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

A pause, maybe bewilderment on their part?

But then she answered, followed by the chorus of her troop.

These hoots were much closer now, direct instead of echoed.

They’d come over the rise. They had to be watching us.

I looked back at the group and said, “Now!”

Dan hit a button on his iPad, manually igniting the house’s outside lights. There was no way they could miss us now, or the “bait” as we whipped the tarp off Consort’s corpse.

The sounds, I thought I’d heard them all before. The call to challenge, the rallying hoot, the roar to charge, the chatter of food. But this, this cacophony of wails. Shock? Did they not know Consort was dead? Grief? Suddenly seeing him like this, no time to process his passing or conceive of how he died? Or was it hope? Belief that he might actually still be alive and that we were somehow holding him prisoner? “Please don’t hurt him! Please let him go!”

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

I stepped up onto Consort’s lifeless chest, raised my spear, and with another challenging howl, I jammed the blade into the dead ape’s gut.

Everyone else followed, mimicking my howls as they drove their spear points into the fur-covered flesh. As with everything, we’d meticulously planned this act. Ten seconds, no more. We raised our spears, waited. But they didn’t come. Still cautious? Still clearheaded enough to plan? That was what I was afraid of when I stepped over Consort’s face, dropped my spear, and then my pants. I couldn’t make my bowels work on command, but my bladder was another story. I hoped the house lights made me visible to all, and that the message behind my action was clear.

“Fuck you, Ex-Predators. Here’s what I can do to your family.”

The bellows washed over us.

They were coming.

They were mad.

The first motion light snapped on somewhere in our backyard, followed by a large slouching shape darkening the space between our house and Mostar’s.

The shape grew, the roar echoed.

Then the step, the high yip, and those points jerked upward as the brute recoiled in pain. It had worked; the challenge, the taunts, the sight of their loved one’s body being desecrated. They were enough like us to fly into a mindless rage, and miss the spikes right under their feet.

Another leviathan loped in between Mostar’s and the Perkins-Forsters’ house. Another sharp cry, and the darkened mass retreated out of sight. Other motion lights, more quick blobs skirting between our homes.

We waited, watched.

No more blind charges.

They’d learned.

It only took a few seconds before we heard the faint crinkle of our kitchen door collapsing. They were trying a different tactic, going through our homes instead of around. Please don’t let them smell it. That was the prayer in my head. Or let them still be too angry to care!

Dan’s iPad chirped, the home security app flashing. One, hopefully more, was now passing directly through our kitchen. The angle of Dan’s tablet gave his face a demonic expression. Rising smile, narrowing eyebrows. Even now I don’t know how he’d done it. Hacking the stove to pump all that homemade methane into our house. Bypassing all the safeguards to ensure a remote ignition. Dan’s eyes flicked to me for permission, finger poised above the screen.

I mouthed, “Yes.”

Dan answered, “As you wish.”

Face warmed, eyes squinted, my ears popped as blue flames blew out our windows. The creature must have run (if it did run) out the back. It might have just been stunned in the blast. There wasn’t time to see what happened.

More chirps. More home invasions. Mostar’s, Reinhardt’s, the Perkins-Forsters’. How could they have been unfazed by the first explosion? Were they that brave or simply that eager to reach us? Dan didn’t wait for my permission this time. Three quick taps. Boom-boom-boom! Heat and pressure rolled over us, along with the sight of our first confirmed kill.

This one had made it to Reinhardt’s living room. Goldenboy. The force of the explosion blasted him right out onto the front lawn. He landed on his hands and feet, dazed, shaking. Wisps of whitish smoke rose from patches of smoldering fur. He tried to rise, slipped, and face-planted right into a patch of bamboo.

We heard a hacking, wet wheeze as he pushed himself up to show us his punctured front. Some stakes were still embedded, some had left gaping holes. Stomach, chest, the higher ones puffed small red clouds. He tried to stand, slipped backward, hit Reinhardt’s door, and slid back down under a slick of blood.

Then the whole house jumped. Reinhardt’s home seemed to rise off its foundation as more fireballs erupted from every window. Dan shouted, “Battery!” and we ran for the safety of the Common House.

Dan had rigged up the houses’ energy cells to explode, hacking their fire suppression systems and packing their bases with oil-soaked towels. He’d tried to warn me that it might not work, or work too well. “We don’t know how big the explosion could be!”

“Bigger the better” was how I’d responded, mentally salivating about how many it could kill.

But as we all crouched under the table listening to, feeling, our houses detonate one by one, I will confess to thinking, Oh shit, what have I done! I’m sure Mostar wouldn’t have given it a thought, probably compared it to an artillery bombardment from her past. “Oh no,” she would have scoffed, “this is nothing.” And then rattled off the names of some army cannons that made these explosions look like firecrackers. I could have used those comparisons now, because the rain of debris made it seem like World War III. Bangs and thuds and, at one point, a crack as the roof’s central beam absorbed a piece of something we used to live in.

We couldn’t see anything outside; blowing ash fogged the windows. One of them cracked suddenly from a small strike. I threw my body over Pal, ready for another hit to send flying glass our way.

A final BOOM above our heads, the last solid objects hitting earth.

A few tense, quiet seconds. Then—

“Listen!” That was Dan, holding my hand and cupping one ear toward the door.

A sound, rising above the crackling, creaking collapse.

A new call. High, lamenting bawls mixing with pain-filled yelps.

Fear.

Alpha? That’s all I could think as my ears strained to pick her out. Is she calling them all back?

I listened for another cryptic cry, but instead got an earful of cheers.

“Yeah!” That was Dan, squatting at the open door, staring out at the fires, pumping his fist in the air. “Yesyesyes!”

Bobbi picked up the cheer, whooping right into my ear with Effie and Carmen behind her.

I shouted, “Quiet!” and rushed for the door. Dan, reaching for my hand, mumbled something like, “Wait.”

I couldn’t. I had to be sure.

The dust was still settling along with some light debris. I coughed at the smoke, tried to see through stinging eyes. Greenloop was gone. Nothing but a ring of bonfires.

There!

Two of them running over the rise behind the burning wreckage of our home. Backs orange in the flames. One lighter than the other, Princess, her pristine fur ruined. And Scout, far out ahead. Just those two? I grasped my spear, whipping my head right and left. No more movement, no bodies.

Then a yelping cry behind me. From the driveway, still in darkness.

I was afraid of that, planned for that, and reached into my pocket for the two car fobs. We’d parked our Prius and the Boothes’ BMW on opposite edges of the road entrance, making sure to angle their noses down the hill. When I hit both buttons, their headlights turned night into day. A startled Gray shielded his eyes, along with Twins One and Two. They must have also been surprised by the broken glass, the only barrier we could lay across the ash-covered asphalt. But between the glass and now the light, we’d spoiled any chance for a surprise attack.