Devolution: A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre

by Max Brooks

  At that moment I was just shocked at how quickly the other ones had fled. Because when Dan and I turned back to the Common House, we saw that the other three were gone. All of them. All the movement up and around the village, even behind us. We checked the back window as well. The older one scrounging in our compost bin. Gone.

  We waited. Watched. Listened. We didn’t move for a full five minutes, which feels a lot longer than it sounds on paper. Silence. Stillness. One by one the outside motion lights timed out. And just as I was mulling over the idea of going outside to check on our compost bin, Dan grabbed my arm and said, “Mostar?”

  There she was, all five determined feet of her, trudging across the driveway toward the Common House. She stopped at the black and gray patchwork from the fight, stooping as if to examine something. She looked over at the compost bin, turned back out toward the ridge. Hands on hips. Placid.

  Dan muttered, “What the hell…”

  But I knew. I could see that all the house lights were still on, and a few people—Reinhardt and the Boothes—were staring at her from their upstairs windows. I told Dan, “She’s letting us all know it’s okay to come out. She’s calling a meeting.”

  We were the first ones to reach her, but not by much. The Boothes, robe and slippers, came jogging out toward us. So did Reinhardt (in a kimono!). Carmen was the only one from her house. Effie and Pal watched from the living room window.

  “Did you see them?” I’m not sure who said that first, Bobbi or Carmen, but Dan answered with, “Oh yeah, we saw them!” and before anyone could respond, he added, “Those were definitely not bears!”

  Whatever Vincent was going to say, Dan’s words shut him up. Carmen too went into reset mode. Mostar kept quiet, maybe waiting to see how that truth would land. She might have regretted it a second later when Reinhardt raised a questioning finger. “I’m sure,” he said in this very professorial tone, “that we all think we saw something other than an ursine family, but…let me remind everyone that given this poor light, the stress we’re all under, the human mind’s ability to fabricate—”

  “Oh, come on!” Dan cut him off angrily. “Dude, you totally saw that! Them!” He looked at all of us, and while Mostar again kept silent, I mumbled, “I saw them, pretty clear. I think I know…”

  I could have been a little more forceful. Me and confrontation. But at least I tried to stick up for Dan, even if it didn’t work on Reinhardt.

  “You think”—eyes glimmering, hand out; Reinhardt looked so smug—“think you saw, and that is, indeed, the issue when confronted with an arcane situation…”

  “Oh Jesus Christ.” Dan took off running for the house. “Wait!” he called over his shoulder. “Just wait!”

  Reinhardt didn’t. “In the interest of full transparency, I will admit that my limited expertise terminates at anthropology”—he bowed his head slightly toward Carmen—“but haven’t there been recorded cases of mass hallucinations?”

  Carmen took the bait and recounted something about a town in the Midwest during World War II where people blamed a bad smell on an “anesthetic prowler.” And, also about a school in Ireland in 1979 where kids all thought they were getting sick at the same time and ambulances were called and ultimately it turned out to be mass hypochondria.

  “Exactly,” Reinhardt said with a tip of his imaginary hat to Carmen, and then his eyes went wide with another newly remembered epiphany. “Wasn’t there a story recently from India? Residents of a Delhi slum believed reported attacks of a mysterious giant ‘ape-man.’ But when the authorities declared it a case of mass psychosis, no new attacks were reported.”*

  I looked at…to…Mostar. C’mon, we need you! That was my expression. But she responded with a blank look and the slightest out turn of her hands. No, you go. That’s what I took from it. I couldn’t understand. Still doubtful? I muttered, “Well, uh…that’s…like, smelling something and feeling something, right? But we all saw…with our eyes…”

  I’m such a wimp. Thank God, Dan came to the rescue.

  “Look!” He was running back with the iPad. “Look at this!”

  And we did. There was the fight, clear and steady. He’d even rested the tablet on the windowsill. No argument from anyone. Not even from Reinhardt. Silent, defeated, he seemed to shrink as Carmen, of all people, switched sides. “They’re real.” It came out shocked, but Vincent’s “Bigfoot is real!” was definitely excited. Bobbi even smiled, grabbing his hand, and when Carmen waved for Effie and Pal to join us, I took the whole mood as relief that we weren’t all crazy.

  Mostar must have interpreted it the same way, nodding at us and speaking for the first time. “There is no denying that these creatures exist.” And the chatter started, everyone talking at once, sharing stories they’ve heard. It felt cathartic, to admit what we all suspected, to make it “okay” by group agreement. I admit I was kind of taken up in the moment, re-watching the video with Effie and Pal. “Look at them”—that was Carmen—“look how big they are!”

  “Do you remember?” That was Effie to her wife. “That time before we were married, when we were camping by Rimrock Lake and we smelled—”

  “Now that they’re real,” Mostar cut her off, “what are we going to do about them?”

  The chatter hushed. Everyone looked at her quizzically, including Dan and me.

  Carmen asked, “What do you mean?”

  And Mostar, kind of theatrically, reached into her robe for what looked like a sharpened stick. It was about a foot long, bamboo, and angled to a point at both ends. “We’re going to need a lot of these.” And she tapped the stick, the spike, against the bamboo growing behind her. “Hundreds maybe, but if we work together, and place them in a deep circle around the village…”

  “Why?” Vincent asked, knowing, I suspect, but needing to hear it out loud.

  “A defensive perimeter,” Mostar answered, waving the spike like a baton. “If they try to cross and one of them steps on one of these…”

  “You want to hurt them?” Bobbi looked like she’d been slapped.

  “Just deter them,” Mostar responded calmly.

  “That’s what the burglar alarm did!” answered Bobbi.

  “This time,” Mostar volleyed back. “But now they know it’s just harmless noise. And why do you think your alarm went off in the first place?” And to the group, she said, “They were trying to get in!”

  Vincent, stepping up next to Bobbi, said, “Maybe they were just curious.”

  Bobbi grabbed her husband, rallying to his point. “And you want to hurt them!”

  “So they don’t try to hurt us,” Mostar answered with supreme confidence, all her previous doubt gone. “You heard what they did to that big cat.” A glance in our direction, then, “You all saw what they just did to each other.” As if to accentuate the point, she stooped to pick up a section of beaded ash. Holding it up to us, mashing it between thumb and forefinger, we could all see the red paste. “They’ve just shown us how violent they can be.”

  Bobbi countered. “Not against us.” And this time Carmen came in with, “Why do you have to assume that they’re evil?”

  Mostar took a breath before speaking. “Carmen, they’re not good or evil. They’re just hungry.” A nod to the darkness. “The berries are all gone, and the fruit from our trees, and your compost, which probably kept them here instead of following the other animals…assuming they haven’t already eaten those animals.”

  Vincent shrugged defiantly. “So, then there’s nothing left.”

  Mostar looked us over. “There isn’t?”

  Nobody spoke. I felt Dan’s grip tighten.

  Mostar was clearly hoping the group would come to this conclusion on its own. And maybe they would have if Reinhardt hadn’t spoiled it. “In point of fact”—he stepped into the circle—“we may be in a more advantag
eous situation than if these visitors were, in fact, ursine.” He must have been waiting for the opening, crafting his lecture while the rest of us debated. “After all, bears are omnivorous while…and I confess my knowledge reservoir of primatology is even shallower than psychoanalysis…”

  And he gave a chortle of faux humility. Has anyone ever deserved more to be punched in the face?

  “But I seem to recall that most hominids are herbivorous in nature.” Mostar made a sound and he bowled over her with his pontificating. “Great apes! Gorillas and orangutans subsist only on fruits and vegetable matter. In fact”—I could actually see when the cartoon lightbulb appeared above his head—“if I’m not mistaken, one anthropoid species, the bonobos of southern central Africa, are matriarchal pacifists by nature.”

  I couldn’t believe what came out of his mouth next. He actually looked over at the Perkins-Forsters and said, “And correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t said bonobos even practice a form of inter-female sexual diplomacy?”

  Was it the shock that kept Effie and Carmen silent? Or were they, like the Boothes, and Reinhardt himself, just so damn determined to hold on to anything to keep the fear away? Ego-defense mechanism. Reinhardt continued his classroom speech with, “In fact, since we know nothing of these hominids’ social order, or their method of interaction, accidentally injuring one of them might precipitate the very regrettable incident we seek to avoid.”

  From my interview with Frank McCray, Jr.

  Are you serious? Why would any of them have a gun? Just consider your question. Why does anyone have a gun? Barring this unique circumstance…

  He nods to the weapons around us.

  …there’re only two legitimate reasons. Once you take out the toys and treason, the man-boys who want to play real life Call of Duty and the domestic terrorists watching for “black helicopters,” you’re only left with hunting and home defense.

  Reasonable, practical, and completely incompatible with life in Greenloop.

  When it comes to hunting…well…I can’t judge who I used to be. Like my former neighbors up there, I somehow thought I was superior to deer shooters because I chose fish over meat, and chose Apple Pay over bullets.

  And as far as protecting my house…our houses, from a break-in…who’s gonna do that? And how? Greenloop is completely off the beaten track, the ultimate cu-de-sac, with a gated private road, and alarms to both private security and county cops.

  So, unless you’re pulling off a Mission Impossible airlift, or you’re some hermit meth head who can’t believe his luck, Greenloop was probably the safest place in America. That was one of Tony’s selling points. That’s why none of the houses have surveillance cameras. Or dogs. Did you notice that? No dogs? The HOA guidelines forbid them. I remember thinking how strange that was when I first moved in. I mean, wouldn’t it make sense for those people to be the ultimate dog lovers? Problem is, they might scare away the wildlife, which, again, is another reason we all moved up there.

  It all goes back to the core philosophy of Greenloop: People are the problem. Nature is your friend.

  * In 2001, reports of a “kala bandar” (Hindi) or “monkey man” began to terrorize residents of East Delhi, India. These reports were later debunked as a case of “mass hysteria.”

  At midnight, Bauman was awakened by some noise, and sat up in his blankets. As he did so his nostrils were struck by a strong, wild-beast odor, and he caught the loom of a great body in the darkness at the mouth of the lean-to. Grasping his rifle, he fired at the vague, threatening shadow, but must have missed, for immediately afterwards he heard the smashing of the underwood as the thing, whatever it was, rushed off into the impenetrable blackness of the forest and the night.

  —PRESIDENT THEODORE ROOSEVELT, The Wilderness Hunter

  From my interview with Senior Ranger Josephine Schell.

  Dr. Reinhardt was right. He didn’t know jack about primates. All apes practice some kind of faunivory, which is a fancy way of saying they eat other animals. Apes have all the biological hardware to be predators. Canine teeth for gripping and ripping flesh. Forward-facing eyes for locking on a moving target. And a brain designed to outthink food trying to get away. I heard a theory once that if aliens ever do come calling, they may very well be hostile, because the same brains that mastered spaceflight learned to think by hunting.

  Different primates have different preferences, of course, with gorillas and orangutans tilting sharply toward the fruit and veggie side. That’s why they have such big bellies. Their guts are packed with plant matter, which takes a long time to break down. That’s not how eyewitnesses describe Sasquatch. What they do describe, consistently, is an omnivorous diet.

  Fish seems to be their main source of protein. One story has them stealing drying fish from a cabin, another where they were digging for clams. And the guy in that movie who took the lie detector test. He says it grabbed his fishing net. With all the rivers we have here, all the salmon and trout, they probably had more than enough fuel for those gigantic bodies of theirs. Until Rainier’s eruption drove them from their traditional fishing spots. Throw in the bad berry harvest and you’ve got a biological imperative to adapt.

  She refers back to the map, specifically the spots where dead deer were found.

  You know that old saying, “If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with?” In the animal world, it’s called “prey switching,” where a predator ends up developing a preference for a certain food source simply because it’s more abundant than their traditional prey.

  I think that’s what happened with the deer we found and it must have just happened or else we would have been finding these bone fragments for centuries. Rainier must have been their ecological tipping point, which has to make you wonder what was ours.

  You know that’s how we got started, right? We were the first apes to start cracking bones. Way back in Africa, when the first skittish little scavengers climbed out of the trees. Using rocks to get at the marrow, realizing what a caloric jackpot meat was. A lot less energy to convert animal into animal than vegetable into animal. And the brain boost we got from that bonanza. Tools, language, cooperation. You can see the incentive for all the advances that make us human. More meat. Bigger brains. Bigger brains. More meat. I wonder what it looked like, when we first tasted fresh blood. What did we think? What did we feel? That moment when everything changed. From scavenger to predator. Hunted to hunter.

  JOURNAL ENTRY #12 [CONT.]

  The knocking interrupted Reinhardt.

  It was clear and consistent, so much so that I think a few of us thought it might be mechanical. A loose pipe or maybe, just for a second, an approaching vehicle. But as we all quieted down to listen, I could definitely make out the undertone of animal grunts.

  Carmen stated the obvious. “Do you hear that? It’s them.”

  thock-thock-thock

  I couldn’t see anything. Nobody could. They must have been farther away. Among the trees or on the other side of the ridge.

  Effie asked, “What do you think it means?”

  No one answered at first. Not even Reinhardt.

  The more we listened, the more we could make out a single source. A branch against a trunk? I’m not sure if the grunts were meant for us. Something about them; soft, low, chaotic, like they didn’t want their voices to drown out the knocks. That’s, at least, what I think now. I didn’t have a clue at the time.

  I glanced at Dan, who was equally perplexed, and then at Mostar, who seemed to be waiting for something. For the knocking to end, or change? I didn’t ask.

  “That’s communication!” Vincent surprised me. I would have expected it from Reinhardt. I looked over at him, the gasbag prof, who was, amazingly, yielding the floor.

  Vincent stepped out of the circle, head craned toward the trees. “They’re trying to talk to us!�
��

  “They’re friendly,” said Reinhardt, who, I think, was trying to get a jump on the next possible conclusion. “They must be! Communication implies intelligence, which implies an innate desire for peace.”

  Is that true?

  The Boothes seemed to believe it, or wanted to, along with Carmen and Effie. But Palomino, she kept her eyes locked on Mostar’s dubious face.

  “Maybe we should…,” she started to say, but Vincent cut her off with, “Hello! Hello there! Friends! We’re friends!”

  Bobbi let go of his hand and lightly slapped him on the shoulder. “They don’t speak English!” she scolded playfully, to which Reinhardt yelled out, “Bonsoir, mes amis!” The Boothes and the Perkins-Forsters laughed. Vincent, grinning from ear to ear, snatched Mostar’s bamboo spike.

  “Everyone, shhh,” he whispered, smacking it against the wall of the Common House. Three hits, then paused.

  The knocking stopped. We all froze. The grunts grew louder. Vincent beamed. The knocking resumed, faster this time, louder.

  THOCKTHOCKTHOCKTHOCK

  “Okay, yes, yes!” Vincent whispered to us and banged back faster with his pole. I heard him whisper “Friends, friends, friends” as he hammered the Common House wall. After a dozen rapid strikes, he stopped. They responded in kind.

  Vincent waited for a crazy tense three count, then gave it another few whacks. Nothing came back. I could see the sweat beading up on his forehead, his glasses beginning to fog. Bobbi saw it too because she took them off, wiped them gently on her sleeve, and wrapped her arms around her husband.

  We waited, we listened. Silence.