The Extinction Club by Jeffrey Moore Read Free Book Online Page A

broken. I feel like I swallowed a sleeping bird that woke up then panicked & is now thrashing its wings inside me. When I try to talk nothing comes out. But even if I get better, which is not likely, I’m never going to speak to anyone again.

    I can’t stop crying & the crying has a muffled, drowning sound. I feel like a duck trapped under the ice, its eyes frozen open, begging whoever walks above it to free it. Now. Please. I’m nearly 15 but I feel like I got mileage on for 115. I don’t plan on making it to 16. I’m going out in my grandmother’s Exit Bag. Before Christmas.
    The family tree
    Ends with me.

    I’m feeling a bit better. And slowly starting to “get my bearings.” I’m in a cabin in the middle of nowhere — from the tiny glimpse I get out the window it may be on that strip of land by the river with hunting cabins that crazy man Brioche built but can never rent because the land’s flooded half the time & theroads aren’t cleared in winter. Plus I’ve lost my voice. Which I might’ve mentioned already. I’m here with this strange American dude who seems to be a doctor who’s got a night telescope or whatever it’s called, black tar in a jar, a stamp collection & generally jumpy behaviour. He chain-drinks coffee from morning to night & paces up & down like an expectant father. Before going to sleep he writes in a small notebook or reads a paperback novel with no covers called Broken Wind. I asked him why it has no covers & he said that it’s probably the result of it being flung across the room many times.
    Every day I think up a new back-story for him. A heart surgeon who lost his nerve in the middle of an operation. A doctor on the run, fleeing a malpractice suit. A jailbreaker convicted of practising with forged medical credentials. An escaped mental patient who thinks he’s a physician. But he might not even be a doctor. For all I know he could be President of the Jeffrey Dahmer Fan Club.
    I don’t know what he expects from me when I get better — if I get better. He obviously took my clothes off & God knows what else he did. But if he saved my life, I should be grateful, I guess, because it might allow me to do two major things before I die. More later, he’s back with more firewood …

    With fuzzy vision I’m looking at water stains on the ceiling & one of them seems to be turning into the man with the orange gloves, but with his face upside down, mouth on top, eyes below.

    Still trying to figure out who exactly I’m rooming with. I know he’s an American from his accent (he says “HOWse” and “badderies” and “huh” instead of “eh” and “zee” instead of “zed” and “Eye-rack” instead of “Iraq”), but he also speaks Parisian French with machine-gun speed, especially when he swears.
    I fed him a line about a girl gang sticking me because I was a fat stuck-up know-it-all science geek who prefers reading to cellphones & texting & cloneclothes. And he swallowed it. If he finds out what really happened he’ll only screw things up, he’ll end up blabbing it all over the place & getting us both killed.
    It’s not that he’s stupid or anything but he seems, I don’t know, like a fish out of water or a rabbit in New York City. Like a baby could take candy from him. He’s certainly no match for Alcide Bazinet …
    He thinks I’m a poor little mute girl & I’ll let him go on thinking that. I’ll be like one of those Benedictine nuns in their refectories. Besides, I’m so painkilled I couldn’t speak if I wanted to. If he only knew what a little chatterbox I am.
    If I can get out of bed, I’ll root around next time he’s gone, try to find out more about him. He won’t even tell me where he’s from. Keeps saying he’s from Neptune.

   V   
    C éleste was snoring softly as I awoke in the pre-dawn dark. Nightmares had raided my sleep, caveman dreams in which I was rubbing two sticks together, nose flaring, eyes roaming and ears straining for hidden