FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Kate had been told there was something different about Redondo Beach. There had been attack there last summer, of course, and everything was closed down while the government came in and cleaned up the biological agents that had contaminated half the beach and the tidal zone. A little bit of digging into the victims list revealed that there were 92 souls affected that day. 85 didn't make it, while 4 of them lived outside of safe zones in the Nevada desert or the Pacific Northwest. The other three were given their G-licenses and lived in metropolitan areas; one of them moved East to be with his family and now lived as a construction worker; another did construction work down in Florida, no doubt doing clean-up for the attack down in Miami; and a third was right here in southern California, doing her best to make it work as a college student.

She had been following the lives of several of these victims, writing a bi-weekly column about how they were transitioning into this new reality after the attacks and how society was beginning to change to accommodate them. The trauma of this whole thing was still too new, and the victims carried the stigma with them in the absence of a guilty party. Whoever was doing this was still at large, and the entire world waited with held breath for the next canister to unleash its toxin within a busy area. There had been over two dozen attacks in the last six months, with a disproportionate number in the States. During that time, people learned to stay away from each other; busy areas like malls and airports suddenly weren't. Businesses were struggling, the economy was slowing. People were beginning to throw around words like "recession".

But the collie didn't see it that way. She had her sources telling her that the group responsible for the attacks (and it most definitely was a group) would probably be caught sometime in the next two or three months and it would take maybe two or three months after that for people to resume their old patterns. Within a year of capture, the victims would stop being victims and simply be Giants. Then, she said, you could watch a whole culture of celebrity rise up like Godzilla from the Pacific Ocean.

It was a bad metaphor, she had said over drinks.

"Maybe," Alicia said, winking over her daiquiri. "But when you see what I've seen, you'll find it's particularly apt."

The conversation that followed lead her here to Redondo Beach. It was still early in the season - just past Memorial Day - but the place was dead. There were only a few small clusters of people scattered along the shoreline, sunning themselves or building sand castles. This same time last year there were three times as many. She could have heard the noise from her apartment three blocks away.

"Weird. I thought there would be more people here." Alicia put her hand over her eyes, even though she wore sunglasses. She carried the cooler in her other paw, full of beers and hard cider.

"Maybe not everyone has super-insistent friends dragging them to an attack site with some vague promise of a story-worthy afternoon." Kate met her friend's "bitch, please" stare with one of her own. Neither of them could pull it off very well. The curse of us working dogs, her mother always said, was to look earnest at all times.

"Trust me, this is gold." Alicia was a terrier blessed with long legs and lean curves, her fur sleek and shiny in the sunlight. Her tongue rolled for a moment in a quick pant, then she looked out over the ocean. "It might not happen, though. There's not enough people."

They set up on the beach anyway, spreading out massive towels on the sand and setting the cooler between them. Kate snatched up a cider immediately and drained half of it in one long drought. She had a feeling that no matter what, she wanted to have a good buzz going. Alicia smirked at her and sat back in a cover-ready pose, paws braced behind her, chest stuck out to accentuate their perk over their size, long legs splashed over the towel in a way that looked studiously careless. She considered the cooler for a moment and then decided against it, looking out towards the surf instead.

Kate followed her gaze and let the peaceful silence of the beach sink in. The sound of the water rushing to shore was hypnotic, and it was easy to let the rhythm of it slow her heart and lull her mind into the nest of its own thoughts. She thought about the number of attacks there had been around the world, how increasingly well-orchestrated they had become now that the world was on high alert. When one type of target had gotten to be too hot, they moved on to a different one. It suggested that the group responsible was very well-prepared for the long run, and that they had done their research on exactly how this was supposed to play out over an extended period of time.

That frightened her more than anything. Whoever was doing this knew how the police and the governments were likely to respond, and had developed a plan to react to it. They weren't going to stop any time soon, and while all attempts to capture them had thus far been unsuccessful, it was only a matter of time before they were. Kate figured that they must have had a plan for that, too. If they were smart enough to guess how the noose would be tightening around them and counter that, they had to know there'd come a point when there was no more wiggle room.

What would happen then? What was all this leading to? What was the point of all of this? No one would know until the terrorists were caught, and even then it might be a long time making sense of it. In the meantime, thousands of lives were lost, hundreds more were changed forever, and society was figuring out how to deal with those changes. Already, legislation about the survivors was being drawn up; there'd be no way it would pass now, but once the shock of the attacks themselves had passed and the victims had stopped being victims, it wouldn't take much to project the public's fears onto them.

Maybe that was why Kate did what she did. These people, no matter what they were like now, were just ordinary people put into an extraordinary situation. They had no more control over this than anyone else. If she could get out in front of this thing, make sure that people identified with them, then maybe the ostracization she saw coming wouldn't actually take. Maybe she could actually keep it from happening altogether. Maybe she could help these victims re-integrate into a society that they had simply become too different for.

The cynic in her told her that there was no way this would actually happen. But she figured it was worth a shot anyway.

Alicia perked and stared fixedly at a spot out on the water. Kate tilted her head and again followed her gaze. It didn't take long to figure out what the terrier was staring at.

A shark's fin broke the surface of the water, slicing through it with a shocking speed that that Kate had never seen before. It was still quite a ways out, but there was no reflecting the slate grey skin contrasting against the blue-green waves or the light blue sky. The collie looked around, but the few people on the beach seemed oblivious. No one had seen it yet.

"Oh my God," Kate said, and moved to get up.

Alicia grabbed her wrist and pulled her back down. "Just watch." There was a strong wave of excitement in her voice.

The fin cut across the horizon, then doubled back. It grew bigger, rising higher out of the water, then higher, then higher still. Kate glanced at one of the sailboats docked on the other side of the beach, and had to guess the fin was at least that high. It came closer, and that's when people began to notice.

The collie could actually feel the wave of panic crashing over people. They looked up, grew alarmed, screamed and ran. Kate could feel that tug in her chest as well, and her muscles twitched automatically. She should be running. She needed to get somewhere far away from here.

Alicia tugged her wrist again and shook her head when Kate shot her a look. "It's fine. You're going to want to see this."

"What, watch people get eaten? Get chased down by some freaking giant shark?" She kept one ear on the water while the other swiveled to get the fading screams of the people racing back up the slope and into the road.

"He's not like that, Kate. Just...sit there. And trust me. I wouldn't be here if I didn't think it was safe." Alicia stared straight into Kate's eyes, made sure the collie was going to stay. Then she turned her attention back towards the rising fin that raced closer and closer to shore.

The giant breached the water about 100 yards from shore. She figured the deep water ran out around there, or else he would have remained underwater even longer. It was most definitely a he - the breadth of his chest and shoulders left no question about that, nor the bulge in his board shorts. He splashed one webbed hand in the shallow water, creating a geyser of foam that made Kate taste salt. His other hand rose to cradle against his chest, and he scooted forward until he got his feet under him.

He stood up and Kate found herself unable to breathe. He just kept rising and rising, his shadow falling across the half of the beach they happened to be sitting in. His head loomed over a staggering distance, water roaring as it poured off his body. It was like a skyscraper had just come up out of the ocean and landed on shore.

He took two steps forward and suddenly he was there, on the beach, taking up most of it with sheer size. His feet were enormous and webbed, sinking into sand that had suddenly grown much wetter and more compacted. He looked around, that heavy gaze moving from one edge of the beach to the other. Kate felt her chest tighten when those dark eyes looked directly at her.

The shark knelt down. The impact brought a wave of ocean-scented air towards her and Kate, knocked over the cooler, flicked them both off solid ground for a split-second. He was looming directly over them now, water dripping all around them, and a building-sized arm was lowering. His webbed hand was tipped with claws the size of swords. It was all Kate could do to keep from shrieking, or running, or passing out. Conscious thought had left her. Nothing should be that big, she kept thinking. He really shouldn't be this close.

The hand settled on the beach in front of them with a lighter thump that still rattled her teeth. Inside of it, sprawled out over the lighter grey skin in the giant's palm, was a lean giraffe in a red one-piece bikini. She was shivering, and her muzzle was open and panting shallow breaths.

"Dude," the shark boomed, "could you call the paramedics? I think this little lady got herself messed up by some jellyfish."

The giant moved to one end of the beach while the paramedics worked on the woman. The other people on the beach had returned, if only to see the spectacle. They kept a healthy distance from the shark, though.

Everyone except for Alicia and Kate, that is. Their attention was torn between the small crush of people across the beach and the titan right in front of them. For just a few minutes it was enough to simply be quiet; once the giraffe was loaded onto a stretcher, they immediately turned and regarded each other. It took just a second or two before the shark spoke up.

"Hey," he whispered. "I'm Bento. Nice to meet you, ladies."

Alicia was all smiles, lifting a hand to shield her eyes from a sun that wasn't even shining on her. "Hey there, stud. I'm Alicia and this is my friend Kate."

"Right on." Bento grinned, rows of teeth showing between pink gums. His eyes were completely black and reflective when they caught the light. If his nose wasn't pointed right at you, it was difficult to tell what he was looking at. To say the least, it was disturbing.

"Sorry if I gave you a scare, Kate. Usually I try to approach like, a little more cautiously. But those jellyfish stings are pretty gnarly. You want to get those taken care of ASAP." His nose was pointed down, right towards her. He shifted his immense bulk, sitting instead of squatting to take the pressure off his legs.