Devolution: A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre(82)

JOURNAL ENTRY #16


October 17

They’re probably full. Why else haven’t they attacked? The Durants and Reinhardt. A lot of meat. They know we’re not going anywhere. They think we’re just here for the taking. Or maybe it’s Alpha. Recovering from her wound. Is she spooked? The deterrence Mostar was hoping for? Wouldn’t that be nice. I don’t want to believe it has anything to do with the body rotting under the tarp in Mostar’s workshop. Dan doesn’t think any of them saw it on their way out. Hopefully, they think Consort’s just run off. Maybe they’re looking for him. I hope that’s the case. I can’t afford to think about them mourning.

Not yet.

I also can’t delude myself into imagining that they’ve moved on. We’re all still choking on their smell. It’s heavy in the air, thick despite the crisp, frosty chill. For whatever reason, they’ve given us about forty-eight hours’ peace, and we’ve used every last second to prepare.

“Hacking the houses,” that’s what Dan calls it. Manipulating the internal alarms, biogas tanks, stoves. That “hacking” part’s hard for Dan. Not the technical, the emotional. It drove him crazy, hunched over his iPad while the rest of us worked with our hands. Physical work. Male pride.

Three times he tried to take a “study break” to help us out. Once he even ran outside to help Effie and Pal carry a big box of stuff. I yelled at him. I didn’t mean to. I just saw him through the hole in Mostar’s garage door and shouted at him to get back to work.

He apologized to me later. He understands. We can’t afford bruised egos any more than we can afford wasted time. “Specialization. Division of labor.”

One of Mostar’s many lessons.

That box I yelled at him about, it was filled with supplies. It’s Effie and Palomino’s job to stock the Common House. Blankets, medicine, what’s left of the food. Everything we need to survive there. I’m glad Effie didn’t argue about the personal effects. Not that I’d expect her to argue about anything. But she did have a point. What about all the photos? The mementos? We can’t just leave them. No, but we can’t waste time on them either. Once everything’s in place, we’ll pack up our treasures.

Effie seemed to get the logic of that argument. So did Carmen, who’s in charge of placing stakes. She and Bobbi have been cutting and sharpening new spikes, as well as “modifying” the ones already made. And by “modifying,” I mean dipping them in our own poo.

Again, Carmen’s idea, in the hopes that it’ll give them an infection. I have my doubts. Who knows how tough their resistance is. But if it works just a little bit, if even one of their wounded wanders off to sicken or die days later…That’s why I haven’t publicly “poo-pooed” Carmen’s idea (sorry, lame joke), and privately, I’m blown away that she’s been able to turn her phobia into a survival skill.

I don’t know how she stands the smell though. I haven’t seen her reach for the hand sanitizer once. She even personally scooped out the bucket of slop from the biogas digester, even after Bobbi offered to do it. Bobbi hasn’t mentioned anything about Carmen clocking her, even though her cheek looks like half a hard-boiled egg. I noticed neither of them talk much about anything.

They’ve been going nonstop, laying stakes in between the houses, on the front lawns, in a semicircle ring around the Common House. “Semi” because the driveway leading up from the road can’t be staked. Same for the actual loop around the house. The asphalt is too hard, the ash too shallow. That’s where the glass comes in.

I took the idea from Mostar’s “minefield.” We’ve swept up all those shards and combined them with every single glass object in the village. I heard Carmen and Bobbi smashing them for hours. Glasses, bottles, picture frames. Shattering them all in the second story bathtub above my head, then carting the buckets downstairs to spread out along the entire circle. Maybe not as effective as bamboo, but maybe just enough to give them pause. That’s what I’m hoping for. That’s what I’ve been working on.

I’m the village “weaponsmith.” That’s what Dan calls me. I’ve been in Mostar’s workshop for two days, trying not to nap, trying to ignore Consort’s body next to me, and Mostar’s one floor above. We placed her on her bed. We’ll bury her later. I know she’d understand. I can picture her yelling at me to get to work. “Stop messing around, Katie!” She probably would have chastised us for carrying her all the way upstairs. “Just toss me on the couch or stuff me in the freezer next to Vincent’s head!”

Knowing Mostar, she’d probably have told us to pump her body full of poison and lay it out for those creatures to eat. I’ve actually thought about it a couple times. I haven’t said anything to anyone though. Morbidity aside, I don’t think the idea’s practical. I can’t afford to waste time trying to find something that might be toxic (of course nobody here has rat poison!) and I wouldn’t even know how to get it into her.

The fact that I’ve even thought about it, that I haven’t cried once since she died…I do think about her though, every waking second. I picture her over my shoulder, barking orders and correcting each mistake. I think she’d be proud of how I’m using her 3-D printer. I hope she’d approve of my creation.