Макс Брукс - Devolution - A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre

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.