FA+
Shop
458
Views
Views
1
Favorites
Favorites
Category
Story / General Furry Art
Species Vulpine (Other)
Size 50 x 50
File Size 86 kB
Report this content
More from wrathofautumn
Chapters:
1)http://www.furaffinity.net/view/3296822
2)http://www.furaffinity.net/view/3311879/
3)http://www.furaffinity.net/view/3331352/
4)http://www.furaffinity.net/view/3376285/
5)http://www.furaffinity.net/view/3417877/
6)http://www.furaffinity.net/view/3496265/
7)
8)
9)
Chapter is all done after slaving over this machine from writer's block for 24 hours! wooooo! My motor skills have been drastically affected by this. Now I must go to sleepies now. Bye byez. *collapses on his desk*
At long last, the chapter we've all been waiting for has come to pass. Everything We have ever wanted to know...well, mostly needed to know, is now officially explained in thisw chapter! ^^ I might have to add some more things I didn't quite think about yet later when I edit it. In the meantime, I think this story here is quite satisfying. Enjoys!
======================================================
”Silent Echoes
Chapter Six
By Wrathofautumn”
The strike of a match illuminated the living room, fumes of sulfur hitting Emma’s Nose. She sat on the floor her hind footpaws scraping against the carpet. Something told her to check the car even though her Jacob assured her he managed to park the car inside the garage. Emma knew better than to distrust her father, but the experience back at the library was still strong in her mind. For some reason, he also assured that Lucy wouldn’t get to the car for some reason. Did something happen to the dog that she ought to know about?
As Alma lit the candles, he set its brass handle on the oak coffee table and took a seat on the end of the couch, opposite of dad. Alma had the looks of a red fox like Emma, Only the gloves on his arms reached as far as his wrists, and his tail wasn’t rusty red like hers but a dark black and tipped with white. His eyes were an icy blue with dark headfur that had been left to look wild and spiky, like he’d given up caring about his appearance. He had a rather strong looking muzzle with whiskers on his chin cheeks and his forehead. He wore a plain white t-shirt stained with what looked like old blood. Over it, he wore an army green jacket with a dog tag handing around his neck. His jeans looked as though they had recently been adjusted to fit his tail as he constantly was shifting his jeans with large handpaws. His plain leather shoes shuffled on the ground, the thick soles giving off a scraping sound.
Jacob stroked the back of her mother, sitting perfectly in his lap but ears perked to attention, golden eyes shifting across the room towards all the others. Occasionally, she could see her look at Emma, her rust reddish tail sweeping across her dad’s jeans. She and her father looked almost identical fur pattern wise, only her fur was slightly much deeper red. Her dark nails were long and sharp, dark ochre sleeves going up to her shoulders. In some ways, it reminded Emma of her only feral like. It was strange, though. Even though she was only a fox now, there was some cleverness reflected in her eyes. Something more than what any instincts could imbue. Her mother was still her mother, as quiet as she was and yet just as expressive in her own ways.
Jacob looked much cleaner than Alma did. His brownish headfur was cut neatly in a crisp businessperson like trim. He wore a pair of glasses with an elastic band around his head. Obviously, his glasses as human could no longer work for him now so he had to adjust somehow. He wore a polo shirt with an equestrian wielding a polo hammer near the color. His own jeans seemed uncomfortable, as he shifted like Alma, but he moved a lot less than her brother did. He didn’t wear any shoes, however. Emma highly doubted that any real shoe could fit them now. The toes were too broad and the nails too long and sharp, the tarsal too thick and lengthened.
His amber fox slits shined in the candle light. “Now, before I go into detail about all this, did you ever happen to watch the news or read any newspapers? What’s exactly happened to you while down in Sanpete County?”
Emma shook her head. Even if she had heard about it before, there was no way she could ever remember after the hit and run. Jacob and Alma were the only ones right now who could actually give her a good idea of the world’s current condition. Quickly she wrote down a simple to her father to explain everything. “I don’t really have a voice anymore, and writing everything down that’s happened to me would take a really long time for you to understand. I’ll just say I lost my memory while in the hospital and found my way here. Now tell me about what’s been happening in the world?”
“All right. Well, three weeks ago, while you were away at college, there was an emergency broadcasting on every channel existing for cable, satellite, and digital. Word had just come from CIA Intelligence and global reporting that a genetically altered virus had been unleashed.” She laid her lower torso flat on the ground, resting her arms on the coffee table and leaning forward, ears perked to attention. A genetically altered virus, he said? Did he mean something like a bioweapon?
“There weren’t too many details on what the virus was actually capable of then. No country inside or outside the circle of the UN was taking blame for the unleashing of this bioweapon. For whatever reason, it was spreading faster than wildfire all across Eurasia and Africa. Eventually, US officials found a small remote village near Spain that had been having reports of the wildlife starting to grow aggressive and violent, even showing strange changes in their bodily structure. The villagers, of course, knew nothing of what it was really about. They assumed that the nearest city had begun dumping waste and poisons into their river supplies.
“Before long, there were reports of people succumbing to what was suspected to be this bioweapon. In the hopes of finding a cure, the Spanish Government formed an agreement to quarantine the area and study this new disease. From what they studied, the virus was spread by air and fluids and gave similar symptoms to that of the common cold. On the third day of infection though, the infected fell into a coma that lasted 24 hours.”
Rebecca looked up at her husband with a whine. Joshua stroked her head assuringly. “During the comatose, that’s when the strange stuff started to happen. It was eventually discovered that the virus did not just contain its own RNA strand, but entire strands of DNA coding stored inside of its body, possibly absorbing it from the local animals it had infected prior. The germ attacked the genetic structure of our DNA and rearranged it using those same strands of animal DNA. People’s bodies began to sprout fur and their limbs changed shape. Their faces broadened and stretched as they began to sprout tails. Even their body size changed, either growing out of their clothes or shrinking away inside them.
“To their everlasting fortune, the virus was mostly fatal. They never understood why, but they theorized that the human body in the process of having its coding rearranged was unable to register this new information and rejected these new changes. As such, the bioweapon was largely fatal. Ninety four percent of the villagers were killed from the infection. Only six of these villagers recovered from the comatose, but had been transformed into something unlike anything seen before. They’d become human animal hybrids resembling the local life around the area. They were unable to save the lives of ninety four people, all who had looked up to us for protection.”
“It didn’t always turn out that way, though.” Alma interrupted, stroking Rebecca’s chest. “Mom here had regressed completely to a full feral fox. Yet, she still has all her memories and intelligence from being human. Maybe there are various levels of ferals too.”
Jacob gave him a glare and Alma’s ears drooped to the sides, a soft bark coming out of his lips. “What happened to these survivors after they had recovered?” Emma wrote on her notepad. “Were they let go?”
Jacob shook his head. “Both governments agreed that as they were nowhere near finding a vaccine and the propertie4s of the virus were still largely a mystery, no risk would be taken to stop the spread of the disease. All six survivors were euthanized with lethal injections and the surround town area burnt to the ground. There were protests against this method, calling the entire movement a massacre. Spain, the United States, and the rest of the surviving world was in an uproar, calling it murder and that they hadn’t done enough to help the villagers fight the disease. As the threat of the disease grew more and more prominent, however, the harshness eventually faded away.
“At that point, the United States beefed up security, stopping all trading going en route from any countries and any arriving flights and ships worldwide. Borderline fences were reinforced all across Canada and Mexico, and contact with Hawaii, Alaska, Guam and Puerto Rico was halted altogether. People all across the nation were being instructed to special isolation colonies where they would be safe from the spread of the disease should it actually manage to hit the USA. In a matter of days, half the nation had turned quiet.”
“But you decided to stay. Why?” Emma asked.
“This is our home, Emma. Always has been, always will be.” Jacob gave a thin smile across his dark lips. “I could never have so readily abandoned what had worked so hard for to gain and keep. Now, I’m not so sure about that statement.”
“I told you we should've gone with Mr. Wilson.” Alma murmured.
“Alma—” Jacob warned.
“Right, sorry.” Alma slouched down against the sofa. He had some problem with interrupting their father, didn’t he? Is that what her little brother was always like before she could remember?
“We’re not exactly sure what had happened then.” Jacob continued. “Somehow, the virus had gotten through the checkpoints, possibly by one of the federal agents from Spain. The news continued to update as much as they could while the virus outbreak expanded to the north, the south, and the west. Eventually, they stopped broadcasting altogether. The last broadcasts they’d made were the United States and every country with enough soldiers was getting ready to fight one another over the cause of the virus outbreak.”
“Over the virus outbreak?” Emma wrote. “How could they? There wasn’t enough proof from any nation to really accuse one another. The entire UN was in dispute at this?”
Jacob shrugged. “Who knows? We’re not so certain now what the rest of the world is like now. Most likely, it’s all been reduced to ashes. New York City, Singapore, London…everything all wiped off the face of the planet, and all because no one was willing to confess who had unleashed the weapon and why. My guess is it could’ve been a third party who’d planned all this from the very beginning. Anyway, the virus had made it into Utah by some student from the east side. There was still that sense of paranoia that the epidemic was coming through. When he went through the checkpoint for diagnosis, it was picked up as just a cold virus, so they let him through.
“That’s when the chaos started three days later. The local news channels were still broadcasting as long as they could, so we could still keep in touch with what was going on in Utah. One hundred and ten people fell sick in the whole county and in only a matter of hours, that number quintupled. By the next day, that number had multiplied by twenty. People were starting to get frightened, fleeing the state as far away from the virus outbreak as they could. Entire neighborhoods became deserted ghost towns, and those who’d stayed behind were either succumbing to the virus or they were beginning to riot, grabbing everything they could to be prepared for the worst. Before long, the power outage set in, and there hasn’t been electricity since. By yesterday morning, Utah County was reduced to a land of dead cities, full of scavengers, bandits, and monsters.”
Rebecca nuzzled Jacob affectionately as he heaved a sigh, which sounded more like a big whine. “It didn’t take long for us to get infected by the virus as well. We weren’t completely unprepared when the virus hit, though. We’ve been living off our emergency stores for some time. Speaking of which, I’m sure it’s about time to eat soon. Alma?”
Alma turned his head, swallowing hard. “What if Lucy breaks through th—”
Jacob let out a scoff. “We’ve been through this, son. There’s no way she can get through. She can scratch all she wants, even howl, and bash at the door, but she doesn’t have the strength to break it down. Now go on. Get us a couple cans of corned beef, some pickles, mustard and preserved tomatoes.”
Emma frowned, her tail twitching from behind. What was wrong with this picture? He treated Emma and Rebecca with respect, and yet strangely, when it came to her own brother, her father seemed less than enthusiastic. Their relationship seemed more close to disputing roommates than a father and son. Was this the way it always was? Did her father actually play favorites?
Alma got off the couch head towards the stairs slowly. “I’d like to see you try and come down here for once, old man.” He grumbled.
“I heard that.” He looked back at Emma with a vulpine grin, but that eventually faded when he saw her expression. Even her mother seemed to disapprove, a low growl going from her voice. “What’s wrong, Emma? Oh, that? I guess it looks weird to you, since you lost your memory and everything. He’s always been that way, but he knows I still love him. Besides, you always picked on him yourself.”
Emma gaped at Jacob with disbelief. She did that? Though a muddled memory of a teary-eyed kid jumping for some GI Joe action figure came to mind, it left a knot in her stomach. How could she have bullied her own brother like that? And how did that really explain the casual relationship with her brother?
“You saw the dog tag. I’d always established in this family that no one would ever join the military without paying the consequences. It’s a fact of life that stuff gets you nowhere.” Jacob stood up and started pacing around the room, Emma surprised by his sudden change of tone. “He made the decision to enlist, and he knew the rules, so we shoved him out the door. He came back saying he’d been discharged for some reason. To make it worse, we found out later that he’d been infected with the virus. It’s why we’ve become these walking furballs and your dog has to be locked up in the closet. Why couldn’t he have been like you and your mother gone to college? You were always the smart one, the example he should’ve followed. If he’d never enlisted…”
From the corner of her eye, Emma could see Alma’s head from the stairs, hung low in shame. This whole time, he’d been listening to Jacob lament at how he’d shamed the family name. Still, he managed to scale the stairs with a calm look as Jacob suddenly noticed his presence. How could he just say that? How could her father just say that about him? Alma was his son! “I-I’ve got the stuff you wanted, Dad.” He said quietly.
Jacob nodded, that sudden resentment masked behind a smiling face. “All right, Son. Thank you. Go ahead and put them in the kitchen. We’ll start the gas stove soon “Sitting back down, he reached for Rebecca to be with him. She jumped off the couch though and trotted into the kitchen. Jacob cupped his face in his handpaw, moaning. Did he wonder if Alma had heard everything he said? “It hasn’t been easy for any of us here. Tensions have been high here, but I’m trying. You can see that, right? I’m not a bad father, am I? We’re not sure how much longer we can last in this house without power and supplies running low.”
Emma suddenly felt sorry for her father. Standing up, she crawled onto the couch and hugged him warmly. He wasn’t trying to be a bad father, she felt. He just didn’t know how to support the son that, from what she could tell, he had neglected most of his life. Some pieces of the puzzle had started to come together. She’d apparently been the favored example of the family, the smart one who had a golden future ahead of her. Alma must’ve been the one who was seen as “wasted potential”, and was neglected in favor of her sister. Even she must’ve mistreated her own brother, gloating in how their father loved her more than him. Was she that bad of a person herself?
No, she told herself. That couldn’t have been true about her. How could that be when her furred armed were compassionately embracing her father? She wanted to be kind and compassionate. Her family needed her to get them out of this mess. Her brother especially needed her affection: something that she felt that she owed to him for a very long time. And she knew a way to help.
She began to write to her dad of a plan to help the family out. She began to talk to him of her adventure. She talked about Moroni and the ruins with the bandits along the highway. She told him of their old friend Moroni and how he was somehow unaffected by the Virus. She even talked about the city of Mount Pleasant, which still had power. She then made the offer to him to take them with her to this “paradise”, where they could relive their lives in decency, away from the horridness of what the world had become. By the look on her dad’s face and his wagging tail, he seemed to like the idea.
“This is a fantastic plan, now that we actually have a car, and a working one at that. Our family van was stolen not so far as a few days ago, hotwired and hijacked. No point in calling the police about it, you know. Anyway, we should get our stuff packed as soon as we finished eating. It’ll get dark soon with these…”gadiantons” as Moroni called them, patrolling the streets. I’m sorry that we have to leave Lucy behind, now that she’s a gadiantons, too. Ever since she got infected by that virus, she’s become too dangerous to ever take with us.”
“That’s okay, Dad.” Emma wrote briefly. It wasn’t like she really even remembe3red anything special about her pet. As a family of foxes, she could only imagine that a dog would detest them all now, no longer recognizing their scent.
Jacob scratched his chin. “You know, that fox that tried to rob your car. Something about him almost makes me think of Larry.”
“Larry?”
“You and he used to date each other for a long while before you went to Snow College two years ago. We still talked with him occasionally; he’d call to see if you’d have ever stopped by. We made it clear the two of you had split up, but he didn’t quite seem over you. The two of you were so good together as a couple. I wonder why you ever decided to dump him in the first place.”
All of a sudden, muddled images of a human teen, pale colored with frizzled short hair and bright eyes, dressed in normal teen clothes and not the gangster hip-hop fashion that was becoming common nowadays. She reached up with a non-furred hand as he and her embraced in a kiss, a chilled spring breeze flying around them. As the memory faded away, a vague emptiness clutched at her insides, and she suddenly realized her fatal mistake.
The stroking of her hair brought her back to reality. Her father had a concerned look on his face. “You seem worried about something. Is it about Larry?”
Emma nodded. “I left him to die out there. I thought I had recognized him somehow…but I couldn’t remember exactly. We have to go back for him.”
Jacob’s brows narrowed. “I’ve had a look at your car. I don’t think it would fit more than the four of us.”
Emma’s eyes shifted for a moment, and then jotted down, “We’ll think of something.”
There was a knocking by the corridor, and Alma’s head poked out. He seemed much more calmed down than before, thanks to Rebecca, for sure.
“Hey we started the gas stove. The corned beef is cooking.” Then he disappeared again, the sound of excited barking echoing in the hallway. Looking at one another, father and daughter walked together into the kitchen, putting aside her worries with Larry for now until that tasty rueben sandwich was between her fangs.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
During the lunch, Jacob explained to Alma and Rebecca what they were planning to do. There were no protests from Alma or Rebecca, their tails wagging just as much as Jacob’s and Emma’s. As soon as they finished eating, everyone got their stuff packed up and thrown into the car, Jacob and Rebecca sitting in the front seat and Alma sitting in the back seat. Starting the engines and raising the garage door, Emma swore she could hear some ear-piercing howl as she pulled out into the driveway. Saying one last farewell to Lucy, she drove away onto the road while her dad told everyone they were going to make a stop first.
Heading back down onto University Avenue, Emma used what little memories she could pull out to find the house where Larry had been living in. After a few crossroads and some confusion, she stopped by the place that her mind recognized as the most familiar. A small, little home with no driveway and a cute little walkway with Pansies slowly beginning to wilt, the age on the house showed. The paint on the porch and walls was crumbling away as ivy struggled to take control of it. All the windows were boarded up and the front door was open. It certainly seemed abandoned yet someone could’ve lived there, and even the whole family something still felt amiss. Her nose told her so.
“Blood.” Alma sniffed the air. “I smell blood. There’s something not right here.”
Rebecca seemed to equally protest with her whimpering, curling up close to Jacob’s body. Jacob sniffed the air too, nodding in acknowledgement to Emma. “You better bring your gun with you, Emma.”
Opening up the glove box, she removed the magazine and replaced it with a new clip, fitting with a loud click. Getting out of the car, she ran across the walkway, climbing up the stairs and opened the door. She wasn’t so sure what she would say or do with Larry. “I’m sorry, Larry. I didn’t know it was you,” or “I really didn’t mean to do that to you back there. Could you forgive me?” Hopefully, Larry wasn’t the vindictive type of fox.
As she opened the door, the stink of death slapped her across the face. Going inside, she saw furniture turned over and slashed open, stuffing covering the wood textile flooring. A broken television lay flat against a carpet with broken picture frames and glass laid all over by a fireplace, sealed off by a welded steel plate. All the wooden doors were cut across with long deep gashes, as if an animal had made its way through here. Was it one of the gadiantons?
The stench of death grew stronger as she got closer to Larry’s room. That’s when she noticed the trails of blood. Like smeared oil paint it led to what looked like a restroom. There was the sound of running water, and a small pool rippled outside the entrance her gun tightening in her handpaws, she forced herself to press on, the back of her mind telling her the obvious of what had happened. It could have been just a gadiantons that had been killed.
As she stepped forward into the bathroom, she stopped dead in her tracks, her body beginning to shudder. Blood stained the scratched up walls, the cracked toilet, the smashed bathroom mirror. In the very far back, there was a bathtub, also stained with blood, water running on the edges, flooding the floor with lukewarm fluid. The shower curtain pulled all the way around it, making whatever was moving in there obscured. A large indistinct shape writhed and tore at something inside the shower. The only thing that could be seen visibly was a limp furred arm of silver fur dangling over the tub’s stained enamel.
Suddenly, the gadiantons turned its long neck towards her, hissing and then letting out a roar. Acting on instinct, Emma raised her gun and fired a whole load of rounds into the creature, shrieks of agony deafening her hears as the bullet holes pierced the curtains, the ceiling and walls spurting with black blood. After several shot, the shape slumped down onto the body, the sound of running water drowning out the sounds of what had just occurred. Larry’s killer had just met its end.
I’m so sorry, Larry, she thought. I’m so sorry I couldn’t save you. Locking the knob on the door, Emma shut it closed, water and blood splashing against her forelegs. Putting her gun away, she slowly walked back to the car outside with her arms curled tight against her waist. Why was she shuddering so violently? Why did her body ache? What was this feeling?
Getting back to the car, she buckled herself up and started it. Her family asked her what had happened in there, but her anguished glance made them go silent. She paused, looking at the steering wheel, letting out a sniffle as her rear view mirror betrayed her. Who could ever think that foxes could ever shed tears? What was she doing, anyway? Larry was someone she could barely have remembered anyway. Setting the shift into drive, she made a U-Turn back towards University Avenue as Jacob said, “There wasn’t any room for him, anyway.”
Gosh, she hated when she was wrong.
1)http://www.furaffinity.net/view/3296822
2)http://www.furaffinity.net/view/3311879/
3)http://www.furaffinity.net/view/3331352/
4)http://www.furaffinity.net/view/3376285/
5)http://www.furaffinity.net/view/3417877/
6)http://www.furaffinity.net/view/3496265/
7)
8)
9)
Chapter is all done after slaving over this machine from writer's block for 24 hours! wooooo! My motor skills have been drastically affected by this. Now I must go to sleepies now. Bye byez. *collapses on his desk*
At long last, the chapter we've all been waiting for has come to pass. Everything We have ever wanted to know...well, mostly needed to know, is now officially explained in thisw chapter! ^^ I might have to add some more things I didn't quite think about yet later when I edit it. In the meantime, I think this story here is quite satisfying. Enjoys!
======================================================
”Silent Echoes
Chapter Six
By Wrathofautumn”
The strike of a match illuminated the living room, fumes of sulfur hitting Emma’s Nose. She sat on the floor her hind footpaws scraping against the carpet. Something told her to check the car even though her Jacob assured her he managed to park the car inside the garage. Emma knew better than to distrust her father, but the experience back at the library was still strong in her mind. For some reason, he also assured that Lucy wouldn’t get to the car for some reason. Did something happen to the dog that she ought to know about?
As Alma lit the candles, he set its brass handle on the oak coffee table and took a seat on the end of the couch, opposite of dad. Alma had the looks of a red fox like Emma, Only the gloves on his arms reached as far as his wrists, and his tail wasn’t rusty red like hers but a dark black and tipped with white. His eyes were an icy blue with dark headfur that had been left to look wild and spiky, like he’d given up caring about his appearance. He had a rather strong looking muzzle with whiskers on his chin cheeks and his forehead. He wore a plain white t-shirt stained with what looked like old blood. Over it, he wore an army green jacket with a dog tag handing around his neck. His jeans looked as though they had recently been adjusted to fit his tail as he constantly was shifting his jeans with large handpaws. His plain leather shoes shuffled on the ground, the thick soles giving off a scraping sound.
Jacob stroked the back of her mother, sitting perfectly in his lap but ears perked to attention, golden eyes shifting across the room towards all the others. Occasionally, she could see her look at Emma, her rust reddish tail sweeping across her dad’s jeans. She and her father looked almost identical fur pattern wise, only her fur was slightly much deeper red. Her dark nails were long and sharp, dark ochre sleeves going up to her shoulders. In some ways, it reminded Emma of her only feral like. It was strange, though. Even though she was only a fox now, there was some cleverness reflected in her eyes. Something more than what any instincts could imbue. Her mother was still her mother, as quiet as she was and yet just as expressive in her own ways.
Jacob looked much cleaner than Alma did. His brownish headfur was cut neatly in a crisp businessperson like trim. He wore a pair of glasses with an elastic band around his head. Obviously, his glasses as human could no longer work for him now so he had to adjust somehow. He wore a polo shirt with an equestrian wielding a polo hammer near the color. His own jeans seemed uncomfortable, as he shifted like Alma, but he moved a lot less than her brother did. He didn’t wear any shoes, however. Emma highly doubted that any real shoe could fit them now. The toes were too broad and the nails too long and sharp, the tarsal too thick and lengthened.
His amber fox slits shined in the candle light. “Now, before I go into detail about all this, did you ever happen to watch the news or read any newspapers? What’s exactly happened to you while down in Sanpete County?”
Emma shook her head. Even if she had heard about it before, there was no way she could ever remember after the hit and run. Jacob and Alma were the only ones right now who could actually give her a good idea of the world’s current condition. Quickly she wrote down a simple to her father to explain everything. “I don’t really have a voice anymore, and writing everything down that’s happened to me would take a really long time for you to understand. I’ll just say I lost my memory while in the hospital and found my way here. Now tell me about what’s been happening in the world?”
“All right. Well, three weeks ago, while you were away at college, there was an emergency broadcasting on every channel existing for cable, satellite, and digital. Word had just come from CIA Intelligence and global reporting that a genetically altered virus had been unleashed.” She laid her lower torso flat on the ground, resting her arms on the coffee table and leaning forward, ears perked to attention. A genetically altered virus, he said? Did he mean something like a bioweapon?
“There weren’t too many details on what the virus was actually capable of then. No country inside or outside the circle of the UN was taking blame for the unleashing of this bioweapon. For whatever reason, it was spreading faster than wildfire all across Eurasia and Africa. Eventually, US officials found a small remote village near Spain that had been having reports of the wildlife starting to grow aggressive and violent, even showing strange changes in their bodily structure. The villagers, of course, knew nothing of what it was really about. They assumed that the nearest city had begun dumping waste and poisons into their river supplies.
“Before long, there were reports of people succumbing to what was suspected to be this bioweapon. In the hopes of finding a cure, the Spanish Government formed an agreement to quarantine the area and study this new disease. From what they studied, the virus was spread by air and fluids and gave similar symptoms to that of the common cold. On the third day of infection though, the infected fell into a coma that lasted 24 hours.”
Rebecca looked up at her husband with a whine. Joshua stroked her head assuringly. “During the comatose, that’s when the strange stuff started to happen. It was eventually discovered that the virus did not just contain its own RNA strand, but entire strands of DNA coding stored inside of its body, possibly absorbing it from the local animals it had infected prior. The germ attacked the genetic structure of our DNA and rearranged it using those same strands of animal DNA. People’s bodies began to sprout fur and their limbs changed shape. Their faces broadened and stretched as they began to sprout tails. Even their body size changed, either growing out of their clothes or shrinking away inside them.
“To their everlasting fortune, the virus was mostly fatal. They never understood why, but they theorized that the human body in the process of having its coding rearranged was unable to register this new information and rejected these new changes. As such, the bioweapon was largely fatal. Ninety four percent of the villagers were killed from the infection. Only six of these villagers recovered from the comatose, but had been transformed into something unlike anything seen before. They’d become human animal hybrids resembling the local life around the area. They were unable to save the lives of ninety four people, all who had looked up to us for protection.”
“It didn’t always turn out that way, though.” Alma interrupted, stroking Rebecca’s chest. “Mom here had regressed completely to a full feral fox. Yet, she still has all her memories and intelligence from being human. Maybe there are various levels of ferals too.”
Jacob gave him a glare and Alma’s ears drooped to the sides, a soft bark coming out of his lips. “What happened to these survivors after they had recovered?” Emma wrote on her notepad. “Were they let go?”
Jacob shook his head. “Both governments agreed that as they were nowhere near finding a vaccine and the propertie4s of the virus were still largely a mystery, no risk would be taken to stop the spread of the disease. All six survivors were euthanized with lethal injections and the surround town area burnt to the ground. There were protests against this method, calling the entire movement a massacre. Spain, the United States, and the rest of the surviving world was in an uproar, calling it murder and that they hadn’t done enough to help the villagers fight the disease. As the threat of the disease grew more and more prominent, however, the harshness eventually faded away.
“At that point, the United States beefed up security, stopping all trading going en route from any countries and any arriving flights and ships worldwide. Borderline fences were reinforced all across Canada and Mexico, and contact with Hawaii, Alaska, Guam and Puerto Rico was halted altogether. People all across the nation were being instructed to special isolation colonies where they would be safe from the spread of the disease should it actually manage to hit the USA. In a matter of days, half the nation had turned quiet.”
“But you decided to stay. Why?” Emma asked.
“This is our home, Emma. Always has been, always will be.” Jacob gave a thin smile across his dark lips. “I could never have so readily abandoned what had worked so hard for to gain and keep. Now, I’m not so sure about that statement.”
“I told you we should've gone with Mr. Wilson.” Alma murmured.
“Alma—” Jacob warned.
“Right, sorry.” Alma slouched down against the sofa. He had some problem with interrupting their father, didn’t he? Is that what her little brother was always like before she could remember?
“We’re not exactly sure what had happened then.” Jacob continued. “Somehow, the virus had gotten through the checkpoints, possibly by one of the federal agents from Spain. The news continued to update as much as they could while the virus outbreak expanded to the north, the south, and the west. Eventually, they stopped broadcasting altogether. The last broadcasts they’d made were the United States and every country with enough soldiers was getting ready to fight one another over the cause of the virus outbreak.”
“Over the virus outbreak?” Emma wrote. “How could they? There wasn’t enough proof from any nation to really accuse one another. The entire UN was in dispute at this?”
Jacob shrugged. “Who knows? We’re not so certain now what the rest of the world is like now. Most likely, it’s all been reduced to ashes. New York City, Singapore, London…everything all wiped off the face of the planet, and all because no one was willing to confess who had unleashed the weapon and why. My guess is it could’ve been a third party who’d planned all this from the very beginning. Anyway, the virus had made it into Utah by some student from the east side. There was still that sense of paranoia that the epidemic was coming through. When he went through the checkpoint for diagnosis, it was picked up as just a cold virus, so they let him through.
“That’s when the chaos started three days later. The local news channels were still broadcasting as long as they could, so we could still keep in touch with what was going on in Utah. One hundred and ten people fell sick in the whole county and in only a matter of hours, that number quintupled. By the next day, that number had multiplied by twenty. People were starting to get frightened, fleeing the state as far away from the virus outbreak as they could. Entire neighborhoods became deserted ghost towns, and those who’d stayed behind were either succumbing to the virus or they were beginning to riot, grabbing everything they could to be prepared for the worst. Before long, the power outage set in, and there hasn’t been electricity since. By yesterday morning, Utah County was reduced to a land of dead cities, full of scavengers, bandits, and monsters.”
Rebecca nuzzled Jacob affectionately as he heaved a sigh, which sounded more like a big whine. “It didn’t take long for us to get infected by the virus as well. We weren’t completely unprepared when the virus hit, though. We’ve been living off our emergency stores for some time. Speaking of which, I’m sure it’s about time to eat soon. Alma?”
Alma turned his head, swallowing hard. “What if Lucy breaks through th—”
Jacob let out a scoff. “We’ve been through this, son. There’s no way she can get through. She can scratch all she wants, even howl, and bash at the door, but she doesn’t have the strength to break it down. Now go on. Get us a couple cans of corned beef, some pickles, mustard and preserved tomatoes.”
Emma frowned, her tail twitching from behind. What was wrong with this picture? He treated Emma and Rebecca with respect, and yet strangely, when it came to her own brother, her father seemed less than enthusiastic. Their relationship seemed more close to disputing roommates than a father and son. Was this the way it always was? Did her father actually play favorites?
Alma got off the couch head towards the stairs slowly. “I’d like to see you try and come down here for once, old man.” He grumbled.
“I heard that.” He looked back at Emma with a vulpine grin, but that eventually faded when he saw her expression. Even her mother seemed to disapprove, a low growl going from her voice. “What’s wrong, Emma? Oh, that? I guess it looks weird to you, since you lost your memory and everything. He’s always been that way, but he knows I still love him. Besides, you always picked on him yourself.”
Emma gaped at Jacob with disbelief. She did that? Though a muddled memory of a teary-eyed kid jumping for some GI Joe action figure came to mind, it left a knot in her stomach. How could she have bullied her own brother like that? And how did that really explain the casual relationship with her brother?
“You saw the dog tag. I’d always established in this family that no one would ever join the military without paying the consequences. It’s a fact of life that stuff gets you nowhere.” Jacob stood up and started pacing around the room, Emma surprised by his sudden change of tone. “He made the decision to enlist, and he knew the rules, so we shoved him out the door. He came back saying he’d been discharged for some reason. To make it worse, we found out later that he’d been infected with the virus. It’s why we’ve become these walking furballs and your dog has to be locked up in the closet. Why couldn’t he have been like you and your mother gone to college? You were always the smart one, the example he should’ve followed. If he’d never enlisted…”
From the corner of her eye, Emma could see Alma’s head from the stairs, hung low in shame. This whole time, he’d been listening to Jacob lament at how he’d shamed the family name. Still, he managed to scale the stairs with a calm look as Jacob suddenly noticed his presence. How could he just say that? How could her father just say that about him? Alma was his son! “I-I’ve got the stuff you wanted, Dad.” He said quietly.
Jacob nodded, that sudden resentment masked behind a smiling face. “All right, Son. Thank you. Go ahead and put them in the kitchen. We’ll start the gas stove soon “Sitting back down, he reached for Rebecca to be with him. She jumped off the couch though and trotted into the kitchen. Jacob cupped his face in his handpaw, moaning. Did he wonder if Alma had heard everything he said? “It hasn’t been easy for any of us here. Tensions have been high here, but I’m trying. You can see that, right? I’m not a bad father, am I? We’re not sure how much longer we can last in this house without power and supplies running low.”
Emma suddenly felt sorry for her father. Standing up, she crawled onto the couch and hugged him warmly. He wasn’t trying to be a bad father, she felt. He just didn’t know how to support the son that, from what she could tell, he had neglected most of his life. Some pieces of the puzzle had started to come together. She’d apparently been the favored example of the family, the smart one who had a golden future ahead of her. Alma must’ve been the one who was seen as “wasted potential”, and was neglected in favor of her sister. Even she must’ve mistreated her own brother, gloating in how their father loved her more than him. Was she that bad of a person herself?
No, she told herself. That couldn’t have been true about her. How could that be when her furred armed were compassionately embracing her father? She wanted to be kind and compassionate. Her family needed her to get them out of this mess. Her brother especially needed her affection: something that she felt that she owed to him for a very long time. And she knew a way to help.
She began to write to her dad of a plan to help the family out. She began to talk to him of her adventure. She talked about Moroni and the ruins with the bandits along the highway. She told him of their old friend Moroni and how he was somehow unaffected by the Virus. She even talked about the city of Mount Pleasant, which still had power. She then made the offer to him to take them with her to this “paradise”, where they could relive their lives in decency, away from the horridness of what the world had become. By the look on her dad’s face and his wagging tail, he seemed to like the idea.
“This is a fantastic plan, now that we actually have a car, and a working one at that. Our family van was stolen not so far as a few days ago, hotwired and hijacked. No point in calling the police about it, you know. Anyway, we should get our stuff packed as soon as we finished eating. It’ll get dark soon with these…”gadiantons” as Moroni called them, patrolling the streets. I’m sorry that we have to leave Lucy behind, now that she’s a gadiantons, too. Ever since she got infected by that virus, she’s become too dangerous to ever take with us.”
“That’s okay, Dad.” Emma wrote briefly. It wasn’t like she really even remembe3red anything special about her pet. As a family of foxes, she could only imagine that a dog would detest them all now, no longer recognizing their scent.
Jacob scratched his chin. “You know, that fox that tried to rob your car. Something about him almost makes me think of Larry.”
“Larry?”
“You and he used to date each other for a long while before you went to Snow College two years ago. We still talked with him occasionally; he’d call to see if you’d have ever stopped by. We made it clear the two of you had split up, but he didn’t quite seem over you. The two of you were so good together as a couple. I wonder why you ever decided to dump him in the first place.”
All of a sudden, muddled images of a human teen, pale colored with frizzled short hair and bright eyes, dressed in normal teen clothes and not the gangster hip-hop fashion that was becoming common nowadays. She reached up with a non-furred hand as he and her embraced in a kiss, a chilled spring breeze flying around them. As the memory faded away, a vague emptiness clutched at her insides, and she suddenly realized her fatal mistake.
The stroking of her hair brought her back to reality. Her father had a concerned look on his face. “You seem worried about something. Is it about Larry?”
Emma nodded. “I left him to die out there. I thought I had recognized him somehow…but I couldn’t remember exactly. We have to go back for him.”
Jacob’s brows narrowed. “I’ve had a look at your car. I don’t think it would fit more than the four of us.”
Emma’s eyes shifted for a moment, and then jotted down, “We’ll think of something.”
There was a knocking by the corridor, and Alma’s head poked out. He seemed much more calmed down than before, thanks to Rebecca, for sure.
“Hey we started the gas stove. The corned beef is cooking.” Then he disappeared again, the sound of excited barking echoing in the hallway. Looking at one another, father and daughter walked together into the kitchen, putting aside her worries with Larry for now until that tasty rueben sandwich was between her fangs.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
During the lunch, Jacob explained to Alma and Rebecca what they were planning to do. There were no protests from Alma or Rebecca, their tails wagging just as much as Jacob’s and Emma’s. As soon as they finished eating, everyone got their stuff packed up and thrown into the car, Jacob and Rebecca sitting in the front seat and Alma sitting in the back seat. Starting the engines and raising the garage door, Emma swore she could hear some ear-piercing howl as she pulled out into the driveway. Saying one last farewell to Lucy, she drove away onto the road while her dad told everyone they were going to make a stop first.
Heading back down onto University Avenue, Emma used what little memories she could pull out to find the house where Larry had been living in. After a few crossroads and some confusion, she stopped by the place that her mind recognized as the most familiar. A small, little home with no driveway and a cute little walkway with Pansies slowly beginning to wilt, the age on the house showed. The paint on the porch and walls was crumbling away as ivy struggled to take control of it. All the windows were boarded up and the front door was open. It certainly seemed abandoned yet someone could’ve lived there, and even the whole family something still felt amiss. Her nose told her so.
“Blood.” Alma sniffed the air. “I smell blood. There’s something not right here.”
Rebecca seemed to equally protest with her whimpering, curling up close to Jacob’s body. Jacob sniffed the air too, nodding in acknowledgement to Emma. “You better bring your gun with you, Emma.”
Opening up the glove box, she removed the magazine and replaced it with a new clip, fitting with a loud click. Getting out of the car, she ran across the walkway, climbing up the stairs and opened the door. She wasn’t so sure what she would say or do with Larry. “I’m sorry, Larry. I didn’t know it was you,” or “I really didn’t mean to do that to you back there. Could you forgive me?” Hopefully, Larry wasn’t the vindictive type of fox.
As she opened the door, the stink of death slapped her across the face. Going inside, she saw furniture turned over and slashed open, stuffing covering the wood textile flooring. A broken television lay flat against a carpet with broken picture frames and glass laid all over by a fireplace, sealed off by a welded steel plate. All the wooden doors were cut across with long deep gashes, as if an animal had made its way through here. Was it one of the gadiantons?
The stench of death grew stronger as she got closer to Larry’s room. That’s when she noticed the trails of blood. Like smeared oil paint it led to what looked like a restroom. There was the sound of running water, and a small pool rippled outside the entrance her gun tightening in her handpaws, she forced herself to press on, the back of her mind telling her the obvious of what had happened. It could have been just a gadiantons that had been killed.
As she stepped forward into the bathroom, she stopped dead in her tracks, her body beginning to shudder. Blood stained the scratched up walls, the cracked toilet, the smashed bathroom mirror. In the very far back, there was a bathtub, also stained with blood, water running on the edges, flooding the floor with lukewarm fluid. The shower curtain pulled all the way around it, making whatever was moving in there obscured. A large indistinct shape writhed and tore at something inside the shower. The only thing that could be seen visibly was a limp furred arm of silver fur dangling over the tub’s stained enamel.
Suddenly, the gadiantons turned its long neck towards her, hissing and then letting out a roar. Acting on instinct, Emma raised her gun and fired a whole load of rounds into the creature, shrieks of agony deafening her hears as the bullet holes pierced the curtains, the ceiling and walls spurting with black blood. After several shot, the shape slumped down onto the body, the sound of running water drowning out the sounds of what had just occurred. Larry’s killer had just met its end.
I’m so sorry, Larry, she thought. I’m so sorry I couldn’t save you. Locking the knob on the door, Emma shut it closed, water and blood splashing against her forelegs. Putting her gun away, she slowly walked back to the car outside with her arms curled tight against her waist. Why was she shuddering so violently? Why did her body ache? What was this feeling?
Getting back to the car, she buckled herself up and started it. Her family asked her what had happened in there, but her anguished glance made them go silent. She paused, looking at the steering wheel, letting out a sniffle as her rear view mirror betrayed her. Who could ever think that foxes could ever shed tears? What was she doing, anyway? Larry was someone she could barely have remembered anyway. Setting the shift into drive, she made a U-Turn back towards University Avenue as Jacob said, “There wasn’t any room for him, anyway.”
Gosh, she hated when she was wrong.
Category Story / General Furry Art
Species Vulpine (Other)
Size 50 x 50px
File Size 86 kB
Comments