Devolution: A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre

The chapter opens with the transcript of a military radio call reporting an active shooter on Interstate 90.

On October 6, Kate observes local wildlife fleeing from an unknown threat. Kate recalls the boulder that she thought was chasing her and theorizes that it was a bear. On the other hand, she believes that nature has been forcing them to compete with the valley’s non-predator wildlife for scarce food resources. She compares this to the state of emergency throughout the region, which has escalated to military deployment in Seattle. This development could further delay rescue efforts.

Kate’s primary concern is food supply. The previous night, Kate informed Mostar that she projected they would run out of food by Christmas. Mostar resolved that they could start halving rations to extend their supply until the garden is ready for harvesting. When Kate sees squirrels intruding on the Boothes’ herb garden, she tries to scare them away but discovers that Bobbi has been hoarding potatoes in her kitchen after all. Though furious over Bobbi’s lie, Kate is distracted when Dan suddenly appears, wielding a bamboo pole.

The novel shifts to Schell’s interview. Schell agrees with Kate’s assertion that the wildlife was fleeing a threat. During their search, the rangers came across several groups of animals fighting over food.

Kate’s journal entry continues. She sees Dan using the bamboo pole to clean volcano ash off their house’s solar panels. He suggests repurposing Greenloop’s bamboo supply to perform housework while Kate and Mostar discuss ration plans. The women caution him against it, fearing that he’ll injure himself. This only galvanizes his resolve. Privately, Mostar tells Kate that their situation’s urgency is forcing the real Dan to come out.

After Dan comes down from the roof, he and Kate hear a scream coming from the Perkins-Forster residence. A mountain lion is stalking Palomino in the yard. Kate instinctively runs to defend Palomino. Just before the lion strikes, Mostar arrives with a bamboo javelin, scaring the lion away. Dan helped her make it while he was making the bamboo broom, proposing that she could use it to hunt deer. She then reassures Palomino, getting her to laugh. The Durants arrive, and Yvette loudly scolds Mostar for attacking a harmless animal. Dan defends Mostar, supporting her assertion that the mountain lion was about to pounce on Palomino. Yvette looks to Tony for support, but he remains shocked and silent. Yvette stands her ground alone, asserting the cougar’s harmlessness, and attempts to confiscate Mostar’s javelin. Mostar refuses, and during their tug of war over the bamboo, Mostar intimidates Yvette with her lower jaw, scaring Yvette away in front of the entire community.

Before the Hollands return home, Reinhardt asks Dan if he can clean his solar panels too. Mostar barters a trade for food in exchange for Dan’s services. Afterwards, she reminds the Hollands that need is the basis of the social contract. Mostar and Dan express their admiration for Kate’s instinctive bravery. Palomino offers her a thank-you gift of beans to plant in their garden.

In the late hours of October 7, the Hollands wake to nonhuman screams coming from outside the house. Kate realizes that she has heard that scream before, most recently when the boulder chased her. She and Dan listen as the source of the screams fights with the mountain lion, killing it. Dan leaves Kate to ensure that the house is locked. Nothing intrudes on the perimeter of Greenloop, however. They decide to wait until morning to investigate.

As the night goes on, Kate laments the loss of the data cloud, especially given all the cloud centers in the region that the eruption likely disrupted. She wishes that she could watch the new season of Downton Abbey or read on her Kindle. Unable to entertain herself, Kate takes Ambien and lights a candle. However, the candle accidentally sets fire to a towel, which she extinguishes after it activates the fire alarm. Dan finds her, and she cries in his arms. The care she receives from him leads to sex, and she feels at home again.

In the morning, Dan sets out to investigate the source of the noise. Despite his protests, Kate accompanies him. Their neighbors watch them from their houses, all of them afraid to investigate the noise themselves. Mostar gives Kate the bamboo javelin for protection.

The Hollands discover the mutilated bones of the mountain lion. They find rocks that were used to smash the animal to death. They find no meat anywhere. They discover a footprint that resembles a human’s but is much larger than Dan’s foot. When they report their findings to Mostar, Mostar is terrified, unable to explain the findings. Instinctively, Kate ties her observations to Oma, the wilderness spirit Yvette spoke about, but can’t believe that Bigfoot really exists.

The chapter opens with Schell’s interview. Schell, who is Navajo, discusses her familiarity with the Bigfoot legend. Bigfoot has many precursors and variations dating as far back as Enkidu from the Epic of Gilgamesh. Bigfoot itself is the legend’s quintessential American incarnation.

Schell shares her personal experience of growing up watching Bigfoot movies and even recalls reading the editor’s listicle on Bigfoot films. She then focuses on two Bigfoot accounts: a boulder attack on a miner’s cabin near Mount St. Helens in the 1920s and an incident retold by President Theodore Roosevelt in his memoir, The Wilderness Hunter, about a fur trapper named Bauman, who witnessed his partner’s death at the hands of a “goblin.” Instead of discouraging Schell’s beliefs, her parents encouraged her to look for scientific evidence to support them. This drove Schell’s interest in zoology, and while she remains open to the existence of undiscovered species, she’s reluctant about the reality of monsters.

Kate’s journal records the later events of October 8. Realizing that the wildlife has completely fled from the valley, she wonders what scared them away. Vincent asks Dan to clean their solar panels too, offering access to their supply pantry in return. Dan is proud of being seen as the “village handyman,” though Kate knows that he balked at previous offers to work for Frank because he was proud of himself as an entrepreneur. Still angry over the potato hoarding, Kate overcharges the Boothes with a demand for rolled oats in exchange for Dan’s labor. She’s later surprised when Bobbi alludes to Kate’s garden, wondering if this signals a shift in community mentality.

Vincent asks Dan and Kate about the cougar’s remains. He later dismisses the carnage as the work of various scavengers. Kate tries to visit Yvette so that she can learn more about Oma and derive insight into how to engage with the Bigfoots. Yvette doesn’t answer Kate’s knock on her door. She hears Yvette’s elliptical machine running inside and Yvette’s muttering voice. Kate wonders if Tony saw Bigfoot when he drove out of Greenloop. Kate becomes increasingly cautious about keeping her back to the woods, especially when she notices that she can’t escape the rancid smell.

An excerpt from Steve Morgan’s The Sasquatch Companion discusses the tension between indigenous oral accounts of Bigfoot and the Eurocentric bias in recorded encounters, of which few exist to attest to Bigfoot’s existence. Morgan acknowledges that evidence of Bigfoot likely exists, but notes that larger historical events in North America prevented records of this evidence from entering the public record. This shifted after World War II, which expedited the creation of industrial cities in the Pacific Northwest. From then on, reported Bigfoot sightings boomed.

Schell posits that the people who have the means to verify Bigfoot’s existence are afraid to do so because of the risk to their reputation. She attributes this to the timing of the Bigfoot sighting boom in the 1960s and 70s, which coincided with widespread public mistrust. This made people immediately skeptical of Bigfoot’s existence.

Schell argues that those who claim to have encountered Bigfoot, such as Roger Patterson, who shot the Patterson-Gimlin film that purports to record images of Bigfoot, are convinced but can’t verify the true nature of what they saw. She explains that when confronting a mystery, the human mind turns to older explanations, even unverified myths. Schell thus previously dismissed every reported Bigfoot sighting. Now she regrets doing so.

In the early hours of October 9, Kate wakes up to a sound outside her house. She looks out the window and sees that something has knocked down the Perkins-Forsters’ compost bin. A moving shadow catches Kate’s attention, though it reaches the tree line too quickly for her to discern its source. When she senses that the shadow is on her back porch, she scares it away by turning on the downstairs lights. She sees that the shadow is tall and heavily framed. When it gets far enough away, the shadow stares back at Kate and blinks, confirming its presence.

Dan joins Kate, and they proceed outside to investigate. They find more footprints and are disturbed by the smell. When they return inside, they discuss modifying the burglar alarm system to alert them anytime the shadow tries to breach their house. Kate is conscious that they’re having their first genuine conversation in years. Kate speculates that there must be more than one shadow.

An excerpt from Morgan’s The Sasquatch Companion discusses the archaeological origins of the Sasquatch, tracing them back to the Gigantopithecus in Asia. Morgan theorizes that the Gigantopithecus migrated from China to other parts of the world, leading to the creation of variant species like the Yeti. They arrived in the Americas during the final Ice Age, crossing a land bridge to complete the journey. Better adapted than most great apes, early Sasquatches survived the migration, as well as attempts by early humans to drive rapid mass extinctions of large animal species. In the latter case, Sasquatches developed a behavioral pattern that centered on hiding from humans.