The Troop

The Troop, a 2014 horror novel by Canadian author Nick Cutter (a pseudonym for Craig Davidson), is a brutal, unflinching tale that marries the survival paranoia of Lord of the Flies with intense body horror reminiscent of David Cronenberg. The novel follows Scout Troop 52—composed of five teenage boys and their Scoutmaster, Tim Riggs—on their annual camping trip to the remote, uninhabited Falstaff Island off the coast of Prince Edward Island.

The Source of the Contagion

The troop’s routine trip quickly turns into a nightmare on the first night when a skeletal, impossibly emaciated man stumbles ashore. Raving about bottomless hunger, the stranger is revealed to be Thomas Henry Padgett, an escaped human test subject for a highly advanced, bioengineered form of tapeworm. Developed by the psychopathic Dr. Clive Edgerton, the parasite was initially intended as a rapid, controllable weight-loss drug but mutated into a fast-acting biological weapon that consumes its host from the inside out, driving them to relentless, murderous hunger.

Scoutmaster Tim Riggs, a local doctor, tries to help the man but soon becomes infected himself. When the boys realize the horrific truth, they lock the rapidly deteriorating Tim in a closet, shattering the veneer of adult authority and safety.

The Breakdown of Order

As the infection spreads to other scouts, the narrative shifts from biological horror to a savage study of human nature under extreme duress. The island acts as a sealed pressure cooker, and the absence of adult guidance causes the troop's social order to collapse into primal fear and paranoia:

• Shelley Longpre, the quiet, sociopathic outsider, exploits the fear to manipulate the others, culminating in the cruel drowning of the infected Kent Jenks and the emotional torture of Ephraim Elliot, who commits suicide by fire. Shelley is arguably more dangerous than the worms themselves.

• Interspersed documents—including scientific reports, interviews, and news clippings—reveal that the military was tracking the escaped subject and effectively sacrificed the troop as unwilling test subjects, adding a layer of bleak governmental conspiracy to the horror.

Ultimately, only Max Kirkwood, the quiet observer, manages to escape the island with the infected Newt Thornton, only for Newt to be summarily executed by the Canadian Navy upon their arrival. Max is the sole physical survivor, but the novel ends on a note of emotional isolation, showing that the trauma and corruption of the island leave him forever distanced from the civilized world. The Troop is a relentless exploration of the loss of innocence and the terrifying speed with which civilization can fall away when faced with existential, biological terror.