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

War does that, I guess, and this place looked like a war zone. All that blackened rubble, debris strewn everywhere. We found the glass “minefield” and the bamboo spikes. Had to be really careful with those, one of our guys almost lost a foot. Reminded me of the story my uncles used to tell about Vietnam. Punji pits, complete with human feces. Amazing how different people at different times can come up with the same ideas.

We found eight stone-covered graves on the Common House helipad—four big, four small. We didn’t exhume them. We left that to the follow-up forensic team. The long graves, I’m told, contained the remains of her husband, along with Roberta Boothe, Carmen Perkins, and Euphemia Forster. The small ones…

She grimaces.

Those were… collections. The smashed bones and tissue shreds of Mr. and Mrs. Durant, the head of Vincent Boothe, and the black, burned skeleton that DNA evidence later identified as Ms. Mostar.

When I think about the time it took for her, the two of them, to dig that miniature cemetery, scraping out the frozen earth, collecting the bodies, covering them with rocks… and still having time for the “other” corpses…

We found a lot of meat in the Common House freezer. Newly cut steaks—well butchered, I might add—along with pots of stew. And in the cabinets, these endless Ziploc bags of jerky. They must have had the dehydrator going night and day. Some of the guys in my group, they… yeah, me too… we kinda kick ourselves for not sneaking just one of those little dried strips. I mean, c’mon, who doesn’t want to know what Sasquatch tastes like?

But it’s all gone now. Confiscated, along with the piles of broken, scraped bones we found behind the Common House and the heavy, stinking skins we found nailed to the walls. Investigators also took every last shard from the other bone pile. The one up behind the ridge, the “lair” according to her journal. They even scooped up the frozen pile of poop from the garden. All under lock and key now, along with the cellphones, laptops, and tablets we found stacked neatly next to Mrs. Holland’s journal. If I’d only thought to charge up Dan Holland’s iPad before turning it in. The compost battle video’s gotta be on there. Woulda been my chance to actually see what they look like. Well, I guess, we all will eventually.

Schell reaches for one of the two remaining boxes. I grab the other one. Together, we carry them out to the parking lot, loading them into the back of a battered U.S. National Park Service pickup truck. On the way out, I ask my final question.

Fuck if I know. At least they’re not writing it off. I think if they were going for a straight-up cover-up, it’d all be explained away by the fires. Community gets stranded, starts fiddling with their newfangled biogas systems to keep warm. Accidental explosion, yada yada yada. But they haven’t done that. The investigation is still very open. Ask anyone directly connected with it and they’ll tell you they’re gettin’ to it, as soon as they dig, literally dig, through all the other investigations going on right now.

And there’s no lying there. That backlog is real. We’re still finding bodies in the woods, who died of exposure after abandoning their cars. And the bodies still buried in those cars? Lahars dry into concrete! Even with ground-penetrating radar, they’re having a bitch of a time.

Between those entombed corpses, our frozen finds, and all the other remains they’re still pulling from under the smashed towns… how long did it take for loved ones to identify body bags from Katrina? How long do you think it’ll take to empty that mega-morgue we’ve got in what used to be Tacoma?

So officially, it’s just a matter of red tape. But unofficially… look, we were “encouraged” not to talk about this, and if I thought my job was on the line, I’m not sure I would, but you didn’t have any problem getting through to me, and you don’t see anyone right now trying to get in between us. They’re not gonna bury this, stick the evidence in a crate and warehouse it like the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. I think the truth’ll come out for no other reason than they want it to.

Think about it. Tourist dollars! Zoo fees! You know what the Chinese make on their pandas? You know how long Loch Ness had been dining out on a few faked photos? Please. We’ll be able to rebuild the Rainier damage and then some when the whole world flocks here for the chance to glimpse a living legend.

They want to go public, the only question is when. Rainier showed us what can happen when people lose faith in the system. We need to restore that faith, rebuild it along with the roads and bridges and other structures that make up a civilization. And that’s why it probably won’t help with public confidence if the government announces it just discovered Bigfoot.

That’s why they have to wait a little bit, till the lights come back on, the water starts running, and all the dead are finally laid to rest. Maybe they have a PR plan for that day. Maybe your book is part of it. No, really. Maybe that’s why they’re letting me talk to you.

It’s not the craziest idea. The book comes out, puts a toe in the water. If no one gives a shit, they’ve got more time to get their story straight. But if it stirs the pot, they can back you up with their findings, blame their own bureaucracy for the delay. Whatever. I guess we’ll know soon enough.

From my interview with Frank McCray, Jr.

McCray has finished cleaning his BioLite stove. He places it in his backpack, checks his watch, then ushers me outside. The wind has gotten colder since our conversation, despite the rising sun. McCray reaches into his parka for a small, bright orange handheld radio and keys the mic three times. Turning toward the mountains, I watch one of the bushes move, a human figure walking down the game trail toward us.

What happened? What’s the next chapter of this story?

There are a lot of scenarios and they depend on who you ask.

Scenario One is that the surviving creatures regrouped for a counterattack. That’s what the scuzzbags at [website name withheld] believe. They think Kate and Palomino tried to hole up for the winter in the Common House until one day, or night, they were ambushed and taken away. I’ll admit it’s possible. She did write about several of them escaping. Scout and Princess, running up the slope after the explosions. One of the twins with all those javelin hits, although I’m betting he later bled to death. And the other two females, the new mamas. She didn’t write about them during the fight.

Yes, it’s possible they reorganized, then came roaring back out for a rematch. Possible, but not probable. Kate wouldn’t have let that happen. Not the Kate I’ve read about. Even when they buried the bodies, she would have been armed and alert. Those graves were dug right next to the Common House, which meant that any of those approaching fuckers would have to cross a lot of open space to strike. Kate probably had plenty of javelins waiting within arm’s reach, and her new spear.

That’s what I think she did with the Iklwa blade. Nobody ever found it. Schell was kind enough to make some discreet inquiries for me. Through all the wreckage, all the stockpiled supplies and homemade weapons in the Common House, they never found a knife with a Damascus blade.

That’s the key piece of evidence to back up her leaving. That and the soba-kiri axe. They never found that one either, and it would have been essential for a long trek. I can’t be sure about any other items. Backpacks, sleeping bags, cooking gear. I don’t know what else they had. She didn’t leave a list. She also didn’t leave a note, which is why some people suspect she was taken. I don’t buy it though; I think she wasn’t sure where she was going.