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Inhabitants of Greenloop
Kate Holland
The primary narrator of the novel, Kate is a quiet, anxious CPA who moves with her husband Dan to the high-tech micro-community of Greenloop shortly before the eruption of Mount Rainier. Her therapist suggests that she try journaling to work on her emotional state, and her diary entries tell the story of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre.
- Action Survivor: Kate evolves from a timid, passive CPA to a ruthless hand-to-hand fighter, capable of ramming a flaming towel down a Sasquatch's throat with her bare hand.
- Apocalyptic Log: Kate’s diary entries chronicle Greenloop’s fall from a high-tech, sustainable “village of the future” to a devastated, burnt-out wreck.
- Badass and Child Duo: Her brother Frank McCray suggests that Kate may have taken Palomino with her to hunt down and exterminate the rest of the Sasquatch clan.
- Final Girl: Kate is the last adult inhabitant standing in Greenloop after the final fight against the Sasquatches.
- Never Found the Body: She and Palomino disappear sometime after the destruction of Greenloop. Her brother Frank thinks they may have gone hunting for the rest of the Sasquatches, though he acknowledges the possibility that they died of exposure while trying to walk to safety.
- Took a Level in Badass: Over the course of the novel, Kate goes from a quiet, nervy young woman to a certified Sasquatch-killer. Her first real standout moment comes when she instinctively throws herself between Palomino and a hungry, desperate mountain lion without even realizing what she's doing.
- Uncertain Doom: After the last battle against the Sasquatches, Kate and Palomino disappear sometime before Ranger Schell's rescue team arrives. Her brother Frank acknowledges that they most likely died while trying to walk to safety, but he also suggests that they might have gone hunting for the survivors of the Sasquatch clan.
Dan Holland
Kate's husband, an unemployed, apparently aimless man who quickly finds his niche after the eruption.
- Achilles in His Tent: It's implied that the failure of his business is why he's acting sulky and inattentive at the beginning of the story.
- The Apocalypse Brings Out the Best in People: Dan starts the book as an an inattentive husband and a Lazy Bum, then slots perfectly into the post-eruption landscape, becoming the most useful member of the settlement after Mostar.
- Brilliant, but Lazy: Strongly implied. He was the valedictorian of his graduating class, and Kate describes him as having been much more energetic and engaged in their college years. When he applies himself, he quickly works out how to MacGyver together a variety of useful tools and weapons from bamboo stalks and household implements, and eventually teaches himself to control the entirety of Greenloop from his iPad. However, at the beginning of the book, he’s an unemployed “entrepreneur” who spends all day monkeying around on the internet, and Kate notes that he’s usually a passive, do-nothing person.
- Heroic Sacrifice: He attacks Alpha to stop her killing Kate, and though he dies, he gives Kate the opening she needs to kill the Sasquatch.
- Took a Level in Badass: After the eruption, Dan is the first person to adapt to the new reality of Greenloop and immediately becomes the most useful person in the village behind Mostar. He takes another level when he hacks the Greenloop houses to turn them into gigantic bombs, then kills a Sasquatch in hand-to-hand combat with a glass-bladed spear.
Mostar
A world-famous artist who works with glass and a survivor of the Bosnian War, Mostar initially appears to be the village outcast by dint of her Brutal Honesty and no-nonsense personality. After Mount Rainier erupts, she quickly takes Kate and Dan under her wing, teaching them how to survive and thrive in their new circumstances.
- Brutal Honesty: Mostar is the only person to challenge Tony Durant's blithe assumptions that they will be quickly rescued after the eruption, and she is also the only person who is willing to state out loud that they will likely be killed by the Sasquatches if they're not careful.
- Cool Old Lady: She's a certifiable badass who survived the Bosnian War, teaches herself how to make spears from kitchen knives and bamboo stalks, and generally takes charge and works to keep the rest of Greenloop alive after the eruption cuts them off from civilization.
- Dying Moment of Awesome: She’s the first inhabitant of Greenloop to score a Sasquatch kill, using one of her homemade spears, but she dies in the process.
- Genre Savvy: She’s the first person to realize that rescue services won’t be miraculously swooping into Greenloop after the Rainier eruption, and therefore pushes Kate into helping her plant a garden and set up rationing schemes for their food. Later, she is the first person who identifies the Sasquatches as a threat, recognizing that they’re hungry and territorial enough to be dangerous and that they’re torturing Vincent to try and draw the rest of them into the forest.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Mostar is described as being extremely blunt and caustic, which initially alienates her from the Greenloop inhabitants. However, on top of becoming extremely close to Kate and saving everybody's lives, she is also very forgiving and understanding when it takes Carmen and the others a long time to come round to her way of thinking.
- I Was Quite a Looker: When we first meet Mostar, she's in her fifties or sixties, and is very stout, with wrinkles and grey hair. Later, Kate sees a photo of Mostar in her younger days, prior to the Bosnian War, and describes her as having an hourglass figure and glossy black hair.
- Mama Bear: She comes charging to Kate and Dan's rescue when they're about to be cornered and killed by the Sasquatches, brandishing a homemade torch and screaming Bosnian curses. Then she bitch-slaps both of them and chews them out for being so stupid as to walk into a forest full of hungry Sasquatches without telling anyone else where they were going.
- Meaningful Rename: She renamed herself after her hometown, which suffered heavy damage from artillery bombardments during the Bosnian War.
- Mentor Occupational Hazard: Mostar teaches the rest of Greenloop to survive and thrive without access to civilization, and later prepares them to fight the Sasquatches. Of course she wasn't going to make it.
- Mutual Kill: She manages to spear one of the Sasquatches to death at the cost of her own life.
- The Nicknamer: She refers to Kate and Dan as "Katie" and "Danny", and calls Palomino "Little Doll".
- No Sense of Personal Space: She literally pushes Dan around to get him to help her and Kate out early on, then hauls Kate around by the wrist and taps her on the butt. She later weaponizes it by physically forcing Yvette to back down from a confrontation over her homemade spear.
- Only One Name: Mostar has renamed herself after her hometown
, which suffered heavy damage during the Bosnian War. Her original name is never given. - Only Sane Woman: Mostar is literally the only person in Greenloop to realize that the Rainier eruption has severed them from civilized society and that help will be a long time coming. She is also the first person to identify the Sasquatches as a potential threat and begin to take steps against them, even as the rest of the Greenloopers try to communicate with them.
- Replacement Goldfish: Kate might be one for her. It's shown that Mostar had a daughter who likely died in one of the bombardments of their hometown during the Bosnian War. Based on what Kate says, she is about the same age as Mostar's daughter would have been.
- Shell-Shocked Veteran: It’s implied that she never fully got over her experiences as a civilian living under siege in the Bosnian War, as she will often use military or siege-related terms in reference to their present predicament. Bobbi even calls her out on this at one point.
- Tough Love: Played with. Mostar accurately identifies Dan as a "fragile prince" who doesn't know how to deal with failure and is in a sulk because his life isn't going the way he wanted it to, so she starts literally and metaphorically pushing him around to snap him out of it. It works pretty well.
- The Unreveal: It’s never made clear exactly how Mostar acquired her knowledge of survival tactics and siege warfare beyond a general acknowledgment that she lived through the Bosnian War, and the few times that Kate has an opportunity to ask her about it, she either doesn’t want to pry or she has other concerns on her mind.
- Vasquez Always Dies: Mostar is the toughest, savviest, and most well-prepared member of Greenloop. So, naturally, she dies just before the climax of the novel.
Tony Durant
The founder of Greenloop, Tony is a handsome, confident, charismatic tech tycoon who hopes to spearhead a new Green Revolution by planting hundreds of sustainable micro-eco-settlements all over the country, allowing humanity to coexist in peace and harmony with nature. Unfortunately, he has forgotten that Nature Is Not Nice.
- Asshole Victim: He becomes this when he tries to abandon Yvette to certain death during a Sasquatch attack. Alpha promptly rips him out of his Tesla and tramples him to death.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Tony's veneer of self-confidence and unselfishness is very thin. He abandons Yvette to death after becoming a recluse.
- Broken Pedestal: Once Kate realizes that Tony had no backup plan for Greenloop’s survival in the case of a natural disaster or other major incident, that he has no idea what to do now that they've been cut off from the rest of the world, and that his facade of confidence and charm is just that, she immediately loses all respect for him, and it’s implied that the rest of the Greenloopers feel the same way.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Alpha drags him out of the backseat of his Tesla, snapping one of his legs in the process, then tramples him to death, slowly crushing his chest and skull into pulp.
- Dirty Coward: Twice. At the very beginning, it's implied he was looking for a way to escape (and leave everyone else, including Yvette) behind, but he's thwarted because the whole road has been swallowed by a lahar. Later, and more explicitly, he clearly leaves Yvette and everyone to be ripped apart by the Sasquatches, although he does get killed anyway.
- Foil:
- Tony and Mostar are often contrasted with each other throughout the book. Tony is charismatic, confident, and charming, and everyone in Greenloop respects him; Mostar is bossy and blunt, and she's the village oddball. Tony is tall, handsome, and muscular, while Mostar is short, of average looks, and built like a barrel. Most importantly, however, Tony is totally dependent on technology and has never experienced any kind of severe hardship. When his perfect "high-tech eco-community" is cut off from the rest of the world by the Rainier eruption, he falls apart almost immediately. Mostar, by contrast, has survived the Bosnian War, is perfectly comfortable without the trappings of civilization, and teaches the rest of Greenloop how to stay alive in a world without internet, phone service, or delivery drones bringing them fresh food.
- Tony and Dan are also sharply contrasted against each other. Kate develops a crush on Tony while bemoaning the fact that Dan has none of Tony's charisma or drive. Tony then collapses almost immediately and loses his mind after the Rainier eruption, then is even more useless when the Sasquatches attack, whereupon Kate loses all her respect and attraction for him. Dan, meanwhile, becomes reenergized by the crisis and develops into a confident and hardworking leader, which helps rekindle his and Kate's relationship.
- Karmic Death: For half a second it looks like Tony might get away from the Sasquatches while they kill Yvette, who he's abandoned. Then he gets killed anyway, and much more brutally.
- Not Enough to Bury: There isn't much left of Tony after the Sasquatches are through eating him. Kate manages to scrape together what's left for a burial anyway.
- Sanity Slippage:
- After the eruption cuts Greenloop off from the world and the Sasquatch attacks begin to wear away at the village, Tony completely falls apart, going from a confident, in-control leader to a slovenly, drunken wreck of a man who can barely string two words together and abandons his wife at the first sign of danger.
- Kate also notes that when he tries to escape the Sasquatches in his Tesla, he doesn't display the sort of urgency that one would expect, comparing how he is driving with how he might go on the commute to the grocery store. He even responds to Yvette shouting for him to stop and blocking his car by simply honking at her, as if she's a pedestrian taking too long in the crosswalk.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Tony may have tried to pull this shortly after the eruption. He disappears for part of the day, then returns covered in ash and mud and acting totally shell-shocked. Kate sees him pull an overstuffed backpack out of his car before looking around in a suspicious manner and dropping it back into the trunk, strongly implying that he was trying to get to safety without regard to the rest of the Greenloopers. He later definitely tries to pull this when the Sasquatches attack his house, even abandoning his own wife, but the alpha Sasquatch stops him cold.
- Tattoo as Character Type: Kate briefly mentions Tony's ink during their first meeting, noting that he has "tribal lines and Asian characters" tattooed on his arms. This may be a very subtle bit of Foreshadowing. In the current day and age, white people who get "tribal designs" as tattoos are generally regarded as cultural appropriators who are trivializing a practice with significant spiritual and emotional meaning to many native cultures. Likewise, those who get Asian characters tattooed on their body are often stereotyped as ignorant poseurs who are more concerned with how cool something looks rather than its actual significance. This is a pretty neat encapsulation of Tony's personality: an unprepared poseur who is focused on appearances and lacks a real understanding of nature.
- Textual Celebrity Resemblance: Kate compares various elements of his appearance to George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Sean Connery, and Henry Rollins.
- Undignified Death: He gets dragged out of the backseat of his Tesla while trying vainly to hide from Alpha, who just casually pries him out before trampling him into pulp.
Yvette Durant
Yvette is Tony's wife. A former model and internet-famous yogi, she establishes herself as the matriarch of Greenloop, at least until the eruption cuts them off from civilization and starts to erode her carefully cultivated image.
- Beauty to Beast: In a matter of weeks, Yvette goes from being a famous ex-model to an unkempt, unwashed, and skeletal mess.
- Control Freak: It's not readily apparent at first, but after the eruption Kate quickly notices that Yvette hates being challenged in any way, and seems to be manipulating the rest of the village to try and keep them under her control.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Alpha claws her back open, snaps her neck, smashes her through the windshield of Tony's Tesla, then disembowels her and offers her corpse to the rest of the Sasquatch clan in a ritualistic manner.
- Fauxreigner: When Kate first meets her, Yvette affects an upper-class English accent. As the situation in Greenloop spirals out of control and Yvette's authority and sanity start slipping away, the posh accent is replaced with her real accent, which is Australian.
- Granola Girl: She is introduced as a glamorous yogi who was a protegee of alternative medicine proponent Andrew Weil, leads a popular online meditation class, and teaches Kate to get in touch with nature. Or at least her conception of nature.
- Karmic Transformation: Having previously fooled Kate as to her competence with her beauty and veneer of kindness, Yvette reveals her true self when she works out constantly even though everybody else in Greenloop is on starvation rations and becomes horribly skeletal and malnourished.
- I Was Quite a Looker: Over the course of two weeks of constant exercise and starvation brought on by Sanity Slippage, she manages to go from “Statuesque Stunner ex-model” to “smelly, emaciated hag”. Kate is horrified by the sight.
- Not Enough to Bury: There isn't much left of Yvette after the Sasquatches are through eating her. Kate manages to scrape together what's left for a burial anyway.
- Obnoxious Entitled Housewife: Yvette hides it well at first, but she clearly doesn’t like or respect Mostar very much, often speaking to and about her in a condescending, passive-aggressive manner. The mask drops completely when the older woman starts taking over the Durants' position as leader(s) of the settlement; Yvette tries to reassert her authority, but Mostar effortlessly forces her to back down.
- Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: In-Universe, as the pressure mounts on Greenloop, Yvette’s posh English accent gradually disappears, replaced by her natural Australian twang.
- Sanity Slippage: She’s revealed to have spent most of the time since the eruption and the beginning of the Sasquatch attacks working out on her elliptical and starving herself while Tony turns the house into a pigsty; as a result, she is a smelly, emaciated bundle of nerves who shrieks like a madwoman at Kate and the others when they try to pry her and Tony out of the house.
- Undignified Death: She is brutally killed by the alpha Sasquatch while screaming at Tony not to leave her behind.
Dr. Alex Reinhardt
A famous philosopher and intellectual, Reinhardt quickly proves to be ill-suited to life without the trappings of civilization, despite his belief in Jean-Jacques Rousseau's theories of human nature.
- The Atoner: After he indirectly sends Vincent to his death by convincing him that the Sasquatches are peaceful and won't attack him if he goes for help, then suffers a cardiac episode that nearly puts him into a coma, he seems to realize what he's done wrong and starts trying to contribute more actively to the community.
- Face Death with Dignity:
- After Kate finds his body, she notes he didn't look like he struggled back or tried to alert them, which is at odds with everything else he's done.
- This one is debatable. Kate's narration suggests instead that he might simply have frozen in terror, like a prey animal, accepting his fate without trying to fight back.
- Fat Bastard: He’s the heftiest member of the community, and he earns the “bastard” part of the title by hoarding ice cream and snacks and generally being smug and condescending to Mostar, Kate, and everyone else in the community.
- Heel Realization: After recovering from his panic-attack-induced cardiac episode, Reinhardt seems to understand that he's been a useless jerk who's done nothing but get Vincent killed and starts trying to help the community.
- Hypocrite: He is a major proponent of Rousseauian philosophy, which effectively suggests that humanity has been tainted by the trappings of modern civilization and that we are at our happiest when living in a more tribal, primitive society. He is also an overweight, lazy intellectual who has no survival skills and absolutely cannot survive without the trappings of modern civilization.
- Kick the Dog: He encouraged Vincent to go to his death and won't even admit it when Bobbi tries to make him do so.
- Know-Nothing Know-It-All: Reinhardt repeatedly pontificates on the probable habits and diet of the Sasquatches, despite acknowledging that he has no expertise in primatology. These lectures are usually accompanied by a Gilligan Cut to the author’s interviews with Frank McCray and Josephine Schell, who point out exactly how and why Reinhardt was wrong. He also possesses the largest personal library of the entire community, but Kate quickly discovers that he has nothing of practical use for their current situation.
- The Load: Reinhardt is the most useless member of the group. He hides food from the others, none of the books in his library are remotely helpful, he constantly sides with Tony and gives people bad information despite admitting he doesn't know anything. This becomes even clearer when he has a panic attack after Vincent's death and needs to be monitored and cared for by Effie and Kate.
- Redemption Equals Death: Immediately after he starts trying to be a better member of the Greenloop community, he gets his head torn off by a Sasquatch that sneaks into his house.
- Rousseau Was Right: Invoked. Reinhardt is a major proponent of the trope, and Tony directly credits his book on Rousseauian philosophy as being the reason he decided to found Greenloop. He is very, very wrong.
- Textual Celebrity Resemblance: Kate describes him as looking like "the Game of Thrones author, without the Greek fisherman’s hat."
Carmen Perkins
A child psychologist and author, married to Effie and mother to Palomino.
- Face Your Fears: Carmen is germophobic, but she conquers her fear when it becomes necessary to save lives; she uses Tony's soiled underwear and filthy clothing to make a scent-blocking barricade when hiding from the dowager Sasquatch, then actively participates in collecting the community's "solid waste" in order to poison the field of punji stakes.
- Get A Hold Of Yourself Man: She punches Bobbi in the eye to get her to shut up when they're hiding from a marauding Sasquatch.
- Heel–Face Turn: Having previously been portrayed as something of a jerk, especially to her wife, Carmen realizes that Mostar was right, comes to apologize, and joins in.
- Javelin Thrower: Carmen proves to be remarkably adept with Kate's homemade javelins. She hits Twin One in the chest, which he then makes into a fatal blow by inadvertently punching the barbed glass head into his lung, and inflicts a probably fatal stomach wound on Twin Two.
- Naïve Animal Lover: Carmen lets Palomino feed a hungry deer that comes into their backyard, despite the fact that this is a waste of precious food, and demands to know why Mostar thinks the Sasquatches are "evil". Mostar calls her out on this fundamental misunderstanding of nature.Mostar: Carmen, they're not good or evil. They're just hungry.
- Pet the Dog: Carmen is clueless and, for a lot of the book, not very nice, but she does use her child psychology training to help Palomino as much as she can, despite not really understanding her. She also bluntly asserts that Effie is smarter than she is when Effie tries to downplay her own skills as a child psychologist.
- Satellite Character: Carmen is implied to be controlling to Effie early in the book, but this is forgotten later. Although she remains somewhat incompetent for a lot of the book, she concedes to listening to Mostar and becomes gradually more competent.
- Took a Level in Badass: Carmen is among the last of the Greenloopers to adapt to their situation, but she is in magnificent form by the end of the book. She kills Twin One and fatally wounds Twin Two, then charges Juno barehanded in an effort to save Palomino.
Euphemia "Effie" Forster
Carmen's wife, Palomino's mother, and a child psychologist who is working on her degree.
- Mama Bear: When Juno, one of the Sasquatches, grabs Palomino, Effie goes into a rage, throws herself at the much-larger Sasquatch, and rips out its throat with her teeth. While she is killed for her trouble, Effie does save Palomino and takes Juno with her.
- Heroic Sacrifice: An actual version. Effie manages to get between Pal and Juno when Palomino is seconds from being Sasquatch meat.
- Mutual Kill: She tears Juno's throat out with her teeth, while Juno smashes her chest in.
- Shrinking Violet: Effie is much quieter and more reserved than Carmen. Near the beginning of the novel it's implied that the reason for this may be verbal or emotional abuse taking place behind closed doors.
Palomino Forster-Perkins
Carmen and Effie's adopted daughter, a Rohingya orphan who escaped the ethnic cleansing of her people in Myanmar.
- Badass and Child Duo: Kate's brother Frank McCray suggests that Kate may have taken Palomino with her to hunt down and exterminate the rest of the Sasquatch clan.
- Creepy Child: Kate says she gives off this vibe at times, given her muteness and her propensity for staring at people.
- Cute Mute: Palomino remains silent all throughout the novel, save for when she calls out to Effie during the climax.
- Due to the Dead: Palomino convinces Mostar to pray for Vincent after his death, and she probably helped Kate bury the dead of Greenloop after the final battle.
- Final Girl: She shares this status with Kate.
- Line-of-Sight Name: When Carmen and Effie first met Pal, her only possession was a tattered and torn picture book on horses. As a result, they decided to name her Palomino, though both women state that they view it as a placeholder name and that Pal can change it later in life if she wants.
- Nerves of Steel: Despite Carmen and Effie insisting otherwise, Palomino never seems overly frightened by the horrible events taking place around her. Then again, Sasquatch attacks probably don't quite hold a candle to surviving a massive ethnic cleansing.
- Never Found the Body: Kate and Palomino disappear sometime after the destruction of Greenloop. Kate's brother Frank acknowledges that they most likely died while trying to walk to safety, but suggests that they may have gone hunting for the rest of the Sasquatches.
- Odd Friendship: Palomino quickly forms a bond with Mostar, despite her muteness and the age gap between them. It's strongly implied that this is because they have very similar backgrounds: both are female Muslims who survived a directed campaign of ethnic cleansing against their people.
- Preppy Name: Which is at odds with her being the survivor of an ethnic cleansing, although Carmen describes Palomino's name as a placeholder until she can choose her own.
- Textual Celebrity Resemblance: Kate explicity compares Palomino to the iconic photograph of Afghani refugee Sharbat Gula.
- Trauma Conga Line: Poor Pal has been through a lot in her short life. First she survived the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya in Myanmar, which apparently claimed her entire family. Then she was displaced from her home and wound up in a Bangladeshi orphanage, with only a tattered picture book and a loaf of bread to her name. Then she lives through the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre and sees both her adoptive mothers die.
- Uncertain Doom: Kate and Palomino disappear sometime between the end of the final battle and the arrival of Josephine Schell's search and rescue team. Kate's brother Frank acknowledges that they most likely died while trying to walk to safety, but suggests that they may have gone hunting for the rest of the Sasquatches.
- Wise Beyond Their Years: Palomino seems to be one of the few people in Greenloop who truly comprehends the depth of their predicament. It's implied that this is because she's already been through a similarly hellish experience.
- Young Face, Old Eyes: Kate's first impression of Palomino suggests this, noting that her eyes have a deeply haunted expression.
Vincent Boothe
A former lawyer for Cygnus, the tech company which built Greenloop.
- An Arm and a Leg: After the Sasquatches capture Vincent, they torture and slowly dismember him in an effort to draw the rest of the Greenloop inhabitants out. Kate spies one of them waving his severed arm at them from atop a ridge.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Vincent gets ripped apart all while still living, as slowly and painfully as possible in a failed attempt to lure the other humans out.
- Naïve Animal Lover: Much like his wife, he refuses to admit the possibility that the Sasquatches might be hostile. It gets him killed.
- Not Enough to Bury: Vincent is dismembered and probably eaten by the Sasquatches after their attempt to use him as bait fails. Kate buries his head, which was the only part they didn't eat.
- Sacrificial Lamb: Vincent is one of the kindest and nicest Greenloopers. So, naturally, he's the first character to be killed, and in a pretty brutal and drawn-out fashion.
- Senseless Sacrifice and Stupid Sacrifice: His death is an example of both, because it isn't clear (even to Vincent himself) what his intentions are when he tries to hike out of Greenloop. He's sort of looking for a road out, or trying to get a signal on his cell phone so he can call for help, but he doesn't make it very far before he's caught and tortured to death by the Sasquatches. Although it does finally wake everyone up from complacency.
- Sound-Only Death: The Sasquatches capture Vincent and slowly torture him to death, ripping off each of his limbs, in an attempt to lure everyone else out. The rest of the Greenloop inhabitants are forced to listen to his agonized screams.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Possibly. When the Sasquatches start making a pattern of rhythmic knocks, Vincent answers them in kind, believing that they're attempting to establish peaceful communication. Ranger Josephine Schell points out that they instead may have been challenging the people of Greenloop.
Roberta "Bobbi" Boothe
Vincent's wife, a kindly older woman.
- Ain't Too Proud to Beg: Pleads for help or mercy when she is grabbed by a Sasquatch in the climax. It doesn't work.
- Driven to Madness: She spends most of her time after Vincent's death screaming hysterically, although in the circumstances, nobody can blame her.
- Get A Hold Of Yourself Man: Carmen punches her in the eye to get her to shut up when they're hiding from a marauding Sasquatch.
- Granola Girl: She's vegan, grows her own herbs, and is an animal lover who is initially horrified by the idea of hurting the Sasquatches.
- Hysterical Woman: Although nobody blames her, she spends most of her time after Vincent's death crying and screaming. Carmen finally punches her in the face to shut her up before she can betray their hiding place to Dowager.
- Naïve Animal Lover: She absolutely refuses to admit that the Sasquatches might be hostile until given irrefutable evidence otherwise. Unfortunately for her, this evidence comes in the form of her husband being captured and slowly torn apart in an effort to draw the rest of Greenloop into the forest.
- The Load: While she's not completely useless, Bobbi generally does more harm then good. She acts horrified by the idea of defending the community against first a mountain lion and then the Sasquatches, spends most of the early confrontations as a hysterical wreck (though given her husband died it's understandable), has to be forcibly silenced by Carmen when they are hiding from the Sasquatches under Tony's bed and during the Last Stand doesn't seem to accomplish all that much before getting killed.
Other Characters
Frank McCray
Kate Holland's brother and a former lawyer for Cygnus Tech. After an ugly separation from his husband, he asks Kate and Dan to move into his house in Greenloop until he can sell it.
- The Atoner: He feels responsible for his sister's disappearance, having been the one to suggest that she and Dan move to Greenloop in the first place. When the author meets him, he's preparing to set out into the mountains to look for her.
- Sympathy for the Devil: He admits that he almost feels sorry for the surviving Sasquatches. Their alpha is dead, along with most of the clan, three of them are injured to some degree, and if his theory is correct they have a pair of crafty, angry, vengeful humans on their tail.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Frank asked Kate and Dan to move into his house in Greenloop after a messy split from his husband, and thus put them directly in the path of the Rainier eruption and the marauding Sasquatches.
Josephine Schell
A senior park ranger in charge of recovery and cleanup efforts after the Rainier eruption. She is also the person who tipped off Frank McCray and by extension the book's author as to what really happened to Greenloop.
- Agent Mulder: Even before finding Kate's journal, she suspected that there was some truth to stories about Bigfoot encounters she heard in her job. She also hints she's not totally skeptical of UFO sightings either.
- Ms. Exposition: A lot of Schell's dialogue takes the form of her doing one of three things: elaborating on the aftereffects of the Rainier eruption; explaining primate behavior to the author and comparing what she knows about chimps, gorillas, and other great apes to the recorded behavior of the Sasquatches; and explaining how and why Greenloop was doomed to fail catastrophically as soon as any kind of natural disaster occurred.
- Native Guide: Although she guides the author through their conversation rather than across the landscape, she is a park ranger and this is her main job after the Rainier explosion.
- Noble Savage: Schell, who is Navajo, sneers at the trope by way of pointing out the stupidity of people who have a tendency to romanticize and anthropomorphize nature and Native culture.Schell: They all want to live "in harmony with nature" before some of them realize, too late, that nature is anything but harmonious.
- Late to the Tragedy: Her search and rescue team arrives a week after the destruction of Greenloop, too late to retrieve Kate and Palomino.
The Sasquatch Clan
Alpha
The matriarch of the Sasquatch clan. Naturally, she is the biggest, toughest, and meanest of them all.
- Final Boss: She is the last Sasquatch that Kate has to fight.
- Hero Killer: She kills Dan when he tries to take her out with his coconut knife. It may be stretching it to call them "heroes", but she also kills Tony and Yvette, and may or may not have been the one to finish off Vincent. Either way, she has the highest body count of any of the Sasquatch clan by the end of the story.
- Large and in Charge: Alpha is one of the largest of the Sasquatches, and all it takes is a single hard slap from her to cow both of the Twins into obedience.
- Monster Is a Mommy: Alpha is strongly implied to be the mother of the twin Sasquatches, and possibly other members of the clan as well.
- Scars Are Forever: She boasts a variety of battle scars, including a missing breast and multiple claw and bite marks on her arms and torso.
Consort
Alpha's mate, and one of the oldest members of the clan.
- Desecrating the Dead: After his death, Kate and the other Greenloopers repeatedly stab his corpse, and Kate then urinates on his face in a successful effort to provoke the rest of the clan into attacking in a blind fury.
- Hero Killer: He kills Mostar.
- Mutual Kill: Mostar fatally impales him, but he is able to break her neck before dying.
Juno
A young, pregnant female Sasquatch.
- Eye Scream: An enraged Effie gouges out both of her eyes when she threatens Palomino.
- Hero Killer: She has the second-highest body count of the entire Sasquatch clan, killing Carmen and Effie in quick succession during the final battle.
- Monster Is a Mommy: The first thing Kate notices about Juno that she is very pregnant, hence her name.
- Mutual Kill: She crushes Effie's chest, but Effie rips her throat out with her teeth in return.
- Shout-Out: She is, of course, named for Elliot Page's character in Juno.
- Would Hurt a Child: During the final battle, she manages to grab Palomino and holds her up in a clearly threatening manner.
The Twins
A pair of identical male Sasquatches, possibly Alpha and Consort's progeny.
- Agonizing Stomach Wound: Twin Two gets a javelin to the gut courtesy of Carmen. When he rips it out, it nearly disembowels him.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Twin One takes a glass-pointed javelin to the chest, then inadvertently snaps the head off inside his chest and compounds the damage by pounding on it, driving the barbed glass straight into a lung. He's last heard of crawling on the ground and choking on his own blood while calling out to his fleeing brother. Twin Two doesn't have it much better. Carmen hits him in the gut with a javelin, and when he pulls it out it nearly disembowels him. Though he escapes the battle, he most likely dies a slow, painful death shortly thereafter.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Twin Two flees the battle after being badly wounded by several javelins, leaving his dying brother behind.
- Uncertain Doom: Twin Two flees from the final battle, but he's so badly injured that his survival is unlikely, and Kate and Palomino may be on his trail . . .
Other members
The rest of the clan: Dowager, Princess, Scout, Goldenboy, Gray, and the new mothers.
- Death of a Child:
- Goldenboy, one of the youngest of the clan, gets caught in one of the exploding houses, then falls into a bed of punji stakes and bleeds out.
- Possibly the new mothers' babies, if Kate and Palomino really are hunting them down.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Goldenboy falls into a bed of punji stakes and bleeds out from multiple wounds.
- Pummeling the Corpse: Gray's body gets thoroughly mangled after his death; Kate crushes his skull into pulp with a rock, while Dan and Carmen stab him over and over.
- Satellite Character: Dowager, Goldenboy, and Gray only appear a handful of times before dying in the final battle, while Princess and Scout flee after being caught in the burning houses. The new mothers and their babies only appear once, which is justifiable by the fact that Alpha would want to keep them away from any possible danger.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Princess and Scout both run for the safety of the forest after being injured by the exploding houses.
- Shout-Out: Dowager's name comes from Violet Crawley in Downton Abbey
- Uncertain Doom: Scout, Princess, and the new mothers all manage to escape the final fight in Greenloop, but Scout and Princess have been injured, and it's possible that they now have a Crusading Widow and her adopted child on their heels.
