Feral Creatures Read online

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2021 by Kira Jane Buxton

  Cover design and illustration by Jarrod Taylor. Cover copyright © 2021 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  Grand Central Publishing

  Hachette Book Group

  1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10104

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  First Edition: August 2021

  Grand Central Publishing is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Grand Central Publishing name and logo is a trademark of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

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  ISBNs: 978-1-5387-3524-4 (hardcover), 978-1-5387-3523-7 (ebook)

  E3-20210730-DA-NF-ORI

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Crowlogue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Discover More

  Reading Group Guide

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Kira Jane Buxton

  For Em and Pops

  Under whose wings a great many feral creatures have found love and protection, including myself

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  Maybe it’s animalness that will make the world right again: the wisdom of elephants, the enthusiasm of canines, the grace of snakes, the mildness of anteaters. Perhaps being human needs some diluting.

  —Carol Emshwiller

  Crowlogue

  Transcribed by a black widow spider named Ra Ra

  It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single crow in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a Cheeto®.

  Okay, I might have borrowed and bastardized that line a little bit, but it’s hard to know where to begin. On a whim and a smattering of Scotch, I am writing my story. I use the term “writing” loosely given that I don’t have any fingers (oh, to have the gift of just the middle one). Where are my fingers? I hear you ask. I have a paucity of digits because I am a bird. My name is Shit Turd and I’m a Cheeto®-addicted American crow—not a species known for our literary prowess, but bah stinkbug, we should be.

  I’ve practiced and told this story—my story, our story—a bajillion times, because we need stories to survive. Stories suture up our wounds, stitch us back together. They keep our loved ones alive. They connect us all, like the mycorrhiza, the fungal web through which the trees talk. Like baby sloths or Kevin Bacon or actual bacon. Now, where to begin?

  All this shit happened, more or less.

  Call me Shit Turd.

  Writing is hard.

  My story is told often: by me, in the sylvan whisper of old oaks, peppered into misty air by songbird beaks, bubbled up in the breath of beluga whales, and shivering along the frosted strands of spiders. Even squirrels natter about it, those toilet wand–tailed, nut-scrimping, Peeping Tom fuck scamps. It matters because our stories will save us. We must remember and retell them, just like humans did before they all died out.

  All of them but one.

  In case you are wondering what a human is, they were essentially bald apes that covered their genitals with cloth and experienced incessant outrage. Holy Funyuns, everything set them off—noises, the weather, the interminable celestial mystery of what happened to their socks, but mostly other humans. They were inordinately clever. They invented magical things like pastries with holes in them and the ShamWow, and they got excited over whimsical happenings like a winged fairy who broke into their homes in the middle of the night to collect their offsprings’ teeth in exchange for cash slipped under a pillow at varying rates of inflation. They had very, very big hearts and I loved them all. Though I’ll admit they had no control over vegetables; I can’t tell you the number of times their lettuce was contaminated with Ebola.

  I stare out the window and try to channel the deep literary acumen of a dead writer (there are a lot of those now). Come to think of it, I am the only actually alive one, which automatically makes me the world’s greatest living scribe and I’m suddenly suffused with confidence. Let me catch you up on my adventures with a little fairy-tale flare…

  Once upon an apocalypse, there lived an obscenely handsome American crow named S.T., which was of course short for Shit Turd. He was given this distinguished appellation by his owner Big Jim, a larger-than-logging-machine human man who once assaulted a sign twirler dressed as the Statue of Liberty and acquired a colostomy bag for the sole purpose of filling it with Peanut M&M’s so he didn’t have to pay for concession stand candy. Big Jim and S.T., the ravishingly handsome crow, along with Dennis, the bison-hearted bloodhound, all lived together in a gorgeous castle in Seattle. One day, when Big Jim’s beautiful ice-blue eyeball fell the fuck out of his head, S.T. (always ready to seize a big adventure) didn’t have a moment of doubt or existential terror; he knew just what to do. Being a heroic, intrepid corvid and a goddamned fucking optimist, S.T. fearlessly led his best friend and bloodhound buddy Dennis into the wilds of Seattle to find a cure. There, they discovered that all the humans—whom Big Jim and he had always called MoFos—had contracted a heinous virus. Some believed the virus was transmitted through the screens of technology (the technicalities of this are convoluted, mysterious, and were explained to me by an intellectually enlightened parrot). Others believed the disease was an environmental issue and that the exploitation of nature came back to haunt them. The MoFos that hadn’t perished had devolved and changed into terrifying quasi beasts, more pungent than they’d ever been throughout their colorful history, even at Coachella. It was as if Picasso had drawn a collection of animals while handcuffed, on dental drugs, and upside down in a paddling pool of chocolate pudding. They hunted screens, smashing all the glass of the ruinous Emerald City. The natural world began to claim and conquer what was stolen from her with s
keletal claws of bramble and a mouth of moss. With no conservation, the crumbling bones of infrastructure were being devoured by ivy and wicked weeds. S.T. set about saving the domestic animals that had become trapped in homes after the extinction of the MoFos. There were great battles between beast and grosser beast. We made friends and we lost friends. I thought I might die of heartbreak. But then—praise to the Cheeto® gods!—we found the last living human on earth and I had a reason to keep hope alive. And, not to brag, but I also bravely overcame a penguin prejudice.

  Stories change every time you tell them. They grow roots, they evolve and shed dull scales for shinier skins, they grow sinuous, sun-striving tendrils and camouflage part of themselves. Many have firm origins in shit (bull or otherwise). This one starts with Shit Turd, the little black bird in a small cabin.

  This is my story about the last MoFo on earth.

  Are you up for a big adventure? Damn right you are.

  Carpe Cheeto®.

  Chapter 1

  S.T.

  A small cabin in Toksook Bay, Alaska, USA

  A bite is a very sudden thing. Cheeseburgers, Evander Holyfield, Peter Parker, the boat from Jaws, and mailmen throughout time immemorial have been ambushed by them. I was powerless, filled with hypnotic venom.

  I had been bitten by the travel bug.

  I was incurable, plagued by wanderlust fantasies of traversing the big beautiful blue. I was, you see, an American crow who yearned to see the MoFo wonders of the world. I found myself daydreaming about the dazzling Taj Mahal in its tighty-whitey hue, the haunting Incan citadel of Machu Picchu, Lady Liberty with her hostile headgear, the lusty rouge of the Golden Gate Bridge, Pisa’s topple-y tower—even fucking Stonehenge to be honest, though it had lost its mystique when Big Jim explained the rocks had simply been plopped there by unimaginative aliens. In the shimmery lagoon of my mind, I’d hop onto the downy back of Migisi, my majestic bald eagle companion and avian chauffeur since I damaged my right wing in a dramatic showdown with a deceptively glassy window. Migisi and I would soar above a velvet tapestry of continents, drinking in the rich MoFo magnificence before the vines, grass, and green swallowed it whole. I’d marvel at how MoFos had dragged their beautiful fingernails across the landscape, before the clandestine conquering of formidable elements—moisture, fungus, bacteria, and the gluey gluttony of insects—demolished it to dust. Before the bird feces corroded it all. Listen, I don’t mean to gloat, but I’ve always maintained that pigeon poop will be the end of us. Alas, the jet-setter fantasies were only to be enjoyed in minute-long bursts, because it turns out that having an infant really puts a damper on your travel plans.

  You know what else bites? Alaska. Not to be the bear of bad news, but although Alaska is beautiful, it’s also quite deadly—like a hormonal honey badger with an Uzi. Toksook Bay was an alright place to be, but it wasn’t Seattle, wasn’t where the soul of me roosted. A crispy, tea-stained map in our little cabin confirmed my suspicions—Toksook Bay is Alaska’s literal armpit. So, I hadn’t been in the armpit and our little dusty cabin long, and although I was homesick for the Starbucks logo, my heart throbbed a proud crimson that the Golden Gate Bridge could only dream of.

  Because I had Dee.

  Oh, Dee. My little Fabergé flower, whose face was an Alpine forget-me-not in full bloom. Dee, whose shy sliver of a smile was a balm for the soul. My nestling—a tiny miracle with breathing skin and Cheeto® fingers and a gorgeous bald head like a dove egg. I had fallen in love with her in a way that made the world shiver with magic. She made the nights warmer and the air smell cotton crisp and fresh, except when she farted, which put the cabin’s foundations at risk. She had canny, darting eyes and the lungs of an operatic howler monkey. It was the sort of love that rallies armies and makes one skip and caw in soprano like a helium-filled eunuch. Just imagine—a tiny, silky-skinned nestling with no teeth and no claws. And she was the last.

  The very last MoFo on earth.

  The snowy owls, Migisi (the wings beneath my wind), and I were doing our very best to provide Dee with what she needed, to keep the last MoFo alive. I was her fierce guardian, her murder, and so, I worked on her wellness, preparing to return to our Seattle safe zone at the University of Washington’s Bothell campus where I could raise her with my fellow crows, Kraai and Pressa, and teach her about my beautiful heritage of coffee, rain, weed, Kenny G, more rain, and the Seahawks, whom I’ve posthumously renamed the Seacrows.

  Five snowy owls had been the first to find Dee as an abandoned infant, alone under the strange Toksook trees on a star-stapled night. They’d worked together to lift her bassinet to our little cabin, sending for me (the MoFo-pro crow) to help them keep her alive. The alabaster owls and I spent a lot of time huddled together deliberating about how to ferry the planet’s most precious Fabergé flower across Alaska: The Last Frontier, where no man has gone before without freezing his balls off.

  It had only been days, but it soon became apparent that MoFo nestlings do not have the esophageal prowess of pelicans and should not have whole blackberries pelted down their throats. There may have been a terrifying choking incident where yours truly had to dangle over Dee’s gullet like Han Solo heroically nabbing an imperiled Lando from the Sarlacc pit.1

  Dee had the resting habits of an insomniac ant, so the five snowy owls and I were the most sleep-deprived feathereds in the history of the big beautiful blue. I witnessed The Hook—really a king among snowy owls—fall asleep midflight and smack headfirst into a quaking aspen. And then he just lay there, enjoying a moment’s peace. The Hook was an agreeable sky hunter, white as bone. I grew fond of him, even though he remained unmoved by my motion to change his name to Owlfred Hitchcock. The largest owl was Kuupa, a magnificent creature who never took her tutelary stare from Dee. Ookpik and Bristle—hypnotic brush flicks of black embellishing their magnificent bodies—both separately passed out while attempting to feed Dee blackberries (lovingly and sensibly squashed by the toes of an exhaustipated corvid). I saw both owls lose their battle with consciousness and slump onto Dee’s tiny chest to her utter hilarity. I learned to sleep on my side while being gummed until I looked like a machine-washed merkin, and even once napped upside down.

  Fruit bats ain’t got nothing on me!

  Little Wik, the smallest of the snowy owls, along with Ookpik, Bristle, and The Hook, was given the task of finding provisions. They’d bring blankets, healing herbs, fresh water, blackberries, and headless red-backed voles no matter how many times I explained this to be a cultural collision. We took turns with diaper duty, being very careful to bury her pellets away from the cabin—away from those whose noses guide glistening fangs.

  One day, as I was supposed to be plotting how the owls and I would transport my Fabergé flower to Seattle, I slipped into the warm waters of a daydream. In the dream, I was pressing a brush held in my beak to the peeling artwork of the Sistine Chapel and patching up some of Michael Angelo’s unfinished bits with a splattering of Shit Turd flair. I’m happy to report that The Creation of Adam was greatly enlivened by substituting my bloodhound bud Dennis for Adam and having the bearded man in the nightdress proffer him a Milk-Bone. In reality, I had nodded off. Because of this, I never heard her approach. It was my fault because it happened on my watch.

  Dee had been crying, cheeks salmon pink, salty streams glistening down the sides of her moon face. Just outside the cabin, white-spotted sawyers sang her a squeaky serenade. The owls and I had pulled her makeshift bed over to the window so the air could kiss skin free from the fuss of fur, and those cunning eyes could enjoy the rapturous quiver of leaves and how the light playfully painted the paper birches. She was a watcher, our little Dee. I was so tired, I didn’t notice the white-spotted sawyers abruptly silence their song. When my nictitating membranes slid open and the scene pulled into focus, Dee’s tiny eyes were on an alabaster head the size of an ottoman, looming over her face. My nestling remained silent, but her tiny chest lifted up, down, up, down, up, down—the beautiful rhythm t
hat meant she still had a chance to survive a world that had obliterated her species.

  The polar bear was female, unusually large. Her hunger announced itself on shiny saliva strings that slipped from her black jowls, fusing to the ancient sealskin blanket we had bundled Dee in that morning—a morning when she had hiccuped and giggled, swallowed beak-delivered drops of fresh water, and pulled playfully at my defective wing.

  Had I kissed her enough?

  “Don’t. Touch. Her,” I warned the pallid predator breathlessly. I was shaking, perched on the wood table next to the dusty, fat stove. The cabin was small—Dee a few frantic flaps from me—but it might as well have been the Taj Mahal. I was too far away, my speed no match for a polar bear.

  “A cub,” came the slow response from the female bear, thick and slippery, as if caked in blubber. “A young cub of the Skinners.” Her voice lowered to a shuddering growl. “I thought they were gone.” Saliva pooled on the blanket and I felt my ribs constrict, cracking under the weight of the mistakes I kept making with my poor helpless Dee. If I had chosen the fleece instead of the sealskin, would the bear still have come here?

  “Back away from her,” I warned, my voice a vibrato, unable to steady the fear that snakes around your esophagus when your whole life is in the paw of a predator.

  “Why do you want the cub, Crow?” The polar bear shook her massive head. She lifted gargantuan paws onto the cabin’s cobweb-festooned window frame. A quick breeze brought her smell to me, a condensed aroma of moss and briny seaweed. Oh no. I caught a glimpse of her side and my heart plummeted. Her ribs jutted out in desperate protest, the skin around her neck hanging loose from a diet of algae, berries, and birds’ eggs.

  She was starving.

  I bargained. “There are caribou near here! Many. You can have every last one of them!”

  The polar bear’s nose wrinkled, drawing in the biscuity smell of my nestling. She lowered her head, coal eyes inches from Dee’s button nose. Dee’s eyes widened. The bear’s mouth gaped open, unraveling a purpled, liver-like tongue. She ran it along a salmon-pink cheek. Dee’s face was frozen in shock, eyewhites glistening. I scanned the room for a weapon, a noisemaker, a knife, a gun—oh god, why wasn’t there a gun—old boots, chairs, the table, the stove, a broom, old MoFo clothes, pots, there were pots full of Dee’s blackberries, blackberries I’d stayed up late squashing, empty pots; I planned to grab one…