Devolution: A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre

by Max Brooks

Selfless suffering feels good for short crusades, but as a way of life, it’s unsustainable.

Denial is an irrational dismissal of danger. Phobia is an irrational fear of one.

But it’s so nice, for a change, to rise with excitement instead of nerves. I can’t remember the last time I did that. Middle school? When was the last time I didn’t open my eyes with a mental checklist ticking in my brain? Stuff to do. Problems to solve.

It’s not diffusing anymore. We’re trapped together all the time.

I’ve actually never done meditation. I think we talked about this. I can’t let go. That one class I took, I spent the whole time trying not to laugh. And all those times at home. When Dan was out, alone on the floor with the ear buds and the scented candle. My mind couldn’t stop checking boxes. Laundry, errands, work calls. I just couldn’t seem to focus.

But is it so wrong to want to be watched over? When you’re feeling small and scared—which, let’s be honest, is pretty much how I feel all the time—isn’t it okay, just for a moment, to want someone, something bigger than you to have all the answers, to have everything under control?

It’s great to live free of the other sheep until you hear the wolves howl.

All animals are competitive by nature and cooperate only under specific circumstances and for specific reasons, not because of a desire to be nice to one another.

All positivity all the time. Learn to fly, even if it’s in the Hindenburg. Move fast and break things.

I 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.

The whole country rests on a system that sacrifices resilience for comfort.

“This isn’t business,” Mostar whispered, “this is life or death. This is when the real you comes out.” She took my hand. “This is when, as the saying goes, adversity introduces us to ourselves.”

“Need. That’s what makes a village. That’s what we are now, and what holds us together is need. I won’t help you if you don’t help me. That is the social contract.”

But knowing you saw something is different from knowing what you saw.

Bigfoot’s as American as apple pie and guns in schools.

Facts are supposed to banish monsters… She sighs. …not invite them in.

“Handyman!” That should have destroyed him! Would have a few days ago. How many job offers, how many helpful, hopeful dinners with Frank? “I’m not a salary man.” That was Dan’s default defense. “I’m a builder, not a maintainer.” And, oh, the surly tailspins that I had to nurse him through.

The problem was that sightings peaked in the late ’60s, early ’70s, which was, coincidently, the dawn of public mistrust. We’re talking Vietnam, Watergate, “do your own thing” counterculture. Now, I’m not saying any of that was bad, especially in a democracy. You need a healthy degree of critical thinking. You need to question authority.

Point is, public skepticism dissuades qualified experts from searching for physical evidence, and lack of physical evidence only fuels public skepticism.

I think the human mind isn’t comfortable with mysteries. We’re always looking for answers to the unexplained. And if an answer can’t come from facts, we’ll try to cobble one together from old stories.

“Of course, I believe you, but they wouldn’t. Too many mental hurdles. Believing the unbelievable.” She shook her head. “Like being warned that the country you’ve grown up in is about to collapse, that the friends and neighbors you’ve known your whole life are going to try to kill you…” She sighed deeply, hands up to the sky. A flash of anger. “Denial. Comfort zone. Too strong. And who are any of us to judge them?”

“People only see the present through the lenses of their personal pasts.”

I should probably go check on Mostar first. I feel so bad for her, and, yes, scared for the rest of us. We’re depending on her, Dan and I, and the whole village, whether they know it or not. We can’t have her doubting herself, ending up as lost as the rest of us. We need her to be strong. We need her to be right.

But maybe there was also some latent gene that woke up in those creatures when they stumbled across Greenloop and found themselves facing a herd of cornered, isolated Homo sapiens. Maybe some instinct told them it was time to swap evolution for devolution, reach back to who they were to reclaim what was theirs.

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.

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.

Terror is a powerful weapon. Terror clouds thought. The flushers are counting on that. Intelligence surrendering to self-preservation. If they can get just one to break away from the group. That’s key. There’s strength in numbers, even for prey.

It’s not like any other kill you’d ever see, not like when a leopard brings down a gazelle or even sharks rip into a seal. Those are cold, mechanical. Apes go crazy. Hopping and dancing. Don’t tell me they don’t enjoy it.

Wouldn’t that have made a great speech? It was already in my head, probably stored, in one form or another, for years.

That face. Will I ever forget? With enough time and therapy? Hypnosis or a drug I’ve never heard of? Is there something to help me “unsee”?

“It’s a blessing and a curse, the human mind. We’re the only creatures on Earth that can imagine our own death. But”—she held up my spear—“we can also imagine ways to prevent it.”

“Like a tree in the forest, America doesn’t hear foreign suffering.”

Amazing how your perception of a space can change so quickly. If I’d been invited into Reinhardt’s kitchen two weeks ago, I might have just thought about the décor (or lack thereof). Then, when I came in with Dan a few days ago, all I could think about was what there was to eat. Now all I could think about was what I could use to defend myself. Same room, different priorities.

“It’s a cruel joke, those formative years, when your brain learns the rules of the universe. Your childhood is spent being nurtured, protected, loved unconditionally while your adulthood is spent searching in vain for substitutes. Mate, government, God…”

I felt so bad for him, all that puffed up veneer stripped away. Embarrassed old man, admitting his weakness.

Grant that we may lie down in Peace, Eternal God, and awaken us to life. Shelter us with Your tent of peace and guide us with Your good counsel. Shield us from hatred, plague and destruction. Keep us from war, famine and anguish. Help us to deny our inclination to evil.

“Are you going to deny that King’s leverage was based on the fear of Malcolm X?” Sensing an opening, I tried to break the siege. “An open hand works when the alternative is a fist.”

“I’m not saying war is good! And I’m not saying that going around the world attacking people is right. It’s not! It’s a last resort, always! If there’s any other way to solve problems, any way to avoid bloodshed…but when they’re coming for you, when you know they’re coming, when they won’t listen and it’s too late to even run, you have to defend yourself. You have to fight!”

Only my brother could make me hate the sound of my name.

“You intellectual coward!” I hissed. “Both of you! Sheltering behind books and quotes and other people’s protection! But what are you going to do when reality’s jackboot comes crashing through your door?”

My fist shook at Father, then to the ghosts on the mantel; all those lives now reduced to piles of shoes, eyeglasses, gold fillings, and ashes.

I kept trying to jam myself through, a Kate-shaped peg in a rectangular hole.

They think they’re at a petting zoo, or in a Disney movie. They’ve never learned the real rules, so they think they can just make up their own. This is called anthropomorphizing.

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, never having felt dirt under their feet, just aching to lose themselves in the Garden of Eden. And then a few days later we find them crawling through the muck, half-starved, dehydrated, nursing some gangrenous wound. They all want to live “in harmony with nature” before some of them realize, too late, that nature is anything but harmonious.

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.

“For the dead and the living, we must bear witness.”

Most humans are not masochistic by nature. The human heart can only absorb so much pain.

We can’t just mourn the deaths, we also have to celebrate the lives. We need Anne Frank’s diary, but we also need her smile on the cover.

It was truly exquisite, the way these hard rivulets had dribbled through their black cage. The frozen fluidity, the way it captured the rays. I couldn’t believe that something so beautiful could come from fire.

I’m good at apologizing. Specialization.