Devolution: A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre

Chapter 14

A rock struck the door as I slammed it. I can still feel my hand vibrating. Dan pulled me upstairs. I shouted, “Lights! Get the lights!” I meant from the master switches at the top of the stairs, not the central control from his iPad. But that’s what he tried to do, halfway up the stairs. He stopped to fumble with his tablet. “No… not…,” but he’d already dropped it. The glass face cracked as it hit the naked wooden step.

“Go!” I yelled as the house shuddered, kneeing him in the butt as he swiped up the iPad. “Go! GO!”

We ran into the bedroom just as the balcony doors took a direct hit. I yelped at the loud hollow BOP and turned to protect my face from the glass. But the doors stayed together. Like our iPad, and maybe our car’s windshield, the plate just bulged in a spiderweb of sparkling cracks. I had maybe a moment of shock, gratitude, then I yelled, “Drapes!”

We split up, yanking the cloth covers together, then turned to do the same with the front windows.

I can’t believe I did that. Hesitating for just a few seconds. But the view of our entire village, rocks sailing in from all directions, bouncing off roofs, kicking up ash geysers.

If I hadn’t stopped to look.

If Dan hadn’t noticed.

“Lookou—” His voice, his weight. The force of his shoulder in my chest. We hit the floor just as the window above us shattered. I felt little cold flakes pepper my neck and ear as the baseball-sized rock bounced across our bed.

Panting on the floor, Dan picked glass from my hair. “Don’t move.” The warmth of his breath, the pressure of his fingertips. “Here… ow… here… here’s one.” Maybe a minute, maybe longer, before it felt safe to move. Squat-walking to the bathroom, the only glass-free space. As I flicked off the light, Dan found the master switch on his iPad. I noticed some of the screen’s finger smudges were red. “I’m fine.” He showed me a tiny bubble on the end of his forefinger. “It’s not from the screen.” That had been the ow when he’d checked me for shards. Now it was my turn, crouching in the shower with the curtains drawn, using the flashlight from my iPhone, looking for any sparkling hints.

thmpthnkscrkthmp

That was our soundtrack, a symphony of impact sounds that, after a couple of minutes, we could pick out like instruments in an orchestra.

Thmp. The ash.

Thnk. A roof.

Thomp. Our roof.

Ksssh. A window.

And one big, crazy kssssh… ­weeeeu­eeeeeu­eeeeeu­eeeee. A car, its alarm wailing like a wounded animal.

Then footsteps. In the house! I looked at Dan, who reached for his stabber that wasn’t there. He’d left the coconut opener downstairs on the kitchen table, just like I’d left the javelin in the bedroom.

Time to get it? I wondered for a second before rapid strides clattered up the stairs.

Then a frantic banging on the bedroom door.

“Kids?” Muffled shouting. Mostar!

“Kids! Are you in there?”

We practically flew to the bedroom door; it was so dark we nearly felt her arms before actually seeing her. Shaking, all of us, on our knees, crouching in a group hug.

A second, a sob, then Mostar breaking to grab a face with each hand.

“Danny, downstairs!” twisting his head to the living room. “Get a… two… two seat cushions from the couch! Go!” No argument. Dan bolted.

“Katie!” Still clutching my jaw. “Come with me! Come, come, come!”

I ran across the upstairs walkway, past Dan’s office with its newly broken window and basketball-sized boulder in the middle of the floor. Into my office where Mostar, crazily, started opening the windows! I couldn’t understand. I was halfway under my desk. But when that little oblong, mango-shaped rock came spinning in through the open window, the words “what the fuck are you doing” were almost out of my mouth. Those words stopped short as the “mango” bounced harmlessly against the back wall, then rolled to a stop at my feet.

No window. No glass!

“Katie!” Mostar motioned to my side. I jumped up, opened the window, then pressed myself up against the wall as a rock whooshed through open space. This one, ironically, almost hit Dan, who’d just come puffing in with the cushions.

Mostar yelled, “Here!” She grabbed one of the cushions and jammed it against her half of the open window as Dan copied the action on my end.

thmp

His cushion recoiled slightly as a rock bounced harmlessly off the other side.

Simple. Genius. Mostar.

She was already sliding my desktop monitor behind her cushion when I slid over next to Dan.

“Behind me!” Taking the soft barrier from him, I jerked my head to the two smaller steel shelves against the far wall. Dan got it, rushed over, and tipped their contents on the floor.

As he lifted the first into place, I felt another rock punch my cushion. The impact nearly knocked me down. “Are you…” Dan’s hand on my back.

“Fine!” Nudging him away. Shifting my weight, widening my stance, I barely felt the next two hits.

Across the room, Dan grunted, “Look out,” and plopped the second shelf on the desk. Then restocking; files, printer paper, printer—the Ikea desk groaned under their weight. But they held! An audible thmp, a quick sliver of light between cushion and windowsill. But it held! I did the same, hands free, stepping back. A soft thmp and rattle of something hard and loose on my shelf.

Barely audible above the rest of the bombardment. That’s what Mostar called it, resting on the floor, back to the wall. “They never warn you,” she breathed, “they always come in before the sirens.” I heard her sniff, hard, then cough. “Never get caught in the open, always away from the doors. The old streets are best, narrow. They shield you from shrapnel.” More cryptic Mostar-isms.

She yawned, breathed some indecipherable foreign phrase, and then dropped right off to sleep. Seriously! Snoring! Louder than Dan’s! He’s at it too, now, by the way. Both of them, like characters in a Disney movie.

At least Dan waited for the “shelling” to stop. It petered out about an hour ago. Maybe ten minutes in total? God, what a ten minutes! Mostar’s still sleeping upright against the wall. Dan’s curled up at the foot of the closed office door. I was worried that we’d suffocate in here, but he insisted we keep it shut. “The alarm’s out.” Those were his last words before dropping off. “I’ll fix it tomorrow… fix it… I’ll fix it.”

I guess I shouldn’t worry. The barrier’s not airtight. I can feel little drafts of cold air drifting down around my desk. That’s where I am now, next to it, wedged into the corner, writing all this down.

My fingers are cramping. I need to pee. I want to sleep but I also don’t. I’m afraid of tomorrow.

Why did the rocks stop? Why did they start? What does it mean?

I can’t hear anything outside.

I really need to pee.

From my interview with Senior Ranger Josephine Schell.

Like wood knocking, rock throwing is deeply embedded in the lore. Again, there’s a lot of conjecture. It might very well be a peaceful… well… nonlethal means of intimidation. That might explain the howls as well. One theory is that they use it to drive another troop or individual away. That would make sense, given that chimps sometimes throw rocks at each other, or at people, like at that Swedish zoo.[28] Santino probably wasn’t looking to kill anybody, just make them leave.

So much to do this morning, so much to do today. I have to get this down quickly while it’s still fresh. The pain in my neck woke me up. Sleeping on the floor, on my side, arm for a pillow. I’ve had neck aches before but oh my God. Shoulder, ribs, face! And so cold! Last night it was kind of nice. The room was so hot and stuffy. But now, the chill outside, it must have dropped twenty degrees. I can see my breath. This is what Frank must have been talking about, that plunge in temperature right before winter.

While the rest of me was freezing, my bladder was absolutely burning. Not only did it cause me discomfort, but when I opened my eyes, I almost peed out of fear. Dan and Mostar were gone, and the door was wide open!

I called out for both of them, and got nothing back. I stood up, shivered, sneezed repeatedly, then poked my head out of the office. The house looked empty, the front door was open. The curtains covering the living room window were raised. I checked my phone, a little past eight, but the darkness… Lead gray, obscuring everything. I couldn’t see lights from the other houses, or the other houses. It was like they’d had been teleported to another world.

I ducked into the hall bathroom quickly, then came out and called again for Dan. No answer. I could hear voices, distant but clear. I hobbled downstairs, rubbing the blood into my needle-stung right leg, and half limped over to the front door.

Fog!

Dark and thick. And cold! I could feel it through my skin, seeping into my bones. The village was barely visible, but I could just make out the small group by the Common House.

Dan was there, talking to the Boothes, along with Carmen and Reinhardt. Vincent was all decked out in his hiking gear, boots, poles, CamelBak. The pack itself was bulging, crammed with stuff it wasn’t meant to hold. So was the laptop bag on his hip, round and overstuffed. And Bobbi’s pink yoga mat on the other hip, tied around his shoulder with an improvised rope of shoelaces. And around the mat was a blanket, one of those ultra-soft airport types you buy at Hudson News. It was wrapped with more tied-together laces that typified his entire ensemble.

“I don’t need to worry about getting lost.” Vincent kept gesturing down the road. “Just follow the driveway to the bridge…”

Dan countered with, “But then what? If there’s no bridge…”

“I’ll just follow the lahar.” Vincent swallowed. “It must have cooled by now. Or hardened, whatever the proper term…”

Dan persisted. “But does that make it safe to cross?”

Bobbi cut in. “He doesn’t need to cross. Like he said, he’ll just be walking alongside it, following it down where the stream used to be.”

“To where?” Dan saw me enter the group, slid an arm around my waist, then swooped his free hand to the sky. “You can’t see anything!”

“It’ll burn off.” Vincent didn’t make eye contact, just nodded quickly to the ground. “It does.” Then, to his wife, “Last fall, remember, by midday…” She nodded back, clutching his arm, trying to smile.

“I’ll be fine.” I’m not sure if Vincent meant this for her or Dan or himself. “Take it slow, careful…” He looked up. “I don’t need to make it all the way, just enough to get cell reception.” He patted his jacket, the high-end trekker kind with solar panels woven into the lining. He repeated, “I’ll be careful.”

“But you’ll be all alone.”

A pause at that. A warning.

Dan filled me in later about the argument I’d already missed. How he and Mostar had gotten up early, decided to let me sleep, and gone out to check on everyone else. That was when they’d found Vincent getting ready to leave, and how he’d already made up his mind.

The philosophy, the justification. Somehow Vincent and Bobbi had convinced themselves that the rocks were meant to scare us away. Our land was the goal, the shelter of our houses, possibly, as well as the food inside. They still weren’t ready to cross that mental line, to admit what those creatures really want. And when Reinhardt showed up…

Reinhardt.

He’d been listening, that’s what Dan thinks, through one of his broken windows, and came over to see what was happening. When he enthusiastically threw his support behind Vincent, Dan said Mostar gave up after that. No one, not even Carmen, who showed up at the same time, was willing to accept the truth. That’s why Dan had switched tactics, focusing on the perils of the hike. But, as I personally witnessed, this logic wouldn’t work either.

Someone just had to go for help. There simply wasn’t any other choice.

Why? Why are we always looking for someone else to save us instead of trying to save ourselves?

“Here it is!” We all turned to see Mostar shuffling back to the group. Dan told me when he’d pivoted to the terrain argument, she’d rushed back to her house for “something.” And that something turned out to be a bamboo spear. A proper one this time. Not the slapdash javelin from before. An eight-inch chef’s knife jutted from the hollow center of a thick, strong shaft, held there by what I thought was brown string but later learned was rubber-coated electrical wire. It looked powerful, deadly, and a little bit comical when held next to Vincent’s diminutive frame. (I also learned, later, that she’d been making it for Dan.)

“Here”—she held out the weapon to Vincent—“this is what I was talking about.”

“Thank you.” Vincent kept his hands at his sides. “But… I think… it’s a little…” His eyes followed the six-foot-plus shaft.

“I can cut it down.” Mostar started to turn away. “Give me thirty seconds.”

“I’m okay,” Vincent insisted, and held up the twin telescopic poles dangling from his wrists. “They’re better for balance anyway, I have more experience with them, and…” He ran his hand over his glistening upper lip. “I don’t…”

A glance at Reinhardt, who, surprisingly, had been silent all this time. “I… don’t want to make things worse.”

“Then don’t go!” Mostar jammed the butt of her spear into the ground.

He shrugged. “I have to.” Then, softer to his wife, “I have to.”

And that was that. A whole conversation in agreed code. Hints, warnings, even a weapon without mentioning aloud what it was for. Mostar just sighed, withdrew the spear, and gave him a big hug. So did the rest of us. I could feel the nervous heat coming through his clothes, the sweat of his neck on my cheek. Reinhardt gave him this confident pat on the arm, like one of those old black-and-white war movies where somebody’s sending the hero off to glory. I always hated those movies. Whenever someone said “Good luck” or “Godspeed,” I only heard “Better you than me.” Bobbi kissed him deeply and, for a second, I thought she was going to cry.

We followed him as far as the Common House and then stopped to let Bobbi walk him to the bottom of the driveway. Standing there waiting, our backs turned to give them some privacy, Mostar looked at her shoes and said, “They never listen. No matter what you say, sooner or later someone always tries to run the blockade.” And she muttered something in her native language, something I couldn’t catch. I half expected her to cross herself. Isn’t that what they also did in war movies, the old stout foreign women?

This one didn’t. She just clapped her hands twice with, “Okay, let’s get to work, a lot of broken glass to clean up.” As Reinhardt took Dan aside, mumbling something about his bad knees, I looked back to see that Bobbi was now alone.

I could see her head was bowed slightly, as she hugged herself, shoulders heaving.

“C’mon, Katie.” Mostar took me by the arm and escorted me down the hill toward her. “Let’s get her home.”

Vincent was gone by then, disappeared into the fog.

From my interview with Senior Ranger Josephine Schell.

Not all chimps throw rocks for dominance. In West Africa, primatologists recently observed them hurling stones against trees. No one knows why. There’s a theory that it’s some kind of “sacred ritual” for some yet undiscovered goal. Personally, I couldn’t care less why they do it, just that they do. It shows me rocks have multiple functions, and we can’t be sure about what all those functions are. If some chimps use stones in their monkey-hunting tactics and those tactics are being used by some of their larger, North American cousins, then both the Mount St. Helens attack and the bombardment of Greenloop weren’t meant to drive the humans away, but to drive them out into the open.