FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Chapter II

Slowly we walked back down the hillside as the burnt oranges and reds tinging the clouds slowly faded into darker blues and purples. Shadows crept further down the distant mountain sides, reclaiming them for the night. The softness brought about by dusk was only juxtaposed by the harshness of the current situation.

From what I assumed, we were headed back to the cabin we were watching, and the guy watching us lived there. We had left our packs behind, and even though I was sure I was marching to my death, my mind still couldn't let go of the fact that we had just ditched every survival tool we had collected over the past few months, everything we owned was in those two backpacks.

I was also really having a hard time pinning down what was most frightening about this guy. The obvious fact that he had a shotgun pointed at me? Or the subtle way he shouldered the weight of our two rifles, and still walked through the fallen branches and leaves of the forest floor without making a sound? If I hadn't taken the risk to peer over my shoulder to still see his shadow behind me, I wouldn't even have know he was still there.

For someone that seemed to initially enjoy taking two hostages, he hadn't said so much as a word to us the entire walk back down the valley. Neither did King or I, but I think we both had an unspoken understanding that any conversation was going to get a reply from a shotgun barrel. King led the way, so to speak, and even he frightened me because I wasn't sure he would stay calm the entire walk back. He was prone to stupidity, and this was neither the time nor place for that.

When we reached the edge of the treeline, the stranger poked me in the small of my back with the shotgun barrel, making me lurch forward.

"Go," he said, "all the way to the house. Then I'll decide your fate."

My fate? Histone chilled me to the bone, cold, unwavering, decisive. We had maybe made our final fuck up today, all these months of surviving and it was going to end at some ramshackle cabin in the middle of who the fuck knows where?

As we trudged closer to the cabin I could see that it was actually not the kind of dwelling we had initially thought when we were scoping out from the woods. Sure the chimney and firepit we saw were there, but from the distance we were at we missed a lot of details.

The entire place was wrapped in what looked like a collection of chicken wire, chain-link fencing and other bits of mesh wiring, which were stuffed full of dead leaves, twigs, branches and other bits of outdoor refuse as some sort of attempt at camouflage.

I gathered that when it got near dusk, this place would be damn near impossible to see even if you walked right past it, and the wet, woody smell of all the plant life prevented even my keen nose from discerning any sort of scent from around the place.

Even adjacent to a wide open field, at least at night this place just folded back into the forest, not to be seen, not to be smelled, not to be detected. The windows, which initially looked liked ordinary glass from afar, definitely had bars installed from the inside, which only scared me further. The only other time I had seen bars on the inside of windows was on the prison shows I saw on TV.

My thoughts, fears, and questions about this stranger were starting to swirl into a torrent of anxiety, and I was finding it harder and harder to calmly walk towards the cabin as we neared the door.

As if he could read my thoughts, the stranger suddenly spoke up.

"I know you're both scared shitless right now, but I need you to calmly kneel down right where you are, and put your paws behind your head. You still have a chance to live, but I don't know you, and I don't trust you, so we do things my way for now. If either of you moves a muscles you get a 12 gauge slug put into you, and I'll drag you into the woods for the buzzards to finish off."

His voice again made my fur stand on end, but both King and I did as we were told, as slowly and deliberately as possible. Quick as a whip the stranger dropped both rifles and his own pack, and slapped handcuffs on King and I within seconds.

This guys speed astonished me; even if I had been ready to take advantage of him when he was restraining King, by the time my brain processed what was going on, he had already gotten the a pair of cuffs on me. And he had gotten them on tight.

The stranger picked up both rifles and his pack, still standing behind us. "I'm going inside to prepare things, I don't think I have to say not to try to run off because you know what will happen."

"And with these," he said, thrusting one of the scoped rifles King and I carried between us to see, "I can promise you I definitely will not miss with the first shot."

With that he strode between us into the house, and try as I might, I could not get a scent or clue on to who this guy was. The cloak he wore diminished all features, I couldn't even hazard a guess as to if he might be a canid, a mustelid, hell even a fucking hyena for all I knew. His clothes smelled like the forest, he gave nothing away about himself. He had even covered his paws with gloves and bindings - this was some serial-killer level shit.

As soon as the door shut, predictably, King opened his muzzle.

"What's gonna happen?" he whispered.

"For once in your life shut the fuck up King," I quietly snarled back, "the guy says we have a chance to live, a say we do what he says and make the most of that chance. We don't really have a lot of other options at the moment if you haven't noticed."

I knew King was just as afraid as I was, and I wasn't trying to purposefully be mean, but I always told the lion, promised him that we would stay alive, and I aimed to keep that promise even I this shitty situation.

We sat outside for what seemed like an eternity; my paws slowly losing circulation from the tightness of the cuffs, my back beginning to ache from having to sit in such an uncomfortable position for so long.

The smokey scent of the fire had died down, and now the only scent the faint breeze brought to my muzzle was the smell of the pines trees, the decaying leaves, the grass and dirt. At the very least that was one good sign; I did pride myself of my sense of smell (being a wolf and all), and the smell I feared was that of putrid decay. That meant walkers were close by, and if I could smell them, they usually could find us.

Just as the last of the light disappeared from between the trees and total darkness began to envelope us, the cabin door opened with a start. Both King and I jumped, but the stranger only paused in front of us, still wearing his concealing garments.

"You," he said, pointing at King, "you first big boy, then your boyfriend comes next."

King slowly stood, giving me a quick sideways glance that showed only complete fear. King was at least usually idiodically confident about everything, and his expression scared me more than anything else had up to this point.

The stranger let King walk past him into the cabin, following behind with a pistol pointed at his back. After a moment he quickly returned, waving the gun in his paw towards the door.

"You next hot stuff," he said, "with that black fur if I leave you out hear any longer I won't be able to find you."

I stood slowly and started to the cabin, the stranger keeping the pistol carefully aimed at me the whole time. _My_pistol, I noticed as I got close enough. Asshole.

Once inside my eyes hazed over for a moment at the change in light. Much like King I had no trouble seeing at night, but the sudden brightness of the inside of the cabin momentarily blinded me.

The stranger gruffly pushed me down into a chair, running a length of chain through the cuffs and into holes drilled through the thick marble of the fireplace mantle. The slab of rock had to be about two feet thick, and a fresh wave of fear swept over me as I realized I was truly trapped.

As my eyes adjusted I saw King handcuffed next to me in an identical way, and more of the cabin came into focus. The lion was breathing nervously and his eyes darted every which way, I had never seen him so scared in my life.

It was cluttered, but in an organized way. Lanterns and candles were placed and hung haphazardly throughout, and shelves of books adorned one corner of the opposite wall.

A small arsenal of weapons hung neatly next to the books from pegs driven into the wall. And boxes and boxes of ammunition were stacked below them.

I recognized the rifles King and I carried, a couple shotguns like the one that the stranger must have been carrying earlier, a multitude of military-style assault rifles, some like the ones King and I had found near the beginning of the outbreak, others I had never seen before. There were more hunting rifles besides our weapons, even a compound bow.

Aside from projectile weapons were a medley of hatchets, bayonet-length knives, axes, machetes, and what looked like a box filled to the top with hand-held knives. Either this guy liked to have weapon choices, or these were remnants of other captives that hadn't made it, and that thought scared the ever-loving shit out of me.

Other than that, the place just seemed to be filled with a bunch of junk. A small bed was tucked into one corner of the place covered in a mish-mash of blankets and quilts, some tools were stacked neatly in another corner, some plastic crates and water jugs sat next to each other in a neat pile, and as I peered up at the fireplace mantle, various knick-knacks were spread across it, including a hideous wood-carved piece that looked like someone had tried to add cotton balls to a stick.

Sheets covered the windows trapping the light inside, and as the door closed, the stranger clicked half a dozen locks into place, and slid three sturdy wooden beams into metal joists bolted into the wall, spread evenly from the top of the door to the bottom. I was confident nothing was getting into - or out, of this place.

The stranger walked across the room and sat on the edge of the bed, extinguishing the lights nearest to him and he did so, until an ocean of darkness formed around him. The small bed creaked under his weight, making the only sound in the room besides the shallow, frightened breathing of King and I. That, and the sound of my own rapid heartbeat in my ears.

"I am going to give you a test," the stranger said after a long pause, "if you pass, then maybe I let you live, you fail...well that fire pit isn't outside for bonfires and sing-alongs."

He shifted his weight on the bed, crossing one leg over the other, placing his paws together and glaring at the both of us.

"The graduation rate has not been good, so I suggest you be honest from the start, and not bullshit me, because I _will_know if you're lying to me. You answer quickly, and you answer honestly, and the second I am not satisfied, you get a round through your forehead."

King audibly gulped and I shifted uncomfortably against the wall, waiting, hoping we had a chance to get out of this. It always seemed to come down to hope more than anything else.

"First off," he said, grabbing a bottle of water next to the bed and taking a swig, "you guys regularly fuck out in the open?"

"What!?" I asked incredulously, amazed of all things that this is what he wanted to know first about us.

The stranger cocked the hammer of the pistol and pointed it quickly in my direction.

"What about answering quickly and clearly did you not understand? Answer the question, one of you."

"Yeah," King piped up before I could say anything, "we're almost always moving through the woods and things get tense you know, you gotta have a release sometimes."

For some reason that made the man laugh, and he drained his bottle of water before continuing. "A release, that's a good one."

"What's the last book you read, before or after the outbreak happened?" he continued.

Again caught off guard it took me a moment to collect my thoughts, I began to really accept this guy was out of his fucking mind.

"Well?" he said, waving the pistol around again, "What was it?"

"B-Blood Meridian", I stammered out, "by Cormac McCarthy."

Again he cackled, an empty, hollow laugh that echoed meanly through the quiet cabin.

"I know who wrote that book, don't patronize me. That before or after all this?" he queried.

"B-before," I stammered again, getting more and more convinced this was just some sick game to toy with us before we were both killed.

"All the time in the world to educate yourself, and you haven't read_anything_? Tch-tch-tch," he clucked back at me, "that's really shameful, the whole world's gone to shit and you can learn whatever you want now, I'd think you could put something in your hands at night besides Mr Lion's dick over there."

After another pause he began again. "What did you do before this all happened, and how did you meet up? And let the lion speak for a second, I've heard enough from you for now wolf," he snapped at me.

"I was a National Guardsman in reserve, working on my family's farm before I got called up. My family got refugee status and came to the states when I was young, I joined the Guard to repay the United States for all they did for my family."

"How noble," said the stranger dryly, "that at least explains why a fucking lion is wandering around the Appalachian Mountains, I thought I was hallucinating at first."

_Maybe you are you crazy fuck,_I thought to myself, sure this guy was completely off his rocker.

"A farmer though, that buys you some points, that sort of knowledge is few and far between these days," the stranger remarked, "maybe I won't shoot you just yet. Where did you meet the Lone Wolf here? Gay wilderness retreat?"

"We were together before all this you asshole," I snapped, "some of us stick together instead of living in the woods like a hermit murdering people."

"First off," he said angrily, rising off the bed and striding quickly over to me, jamming the pistol right into my muzzle so that I could taste the metal, "I am _not_an asshole, and you will apologize for that or your shitty life ends right now. Secondly, I am not a murderer, I am careful, and being careful keeps you alive. If you two were more careful maybe you wouldn't be here right now, maybe you'd be having your fuckfest in the woods before the zeds finished you off."

"Now apologize."

"Shrmy," I mumbled, the barrel of the pistol still in my mouth,

"What?" he answered back.

I nodded my head towards the pistol, and he took the barrel out of my muzzle.

"I said sorry, sorry for calling you an asshole."

"That's better," he said a little more calmly, "so we have the lion here who's a farmer _and_a soldier, you better have been a fucking surgeon or something wolf, because that scores your friend a lot more points, and I already don't like your attitude."

"I was a marketing director," I said glumly, "I supervised a regional office a few miles from where _Mr. Lion_lived," I remarked sarcastically, already not believing this guy was gonna let me live anyways, getting tired of his games. "We were on vacation up in the mountains when shit hit the fan, and we've just been wandering around ever since."

"Marketing!?" the stranger exclaimed, "So you convinced people to buy shit they don't need with money they don't have, what a saint!"

He began to pace back and forth across the tiny room, scratching his chin with his paw.

"You know I think I've heard enough already, I'm not even gonna bother with the rest of the test." He walked over to the window and peered through a crack in the curtains, then began undoing the bars and locks on the door.

With that he walked over to the mantle and undid the chains, leaving the cuffs on us both.

"Back outside, both of you," he said sharply. "Face away from the house and kneel on the ground."

King and I glanced quickly at each other with the same look of terror. This is it. This was our fuck up, this is how we go out. Not with a bite, not starving to death or getting a sickness we coudln't find meds to cure, but at the hand of some psycho.

"I'm gonna give you a second to pray to whatever higher power you believe in, if you do believe in that sort of thing, then take a second to check out the stars because you might not see them after tonight."

Trembling with fear King and I both kneeled; King started praying in a language I only ever heard him use with his close family, and I looked up at the stars. I could never get over how many of them were visible now that all the lights in the world were off, more stars than I ever thought could ever exist. It was so beautiful, a glittering blackness that speckled the heavens, it gave me a moment of peace before I snapped back to reality.

I took a second to look over at King, and he was already looking at me._I love you_he mouthed to me. It was too much. "I love you too King! I'm sorry but we'll see each other soon!" I sputtered, tears streaming down my face.

"Isn't that sweet," the stranger said sarcastically, "the fags final farewell."

Placing the pistol at the back of my head he asked, "You ready?"

"Just do it you piece of shit," I said coldly.

"If you say so."

I winced, waited to hear the hammer click, the sound of the shot, but instead the stranger grabbed my hands and undid the cuffs, letting them drop to the floor. He walked over to King a moment later and did the same thing.

He didn't holster his pistol, but he did lower it to his side and walk around to face us.

"What are your names?"

Still in shock, I just stared at the dark figure in front of me.

"King," came the weak reply next to me, "my name is King."

"And you wolf?" he asked.

"Cash," I said emptly, "my name is Cash."

"Good, good," the stranger said, "King, Cash, I suggest we go back inside to the safety of the cabin, because we have a lot to discuss before bed, and the zeds love to sneak up on you out in the dark."

Neither King or I could move, was this guy really serious? He brings us outside to execute us, then just flips the script and invites us in to stay the night?

"Like I said getting inside quickly would be a smart idea, because I have a lot to go over tonight, and I am tired as shit from following you both all day. I'm not going to put my weapon away until we go over some things, but I'm not going to kill you so please, inside if you will."

Robotically King and I stood up, and trudged back into the light of the cabin, shaking with adrenaline and fear. The stranger quickly and carefully re-locked and barred the door, and extinguished most of the remaining lights. He pulled to chairs from behind a stack of crates and gestured for us to sit down, so we did. He sat back down of the bed, glaring at us again, but with the pistol in his lap this time.

"So," he sighed, "where to begin?"