The Extinction Club (36 page)

It came upon a midnight clear, with loud engine noises coming from the direction of the cemetery. I peered out the grandmother’s window. A phalanx of high-powered snowmobiles had formed, five of them in a line, all shiny black, revving their engines. One by one, as in a military show, they peeled off the line and roared through the cemetery, tossing up snow and noise and diesel fumes, weaving single-file through the tombstones. The last one, with two riders and a provincial logo on the side, was dragging something white, hard to distinguish because of the snow, no bigger than a hat.

Two of the vehicles left the formation and zoomed around the perimeter of the pond, in opposite directions, on what looked like a collision course. No such luck. They slowed and stopped a few feet away from each other, then turned abruptly, accelerating across the pond, back toward their comrades. This surprised me. The marsh and pond were frozen, but how frozen? Would it hold all that weight? It did.

After a while the revellers abandoned their steeplechase and congregated in a five-star circle. My hope was that they were planning to go back wherever they came from, but they shut down their engines and dismounted. The brief silence
was followed by music, if that’s the right word: bottom-heavy Quebec goth. Do snowmobiles have sound systems? A bonfire soon lit up the sky.

With my surplus Russian nightscope I tried to see what they had been dragging. The first object I focused on was a silver blaster stuffed with D batteries, and the second a white-tuqued man twenty feet beyond. He pulled down his pants next to a gravestone, to the applause and laughter of his friends, and sprayed an angel with urine. The sound of a chainsaw was next. I didn’t need night vision to see what the man was about to cut down: a rare white pine born before his grandparents.

“Céleste! Céleste!”

Her bedroom door opened. “I see them,” she said calmly.

“Get in the attic. Now. And stay there. Take the pistol, take the Taser.”

“Where are you going? What are you going to do?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Don’t, Nile. That’s what they want you to do. They’ll kill you if you go out there, say it was a hunting accident.”

I flew down the stairway four steps a leap and picked up the phone. Dialled 122 then hung up. That was the emergency number in France. My mind was not working right. Dialled 911 but there was no dial tone. Wires snipped? I hurled myself back up the stairs, to my bedroom closet, grabbed a certain article from its hanger. Hesitated. Put it on. Should I take the rifle? I don’t even know how to use it. I took the rifle. And a flashlight.

Back downstairs and into the kitchen, hyperventilating. I paused to compose myself, counted slowly to eleven. Took two stiff belts of Christmas absinthe.

“Turn the music off!” I shouted in English. Then in French, twice, three times. To no effect. « Now! » I pointed the Winchester at the boom-box guy. « I said turn the music off! » I shone my light in his eyes. He was Asian, perhaps Chinese, with a patchy spade beard, greased-back hair and a face like a potato that had been in the ground too long.
came into my head:
nánkàn
, ill-favoured, literally hard to look at. “
Gu
ā
n bi y
ī
n lè
!” I tried. He turned the music off.

With the rifle slung nuzzle-down from my shoulder, attempting to look rangerly, I strode toward the pine killer. As the others, with their helmets on, sniggered and yelped and pranced around the fire, I wondered if some base part of their brains was recalling ten-thousand-year-old rituals, if I was seeing the genetic wheel going backward.

I stepped through the powdery snow, my parka making small rustling noises like a battery-operated toy. From five or six feet away, I aimed my light at the woodcutter’s head. All I could see was stainless steel and a white tuque. « Turn that off! Now! And lay it on the ground! »

The man waved the saw in the air, gunning it for good measure. He either didn’t hear me or didn’t feel like laying it down. I didn’t ask which. I took my rifle by the barrel and swung it like a baseball bat, reflexively stepping into it, rotating my hips and shoulders, extending my arms and pulling the rifle through the strike zone. The way my uncle taught me.

He raised the roaring saw to protect himself and there were sparks as metal hit metal. The chainsaw kicked back on him and he howled, holding his forearm. I swung again, this time with an upper-cut swing, hitting him square under the
jaw. His head snapped back and his tuque flew off, snagged in branches. His knees buckled and he staggered like a drunk before falling head-first into the trunk of the tree he was trying to cut down. The saw lay on the ground beside him, in snow, inert.

My hands were stinging, throbbing, as if thrust inside a hornet’s nest, and blood was roaring in my ears. I was breathing not air but an inflammable gas: my head was on fire. I had to get away from this guy before I did something worse. Three strikes and you’re out. In my mind I saw his eye dangling out of its socket on the greyish pink string of the optic nerve. I blinked hard, and blinked again, trying to chase the image. I slung the rifle back over my shoulder and headed back toward the others, my pulse pounding like a racehorse’s. All I could think of to hold off this show of madness was to keep walking, keep moving. Let the voices and images die.

By the bonfire the three Stone Agers watched me, without retreating, without fear. Why should they be afraid? An attacking force, a history teacher once told me, should be three times the size of the defending force.

« Well I’ll be dipped in shit, » said the tallest one. « If it ain’t the Lone Ranger. »

I strained to see a billy-goat beard behind the tinted visor, but even after flashlighting it I couldn’t be sure. But I recognized the nasal twang. And the smell of beer and sweat and animal blood trapped inside his clothes.

« The butt stuffer with the prissy Parisian accent who eats micro-veggies. I
knew
you were a leaf-eater, moment I laid eyes on you. » He let out a hoggish grunt.

The man beside him, who didn’t join in the ensuing brays of laughter, said, « Gervais, you didn’t say nothin’ about no game warden. » He was staring at my parka. I shone
my flashlight through his smoked visor. It was Darche, the hockey player with the Ferrari. Slung across his back was a bow and a quiver of arrows. « If this hits the papers … »

I saw movement in my peripheral vision. The chainsawer was making his way toward me, zigzaggedly, clutching his wrist. I threw my beam in his face. Like Gervais, he had a currentless, flatlined look in his eyes. Eyes that were still in their sockets, thank Christ. His head was hairless, and his nose beaked sharply. A fierce overbite made him look like a snapping turtle.

He unleashed a phrase I didn’t understand, what I’m guessing is the direst oath in the Québécois canon, followed by an arc of puke, luminous over the fire. He removed his snowmobile glove and wiped the blood and vomit from his mouth with his bare hand, flicking it into the flames. « Thanks for your help, Gervais, » he spluttered. « You yellow-bellied sapsucker. I’m outta here. I ain’t goin’ back to jail, and I ain’t doin’ no community service neither. I didn’t know he was the goddamn law. »

« Don’t be a hole, » said Gervais. « You crybaby whiny ass. You scared of a uniform? »

The man held his jaw, groaned. « I feel like fuck on fire. »

Gervais smiled, turned to me. « You ought a be wearin’ orange, Mr. Forest Ranger. Mr. Ecoholic. Get yourself shot in that getup. »

« No one said anything about a ranger, » said hockey player Darche. « I thought he was some sort of churchman. A pushover, you said. Who we were just going to
intimidate
. But it doesn’t look like we
succeeded
, does it. »

Oh yeah, you’ve succeeded, I thought. I’m intimidated—terrorized in fact. But the terror and danger fascinated me somehow, and I stepped back from it to get a better look.

« He ain’t no ranger, skunk dump, » said Gervais. « How many times do I have to tell you? He’s here to get the bishop. And protect that fat four-eyed mole. Dickless Tracy. I know who you are, squaw lover, and you’re not from France. You’re from the States, am I right? »

This is not what I wanted to hear. Where was he getting this information? From the four-eyed mole? From Earl? I said nothing. I shoved my hands deep in the pockets of my parka, to prevent him from seeing how much they were shaking.

« What’s the matter, rifleman? » said Gervais, watching me closely. « Got the shakes? »

I stretched both hands out in front of him, angrily, relieved to see that although I seemed to feel them trembling there was no sign of it. Anger chases fear.

Gervais removed his helmet and wiped his sweating dome. « The feds send you, fuckweed, or you a goddamn bounty hunter? »

I waited for the words to unsilt themselves, strained to grasp Gervais’s meaning. Had Bazinet run afoul of American law? Lines from the book I translated,
A Vacation to Die For
, came back to me. « All you need to know, pond slime, is that I’m takin’ him back, dead or alive. As soon as he walks. And you know why. »

« That uniform don’t fool me. ’Cause I know who it belongs to. Who you really workin’ for? Yourself? »

I didn’t know what to say. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police? I cleared my throat, took a deep breath. « Snowmobiles on private land, let me remind you— »

« This is public land. »

« Snowmobiles on public land, let me remind you, must be registered and display a decal. And snowmobilers riding
on public roads must have a driver’s licence and … possess a snowmobile safety certificate. »

Gervais brushed away this smoke with a laugh, but it seemed to impress the Chinaman, who began to apologize in Mandarin. The only law he was breaking, I told him, was a Chinese one: wearing more than three colours at once.

« Who you workin’ for? » Gervais interrupted.

I glanced back at the rectory, toward the attic window, wishing Céleste were here to prompt me. It was a mistake, a rookie mistake. Gervais followed my gaze to the window, from which a nightscope protruded.

« I’m with the … » I was about to say the Department of the Interior but he seemed to know that was untrue. « The World Justice Bureau, » I said.
The World Justice Bureau?

« The
what
? »

I took another deep breath, steadied my voice. « Wildlife Detachment. Unit commander. »

« What the hell is— »

« So listen up, plowboy. I don’t want to see you anywhere near this church again. Not in your plow, not on your Ski-Doo. If I catch you or any of your peckerwood pals within ten yards of Céleste Jonquères, I’ll kill you. You’ve already had one crack at her. You won’t get another. »

« The fuck’re you talkin’ about? I never laid a hand on her. Who said anything about harmin’ the girl? If you think it was me who cut her, it wasn’t. »

« Who said anything about cutting her? »

No reply, at least nothing intelligible. As he grunted and snorted I remembered other lines from the book.

« You go near her again, you can count your remaining minutes on one hand—and you’ll still have some fingers left over when you’re done. So get lost. Piss off. Now. » I unslung
my bloodied rifle but didn’t cock it or anything because I didn’t know how.

For a few elongated seconds, Gervais stood stock-still. He said nothing until the Chinaman began talking to me, politely, something about a
wù jiě
, misunderstanding. « Shut your trap, rice rat! » said Gervais, spittle flying from his lips.

In a low murmur of grumbles, following Gervais’s lead, everyone began packing up their things. They gunned their engines, one by one, before roaring off, leaving me finger salutes and foul exhaust. The last salute, which dripped blood, looked strangely familiar. Its owner had made the gesture twice before, I suddenly remembered, from a yellow Hummer.

Are these the homicidal inbreds, the freelance psychopaths, that slashed and dumped Céleste? But weren’t there
five
sleds? Where was the fifth, the one with two riders?

I kicked snow on the fire before returning to the scene of the chainsaw massacre. The damage to the old pine was minimal. The moron was cutting not the trunk, but a large branch. A few feet away I spotted the long rope I had seen through the nightscope, which had been cut loose from the snowmobile. I followed it with my flashlight until discovering what was at the end of it. I closed my eyes. It was a small animal. With white fur and a red collar.