Devolution: A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre

by Max Brooks

His pause gave us all a moment to hear it.

  zzzzzp zzzzzp zzzzzp

  Mostar shook her head, maybe angry with herself for not realizing it sooner. (That’s how I felt, at least, forgetting to check the garage.) I might have knocked on the door if Mostar hadn’t pushed past me and thrown it open.

  Bright light flooded in, with an invisible, acrid mist.

  Yvette, or what she’d become, practically fell off her elliptical.

  “What­WHAT?” Her voice was high, scratchy. Bounding into the living room, dripping, wild. That’s how I’ll always think of her eyes. Wild. Frantically darting to everyone and everything. Her face, her frame. We were looking at a skeleton. Under the soaking sports bra and yoga pants. Skin wrapped so tightly over sinewy bone. Had she been eating at all? What can you do to your body, your mind, in so short a time?

  It hadn’t even been two weeks. That quick for someone to fall apart? That easy?

  I guess it depends on who you are to begin with, how tightly you’re already holding on.

  Adversity introduces us to ourselves.

  Nice to meet you, Mr. and Mrs. Durant.

  “What­what­what­do­you­want!” I could still hear gibberish squawking from the noise-canceling headphones around her neck. Not music, some kind of talking. Inspirational? Guided imagery? Her own voice?

  Mostar barely uttered, “Yvette,” but was cut off with a frantic “What­you­want!”

  Recognition, adaptation, Mostar shifted from the command stance with Tony to a conciliatory, de-escalating, “Yvette, Love, we have to get you out of here.” Soft, easy, as with a child or a jumper. “You know about the animals out there?” A slow, non-startling gesture to the unrepaired broken windows. “You know they’re surrounding us, right? That they’re getting more aggressive? Did you hear the—”

  Yvette cut her off with a chattering, “What­no­I­don’t­know­anything­about­any­animals.” Skin steaming in the cold air, head quivering with each syllable.

  “Don’t­know­what­you’re­talking­about.” Her breath, five feet away. I could smell the starvation.

  Mostar, caring, concerned. “You must have heard the screaming. Vincent? You heard him, right?”

  At that, Carmen put a comforting arm around Bobbi.

  Mostar continued with, “And now, last night, Alex…”

  “I­don’t­know­anything!” Yvette chattered. Her accent, upper class English, gone. This new one, old one, a thick Australian twang. “You­need­to­go!” Head bobbing maniacally at the door. “Go…go­go­go­go!”

  “We all need to go,” Mostar said slowly. “We need to take what we need to live on, and all move into the Common House, where we can protect each other.”

  I was already thinking, planning ahead, as to how we’d take care of them. The shower, first, hot water and a scrub. We could hold her down, if we had to. At least Tony might go quietly. Two more mouths to feed. And clothes, I’d wash theirs by hand. I wouldn’t mind. Clean, safe. They’d come around. They’d have to. All of us together, cramped, sharing everything. No choice.

  “You need to hurry,” Mostar continued, enunciating each word slowly. “Don’t take anything, just come with—”

  “No­no­no!” Yvette backed up a step, jutting out her lower jaw. A cornered animal, that was all I could think of, a monkey in a cage. “You­need­to­get­out! All­of­you­out­c’mon­now­now!”

  Tony had sat back down by then, melting into his sleep stain on the couch. He didn’t seem to acknowledge what was happening around him. Didn’t look or move.

  “Yvette, please!” Mostar, losing patience, almost pleading, holding out her hands with a desperation that tightened my abs. “We don’t have time for this! They’re not afraid of us anymor—”

  She never finished.

  At that moment her head happened to face the huge living room window behind us.

  I turned just in time to see the dark shape standing right in front of the curtained window, right before that window collapsed.

  *1 At the time of this writing, ten humans have been killed in North America by cougars since the death of Scott Lancaster.

  *2 Majmune jedan: You ape.

  If this had been a bluff charge, they would have been screaming to intimidate us. These guys were quiet. And they were huge. They were coming in for the kill.

  —Primatologist SHELLY WILLIAMS, BBC News, on the “Mystery Ape” of DR Congo

  JOURNAL ENTRY #15 [CONT.]

  The scramble.

  Shouts and running bodies. An elbow in my chest, hair in my face, a shin tripping mine. I started running before I’d fully turned. I stumbled, fell, tried to get up, and slipped again on a copy of Eco-Structure magazine.

  My face hit the carpet just as the head-sized fist whooshed into the wall above. I heard the crack, felt the vibration, then looked up to see Dan’s face through the blue cloud of denim insulation. His hands shot out, cupping me under the arms.

  Pal! That was my first conscious thought. Where was Palomino? My head spun around the room. All I could catch was Tony, sprinting over the couch, practically flying through the door to their garage gym. Yvette, a step and a half behind him, calling his name, reaching for him as the hooting colossus reached for her.

  The flash of a moving figure outside (Mostar?) disappearing from sight.

  A stampeding sound above my head. Small feet on the second floor. Human feet?

  “Pal!” I shouted to the ceiling as Dan pulled me to my feet. A loud “C’mon!” in my ear, and a hard tug on my arm.

  Together, we rushed toward the kitchen door. Around the table and chairs, just a few more steps. I was already reaching to slide it back. A shape loomed in front of us, a recoiling fist.

  “Back!” Dan pulled me away as the veined safety glass wrapped, literally wrapped, itself around the attacker. Blinded for a second, thrashing in the crunching coat.

  “Here!” A shout over our shoulders, Mostar beckoning us from outside the hole in the living room window.

  She’d waited for us. She could have gotten away and she waited.

  Mostar.

  We dashed across the living room, past the creature trying to batter its way into the exercise room. A grunt of recognition. A look of terror from Mostar. It must have turned toward us, followed us as we jumped through the window’s car-sized opening.

  Mostar shouted “Run!” and gestured with Dan’s spear. Then a thrust, an inch or two past my face. I spun just in time to see the huge bloody hand, still gripping the blade.

  The wail, that painful, sustained bawl. It rang in my ears as Mostar pulled me forward and kicked me, actually kicked me, in the direction of my house. “Go! GO!”

  I sprinted across the driveway, dodging moon-cratered rocks. I thought they were right behind me. Mostar and Dan. I even held the door for them. But they’d broken left instead of right, around the other side of the Common House. Mostar’s idea? Multiple targets? Or was the ultimate goal her house? Her workshop? Her weapons? Watching them reach the door, I felt this sudden rush of panic, like a little kid whose family got on the other subway car.

  I called, “Dan!” and he actually stopped for a moment. A look, a recognition, and the first formation of a word. Then a hard shove of Mostar’s shoulder drove him through the entrance. A roar behind us. I jumped inside.

  I should have gone upstairs. I should have at least grabbed my spear. It was right there! Leaning behind the front door! Stupid! So many mistakes. If I’d armed myself, barricaded the office, or holed up in the bedroom where I might have escaped out the back balcony. Choices, chances.

  Anything except what I did. Staying downstairs, crawling to the window, spying the horror across the way.

  I’d looked just in time to see the Durants’ garage door begin to slide up. A foot of
space, maybe a little less, just enough for Tony to slither out. Skittering for his Tesla, his right hand closed around what had to be his key fob. He jumped behind the wheel just as Yvette crab-walked out behind him. I watched her run to the passenger side, try the handle-less door. She slapped, then punched the window with her bony hands.

  I couldn’t see Tony at first; the car was parked facing their house. But when the backup lights came on, when the tires skidded in four clouds of ash, when Yvette leaped back to prevent being run over.

  His face. A photoshopped mask of mundanity. He wasn’t running for his life. He hadn’t just abandoned his wife. An everyday three-point turn on his way to the store. Even when Yvette jumped in front, pounding the hood.

  “Cunt!” Her screech, clear and sharp through my double paned windows. “You­fucking­cunt­you­fucking­shit­eating­cunt!”

  He honked. Actually honked! Behind flapping windshield wipers, he looked, what, perturbed? Delayed by road construction or a pedestrian too slow to cross? Frowning slightly at the hysterical Yvette, whose back showed four long, bloody stripes. “Fuck­you­fuck­you­fuck­fuck­fuck­FUCK­YOUUUUU!”

  And what did I look like? Probably the same? If Tony was stuck in traffic, I was watching a movie. I didn’t move, didn’t speak, didn’t try to warn them as the brown, shaggy ogre leapt from the hole in the window, rupturing the windshield as it landed on the roof like a wrecking ball.

  Alpha. Arms raised. Hooting.

  I couldn’t look away as she gripped Yvette, flailing and screaming, by that long stringy rope of hair. She kicked, she shouted, she swiped up and back at the forearm-sized fingers. The yank ended everything. One hard jerk snapping her head back against her spine. Flicking a switch. Yvette dropped.

  Then another yank, a full circle up and around. Her body slammed into the car’s windshield, caving in the opaque barrier. I caught a quick peek of Tony’s rump disappearing into the backseat. Was he trying to climb out? I didn’t see either of the back doors open. He might have just been cowering in the footwell. Cornered, helpless.

  Still gripping the dangling, almost fluid Yvette, Alpha reached her other arm through the holed windshield and pulled Tony out by his right leg. I saw the left leg catch on the seat, twisting at an impossible angle. I know I didn’t hear any screams. The way his arms flailed, grasping at the smooth metal as he was dragged backward across the hood. He reminded me of an insect, a captured butterfly trying to flap away.

  Tony was still moving when she tossed him to the ground, bouncing him on his stomach, bringing her big foot down between his shoulder blades. Why did he have to be facing me? Why did I have to see that frothy red bubble from his mouth? Another stomp, the crack of ribs. A thicker, darker spurt followed by the spasm of lungs trying to find breath.

  She was standing on him now, both feet alternately pulverizing his neck and back. I saw his head burst. Not break. Burst. Fluid in the brain case? Was that the red pressure pop from the nose and eyes?

  She held him aloft, this limp, dripping bag of skin and soaked clothes. And Yvette, the hanging puppet in her other hand, still recognizable, still staring with open eyes and a wide, crooked mouth. Alpha howled, a long, triumphant wail that seemed to vibrate the glass in front of me.

  A rallying cry. The rest came running. The Twins from around the back of the house. Scout, galloping across the circle with old Gray trying to keep up. From down the slope, Juno and the two new mothers. The small young male squeezing through the front doorway as Dowager climbed through the hole in the living room window. And behind her, tall and broad, Consort with his dripping bloody hand. He must have been the one Mostar stabbed with Dan’s spear. Licking the wound, bloody tongue.

  Hopping, whooping, beating their chests as they surrounded their leader. And all with eyes averted. None would look at her as they got close enough to hold out open hands. Begging. Submission.

  Alpha dropped Tony’s amorphous pulp at her feet. The crowd surged forward. She barked. They withdrew. With her now free hand, she reached for Yvette’s exposed stomach. Sharp nails tore through the flat, muscled belly, spilling a red torrent down her white skin. A slow, almost gentle pull, and a fistful of bloody hose flopped out.

  The circle closed, the shrieks rose. Alpha’s hand lowered as the small male, the Goldenboy, grabbed the first taste, then spun its back to the group, a length of intestine still connected to Yvette’s corpse.

  The troop went wild, some running in small tight circles, some rolling spasmodically in the ash. What do they call it when sharks do this? A feeding frenzy? Alpha looked down for another grab into Yvette’s torso. That was when she saw me.

  Spy. Voyeur. Why did I stay? Why did I have to look? Just like that first night, the compost bin fight, when she’d locked eyes on me. A challenge? That huge head stopping halfway up with another fistful of gut. The glint from those two black marbles.

  The roar! Yvette’s body tossed aside as the mountain charged.

  I jumped back from the curtains, running, stumbling, scraping my knees up the stairs. Again, I forgot the spear. Again, I chose the wrong hideout. The guest bathroom was right at the top of the stairs. The door was open, and so was the back window. Why did I think I could slip through it? Slamming the door, locking it, jumping onto the closed toilet seat, trying to inch my shoulders through.

  Too narrow.

  I pushed again, trying to relax my body, forcing my flesh to give. The scraping, the burning. I tried again, faster. Again. Straining. Skin scraping off on the metal sill. The definition of insanity, repeating motions with the baseless hope of a different response. I kept trying to jam myself through, a Kate-shaped peg in a rectangular hole. Back and forth, twisting my arms, bashing the back of my head on the sill. I don’t know how many times until my neck seized up. And when it did. That knot at the base of my skull, like a hand grenade behind my eyes. Pain rippling down my neck, across the right side of my face. Ear, jaw. Spine.

  Crippling. Freezing.

  I sank back on the toilet, unable to move my head, neck, right arm. I tried to rise, make it to the door. I reached for the knob.

  It vibrated in my hand as the whole house shook.

  I felt the living room window smash, heard the curtains pulled from their fixtures. I didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. Adrenaline must have deadened the shock waves surging from my neck. I remember that cold line of sweat running from my armpit to my hip.

  She couldn’t have seen me. That was what I hoped. The curtains had to have blocked her view of my escape. There was no way she could know which way I’d gone.

  Another roar, rattling the mirror in front of me. I heard a hard bang from the coffee table. A soft thump from the couch. Three quick, shaking booms told me fists were bashing in the downstairs bathroom door, and the lingering crack said that door was caving in.

  A frustrated huff, then silence. She paused to listen, which gave me pause to think. I don’t know where this idea came from. But as I heard the first creak of a foot on the staircase, I grabbed for the phone in my pocket. Still charged, still able to communicate. I tapped the music app, hit the room choice, heard it blasting from the kitchen.

  A grunt, a shuffle, then the clang of pots and crash of plates.

  Thank you, “Black Hole Sun.”

  I took a careful, painful breath, trying to think, to plan my escape. Out the door? Through another window? Could I make it to Mostar’s house? Flashes of Alpha’s speed, her reach. At that moment the floor jumped, killing the music. I checked my phone to see that the connection was gone. Something delicate she’d severed. I could hear more destruction below, the overturned roll of the kitchen table as she stomped back out into the living room. Then the hard, shaking bang of another door caving in.

  The garden. My sprouts!

  Low grunts. Long, slow. Sharp cracks and muffled thuds.

  A s
econd source. High and distant out the window. Next door. Pop-papop-pop!

  Alpha must have heard it too. She paused. Both of us listened to the noises, followed by grunts, growls, and suddenly a wail.

  The same sound Consort had made when Mostar’d speared his hand.

  Pain.

  He was hurt!

  A crashing sound, furniture turning over. A childlike whine lowering to an angry yelp.

  An answer from my house, Alpha’s bellow from my garden.

  The BOOM, this deep bass from somewhere at Mostar’s. Not furniture, not wood, not alive. I couldn’t begin to imagine what had made that kettledrum din.

  The screams. Human—Mostar and Dan.

  Dan! I tried the phone again. More music to cover my escape. No response. Zero signal. A flash of anger and I almost threw it against the mirror. And in the mirror, I saw the smoke alarm. Memories collided into an idea just as I heard the roar.

  She must have heard me. The faintest creak of my feet?

  Thundering footsteps.

  I grabbed the towel, wrapping it around my arm.

  Louder, closer.

  Match in my free hand, box wedged between towel fist and sink.

  The staircase shuddered.

  First strike, breaking with a curse.

  The force of a truck, crashing against the door.

  The second try, a flare, holding the flicker under cloth.

  Second blow, wood splintering.

  Light. Please. Light!

  Door bursting open, thick fingers grabbing my shirt.

  LIGHT! Orange licks through billowing smoke. My toweled fist burning!

  Alpha pulled me toward her. Chipped teeth, stinking, moist breath.

  One punch.

  Into her mouth!

  A muffled bawl. Biting down as I yanked my hand from the towel.

  Flying cinders, stinging eyes. The smell of singed hair and burnt meat.

  Coughing.

  Snarling.

  Staggering back, pulling me with her.