The Troop by Nick Cutter is a solid horror book.

A Boy Scout group of five teenage boys and their scout master are on an island for their yearly getaway. Each boy‘s background is explored a bit through the story. There is a budding psychopath, an overweight nerd, a jock, one prone to anger issues and his closest friend.

Their whole group is put to the test when an infected stranger shows up during their first night. This sets off a domino effect of contagion which pits the group against each other in varying degrees. Snippets of the experiments that led to this point are scattered throughout the story in the form of interviews and news clips.

I had to skip over a few particularly gruesome scenes involving animals. Reminiscent of Lotd of the Flies cranked up with a horror/science twist, it is a take on human nature in extreme circumstances.