The Extinction Club

by Jeffrey Moore

  THE

  EXTINCTION

  CLUB

  ALSO BY JEFFREY MOORE

  Prisoner in a Red-Rose Chain

  The Memory Artists

  THE

  EXTINCTION

  CLUB

  JEFFREY MOORE

  HAMISH HAMILTON CANADA

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Canada Inc.)

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  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published in 2010

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 (RRD)

  Copyright © Jeffrey Moore, 2010

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part

  of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or

  transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording

  or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the

  above publisher of this book.

  Publisher’s note: This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents

  either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any

  resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Manufactured in the U.S.A.

  ISBN: 978-0-670-06797-8

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication data

  available upon request to the publisher.

  Visit the author’s website at www.jeffreymoore.org

  Visit the Penguin Group (Canada) website at www.penguin.ca

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  The beauty and genius of a work of art may be reconceived,

  though its first material expression be destroyed; a vanished

  harmony may yet again inspire the composer; but when the

  last individual of a race of living beings breathes no more,

  another heaven and another earth must pass before such a

  one can be again.

  —WILLIAM BEEBE,

  THE BIRD, ITS FORM AND FUNCTION, 1906

  Time and again, however well we know the landscape of love,

  And the little churchyard with lamenting lines,

  And the dreadfully silent hollow wherein all the others end:

  Time and again we go out two together,

  Under the old trees, lie down again and again

  Between the flowers, face to face with the sky.

  —RAINER MARIA RILKE, “TIME AND AGAIN,” 1906

  There is only one really serious philosophical question,

  and that is suicide.

  —ALBERT CAMUS, THE MYTH OF SISYPHUS, 1942

  PART ONE

  PRE-CHRISTMAS

  Brightly shone the moon that night

  Though the frost was cruel …

  I

  It was dark—north-country dark—by the time I arrived but this had to be it: the Church of St. Davnet-des-Monts. Two sodden, grime-streaked signs, barely visible in the circle of my flashlight, were nailed to its front door. The first, its black mediaeval characters weeping freely, was a dispossession notice signed by the archdeacon:

  In sorrow we revoke the sentence of consecration, and release this building and its site for other use, with prayers that the purposes of God and the well-being of the community may continue to be served …

  The second, on a panel like the inside of a cereal box, was a jumble of red capitals, as if written wrong-handedly:

  ELDERLY VOLUNTEERS WANTED TO WORK IN MERCHANDISING NEITHER AGE NOR MENTAL HEALTH A FACTOR

  I moved my beam in dancing ovals to the top of the spire, then back down, side to side, the light playing over the rough grey walls, like the hide of some ancient pachyderm. Pocked with tiny holes, as if from shotgun fire.

  Was this the right church? In the photograph it looked so much more … well, churchly. Instead of stained glass I saw shutterboard, instead of florid tracery, graffiti. And where was the For Sale sign? I aimed my flashlight to the side, illuminating a corroded gate off its hinges, a meandering gullet wriggling its way through rocks and rubble, and a headstone cross sprayed with red swastikas.

  A church bell began to ring, dully, from a distance. At midnight on the nail, on the last stroke of November, cold rain came down: fat splattering drops that turned thick as glycerine, coating everything they touched. My flashlight fizzled, then dimmed and died. I could have—should have?—waited till morning.

  Some hundred yards away, beyond the church lane, came a rumbling and a single pin of light. A motorcycle … No, it was larger than that, with something flickering on its roof. A gumball?

  I bolted in the direction of my van, hidden on the other side of the church, but instinctively took the wrong fork in the path, which led to the graveyard. Two marauding animals, cats or racoons, scurried across the flagstones and I slid madly to avoid them, my city shoes as effective as bedroom slippers. I grabbed on to a large headstone—a stone carving of some unknown angel by some unknown artist—and crouched behind it. Pulled out a nightscope from my knapsack, waited until the car came within range.

  The landscape glowed with the colours of things otherworldly, outside of nature: the tree line was neon yellow, the road nicotine orange, the car the eerie green of horror movies. I moved the wheel and sharpened the milky images. Something was flickering all right, but it wasn’t a police flasher. It was something more sinister: a large furry animal with its paws … dripping? Cut off? The light came from its mouth, which was propped open with what appeared to be a light bulb.

  The car, which wasn’t a car but a pickup with a raised chassis, rooflights and bulldog grille, came barrelling toward the church, heading for its front door. At the last second it swerved onto a narrow path that curved around the church, away from me, to the other side of the cemetery. It braked suddenly and spun ass to front, its engine stalled or killed. A silence of four or five seconds, then a thwack, a snapping sound like breaking glass.

  As soon as I heard that sound I knew that I always would. The truck fired up again, its oversize tires churning on black ice, spitting out stones and dirt. It exploded back down the lane, into the roiling cloudlets of chill fog, and was gone.

  I stood motionless, confused, wondering how I fit into all this. Whatever they dumped is none of my business. I returned the monocular to its case while picking my way to my VW van, a stolen rust-bucket that was tricky to start. It rumbled to life first time. I drove lights-out to the end of the church lane.

  For at least a minute I sat there, hands clutched on the steering wheel, watching the wipers, listening to the sound of metal grating on glass. The rain sy
ruped down the windshield and hardened. I slid the defroster to high. Stared at the back of my hands, which seemed to belong to someone else. From beneath the seat I extracted a bottle of Talisker 16 and drank its dregs. Another fall from grace and the wagon.

  I hung a U, scraping the underbody as I hit the lane at a bad angle, back toward the cemetery. At the whirling skid marks I flicked on my brights: on one side, a dozen cattails rising out of vapour like giant hot dogs on spikes; on the other, a dozen tombstones, lopsided and rotting like a row of bad teeth. Every black root and tendril around them was rimmed with silver. I backed the van up, turned the wheel sharply. There. Something embedded in the snowy ditch: a pale brown lump. I got out for a closer look.

  It was wrapped in what looked like burlap and bound crosswise with red cord, like a Christmas present. A drug drop? Cash drop? I had no intention of untying the knots to find out more—until I heard something, a sigh or whispered moan. Animal or human, hard to tell.

  I clambered down the bank, head afire and heart working double-time. Under the snow was a crust of ice, as solid as a soda biscuit, and I plunged through it up to my knees. It wasn’t a ditch—it was a bog. But I felt only the slightest tingling as my shoes filled with freezing water. I yanked them out of the black muck and lumbered forward, punching through the ice, releasing the pungent smells of decay—of peat slime, swamp grass, animal dung. I was surprised at the weight of the mud, the effort it took to lift each limb, like walking with ball and chain. I hadn’t tramped in mud since kindergarten.

  When I reached the red cord I pulled one-handedly with all the strength I could muster, which was not a lot; I was off-balance and the sack barely budged. It was disappearing, it seemed, into the marshmallowy marsh, into the reeds and rot, and I along with it. It felt like a hand was tugging at my shoes. With one foot planted on a petrified log, like a crocodile forced up by saurian times, I pulled with both arms and felt the bag move. Inch by inch I hauled it across the crackling membranes and up onto higher, drier ground.

  I stretched and pulled at the cord like a backward child, like someone unfamiliar with the concept of knots. I even bit into them, like trying to cut steel with scissors. Cold rain dripped down my face, mingling with sweat, burning my eyes. There had to be an easier way … With blurred vision I saw a pink form protruding from a small slash in the bag. A thumb? Elbow? I tore at the burlap from all sides, shredding it blindly from toe to crown.

  After wiping my eyes with a frozen fist, I saw something that sucked the breath out of me, that most of us will never see. For three or four heartbeats time stopped; I was suspended in a force field of fright that calcified my bones, atrophied my muscles.

  Some mysterious natural chemical, something defibrillating, suddenly surged within me. I picked up the bag as if it were a pillow and carried it from road to van, the frozen pebbles grinding harshly under my heels. The high beams illuminated the cloth with a chill fluorescent glow that made its red stains look shiny and black. Drops made puffs of steam as they hit the snow.

  A shadow moved in front of me, made me freeze. It advanced dream slowly, in the direction of the swamp. On four legs. Then stopped and stared into the light—not my light but a full moon’s—with eyes like sparkling emeralds. It swung its head from side to side, gave out a low moan, then loped soundlessly on, arching its long tail. I closed my eyes. The fallout—was it starting again? I opened my eyes and the creature and moon were gone.

  With my pulse quickening and brain slowing, I fumbled with the back doors of the van and laid the wet bag down. Don’t get blood on the upholstery, you’re in enough shit as it is. I turned on the dome light, my fingers staining everything they touched, including a sleeping bag I hadn’t yet slept in.

  Okay, so where’s the police station?

  The police? What would I tell them? That I’d found a blood-soaked child—and by the way, officer, I’m in this country illegally, fleeing a charge of child abduction. Among other things. And yes, that’s alcohol on my breath. They’ll want a statement, a name, an address. Fishing in a Quebec swamp—where did that idea come from? From long practice in doing the wrong thing: my father’s words. How about a hospital? I heard another muffled moan.

  “Everything’s going to be fine,” I lied. “Just hold on …” My voice had a quaver, I could hear it myself. “I’m taking you …” Through snarled hair I glimpsed the child’s face—as white and wet as milk, with a look of terror I’d never seen before except in dreams.

  The freezing rain clung like shrink wrap, acres of it, and my bald tires could barely pull me up the first hill. And balked entirely at the second, despite two charges in first gear and one in reverse. Aslant in the middle of the road, I flicked on my four-ways, pointlessly, as there was no one within miles. To the count of ten I watched the lights turn a twisted green sign off and on. HÔPITAL 8 KM, it said, its arrow pointing upward, to the heavens.

  Back down the grade I snaked, in reverse, stopping at a gravel crossroad with another sign: CHEMIN SAISONNIER. I swung right and drove recklessly for three, maybe four miles—over railway tracks that hadn’t held a train since World War II, over a humpbacked wooden bridge that said UTILISEZ À VOS RISQUES ET PÉRILS—toward my rented cabin. My wipers scraped across my view, a blinding rime of ice covered my back and side windows, my tires spun. The hood, held down by bungee cord, bounced up and down with every pothole.

  The lights were off inside the cabin, as were those of a cottage some fifty yards on. I cut the ignition and the engine went on coughing and sputtering for half a minute. Left my brights on, trained on the front steps.

  I was carrying the child in, his head lolling like a marionette’s, when it occurred to me I should have unlocked the door first. Propping the body awkwardly against the wall, I jammed the key in, shook the lock around and kicked the door inward. Stumbled in the dark toward my broken-bellied bed, knowing this was unwise, knowing my only bedsheets would be drenched red. Put the body down hard, nearly dropping it on the floor. If he isn’t dead already, he is now.

  I ran my bloodied fingers over the NO ANIMAL SKINNING sign above the headboard, fumbling for the bar light. Felt the white peg and pushed. Then stood and gawked in harsh fluorescence, blinking, panting, sweating. I felt the child’s neck artery. Nothing. Got down on my knees, leaned forward and felt a faint breath mingle with mine.

  Into a wood-burning stove whose embers were still flickering, I tossed two more logs. Long practice in doing the wrong thing … Should I put him back where I found him? Take him to the hospital? How, dogsled? Even if I could climb that hill, we’d never make it in time. Might as well deliver him to the morgue. I watched the flames grow higher.

  Stop the bleeding at least. Can you do that? Rack your brains, try to remember … I searched my memory, but it was like groping for an object that had slipped through a pocket, into the lining.

  I pulled at a wooden drawer that resisted my first pull and that my second yanked free of its moorings. It fell from my hand, its contents scattering over the floor. I took the Lord’s name with a volume that surprised me, that reverberated inside the cabin and seemed to rattle the walls, that I swore could be heard miles away. Scrambled to find, on hands and knees, some makeshift instruments. A curved carving knife, like a pirate’s dagger, caught my eye, along with a tube of Krazy Glue and some orange dollar-store scissors …

  I swallowed hard before unwrapping the body from its burlap cocoon, scissoring the sticky patches that cleaved to the flesh. The body was doubled up like a jackknife, with red twine tied around the neck and under the knees. Not as tight, thank Christ, as it could’ve been. The hands were bound behind the back with white plastic cuffs. I fiddled blindly with the catch, fumbled in my shirt and coat pockets for reading glasses, then sawed through it with the dagger. And sliced the twine at nape and knees.

  Now for the clothes. Jeans rolled down to the thighs, boxer shorts steeped in blood. I tugged at each pant leg, pulling them past each shoeless foot. A shirt and vest, each in tatters,
were next. All that was left to remove was the boy’s …

  Everything seemed to be happening at quarter speed, in another dimension. I was at the sink, robotically washing and wringing out a sponge, filling a saucepan with water. It’s a girl, you fool, not a boy. I looked for something to cover the bed, eyeing first the living room drapes, then the quilted carpet. Neither would do. In the bathroom, I ripped off a clear plastic shower curtain speckled with a Milky Way of mildew, the metal hooks popping off one by one. Crammed it into the bathtub, hoping to find something under the sink to clean it with.

  Amidst hardened rags was a can of clotted Ajax and a box of steel wool with a Bulldog logo discontinued in the eighties. I cranked the taps until the water rushed hot and loud. Looked down at my feet of mud and realized I couldn’t feel them. Ripped off my shoes and socks, rolled up my pants, stepped into the tub. Began scrubbing with a manic intensity I hadn’t felt in years, not since being locked away.

  When the curtain was clean, I slipped it carefully beneath the young girl. She was short, stout, cherub-faced. Twelve, if I had to guess. Small tattoos of animals on each shoulder: a cinnamon bear on her right, a butterscotch mountain lion on her left. A ring of red sores on her wrists—like chilblains, that Dickensian ailment—and every fingernail broken, filled with blackish blood.

  I had barely finished sponging her down when I heard scratches on the front door, as if made by a dog that wanted in. I stopped what I was doing, listened. No, the scratches were coming from the very top of the door or the roof … I was heading toward the sound when the door swung wide open. A shadowy shape stood on the threshold, stock-still. Haloed by a full moon. A Mountie in a fur coat? A bear on its hind legs? I moved closer.

  Nothing there, nothing but the cursed … fallout, afterglow. Alcoholic hallucinosis or Wernicke’s disease or Korsakoff’s syndrome or Jolliffe’s encephalopathy. Or just plain old-fashioned madness. I shut my mind down. The trick, I’d learned long ago, was to reset, refocus, pick up where I left off. They couldn’t catch you if you didn’t stop. I hurled my body against the door, closing it against the rising wind. An antique-looking brass key was in the lock, which I turned.