him off. Hunger and a flash of fear pull Shelley back to his cave. He discards his old name and role. He lives for one thing now: to be a “great daddy.”
Character Development
The troop’s dynamics implode, forcing each boy into his truest self—hero, mourner, or monster.
- Max: The thinker turns fighter. Rage replaces reflection after Ephraim’s death; he’s willing to maim Shelley with stones and accepts the cost of survival.
- Newton: Courage crystallizes. He saves Max with decisive violence, then insists on dignity for the dead, grounding the story’s moral center.
- Shelley: The bully becomes a vector and a zealot. Psychopathy fuses with the parasite’s drive, recasting murder as paternal duty.
- Ephraim: A tragic endpoint. Paranoia erases pain and reason; in seeking purity, he annihilates himself.
Themes & Symbols
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The Breakdown of Civilization and Social Order (/books/the-troop/the-breakdown-of-civilization-and-social-order) The troop’s micro-society shatters: torture masquerades as care, a friend burns himself alive, and the boys turn to battlefield triage and burial. The interludes mirror this collapse at scale—science weaponized, government ethics suspended, and a democratic state choosing sterilization over rescue.
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Loss of Innocence (/books/the-troop/loss-of-innocence) Max’s reflection frames childhood as elastic enough to absorb monsters. By section’s end, that elasticity snaps: witnessing self-immolation, surviving a stabbing, and burying a friend push Max and Newton beyond childhood. What they keep—loyalty, small rituals of care—looks like adulthood forged in catastrophe.
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Body Horror and Biological Corruption (/books/the-troop/body-horror-and-biological-corruption) Ephraim’s fire is a perverse purification that destroys the vessel rather than the parasite. Shelley’s metamorphosis externalizes inner rot: a swollen belly, worm-laced saliva, predatory hunger. Bodies become labs and nurseries—sites of invasion, incubation, and weaponized appetite.
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Symbol: Fire Fire promises cleansing and delivers erasure. It stands for control Ephraim longs for and cannot achieve, burning away identity, community, and hope as thoroughly as flesh.
Key Quotes
“Children… believe everything can happen, and fully expect it.” This captures Max’s thesis on resilience: imagination as armor. The irony is brutal—belief helps them survive the idea of monsters, not the cost of facing them.
“Burn it out.” Shelley repackages murder as remedy. The phrase exposes how language can launder cruelty, especially when victims are desperate for a cure.
“My very best friend… the only one who gets it.” Ephraim’s gratitude pins the tragedy: illness and manipulation twist love and trust into instruments of death.
“A swiftly charring effigy.” The image reduces a boy to a symbol. It makes grief abstract and intensifies the horror of how quickly a person can vanish into spectacle.
“What did you do, Shel?” Max’s demand marks his transition from witness to avenger. The knife that follows ends any pretense of troop brotherhood.
“Total neutralization.” The military euphemism sanitizes annihilation. It reframes the boys’ struggle as doomed from above, heightening dramatic irony and despair.
Why This Matters and Section Significance
These chapters erase the troop as we know it. Ephraim’s death and Shelley’s exile leave Max and Newton as a pared-down partnership defined by grief, resolve, and watchfulness. The conflict sharpens: two boys versus a former friend who has become the parasite’s willing host.
The interludes close the escape hatch. The worms are engineered; the island is condemned. Rescue is not delayed—it’s forbidden. This shifts the narrative from survival-awaiting-rescue to survival-against-erasure, deepening the novel’s tragic arc and fixing its tone in darkness.