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

The body was lying facedown. Flat, smooth, tremendous feet glittering with so many embedded shards they looked like a treasure trove of rubies. The blood trickling from those wounds mixed with the large red circle that spread from the breathless torso, from the knife-topped bamboo that sprouted from its silver back. Consort. I could see my reflection in his blood, following another trail that led to the far corner of the room.

Dan, sitting against the wall, cradling Mostar’s limp form. For a second, just a second, I thought she might be sleeping. The rise of her body under Dan’s heaving chest. I should have known right away that no human neck can twist so far to one side. But the closed lips, the gently shut eyes. She looked peaceful, alive.

Dan told me later what had happened, how she’d pulled him inside the house and ordered him to start smashing her art. She’d disappeared into the workshop as he’d grabbed all her sculptures off the shelves. One after the other he’d hurled them against the floor. He wasn’t sure how many he’d destroyed, half a dozen maybe, when the kitchen sliding door had toppled down. Mostar must have heard it too. She shouted from the garage, “Keep smashing!” And he did.

He told me that the beast had half stepped, half leaped at him, and come down hard on a floor of broken pieces. The whole village must have heard the roar. Dan watched the giant stumble backward, tread on more shards, then disappear back outside. He told me he felt like cheering, even crying, but Mostar had shouted, “Don’t stop! Expand the minefield!”

Her word, “minefield.” Always with the war metaphors.

He’d thrown everything to the ground. “Hard as you can,” she’d said, “everywhere!” He’d covered the kitchen, the living room, the entryway, every direction leading up to the garage.

Mostar was still inside, working on another spear. This one had been for her. You could tell by the short shaft that was now rising from the dead ape’s back. She’d just been tying off the wire when the garage door imploded right in front of her.

“She didn’t call for me.” That’s what Dan said. No cries for help as she’d turned and braced the butt of her spear against the wall. She must have known she was too little and weak to cause any damage, but if she could use the animal’s strength and size, if it was angry enough to charge without thinking…

That’s what she must have counted on as Consort came at her, impaling himself on the blade. But it worked too well. All that weight and speed. Dan doesn’t know if it was the inertia of the attack, or if the monster actually intended, despite the pain, to pull itself down the spear’s shaft to Mostar. Dan didn’t see any of this happening.

She was dead before he reached her. All he could do was drag her body away from the dying killer. And it didn’t die right away. It lay there for several minutes, facedown, coughing up blood, jerking every so often as the spear swayed like a flagpole in the wind.

Dan, holding Mostar in the corner, watched as Alpha came stumbling out of our house, clutching her charred, smoking mouth. He’d heard her pained cries, and that’s why, he believes, the rest of them didn’t finish us off. Their leader was hurt, unable to command. She probably wasn’t thinking about anything but getting away, finding a safe place to lick her wounds. They probably followed without question. Obedience trumping bloodlust.

Dan couldn’t stop apologizing later, about how he didn’t think to come looking for me, about how he just huddled there, sobbing quietly, holding Mostar’s cooling corpse. I didn’t judge him. I still don’t. He couldn’t even talk when I first saw him. The grief, the loss. I envy him. I didn’t feel anything at that moment, bending over him, reaching out to touch his tearstained cheek.

I remember his face darkening with the shadows of everyone crowding around us. I remember turning to face them. The silence. No one knowing what to say.

Then:

“We have to kill them.”

That was me. And it wasn’t.

I hadn’t planned on saying those words, or the ones that followed. Someone else was talking, a part of me I’d never met.

“Kill until they’re too afraid to hunt us, or until none of them are left.”

All eyes were on me. No pause. No debate. One by one they silently nodded.

I looked down at Dan, then over to Mostar’s face. “We have to drive them off or wipe them out.”

I felt Pal’s arms slip around my waist, her head nodding into my stomach.

“We have to kill them.”

From the NPR program Fresh Air with Terry Gross (2008).

GROSS: …And so you’ve taken on the name of your city as a form of public remembrance.

MOSTAR: Well, I know to some it sounds like… what did Jerry Seinfeld call “Sting”? “A prance-about-stage name”? [ Chuckles. ] But the inspiration came from Elie Wiesel, when he said, “For the dead and the living, we must bear witness.” That is what my life, this new life I’ve been given, is about. That is why I became an artist.

GROSS: To remind the world of the tragedy of Mostar?

MOSTAR: Yes, but not in a tragic way. I’m glad you used that word “tragedy,” because it exemplifies what I believe is the critical danger of negative remembrance. Most humans are not masochistic by nature. The human heart can only absorb so much pain.

GROSS: And you feel that discussing tragic events in their barest form runs the risk of repelling people?

MOSTAR: Not always, but far too often. 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. That is why I decided to become an artist, when I had that inspiring moment.

GROSS: Can you talk for a little bit about that moment?

MOSTAR: It wasn’t long after the siege.

GROSS: The second siege.

MOSTAR: Yes, when the Serbs had gone and the Croats turned on us. This was in May, when we weren’t sure the cease-fire would hold. There was a house I passed every day on my way to the hospital. It was just a charred wreck. I’d never really looked at it before. I must have passed it hundreds of times. But that one day, that moment when the clouds cleared and the sun caught a special verdant glint… I stopped. I turned around. I couldn’t believe it. A sparkling waterfall of ice.

GROSS: But it wasn’t ice…

MOSTAR: No, it was glass. Wine bottles that had melted down their wrought iron rack.

GROSS: Oh…

MOSTAR: 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.

They’re probably full. Why else haven’t they attacked? The Durants and Reinhardt. A lot of meat. They know we’re not going anywhere. They think we’re just here for the taking. Or maybe it’s Alpha. Recovering from her wound. Is she spooked? The deterrence Mostar was hoping for? Wouldn’t that be nice. I don’t want to believe it has anything to do with the body rotting under the tarp in Mostar’s workshop. Dan doesn’t think any of them saw it on their way out. Hopefully, they think Consort’s just run off. Maybe they’re looking for him. I hope that’s the case. I can’t afford to think about them mourning.