FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Of Gods and Men

An Anthracite City Story

By Psion

All Rights Reserved

It had been a long and slow trip but it was almost over. The cold wind howled endlessly since the apocalyptic winter began, a final measure of the alien invaders to break down resistance. No one really knew how it began, just one day the sky was thick with overcast and it never broke up. Without the sun's rays to warm the planet... well the rest of that story pretty much told itself. No reason to worry about that now though, the snow-covered ruins of Old Scranton loomed ahead like a skeletal hand reaching up towards the ash-gray sky. Old Scranton, the final leg of his journey had just begun, one last time he had to trade or scavenge the ruins for supplies before he was forced to cross the Central Pennsylvanian Wastes to get to Anthracite City.

The tall human male made camp in an old abandoned warehouse, anything promising was clearly picked over long ago. Even the break room vending machines had been broken into and cleaned out of anything remotely edible. Still, it looked like as good of a place as any to spend the night before he explored deeper into the ruined city. Not like he wouldn't give his right arm for some modern comforts, he thought to himself while unfurling his sleeping bag and seeing what he could do about barricading the room until morning. Next to no food and no warmth except a dirty sleeping bag he "stole" out of the trunk of an abandoned car, what the lanky man with the long brown hair wouldn't give for a hot meal, a soft bed, and a warm body of the female persuasion. Hard to believe he used to have at least two of those things on a regular basis. Oh well, nothing to do but keep hoping that tomorrow was somehow better. Laying his multipurpose utility bar and his backpack down on the cold concrete floor next to his sleeping bag, he closed his eyes and did his best to fall asleep.

The next day looked the same as the last, steel-gray overcast sky, cold winds blowing furiously, and a light snowfall to cover up the tracks he made the day before. Time to get up and see what nightmare awaited him today. Would it be bandits or slavers, free traders or a holdout keeping their heads down and hoping everyone would ignore them? Lacing up his boots, putting on his coat, and grabbing his gear, the man exited the frigid warehouse for the equally bitter cold outside. Snow crunched beneath his boots as he trudged through the snow, following a road that took him deeper into the city. Breath condensed into a small cloud of fog as he kept an eye out for signs civilization lingered on, both the obvious and the not so obvious.

The industrial district grew more congested as the wanderer walked towards the city, the factories and distribution centers growing closer together when the shrouded man started to see subtle signs of habitation. Was it? Yes, over there in the old food processing plant he could see flashes of movement from someone trying to stay out of sight and doing a worse job of it then he was. For that matter, didn't that plant used to belong to that canned soup company? Maybe there was some stock that someone would be willing to trade in exchange for some repair work. The squat building soon loomed before him like an ugly box-shaped mesa of concrete and steel as the wastelander spotted some fresh footprints in the snow, someone was either holed up here or trying to loot the place before anyone else did. Or this could have been a trap set up by bandits that somehow spotted him the day before, wouldn't be the first time brigands tried to bash his head in and steal his stuff...

Drawing his heavy steel utility bar, his pace slowed to a crawl as he quietly crept up to a promising door and tested the lock. Yeah, shut tight... and that flicker of movement meant someone was about to try bashing his head in.

Steel clanged against aluminum as his hybrid crowbar/sledgehammer clashed with the other man's baseball bat. Pushing his opponent away, the outsider gave his weapon a twirl and glared. "You treat everyone you meet like this?" He growled.

"Only if they're bandits, are you a bandit?" The local man countered, taking his opponent briefly aback by the "innocent" way the question was asked. Perhaps it wasn't a surprise though; neck beard, faded Batman shirt underneath his coat, and a physique like... like a formerly fat comic book nerd that was forced onto the "Post-Apocalypse Crash Diet." This was not the first time the tech-savvy wastelander had dealt with someone like this though it was the first time he had seen one in ages. To see one of these naïve, misguided morons still alive... names could wait, right now he needed to keep his head from being bashed in.

"Really? What kind of a question is that? If I'm not, I'm going to say no. If I am, I'm going to still say no so I can bash your head in and steal your stuff once you turn your back. For that matter... you know what, never mind. This is going nowhere so you have yourself a nice day." The longhaired human snarled and started to back away in haste. This was a waste of energy, he wasn't that hard up to trade anyway.

"And let you go back to your bandit friends, no way." The comic nerd replied, baseball bat risen over his head like an action movie samurai and his katana as he lunged towards the "bandit."

Stepping aside and swinging low, the first man caught his opponent in the legs, tripped him up and making him land face first in the ankle-deep snow. "Well that still was a completely pointless use of time. By the way, I'm Adam White, a displeasure to meet you." The brown-haired man said over his shoulder before he took off for the city proper. Maybe he could get lucky and there was a part of the city that hadn't been picked over yet...

Walking downtown took the better part of the day, Adam grumbled as he trudged through the unplowed roads, past cars that had been abandoned in the middle of the road when the Invasion came, and against the frigid wind. Grateful for his warm winter parka and woolen hat, to say nothing of the gloves; good gloves were important for keeping his hands warm, cold hands were stiff hands and regardless of what name you called him, a repair guy without nimble fingers was a bad repair guy. Blue jeans turned white as they grew covered with snow as the cynical man made his way into downtown Detroit.

Inside the city, as skyscrapers towered above him like monoliths erected to Pre-Invasion deities of capitalism and industry, honed senses caused the hairs on the back of his neck to stand on end. At least one of THEM was here, one of the invaders' elite mercenary soldiers. Adam wasn't sure how to describe how he knew, he just knew. It was something in the air, like the way the atmosphere electrifies in a stadium before the big game or the way the mood shifts in those tangible seconds before a man proposes to his girlfriend. As cliché as it might be to call it a sixth sense, that was perhaps the best way to describe it, some primal instinct reawakened by being hunted like a wild animal for... how long has it been since Sentinel City was besieged and the rest of the world went dark? Sixth months? A year? Somewhere in the middle sounded about right, it was getting hard to keep track of time these days...

Eyes open, he scanned the street ahead of him while struggling to listen over the howling wind for signs of pursuit. On the plus side, depending on how long the unseen mercenary Marauder or Marauders had been here, he stood a good chance to get some decent supplies as the freaks would have scared away other scavengers. The downside of course was that they had every reason to be scared, as even one Marauder was tough enough be a death sentence for most men. But Adam knew how to stay out of sight, the places they usually went were the places that didn't have much meaning to most people anymore, places like jewelry stores and banks. Considering what the human wanted was food, parts, and maybe some more warm clothes and sleeping gear from the nearest army surplus or camping store, odds were pretty good their paths wouldn't intersect if he kept his head down...

Approaching an intersection in the city's commercial district, the shivering wastelander figuratively froze when he heard something further down the other street, his vision blocked by an appliance store on the corner. Metal audibly scraped on pavement as something pushed something else metallic and very heavy across the ground. Adam took a quick look at his surroundings. Other then a mailbox and a delivery van, the street was devoid of objects he could hide behind.

Taking his chances behind the immobilized vehicle, the scavenger put his pry bar away and drew his revolver before crouching down and leaning around the corner. At that moment the source of the noise walked into view. A massive, muscle-bound gray-furred wolf anthromorph dressed in a insulated costume walked by as he pushed a snowplow, truck and all, down the other street; a "brick-style" super, in the middle of some kind of strength training exercises and with the insignia of the Invaders' army on his shoulder. Yeah... fifty bucks said Adam needed something a little bigger then what he had in his hand to take down that embodiment of all that was sick and adolescent in the furry fandom.

Counting to five, he moved into the nearest building, up a narrow stairwell between a laundry mat and a convenience store, and into the apartments above. Out of sight, he quietly began rummaging through the abandoned apartments, always keeping an ear open for the scraping sound of that damn wolf playing with life-sized toy trucks.

While he had yet to find an abandoned building that was anywhere nearly as charitable with loot as the Fallout or Metro 2033 video games, the fourth floor of this building wasn't too bad all things considered. Some cans of soup, a Zippo oil lighter in an apartment that smelt like an ash tray, a flashlight, a few spare batteries that still looked good, and of course it wouldn't be Scranton, a city that could only be considered the shining jewel of northeastern Pennsylvania if quotation marks were involved, if he didn't accidentally stumble upon a drug dealer's bolt-hole complete with a gaudy chrome .45 handgun complete with extra ammo and a dubious-looking plastic can of gasoline that Adam left alone for the time being. The chrome would have to painted over, these days flashy and eye-catching tended to get you killed, but other then that the gun still looked usable. Checking the loaded gun and ejecting the magazine, he tucked the ammo away into his pants pocket and slipped the weapon next to them. One of the take-home lessons of all those damn shooting competitions his dad dragged him to as a kid was to never have a gun loaded with ammunition unless you could keep it properly shouldered or holstered, sound advice as Adam was kind of attached to keeping his privates where they were.

The rest of the apartments on this floor were either locked or already picked over. White could force the former open with his pry bar but that was noisy and he wasn't confident the wolf on the ground would be unable to hear him, especially now that the scraping sound had suspiciously died down all of a sudden. Could it be? Nah, wuffy probably just went home to get some hot coco and whine about how cold it was outside his prefab bunker while the "human peons" all froze.

"I SMELL A FRESH HUMIE!" A loud voice echoed through the abandoned building from somewhere below. Guess the big guy wasn't a hot chocolate fan. Well now it began again, another round of running for his life like a scared little rabbit, only this time the odds were really stacked against him. Super-sniffers rarely lost the trail once they picked it up and once they realized who he was... Well first Adam was a tech-head; that automatically upped the base price he'd bring. Second, he hadn't exactly been lying low and sucking his thumb in a fallout shelter while waiting for the aliens to clear out so there were a few... incidents that ensured his alien overlords had put quite a pretty penny on his head. Short version was that running was never an option for him, not without making sure his pursuers had something else to occupy their attention first.

Speaking of which, Adam still hadn't found anything that could bring wolf-boy down... or did he? The lighter now in his pocket, the gasoline... surely one of these apartments had a bucket or something that would do in a pinch. A plan began to form in his mind, the kind that was almost crazy enough to work. Time to see if he could strike another one for Joe Average...

By the time the wolf had reached his floor, the human had already set his trap in one of the apartments he looted, opened a window, and was presently hiding in the fire escape. One Mississippi... there was the sound of a door slamming open and a yelp of surprise as the bucket landed on muscle-freak's head, spilling gasoline all over his fur and clothes. Now to see if he took the rest of the bait or was smarter then Adam gave him credit for.

Less then a second later, the latest "Super Wolf" to try and make life miserable for the human guerrilla leapt out of the window and landed next to him on the fire escape. Looking both down and up first, he only looked to his left and spotted Adam after the human let fly with a lit lighter. Following up his throw with a desperate charge, he caught the super-strong lupine by surprise and managed to shove him off the building milliseconds before he burst into flames...

Beating out the sleeve of his parka before it could catch fire, the human looked down at the screaming wolf fighting desperately to put out the flames with a mixture of disgust and contemplation. A horrible way to die but if he fought on behalf of the Enemy for cash he probably deserved as much. Still Adam couldn't help but wonder what the bruiser's name was, either his real name or whatever lame-ass comic book moniker he went by. Was he a mindless thug like so many others or could there have been more to him? Did he have a family, any hobbies like stamp collecting? Typical engineer thinking, Adam... overanalyze the obvious; he was an enemy, now he's a hunk of charred meat for the carrion feeders. Shame it won't last though, that damn crystal in his head probably put out a ping for the nearest meat wagon to pick it up along with a tissue sample They can clone him a new body with. Which means I better get out of here before reinforcements show up to secure the corpse and try to go all hunter-seeker on my ass. The human chided himself as he started to turn away. Still, it felt like he needed to say something before escaping yet again...

"That was for all the shitty-ass Fur Affinity writers who constantly shoehorn humanity into being fat space Nazis. Enjoy your short stint in hell Darkwing Wolfclaw." Adam shouted over his shoulder before disappearing back into the apartment building. Had to put at least a block between him and the cadaver before he could look for a place to hide. There had to be basement apartments or at least a useable basement period in one of these buildings.

Back outside, he picked a direction that would likely take him closer to the city center and started walking at a faster clip. The wolf might have been alone, he might have not been alone; no one really knew how some of these Marauders thought. Some had military or at least paramilitary tactics down to an exact science, others preferred to work alone. Better not take a chance on whether or not his latest kill had backup and get back under cover quickly. Scanning the street ahead of him, he picked another promising door that lead up into a small office building. Not quite as promising as a store or an apartment, but there might be something worthwhile here other then free copy paper. At the very least the maze of cubicles offered a flimsy if unobvious place to set up camp for the night, something that was becoming increasingly important as it appeared that a storm was starting to brew overhead. Exploring a promising level high above the city streets, he found that the vending machines in the break room still had stuff in them this time. One good swing with his pry bar was all it took to break the glass window over the snack machine while the drink machine required a little mechanical fiddling with a multitool. Still, a few candy bars and a couple of sports drinks for his trouble was better then nothing.

Unfurling his sleeping bag in a central cubical and laying his weapons out within reach, he opened one of the cans and ended his day with a container of cold tomato soup. About as appetizing as it sounded but then again proper cooking appliances weren't exactly common after the apocalypse. Oh well, he could devote tomorrow to finding more supplies then continue on his way to Anthracite City. That was the location he agreed to meet his friends at and if the rumors were true that was where the enemy was the weakest. Sounds like as good of a place as any to start up a resistance...

The next morning, Adam woke to find... was it his worst nightmare or a badly needed reprieve? During the night someone came to his campsite and traced a circle around his bag and gear with a luminescent substance he couldn't identify. It glowed like neon yet the etchings were stone cold and completely nonconductive. Yet that didn't stop someone, likely someone feminine, from drawing a circle around him and doodling a fox's eye on the ceiling directly over him in a rainbow of bright colors. Below the eye, written in beautiful cursive, was the message "I'm watching you" signed with a heart.

"Yeah... this isn't creepy at all." White remarked, his voice dripping with sarcasm as he quickly got dressed and packed up. Perhaps he should just settle for getting out of the city as quickly as possible. Something told him he might have been better off with the wolf instead of whoever this newcomer was....