Devolution: A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre

by Max Brooks

“ration my current events, learn the facts but don’t obsess.”

don’t know what made me feel worse, that I suddenly didn’t have the world’s knowledge in my pocket or that up until that moment, I’d always assumed I was entitled to it.

And what is the USGS? Someone from there complaining about local businesses not wanting to hear the warnings, accusing them of “another Mammoth Lakes.”*2

I watched Tony wait till the front door closed before going to his trunk and retrieving a big, bulging hiker’s backpack. He got it halfway out, and looked like he was going to swing it up onto his back. Then he stopped. That was what really got my attention. I hesitate doing things all the time, second-guessing if I’m going to pick this up before that, realizing I should do X before Y. I do it more than most people, so I’m always hyperconscious of it. I’ve never seen Tony do that. He stopped, mid-swing, looked over at the door again, then looked all around the neighborhood, then quickly dropped the pack back in the trunk.

rabbit.

She held the rabbit up by its head, over the sink, then massaged her hand down its body. “We have to squeeze out all the pee from its bladder.” She then laid it out in the pan, on its back with the knife at an angle to the chest. “Just pray that the sticks didn’t puncture any of the organs. If they leak out onto the meat, it’ll taste terrible.” I grabbed the end of the table, steadying myself, as Mostar sliced into the fur. “From the neck down to the anus,” she said. Then setting the knife down, she stuck her fingers right into the incision, and started to peel the skin away. “So far, so good. I don’t smell anything.” I felt the bile rise. “We’re also lucky that I heard it thrashing around in there. If I hadn’t gotten there in time to snap its neck, it might be too stiff to work on.”

The toes matched, the overall shape. But the size. That’s impossible. It must have been a trick of the ash, or maybe the way it was planted. Nothing could have such a big foot.

I’ve flipped through a couple of the faux documentary cable shows. I keep meaning to check out the one from the survival guy, not the British fraud, the real deal. The Canadian. He knows his shit, and maybe he’s actually on the right track.

Anyway, it goes on to “recount,” not tell firsthand, recount, the story of an Idaho fur trapper named Bauman, whose partner was torn apart by a “goblin.”

swap evolution for devolution,

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.

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.

“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!”

Wood knocking seems to be pretty common in eyewitness encounters and no one knows for sure what it means. Likewise, no one knows how a wood-knocking response will be received. Language is tricky, even among our species.

She holds up her rounded thumb and index finger. In this country it’s “a-okay,” in Brazil it’s “you’re an asshole.” And when you include the extra layer of inter-species contact… She raises her head slightly, showing a discolored scar under her chin. Six years old, over at my cousin’s one time, I didn’t know their old beagle would take my staring contest as a challenge. And for all we know, wood knocking denotes a challenge, which Vincent Boothe unwittingly accepted.

Most accounts tell of giant boulders being hurled against the cabin, and say some even fell through the roof… —FRED BECK, I Fought the Apemen of Mt. St. Helens

http://www.bigfootencounters.com/classics/beck.htm

Two females, one old, one young, both holding fur balls in their arms. Babies. Two mothers, hunched, hesitant, following behind her.

Nature is pure. Nature is real. Connecting with nature brings out the best in you. That’s what I hear from the poor dumb dipshits who come up here every year in their new REI outfits,

They all want to live “in harmony with nature” before some of them realize, too late, that nature is anything but harmonious.

The old female must have just poked her head in, reached out to pull the shower curtain down, then come back out to tear the doors off Yvette’s walk-in closet. For a few seconds they heard clothes being ripped down, drawers pulled open. (Why? Just curious or thinking they made a small entrance to another room?)

According to Darwin’s Origin of Species, it is not the most intellectual of the species that survives; it is not the strongest that survives; but the species that survives is the one that is best able to adapt and adjust to the changing environment in which it finds itself. —LEON C. MEGGINSON, professor of management and marketing at Louisiana State University, 1963

I’m glad Effie didn’t argue about the personal effects. Not that I’d expect her to argue about anything. But she did have a point. What about all the photos? The mementos? We can’t just leave them. No, but we can’t waste time on them either. Once everything’s in place, we’ll pack up our treasures.

I wish we had more time. If just to practice with the javelins. No chance now. I probably shouldn’t have wasted all this time writing. But just in case something happens to me, I wanted there to be a record. I want someone, anyone who reads this, to know what happened.

Whatever emotions drove their soprano screeching, it rose to a fever pitch when we began our mutilation.

Dan’s eyes flicked to me for permission, finger poised above the screen. I mouthed, “Yes.” Dan answered, “As you wish.”

I shouted, “Javelins,” but Dan was already next to me, shoving one of the long thin missiles in my hand. I held it next to my face, arm cocked, legs bent for balance. The glass point glinted in the light. Something beautiful from fire.

The barbs had held the blade in place, allowing it to snap clean off. Yipping, dancing, Twin One pinched and fingered the bloody hole. Finally, in an explosive fit of rage, he pounded furiously on his chest. That must have driven the point through the lung. The sound. Megaphone hacks of wet, crackling bubbles from his nose and mouth. I could have watched it forever, then…

And that was when we made our mistake. Leave him there. Recover our weapons. Scan for other attackers. That was the right choice, the one we’d planned for. Gray had to be dying, and dying or not, he couldn’t hurt us anymore. I remember Carmen bracing her feet against the heaving ribs, and the spurting streams that followed her retracting blade. I remember her jamming that blade right back in, her red-stained teeth grinning wide. I remember Dan retrieving his spear, striking Gray in the chest, the stomach, the groin. I remember the old ape’s splotchy, sun-damaged face, upside down as I kneeled above it, eyes clear, mouth opening, driving the rock down.

We’d stopped thinking just as they’d started.

I found a way, I found a way to survive with them. Am I a great person? I don’t know. I don’t know. We’re all great people. Everyone has something in them that’s wonderful. I’m just different and I love these bears enough to do it right. I’m edgy enough and I’m tough enough. But mostly I love these bears enough to survive and do it right. —From the video diary of TIMOTHY TREADWELL, self-proclaimed “Grizzly Man,” recorded right before he was eaten by a bear From my interview with Senior Ranger Josephine Schell. A knock at the door interrupts my interview. Two rangers enter, hesitate respectfully, then on her nod remove several of the heavy boxes from the room. The time is eleven forty-five A.M. The government’s lease officially expires at noon. Schell rises from her

I can also picture my sister “playing” with her kill, torturing her. Not for fun, that’d be a waste. She’d try for a Vincent Boothe tactic,

If there’s anything worse than visualizing your own death, it’s knowing that you caused it.

Hard to accept why she left the journal behind. She never said it, but I know. One journey ends, another begins. Hard to reconcile the memories of my soft, sensitive baby sister with the predator that might be out there now. Mother of a tribe of two. The killer apes.