Cranberry’s for some reason getting mushy. It’s a little awkward since no one gives much of a fuck about him. Listen to that cricket, he says. I love that cricket. We all look at each other. Who invited him? Did he eat something poisonous? No one knows. I break out a deck of cards and start to shuffle them, Pingpong lights a Newport. Cranberry’s crying, he crawls out of the hideout, on his hands and knees, looking for the cricket. You’ll never find it, says Dwarf. Nobody ever finds any crickets. People are defaulting into sleep because of fatigue, habit. Bog Man has materialized next to where Pingpong’s curled up, is spooning him, and Pingpong’s whimpering and clearly terrified. He can’t get a boner, I tell him. Don’t worry, just roll with it.

As the sun rises I’m out in the damp grass. Several of our number have disappeared in the night, I’ve noticed, either back to Scout House, or who knows. Dwarf’s still here. The plywood’s sort of settled down overnight and it looks like there’s no way humans could fit under it, an excellent hidden fortress. Pingpong emerges from the ground and informs me, and by extension, Dwarf, who is squatting right next to me, that he’s going to quit, because he can’t handle the living dead trying to fuck him while he’s minding his own business. His actual words are something less coherent, more impassioned. And my response is: Well, we each had different upbringings, didn’t we? Besides, I tell him. I’m out next. At least not last.

Bog Man’s a pile of crap, can hardly animate himself, which is a further depression in the wet morning. The ultimate anticlimax. No one got to explode, or be annihilated by his terrible telekenetic power. He was modest with his second try at things, I think he mostly blew his reanimated do-over. Maybe he was all talk. I bump his scapula with my toe. Nothing. Something might have moved. I grab his leather skullcap and try it on. It’s a bit stiff and has a horrifying odor. Ancient skin is weird, I don’t recommend it. Then, a movement. I look down, and Bog Man’s trying to do a sit-up, but he can’t get it together. One arm is stuck out like a zombie, the other apparently powerless, and his abs are jittering, which makes his neck vibrate, which makes his hardened brain bang around inside his skull like a grapefruit, which makes his head jerk forwards and back again, which makes his movement plan disturbing and arbitrary. His sad algae-slime face is proof that the universe is the opposite of warm and friendly. I try to remember what it was like when being a Scout was new and exciting, and I can, but it’s a further compounding of the bum-out, because my remembered exuberance is now revealed to have been shamefully stupid. Dwarf helps me scoop Bog Man and dump him into someone’s backpack. He’s like a few armloads of bony kelp; the fronts of our shirts are wet and brown. He needs to keep moving, says Dwarf, maybe if we can get him back to the bog- but he doesn’t finish the sentence. My guess is he’ll mostly leak out of the bottom before we get very far in any direction.