The Extinction Club (46 page)

The next thing I remember is the solid ground of a clearing on the far shore. Remnants of an unused road, said Céleste, which someone had tried to clear with a bulldozer until someone else told him to stop. It was snow-covered but had wide ridges and furrows that the van’s tires were able to grip. A mile or so on, the trees closing in, we passed a crumbling cinder-block foundation for a house that was never built.

“Where does this lead?” I asked. To a freeway? The interstate?”

“We don’t call them freeways in Canada. Or interstates either. It goes to Lac St-Nicolas. We should be there in twenty minutes.”

“Twenty minutes Canadian?”

She looked at the dash clock and speedometer. “Or longer. You should have a calendar in here, speed you’re going.”

I couldn’t go any faster. It was murderous terrain, up and down gullies, over fallen logs and branches. Twice the van sunk to the back bumpers in black mudholes that lay under the deceptive snow. The studded tires spun as though in oil. A Caterpillar, I was sure, couldn’t have pulled us out, von Guericke’s vacuum principle being what it is, but each time we prised the truck out with logs as levers and branches as mats, I lunging, Céleste rocking the wallowing vehicle as the wheels spun out gouts of cold mud. Much of it onto me.

“What are we going to do on Lac St-Nicolas?” I asked, back behind the wheel, wiping my face with slimy, peat-scented gloves.

“My grandmother’s plane is there. I hope.”

“And we’re going to do … what with it?”

She dug into her side pocket and held up a ring of gold keys. “What do you think? If it’s not there, we’ll drive across the lake.”

I paused to think about this.
Is madness contagious?
“Are you … all right, Céleste? How do you feel about … you know …”

“About what?”

“About what happened.” I didn’t dare spell anything out. The cousins, I was pretty sure, had vanished into a dark hole, as utterly and completely as if the devil had snatched them down to hell by the heels. But had there been a cougar?

“You mean what happened to Baz and Cude? The fall-ins?”

Okay, at least that happened
. “Yeah.”

Céleste paused to think about this as we bounced along. A long pause, at least for her. “I feel like … like a fish released into a stream.” She put her hand to her mouth, as if about to throw up. “Or a duck trapped under the ice who’s been set free.” She coughed into her mittens, a barking, brassy cough. Bronchitis? Croup?

“You okay?”

“Or … like I’ve been strapped to a bomb and the last wire’s been cut and the ticking stops.”

An unexpected wind howled through the trees, seemed to push us forward, deeper into the forest. The path grew smoother but narrower, twisting and turning randomly. We wove in and around large boulders and towering pine, spruce, fir. Finally the path disappeared altogether in veins of scrawny
saplings—either burnt or drowned—and a copse of elderly crippled maples, trunks knotted and knurled from surviving disease. The old van, snorting and twitching, plodded on.

In the early twilight, everything seemed to have a supernatural clarity: I marvelled at the way every mound of snow, every branch and boulder seemed distinct as if framed in black, as if the entire landscape were a series of paintings executed with superhuman skill. I looked at Céleste and saw, as though in time-lapse photography, the same degree of detail, all the lines present and future in her young and old face …

With a patch of the lake in view, its surface blindingly white, the Vanagon stalled. I ground and pumped, but her heart was dead. If only I’d taken her in for repairs. This will cost us our lives.

“Forget it,” said Céleste, pointing. I squinted, sheltering my eyes from the setting sun. Out on the lake, or perhaps on the shore, was a small blue-and-white craft. A boat, I thought, which would be of no use to us. Beyond that was a small redand-white cottage, candy-striped.

“Do you have the rifle?” she asked.

I’d forgotten it. A stupendously stupid thing to do. I waited for some words from my father, but no words came. I opened the glovebox, pulled out the plastic .38.

“Does the battery still work?” she asked.

I switched on my left blinker. “Yeah, why?”

“Can you put the flasher and siren on?”

“Yes, but—”

“I know the guy down there. We’ve got to try to … well, distract him, confuse him, throw up some smoke.”

From underneath Céleste’s seat I once again grabbed the portable beacon light. I plugged the wire into the cigarette
lighter and set the cherry onto the roof. Then flicked two switches.

“Who is it?”

“Take your coat,” she said as the siren sounded and the red light revolved.

“Keep it, I’m fine.” Adrenalin had numbed me from the cold.

“Take it,” she repeated, her body shaking, her words leaving a vapour trail.

We climbed out of the van and highstepped downhill through thigh-deep snow that was crusted on top. Just punching through it took a lot of strength, so I took small steps so that Céleste could follow in the holes I had left. As we reached the frozen lake I could see a long, snow-free lane bisecting it. At the near end of it was the blue-and-white craft. A headless man in black stood beside it, his top half lost under the opened engine cowling.

It was not a boat, but a plane. With short “skis” under the wheels like flat metal shoes. When the pilot saw us he slammed the cowling shut, tossed a cigarette onto the ice. From under his reaper’s hood he looked toward the blinking van, hesitated a few seconds, then climbed into the cockpit.

“Run!” Céleste rasped. “Don’t let him get away!”

I ran hard, into the teeth of the wind, slip-sliding across the ice, waving the pistol and screaming out battle cries like a backward Indian. My face, I’d almost forgotten, was warpainted with mud. The pilot put his hands in the air.

« 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?”