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

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.

I threw. I missed. My shot landed just short of Gray. The old male kicked it aside, trampled, forgotten.

But the second.

Carmen, like an Olympic athlete, threw hers from a running stance! She was still balancing on one leg when I turned to see the reflected orange sparks vanish into the target’s chest. She must have hit right between the ribs, sliding almost to the hilt.

Twin One roared, skidding to a halt in a storm of ash. He grabbed the shaft angrily, threw it aside, then skipped sideways and backward, clawing the tiny wound.

It worked!

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…

“Throw!”

Dan’s mouth in my ear, his hand pointing to my left. Twin Two, barely a dozen feet away. Arms out, mouth open, eyes narrowed.

Two javelins. Mine and Dan’s. His was knocked away in mid-flight. Mine hit low, planting deep in the upper thigh. Two jerked to a stop, like hitting an invisible wall. As it reached to break off my wiggling shaft, Dan launched another right into its shoulder. Two jerked back sharply, roared, reached up to tear it out.

I actually heard this one, the whistle of a third javelin that whipped between Dan and me. Carmen again. Straight on to burrow in the smooth, muscled gut. Grasping, pulling, the whole barbed point came out. A long yowl, a flash of pink, tubular intestine.

One hand swatted the air in front of him, the other cupped his wounded stomach.

Enough? Self-preservation instinct or an intelligent calculation of odds?

“Not worth it!” That’s what Two seemed to yelp as he backstepped a few paces down the driveway, then turned and ran. Ran! He didn’t even stop to help his brother, who was lying on his side, panting, bleeding, trying to crawl away. Two didn’t look back as One wailed after him. The mouse from the cat, the antelope from the lion. Distance, safety, life.

“Effie!”

My eyes flicked to Carmen, thrusting spear in hand, sprinting over to her kneeling wife. I watched Gray catch Effie’s javelin mid-flight, stop to bite it in half like a piece of dry spaghetti, then bound the last few steps toward her.

Speed, weight, momentum. What does it take to knock a hurtling asteroid aside? Carmen, Dan, and I running with outstretched spears. We hit at exactly the same time. Dan’s blade buried itself into the sinew of Gray’s left forearm while Carmen’s pierced its bulging calf. And mine, falling forward, steadied by the grip on my shaft. It skewered him under the lowest rib, stopped only by the spear’s crossbar! Gray yowled, spun, swiped at my head. Six inches, maybe. Three? Close enough to whip the air across my face. The crossbar’d kept me, literally, at arm’s length!

If I’d only been smart enough to let go and duck. Gray pivoted from the hips this time, using my own weapon to catapult me back into the ash. My head hit something. Hard. A bright star burst in the center of my vision. I rolled over twice, saw what I’d struck.

A thrown rock from the first night’s bombardment. Rough, oval, heavy, I grabbed it with both hands, struggling to my feet. I don’t know who’d acted first, Dan or Carmen, but as I turned to face them, I could see both had Effie’s spear now, and were driving it up into the goliath’s chest. The angle was perfect, just under its rib cage, right into the heart.

Thick, sticky spray. Down the pole, into our faces as Gray toppled backward.

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.

Bouncing off the skin-covered bone. Again. Teeth breaking, lips torn. Again. Muzzle cracking. Again. Skull giving. Again. Broken bone slicing up through damp fur. Again. The first hint of brains. Again. Again. Again. Eyes popping, skull collapsing, brains spilling out into the ash, onto my jeans, a mass of hairs and liquid and steaming, shiny meat. I remember everything.

I remember laughing.

No words, words are for thinking animals, for human beings. Laughing and grunts and tight little moans of joy.

Then the scream.

Up and alert. Me again.

All of us scrambling. Remembering where we were, who we were.

One mistake. That’s all it took.

There were others out there, braving the dying flames, watching for the shadow of stakes and flicker of broken glass. We’d stopped thinking just as they’d started. Moving through darkness, silent, creeping up to the Common House behind our backs.

The scream was Bobbi. It had her by the hair. Dragging her in a puffing furrow, spindly legs kicking, delicate, pale hands grasping backward at air. Screaming, sobbing, pleading.

I don’t know if what happened next was an act of self-defense, the old lady, Dowager, using Bobbi to ward off Dan’s charge. All I saw was Mrs. Boothe, still writhing, swung back and up into the air. Like Yvette, spun in a complete circle. I pray that her neck broke quickly. The Common House roof thudded as her body broke on its edge. She had to have been dead by then, by the time my eyes followed her down, and caught on the image of Dan’s spear rammed up into the killer’s chest.

That was when we all heard the second scream.

Pal!

Juno had slipped completely past us, right into the Common House without a sound, right over to the pile of blankets hiding her.

“Palomino!” Carmen ran after the withdrawing titan. Like Bobbi, this one had Pal by the hair. Unlike Dowager, Juno wasn’t looking for a fight. She was limping, bleeding from her right foot. A stake? Probably why she’d gone after Pal. Easy pickings, limited risk. Withdraw, escape, feed somewhere quiet and safe. That was what must have been going through the pregnant sow’s mind.

Carmen and I were running toward them, with Effie—the only one still armed—leading the charge. She threw her heavy, clunky spear in a high arc. Over Effie’s shoulder, I saw it thunk into the small of Juno’s back. A shallow hit, maybe glancing off the pelvis. Enough to get her attention though, force her to turn and swipe at Carmen with her free arm.

The open hand caught Carmen on the side of the head, grabbing it, lifting. I saw her feet rise off the ground. I heard the crack as Juno crushed her skull.

Juno hurled Carmen’s body at us, forcing us to stop and duck. With a growling hoot, she held up Palomino, dangling her like a taunt, or a warning.

“Don’t come any closer. I’ll hurt your baby. Get back. I’ll kill her!”

Intelligence, reasoning. I know that’s what it meant, and I think it might have worked except—

“Mamma!”

That was the only word I’ve ever heard Pal speak, and before I could react, I witnessed that word’s power.