The Extinction Club

by Jeffrey Moore

  « Can you give us a lift? » I shouted. I was panting, gasping, like a fish breathing poisonous oxygen.

  The man shook his hooded head, made sounds I couldn’t make out. Spit-filled, Donald Duck sounds. He was looking not at me, but beyond me. I turned round and saw Céleste running pegleggedly toward us, clutching the collar of her coat round her throat with one hand, looking like she was about to drop.

  The dull sound of distant motors. A mile or two away, red and black snowmobiles swarmed on the shoreline like red and black ants.

  « We need a ride, Inspecteur Déry! » said Céleste in a hoarse high yelp. «Now! Otherwise we’ll have to blow your head off! »

  Inspecteur Déry, obviously off-duty, wore a black leather jacket over his hoodie, all zippers and snaps, with “Aigles Noirs” written on the back. He turned to face Céleste and stood up. He was a big man my age with a slightly houndish sag to his face. His big sloppy body looked like it was about to fall over.

  « Do you know why your grandmother sold me this plane? » he said, his words squishing saliva. He put his hands back down to his side. « Dirt cheap? »

  « Put your hands back up, » Céleste shouted.

  « So that I wouldn’t go near you again. Or my sons either. So that I’d keep an eye out for you. » He smiled. « But since she’s dead now, and since your friend’s holding a water pistol … »

  A revolver was coming out of his pocket as I aimed and futilely fired. A thunderous shot rang out, but from another direction, from the cottage. My eyes darted to Céleste. She was fine, it seemed, unhit, but her eyes bulged as she gaped at Déry. I turned. The blast had scalped him and shattered his teeth and all but severed his neck. A clot of hairy grey matter hung from his upper lip and smoke poured out of a hole where his nose used to be. He stumbled out of the cockpit, arms in front like a blindman, still holding the gun.

  His legs folded like marionette limbs as he fell into the snow face down. Or half face down. The white around him turned to red, like drippings from a child’s Popsicle.

  “Get down!” I jumped in front of Céleste, arms raised. Grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her to the ground as a second blast rent the air, louder than the first. It came not from the cottage but the opposite direction, from the van, and the spray of lead found its target.

  After a splinter of time, too small to register on the brain, too soon to feel pain, a third and final blast came from the cottage, one to help not harm us.

  XXXII

  I’ve had visions before but nothing quite like this. Nothing on this scale. It begins with a fade, like theatre lights coming down, but goes more to grey than to black. A pain inside my rib cage jolts me, fills me with light and heat— balls of fire, showers of sparks, flame-wheels of blue and red. And then night—my mind fills with night. No stars, nothing. I have no thoughts, nothing rational at least, only the power to feel, like an animal. The chemicals of thought, what’s left of them, kick in and I realize we’ve fallen, into black winter water. From a plane? I open my eyes and see a blue light shining high above me with an almost churchly cast, as if, impossibly, it were slanting down from a stained-glass window. My senses are sharpened, and everything they record is clear, magic-realistically vivid. Something in the commotion of my parts has turned my eyes into telescopes and ears into stethoscopes. In the forest on all sides I can see each tree, the texture of its bark: the rugged fissured coats of maples; the patchy grey-browns of pines; the peeling white paper of birches; the dark grey ridges of elms (or their ghosts because elms are all dead). I see the prismatic colours of icicles hanging from their highest branches, the hexagonal crystals of their snowflakes. But all is contained within frames as small as postage stamps, jagged squares that embrace the beginning and the end of things. A white-throated sparrow flies overhead and I hear its song as if it’s perched on my shoulder, singing into my ear. The discordant calls of other birds—blue jays, chickadees, ravens—merge in a soft melody inside me. A glossy-coated mink (or muskrat or otter) swims beneath my eyes and I hear the swish of its dark chocolate body—the sound, I am sure, the animal itself hears! The world begins to whirl, and I see a candy-cane cottage of red and white, an airplane of turquoise and cream, a lion of butterscotch and black. I am astride the animal as in a merry-go-round and hear its heart-breaking moans. Black vortices of water, bloodied swords of ice, armies of hunters hunting me—all is blended and blurred, caught in this gyrating mass. When it stops I see that same blue light, scattering jewels onto the snow. A distant bell tolls the hour. I fade again, but reawaken to find myself back home, standing before the cemetery gate.

  “We made it! We escaped!” I cry to my partner in crime, my precocious little murderess. But I do not see her, and she does not hear me.

  So here I lie beneath a canopy of trees and fix my eyes on the darkening heaven. And I will hear the stroke of six but not the stroke of seven.

  Céleste is bleeding, I am bleeding, our blood joins in a pool at our feet. The distant engines are louder, the rival snipers silent. I smile at Céleste and she gives me a laughing, full-toothed grin, like the one she wore in the photo with her grandmother.

  “Are you hurt?” I ask, but there is little voice in it. “Can I take a look at your wounds?”

  She doesn’t seem to hear. “Where to?” she says, looking heavenward. “Neptune?”

  “You know how to fly this thing?”

  She remains silent, studying the instrument panel. Fiddles with the floor-mounted stick, moving it in all directions. Pushes on a small black button on the right, then gets out onto the ice and pulls the prop through twice by hand. She climbs back in, grimacing, and turns a switch to “Both.” Eases the throttle all the way forward. Nothing happens. “Oil pressure, oil temp, RPMs,” she tells herself. Tries again and the prop begins to turn. Slowly, dream slowly, we begin to wobble along the lake as if wounded.

  The black and red snowmobiles are now upon us, within firing range. Bullets whip the surface of the ice like hailstones. A tire explodes. A mirror shatters. There is a rich tang of gunpowder, like the smell of fireworks. Céleste rights the plane and we pick up speed, faster and faster, a fifty-yard dash along a snow-free lane. At the finish line she pushes the stick forward and the plane’s tail lifts up. Then back on the stick and we begin to rise.

  Gazing down, we see muzzleflashes as hunters continue to shoot at us from the shoreline. We hear a sharp metallic ping and dip suddenly over a small island, brushing the crown of its sole tree. One of our wings begins to leak.

  But we rise up again, like endangered birds, like birds seen only if believed in, over treetops and streams, mountains and marshes, higher and higher, into the setting sun and animal-shaped clouds (“White Whale, White Lion, Polar Bear!” I cry), following the path of winged predecessors (“Eskimo Curlew, Labrador Duck, Passenger Pigeon!” she cries), and it comes to me, like something resurfacing from memory, that I will never see anything more, ever, but what lies in this heavenly mist.

  XXXIII

  I would’ve flown that plane to the end of the Earth, through all eternity — but it wouldn’t start, I couldn’t get it off the ground, I couldn’t remember how!!

  I tried & tried with hands that wouldn’t stop shaking, pumping the primer, pulling the prop through again & again, pushing the throttle all the way forward … I stopped when I saw something flying overhead — a blaze-orange & blue helicopter, like a giant candy-coloured dragonfly. And then two police sleds, one red, one black.

  When I looked at Nile in the rear cockpit he was slumped in his seat & blood was trickling out his mouth & down his throat. “We made it, we escaped,” he said softly. But nothing more. I screamed his name over & over but he wouldn’t answer. He’d bled to death. A bullet had entered his rib cage. I’m sorry, Nile, for not knowing how to save you.

  A service was held at the Church of St. Davnet & I thought no one would come. But I was wrong. Lawyer Volpe came & sat in the front pew & the sweet old man cried his eyes out. In a gentle voice h
e said it was such a shame because Nile was just starting to “turn things around.” He also said he didn’t like the idea of Nile being buried in this Quebec mud, far from the family vault in New Jersey where his father lay. I told him that he wanted to be buried here with the other rovers & renegades, next to Moon, and that it was a question of respecting a person’s final wishes. Lawyer Volpe believed me & I’m glad because I was telling the truth (except for the bit about Moon). He asked me if I knew who killed Nile & I said no, but that it was either the cops or Jacques Déry, Jr. “The police say he killed his father as well, accidentally?” “I guess so,” I replied, though I later found out this was impossible. Déry Sr. was killed with a Nitro .500 & so was Déry Jr. But Nile wasn’t. Lawyer Volpe put his hand on my shoulder & asked if he could speak to me later about a “private matter.”

  Beautiful Brooklyn, with legs as skinny as a praying mantis, was sitting next to him & she cried & cried too. I haven’t talked to her yet, but I will. The peewee banker & his beanpole son came, as did the entire village of St. Davnet, or almost. People talked to me, including two guys my age who’d never talked to me before.

  I didn’t read anything during the ceremony, like a Psalm or something, because I don’t believe in God, but I slipped a card inside Nile’s coffin:

  The two Weskarini Indians, the anarchist & artist, told me they were very sorry about what happened to Nile. It was the first time I’d heard the artist speak. The anarchist said that the Cave was “a pyre awaiting the torch, waiting to be roasted to ash & fed into the sky.” And that they were “all over it.” I made them promise on the bones of their ancestors.

  Earl came too & he gave me a big hug & a bag of black licorice & offered me a job at the store. I thanked him & said I would certainly think about it. He pointed at my shoulder & I said it was just a scratch, that a Kevlar vest got most of it. An old man with a white beard & duct tape on his shoes & bicycle clips on both ankles & red long johns peeping out of both pant legs was standing beside him & it took me a while to figure out it was Mr. Llewellyn! He kissed me on the forehead & pressed something into my hand: an American twenty-dollar bill folded into a tiny hard square. He told me he’d been “released” & that Nile had promised him a job at the church & I said I would keep that promise. I asked him if he needed a place to stay & he said no, he was living in a “candy-cane cottage” on Lac St-Nicolas. With a “Nitro for protection.” He winked at me & I understood in a flash. What a dummy I am! Why didn’t I think of that before? I was about to ask him more — and to thank him — but I was interrupted by a woman with crutches & a cast on one leg that went from hip to toe.

  It was Solange Lacoursière — the vet from St. Mad who’s not really a vet but a forensic mammalogist. She kissed me on both cheeks & said how sorry she was about everything that happened — almost everything, that is — & I said how sorry I was about everything that happened to her. “But … what happened exactly?” I asked. A traffic “accident,” she replied, making quotation marks with her fingers. It happened in the parking lot of the Cave after she met “Mr. Nightingale.” Which is why she never replied to his phone message — she was in the hospital. “Were you in love with him?” I blurted out stupidly, wishing I could’ve taken it back. She didn’t answer. Just gave me a slow smile & asked if I wanted to study wildlife detection when I “grew up.” I said that I didn’t know & that I was already grown up. She asked if I still wanted to set up a sanctuary in the church & I said I didn’t know that either. How? According to Gran, it would cost five thousand a month. What I didn’t say is that I was going to be so spectacularly screwed up starting like, tonight, that I wouldn’t be able to do anything except maybe collect stamps. That I wouldn’t be able to live with the guilt of getting Nile killed, or my anger over his leaving the world while I still had to stay. Solange asked if I’d heard about the new cougar sightings & I said no. I was interested in what she was saying, I really was, but I kept looking around for Mr. Llewellyn, who seemed to have vanished into thin air. I was also on the lookout for Baz’s thugs & triggers, who I was sure would come & spoil things. But they stayed away. All but one, that is.

  You may wonder how a ceremony could be held at a church that was so badly wrecked & robbed. Because in the days before the funeral a small forest of people arrived out of nowhere — including two look-alike brothers with bib overalls in a flat-bed truck, and two look-alike sisters with paint-splattered tools — & repaired everything, or almost (not the stained glass, not the pine floor) & while they worked they listened to Mr. Llewellyn’s cassettes.

  And some of the stolen stuff began to come unstolen, like pressing rewind. I don’t know who pressed it & no one seems to know. Everyone was super-nice, super-neighbourly. They said that the arrival of my friend “Inspecteur Nightingale” was a godsend, a “bénédiction du ciel.”

  I know I said that I couldn’t go on, that I was going to leave in an Exit Bag after we ridded this planet of a certain black heart. Or two. Or three. But I changed my mind. Not because I feel better about myself or the world or human beings — it’ll take more than a few repairs & tears to do that — or because I love grouchy old ladies like Gran & hope to live long enough to be one. No. It’s because a spent-wing angel saved me, and I don’t want it to be all for nothing.

  And yet … it might all well be. A girl my age, dressed in a grey blazer & turtleneck that matched her smoky grey eyes, kept staring at me, glaring at me, from the back of the church. She hung around to the end, the last one to leave, and I knew she was waiting for me. “You’re dead meat — you’re going to get cut open like a fish, bled like a deer,” she said in a flat voice, like a voice underwater.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The Laurentians, of course, is a real place and well worth a visit. But the characters and almost all other places mentioned in this story are imaginary. I would like to thank Céleste Jonquères, head of the Quebec Wildlife Detective Agency, for her assistance in researching this novel. I would like to, but she doesn’t exist, nor does the agency. But maybe one day, with any luck, something like them will. For information on the bear bile business, I am indebted to the World Society for the Protection of Animals and Quebec’s Natural Resources & Wildlife Ministry. Despite their lukewarmth toward my original titles (The Extinction Carol and The Extinction Choir), I would like to thank Marlène, Laura, Nicole, David, Jon and Michele for their counsel and complicity.