The Extinction Club (2 page)

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.

There was not nearly enough light so I moved one of the stand-up brass lamps, whose frayed extension cord buzzed and sparked before shorting out. I cursed again, thunderously, before going back to the kitchen for something to mend it, something I had glimpsed among the scattered items on the floor: a half-roll of green electrician’s tape. I re-spliced and re-plugged, then tilted the lampshade to cast as much light as possible onto my operating table. Around the girl’s face a ghostly blue after-image of the lamp floated like an aura.

On her abdomen, on the left side, was a gash just below the rib cage. Dark blood welled out, slowly but steadily. The other cut was in the inner right thigh, in the middle of the
longest muscle of the body, the sartorius, which runs from the outside of the hip to the inside of the knee. There the blood was bright red, pumped directly from the heart, oozing out at each contraction.

Terrific. A bedful of blood and a corpse in my cabin. A
girl’s
corpse. My ex and her lawyer are going to have a field day with this.

On weak knees I began to sway, and blood thunder pounded against my temples. Was I about to lose it? I shook my head violently, a dozen times, trying to regain some clarity. When that didn’t work I banged my forehead against the door, not once, not twice, but three times. I opened the door, let the wind sting my face with sharp pellets so cold they felt hot. Then stepped out into snow.

From my glovebox, beside a plastic .38, I pulled out a pair of reading glasses and from under the passenger seat, my father’s survival kit. I unsnapped it for the first time and peered in: a shake-to-charge flashlight, radio/lantern, first-aid kit, hand-cranked cellphone charger. But no cellphone. Toolbox, I’d need my toolbox. I rummaged under the passenger seat, but it wasn’t there. Stolen? No, it was never under the passenger seat. It was by the inside hub of the back wheel. I grabbed that and my nylon sleeping bag.

Under the mended lamp I examined the contents of the first-aid kit. It was state-of-the-art, like everything my father owned. I pulled out two bandage compresses, unfolded them, and placed one over each wound, applying pressure with each hand. The bandages were soon saturated, so I opened up packets of gauze and placed them layer upon layer over top.

The bleeding wouldn’t stop.
Think, try to remember, scrape the bottom of what’s left of your brain
. There are twenty-six pressure points on the body, thirteen on either
side. But where, and which ones should be pressed? I placed the heel of my hand directly on the crease in the groin area, mid-bikini line, praying this was the right spot, and applied pressure. The idea was to close the femoral artery, but it wasn’t working … I put my knuckles to my lips, nearing the panic point, smelling and tasting her warm coppery blood.

A paste of cayenne pepper, it came to me, can stop the bleeding in seconds. According to old wives, at least. But I couldn’t remember seeing any spices at all, either here or at my neighbour’s.

With the flat surface of my fingertips, I pressed directly over the artery and applied additional pressure with the heel of my other hand. Counted to sixty, to ninety. Okay, slightly better … To one twenty, one eighty … much better. I let out a breath that felt like it had been held for the full three minutes.

Now what? Elevate the wounds, above the level of the heart. Slow the flow, speed the clotting. I looked around. From the sofa I grabbed a cushion to slip underneath her but quickly changed my mind.
Errore molto grande
if she has fractures. So I dropped it on the floor, hefted up one end of the bed, kicked the cushion underneath. Then got the other cushion and did the same on the other side.

In the kitchen I turned on the tap full blast onto a spoon lying in the sink, which deflected the water up into my face. I wiped my eyes with my fist, filled a large metal cauldron with water and put it on the stove. I did the same with an old tea kettle, a heavy cast-iron affair, flushing out an alarmed spider. I struck a match and turned two switches. Propane. How long would that last?

From an inside pocket of my duffle bag I pulled out a Best Western sewing kit, with a needle and cardboard spool of
black thread. I tossed them into the pot of water. From the toolbox I took out a pair of tweezers and needle-nose pliers. Clamps, I’d need clamps …

On hands and knees on the kitchen floor, I pawed through the mishmash of gear. Nothing. I returned to the bed and stared at the gash in the groin, which was releasing streamlets of red. The numbers 9-1-1 began to bounce inside my head like lottery balls.
How can you possibly save her? Someone as spectacularly screwed up as you. You can’t even save yourself.
There was no phone in my cabin, but there might be one in my neighbour’s …

I’d forgotten, already, how dark it can get in the north country. I looked up at the sky and wondered whether my eyes were closed. A blanketing coffin jet, wind out of the northwest pushing black clouds across a black sky. In the faint light of the flashlight I could make out only the outlines of brush and conifers, of huge lumps of rock like fairybook beasts.