FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Taking Action

"Move it, people! Go, go!" A large, burly wolf shouts loudly. From behind him, four heavily armed soldiers charge forth, determination and a hint of fear in their eyes as they take up position in front of a large satellite dish. In the far distance, they could see a town. None of them wanted to think of the amount of civilian casualties should they fail in their mission. One of the soldiers brings up a laptop of sorts, connecting some cables from this strange device to the satellite. He quickly begins to punch in some numbers and letters. "All right, give him cover! Keep these rookies off of him. Nate, take up sniper position on that hill. Shawn, drop that damn pistol and get your machine gun dug in!" The wolf continues shouting his commands.

The battle is fierce and bloody, though the five of them get along without trouble. Their position is a tactical dreamland, high up on a hill with the satellite being in a sort of crater like dent in the mountain, which in turn is a nightmare for the enemies downhill.

"Sir, there's something very wrong! I can't do anything to stop or alter its path!" The soldier by the computer shouts to the wolf in charge. "No-- what! Sir, we've just been locked out of the system!" He continues, frantically trying to push whatever button might work to restore his connection to the satellite.

"You better find a way to fix that piece of scrapmetal right now, unless you've a sudden hunger for fried meat!" The wolf shouts in reply, bracing himself as he fires his rifle against a new wave of enemies swarming them from the bottom of the hill. Fools.

"Damn it, I'm trying! Nothing's working! My codes aren't functional anymore!" He shouts anew, frowning as he gives the laptop a shove, slinging his rifle from his back and into his arms. "With all due respect, sir, fuck this. I refuse to go down sitting by some piece of shit computer while you fight." He says, stepping up to the edge of the crater, joining his brothers in battle.

The wolf has nothing to say to that, as suddenly, they find themselves shadowed by a massive object in the sky. The silence that comes with the sight of the object is... eerie. Frightening, almost. Not a single bullet is fired, as everybody is obviously busy gazing at the object as it flies past them. The five men look at each other, then to the computer, screen blinking with red letters saying "access denied".

"Clever fuckers." The soldier that had been using the computer snorts, spitting on the ground, suddenly getting knocked right over by the mass of the wolf. Was he pushed? Shoved? He did not even have time to realise that the force of the explosion had sent the wolf flying into him. He and the wolf then found themselves tumbling down the hill at an alarming speed, getting knocked around and bruised up pretty heartily on the way down. The sound of gunfire starts once more, now aimed at the two tumbling down the hill. The three in the crater are unable to provide any sort of cover, as they too are on their way down the hill.

It is not long before their worlds turn black, conciousness robbed from them by their harsh trip downwards.

The Aftermath

Keith had always loved his little town. Loved the streets that he used to walk on. Loved the people that he met on these streets. In fact, there is probably not a single person that he did not know in town, and all this makes it hard for the husky to come to terms with what has happened. He stands now on the only mountain his town - his desolate town - can be proud of, next to the sundered ruins of a satellite dish, gazing out over the wasteland that was once his beloved home. All that had been his was taken away from him in only a day, how could he ever let such a thing happen?

Unfortunately, that is not all. Keith's friends? His loved ones? Yeah, they are not exactly alive anymore. It is hard to make sense out of it, since they are not dead either. They walk. They walk the streets aimlessly, moaning and groaning like hungry, starved beasts. Now, one might wonder how it all came to this; Keith torn and tattered with rifle in hands, his friends dead - undead - and his town blown to all hell.

It is quite simple. War. The world had been on the brink of war for months, and all it took was a small spark to light the fuse that would become the war that would destroy this world. How did the fuse light? Some nuclear weapons testing went wrong. Someone tampered with the warhead, sent it way off trajectory. At least that's what the papers say. Point of impact was completely obliterated, and naturally the 'attack' was responded to with a warhead of their own. Soon we could all see what was to be our doom flying overhead.

People dared not sleep, with fear of that one of the missiles would suddenly fall from the skies and down towards them, destroying them without a chance for them to say goodbye to each other. Keith wondered if they did say goodbye, watching the missile head straight for them. Perhaps.

At least now he knows that what hit them was no ordinary warhead. He had seen intel on some new 'intelligent' bio-weapon. Supposedly, it is able to spread a virus or radiation through a designated area for as long as they think it might take to destroy or contaminate this area. Whatever was in that missile was bringing his dead friends back from their graves, as if taunting him. Mocking him for his failure. He shuts his eyes, but not even then does the haunting image of the quite lively ghost town before him vanish. He draws in a breath - hardly a fresh one, however, the air filled with ashes - then heads on down the hill.

A Cleansing Fire

Covering the distance from the hill to the town took him almost two hours. Of course, counting all the times he took a small detour to scavenge. An empty canteen here, cans of food there. A miracle, frankly, that some of the cans actually contain food. Then again, many people lived in the outskirts of the town, so he figured it to be their supplies. They would not be needing them anymore...

When finally he has managed to reach his destination, he is immediately greeted by the familiar sound that is the song of the undead. Silence. Rolling his shoulders, Keith brings up his rifle, walking at a slow, wary pace to ensure that he would not be ambushed. As far as he knows, these things still have a bit of intelligence... or maybe it is their hunger that drives them to do things that one would not expect from, well... something that is dead.

Keith freezes in his tracks as he hears a moan coming from his left, behind a partially opened door. His ears perk up on top of his head, the husky slowly moving towards the door even though every bit of instinct within his body tells him to get away - far away. Using the barrel of rifle, he knocks aside the door, holding his breath for a moment to steady his aim should something jump out at him. As soon as he is certain of that he will not be attacked, he moves forth into the dark room, kept alit only by a candle standing on a table.

What he sees next, however, makes his insides turn. More than once, at that. He feels the sudden urge to throw up, but he fights it back and steadies the grip about his rifle. A mere feet away from him, just barely lit up by the shine of the candle's flame, is one of those things. The stench of death is overwhelming, and what worse is that he seems to be feeding off of someone. Keith begins to back up, but in his focused state, he does not notice that he is about to back right up into a table.

The moment he feels the surface of the furniture against his back, he freezes anew, staring at the undead being that he is now eye to eye with. The thing had turned so quickly he wondered where the hell he'd gotten such reflexes from. Is he not dead?

"Y--... you better stay right there!" Keith begins in a low voice. He immediately clears his throat to sound less pathetic. "Stay back!" He says, slipping past the table to keep backing up. Apparently, that is very disliked...

Keith fires a quick burst of rounds into the thing's chest as it charges at him with a shriek that causes his ears to fold down. It hardly even stops in his tracks from the rounds. The husky's eyes widen as he is now face to face with it, rather than eye to eye - a much more preferred scenario right about now, admittedly - having dropped his rifle to let it hang from its strap while he holds the thing's arms, keeping it as far away from himself as possible. Being this close makes him notice something too... the piercings in the undead's eyebrow. It's a star, with a few smaller round piercings behind it to make it look like a trail that follows the star.

"W-wesley?" He blurts out, blinking. His little moment of soaring away into his thoughts resulted in his head being knocked back into the wall behind him, snapping him back to reality, and with a surge of strength, he gives the undead a firm shove backwards, pulling up his pistol to fire off two rounds into his head - his friend's head - closing one eye as blood splatters across his own face, watching with the other eye as the thing stumbles and falls onto its back, head resting on the body that he had been feeding from just a moment ago.

Keith frowns, looking to his pistol. "A bullet to the head, then..." He begins, mumbling to himself. "A bullet to the head will kill them." He continues, as though somebody was there to hear him relay the information. He holsters his pistol, again taking his rifle into hands. He exits the room and shuts the door behind him, again breathing in.

Only five or so steps away from the door, he steps on a sign, covered in dust. Pausing to look around again, he quickly crouches down to brush away the dust and sand from the sign, blinking and frowning again as he reades the text in large black letters. "A cleansing fire comes". Almost ironically, the left edge and corner of the sign is charred and nearly burnt to cinders. He shakes his head slowly, standing back up.

That sure is some cleansing fire, huh...

Keith decides to push on ahead again, making his way deeper into the town where the eerie silence still hangs heavy in the air. The sound of the wind breezing past the ruins of buildings he walks amongst definitely does not help soothe his mind. At many occasions, he comes across places that he can piece back together in his mind. Before this hell was unleashed.

He stops to think briefly, then quickly averts from his current path, heading towards another building. It looks to be in better shape than most others. "At least that renovation paid off," he mutters to himself. Without much effort, Keith breaks open the door that is barred shut from the outside. Perhaps that meant people got out... or did not want people to get out. Either way, Keith will soon find out.

The husky slings his rifle onto his back, again bringing up his pistol. It works better in these tight quarters, he figures. The rather pathetic excuse of a hostel is abandoned as far as he can tell, not even a corpse, bone or a piece of flesh around to show signs of death. Dust the place down and hey, it might make a cozy home. He smirks at the thought, but as he walks down a corridor just past the main desk - the reception - that all too familiar smell of death finds him again. He knows it comes from one of the four rooms in the corridor.

With his boot, the husky pushes open each of the doors one by one. For some reason, he was hoping it would be the last door he had to open to find out what the smell was coming from, but only a second after the door had been opened, his eyes widen and his face turns grim. In the bed lays the charred husk of a once beautiful dalmatian lady - Clara, he knew her well - and her child, Ruby, clung to tightly by her mother as they shared their last moments in life together.

The husky has to fight hard to keep from letting forth his tears as he walks into the room, setting down his backpack onto the floor to pick out a heating blanket, placing it down over the two. He did not care about whether he might need the blanket or not, he just... wanted to do something for them. Anything. Keep their warmth in the afterlife, perhaps. Anything, he told himself, to help.

Taking his pack, he heads out of the room and into the one next to it, fortunately empty. He shuts the door and drags a bookshelf standing there in front of the door to cover it up, then grunts as he lays down in the bed, covers still neatly folded. His pistol is kept close, held in his hands even as his eyes begin to close, and his mind drifts off into a fitful, restless state of sleep filled with haunting images of what he had seen. Clara... Ruby.