FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

As always, as accurate as I can get it, the military stuff is reasonably so, the locations very much so, the people, well, if someone ever finds Crystal please get her in contact with me :)

Oh and meant to apolgise to all the Americans at the start, all spellchecking is done with an Aussie dictionary, if it gets to you too much, just yell at me in comments.

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The Event seemed completely random in who it chose at first, taking some, leaving others, but one thing was for sure, it left its mark on everyone who survived it.

After awakening to find the temporary camp we had constructed near empty I sought out my commanding officers tent, hopefully there would be some answers there.

"Sir! What's going on sir?", asked one of the newer enlisted, the name Private O'Brian jumped into my head after a fraction of a second.

"That's what I aim to find out, O'Brian. Try and track down sergeants Grady or Harris and get them to gather what troops are available.", had to get things manageable, order from chaos, this should be a junior officers job, wherever they are.

"Sir! Yes sir!" the female recruit said enthusiastically.

As she trailed off, I couldn't help but admire that kind of ethic, and the guts to approach a senior officer first thing in the morning, speaking of which...

"Sir, are you available sir?" I asked loudly in front of the Lieutenant Colonels tent, there was no answer, which I took as the permission I needed to investigate the interior.

As with the few empty enlisted tents I had checked, this one was seriously deficient in its occupant, after checking the bed-roll and finding it empty with no warmth yet it looked slept in and not only that, but as though the occupant had neither gotten up and made it nor actually just climbed out.

Making a quick decision I left the tent and headed for where I could see about two dozen troops forming up.

Trying to spot an enlisted officer, and failing, I called out, "Private O'Brian, report on the status of this command."

"Sir!" the flustered Private exclaimed, "This is all that's within the bounds of the camp, we have nine members of the 105th, two from the 108th signals and the rest of us from the 5/6 RVR, from various squads, Sir!"

So a handful of engineers a few radio ops and a unit of infantrymen, this was looking worse and worse. "Signalmen, we need to make contact with HQ, see to it.", I ordered the radio ops, "Engineers, I know your not normally mechanised, but try and get that pair of M113s started and we will see where we are, the rest of you, lets go over the camp, collect rations and supplies. Dismissed."

This was either some huge cluster-fuck or it was a surprise manoeuvre, if it was the latter, it would be the first time I had heard of anyone being tested with this particular situation, its just not called for. I angled to walk off with the two from the 108th, their task may bear fruit that would immediately require my attention.

"Sir we got nothing, on either the regular channels or the civilian ones, hell the local truckies should be burning up their CBs at this hour.".

"Ok then, set up a recording loop and we will see what we can do, have it alternate on all Mil bands and the Civvie emergency band.", the radio ops gave me a thumbs up, "This is Major Davis of the fourth brigade reserves out of Melbourne, we are maintaining a base camp and are trying to re-establish contact with the chain-of-command. Any units hearing this, report in. Over."

"Ok, its running sir", "Sir, we are getting some responses".

"... is Lieutenant Jessup of the 2nd Commando's out of Holsworthy, we cannot contact the rest of the chain, your the highest so far, where can we meet up, Over."

I looked at the map, and read out some co-ordinates just south of our position and outside the scrub area on a road.

And so we progressed, gathering as many able bodied squads as we could, with a few surprises.

"Ssir, I have some Civvies chasing me ssir, they seem hosstile, it may be because I, well that iss, I don't know if I am completely human any more, Ssir.", came a stupefying message at about mid-day, it was then I heard the jeep of the Sergeant in question engine revving hard as it came to our position, accompanied by the high pitched whine of some trail bikes chasing them.

"Cover the incoming jeep, give those bikes a few warning shots to let them know we are serious, open fire if they don't stop or turn back." I heard weapons being cocked, and somehow the silent implied threat of a half dozen soldiers sliding the safeties off on their styres.

A line of soldiers let out a quick shot into the dirt around the sides of the road nearby the bikes, all but two of them immediately turned around, I noticed the shotguns in the hands of the last two bikers at the same time the two soldiers with Minimis recognised the armaments, and opened fire.

That was the first time I had ever had to order troops under my command to open fire on my own countries citizens, neither a proud moment, nor one I will ever forget. "Check that fire, targets are unresponsive." I almost hated myself for the next words, but I knew I had to say them to give those soldiers any hope of sleeping again, "Good work soldiers."

"Sergeant Cope, welcome to my command..." and for the first time I was speechless, Sergeant Cope had a very unusual look to him, scales covering all exposed parts of his body, no hair and what looked distinctly like a snakes head. Recovering thanks in part to said sergeant coming to attention and snapping off a very smart salute, "What do you have to report?"

"Sssir! Only member of my battalion, the 1/15 Lancers out of Parramatta."

"Good to have another non-com to keep this lot in line, I have had to field promote one Private already. See if you can help her get a handle on her new position."

"Sir!" one of the signalmen beckoned, "We are starting to get a pattern emerge from the survivors, it seems there are three variables that seem to govern this. physical fitness, emotional state, mainly in regards to partners and significant others but also fraternal, and... something else. Physically unfit, the emotionally unstable and a deficiency in, well, lets call it factor-X, any of those and they didn't make ... uh", the Sergeant became the centre of the radio techs attention for a moment, "Sir, permission to question the Sergeant as to their experiences before and after the Event, Sir?"

"Granted, and keep up the good work Private Peters".

-

"And then your call came in. We have been dealing with newcomers and fending off the undesirable elements since then, with the occasional surprises, like yourselves and some others, I don't know if you noticed any larger than normal dingos roaming around? About the size of a pony?" The Major finished up his debrief/brief session.

"Thankfully not, but how did you recognise what I was doing out there?" Crystal asked him, referring to her psychic defence of her VW.

The officer chuckled, "Easy, I have seen that same look, in the mirror." It was then we noticed a pen was floating about five centre-meters off the desk, "Its the best I can do, but every day I can hold it there a little longer, what you have been able to do is amazing compared to this." The pen dropped with a little thud.

After returning back into the sunlight we saw a few soldiers huddled around Crystal's car with very hopeful looks on their faces. "... at least get some juice into this we may be able to get the thing to play", "Maybe we should ask the wolf-chick who seemed to be a little possessive first?", "Nah, come on, where's your sense of ...", went the conversation, the participants of which seemed completely oblivious to our presence behind them.

"I would ask her myself, took me two years before she let me even touch the stereo." I couldn't help but inject into their little discussion. And with that, Crys, always loving to show off her baby, vaulted the soldiers and landed in the drivers seat, starting the engine which coughed a little but rumbled to life after the brief hesitation.

Her face turned from delight to near anger when the first soldier asked, "what music you got on that thing?", and she realised they only considered the auto-mobile to be a mobile generator for her MP3 stereo. I thought she was going to go for his throat so smoothly took over.

"What's your preference? We have a little of everything on this, but one rule, and its very inflexible." I gestured to Crystal, she had the same dislike.

"No country!" She growled, taking the sting out of it by putting on some ACDC for the assembled.

"How loud can this thing go?" one of the troops queried, since we didn't know if we were allowed we had started out quiet.

"How loud can we go?" I asked back with a feral grin.

Later that evening, with some Nirvana trailing off as the officers ordered the watches to change and the 'racket to quieten down', "Seems my car made us more friends than the two truck loads of supplies we brought in." Crystal observed, bending into the tent.

"Can't fault them, I don't know if I could survive in a world with no music at all.", was my sleepy rejoinder as I climbed in beside her.

"Well, tomorrows another day babe." Crys said as she drew me into her arms in the 'made for one' sleeping roll, but as we found out, if two are close enough, it can still work out.