Fictional Life

REDEMPTION

— by Jeff Karamales

Chapter 21
Wearing a White Hat

“Everything you requested is waiting for you,” Trooper Gibson told the three Furs over the headsets that were perched precariously on their heads. The earphones hadn’t been designed with anthro-beings in mind, and they had to hold the sets in place over their triangular ears.

“How far out are we?” the black and smoky grey fox asked as he looked at the ground rushing by beneath them.

Gibson looked at the pilot the woman turning to face him and held up her hand with fingers splayed then closed two. “About eight minutes.”

It was a tight fit for all four of the Furs in the passenger section of the small helicopter and Sofiya was all but sitting on her mate’s lap. She leaned closer to the door, looking at the heavy woods below. It didn’t look as if the ground was too rough, but that was deceptive. Beneath the verdant foliage could be small ravines, streams and a number of obstacles that might hinder the search for the missing child. Those same obstacles could provide other challenges as well in the form of hiding places and potential hazards for the kid and foxes alike.

A gap in the canopy showed the worn track of the fire road that allowed access to the forests in this region. The tire tracks looked fairly fresh as the pilot shed some of her altitude before coming in over a clearing that was filled with a variety of different vehicles. Most of the cars and SUV’s that they saw were different law enforcement units including local Sheriff’s, State Police and Park Service vehicles. There were also two news vans and one moderately sized RV and an ambulance.

The pilot dropped the helicopter with deft touches of the stick and cyclic, lowering the small aircraft gently onto the damp grass that whipped outwards from the wash of the rotor, the downdraft kicking up moisture and stems that swirled in a maelstrom around the Plexiglas windows. Needing no real prompting, the Furs opened the doors and piled out, all three snagging their small packs as they exited. Gibson joined them a moment later and motioned them to follow, leading the way to a large box truck with Park Service colors and logos on the doors and side panels.

Sofiya noticed that many of the people that were milling around hadn’t been expecting them and expressions ranged from jaw-dropping surprise to a few of revulsion and one or two that eyed the Furs with open hostility. None of the Vulps paid any attention to the other humans that were gathered around and headed straight to the box truck that was serving as the communication point for the rescue effort.

As Sofiya neared the open back, searchers and reporters that were sipping at steaming paper cups of coffee or tea parted, though the vixen’s access to the vehicle was blocked by a State Trooper in a slightly rumpled shirt and tie with brass oak leaves on his shoulder tabs and his ‘Smokey-the-Bear’ hat in hand who glowered at the female.

“Before you come in here thinking that you can jus-”

The man was cutoff not by either of the vixens, or even Richard, but by Toshiro who bared his teeth at the human, a growl escaping from his throat as the hackles on the back of his neck rose. The man’s first reaction was to let his hand twitch towards the pistol in the holster at his belt until Sofiya stepped between the Asian red fox and the policeman.

“Calm down, Toshiro,” Sofiya said with a hand on the other Fur’s arm, her tone and touch having the effect of instantly getting the male to relax. She turned her yellow-green eyes on the human. “We are not here to do anything other than find a child that is lost. Nothing more and nothing less.”

“Major, they can find the kid faster than-”

Gibson was silenced by the glare directed at him. “So you go and bring back these…these freaks? We don’t need these things to find the Ropper boy!”

“Fortunately you aren’t in charge here,” a woman in a Park Service uniform said. “This is a Federal park, not State. The only reason we called your department was out of professional courtesy.” The woman pushed past the State Trooper and extended her hand to Sofiya. “Sorry about Major Lambert. Personally, I’ll take all the real help I can get.” She smiled warmly at the Fur before extending her hand to the other three Vulps in turn. “I’m Supervisor Wilson, but you can call me Carol. Is there anything you need? Anything I can get you?”

“We are ready to begin soonest,” the vixen told the woman, liking her immediately and her level of professionalism. “I am Sofiya and these are Richard, Riva and Toshiro.”

“It’s a pleasure” Carol said with another smile. “Terrence said that you wanted to access clothing or something else of the boy’s?” At Sofiya’s confused expression the woman smiled. “Sorry. Trooper Gibson. Let’s get you four to their campsite. I’ve had the rest of the search personal clear the area.” The woman gave the vixen an embarrassed look. “I wasn’t sure how you would start looking for Mickey, the boy that’s missing, but from what I’ve read about you Furs, I thought you might also use scent.”

Sofiya nodded with a small smile to put the woman at ease. “It is part of the transformation. All of our senses are enhanced to aid in life on another planet. Many times it is used to accurately determine if something that might be used for food is safe or not.”

The small mixed group drew near to the family’s campsite consisting of little more than a large tent that could be divided into rooms, a pop-up shelter with portable table and chairs and an SUV with small trailer. A man and woman sat at the table, both with vacant looks on their drawn and tired faces while two more children, one about thirteen, the other around ten, a girl and boy respectively, fidgeted off to the side. The man stood with the approach of Carol and Terrence accompanied by the four Furs.

“Are you here to help find my son?” the man asked in a desperate voice, his brown eyes frantic. He was bandaged in several places and there was the beginning of a spectacular bruise on the side of his forehead.

Sofiya nodded. “His name is Mickey?”

“Michael,” the man said with a nod. “But we’ve always called him Mickey. Are you going to find him?” The man had taken one of Sofiya’s paw-like hands in his, completely unmindful of what she was, only hopeful that someone else might be able to help find his child.

The red fox put a reassuring hand on the man’s shoulder. “We will find him, Sir. Of that you may be confident.”

Trooper Gibson stepped in and guided the distraught father back to his chair, the man already having had a rough night.

While Gibson deflected the frantic man, Carol took the Furs to the tent and offered a selection of clothing and the boy’s sleeping bag. Without any self-consciousness, Sofiya and Richard sniffed the different fabrics, the vulpine aspect of their brains cataloging the child’s personal scent into a sort of file that was already being used to identify other things through their olfactory capabilities. Toshiro and Riva also followed suit and nodded when they were ready.

“We will work out from the tent,” Sofiya instructed the others. “When one of us finds the trail, mark it with this.” She pulled out a bundle of bright red strips from her pack and handed several strands to each of the other Vulps. “I am thinking that we will find the direction he took a little way out from this place.”

One of the things that the vixen and Richard had both been studying had been search and rescue processes from some of the other colonies that had had Furs that either got lost or separated from the rest of their groups for one reason or another. Methods had been learned and developed using the enhanced abilities of Furs, and this was the plan that all four had agreed upon during the helicopter trip.

Each of the foxes took a direction, their back and forth quarter-circle pattern taking them to the edge of the individual to the right and left. As was expected, all four found traces of the child’s scent and marked these, removing other tags for older scents to narrow their focus. It was Riva that found her trail went further and tied two fabric tags to a sapling before whistling for the others.

“Did you take your son in that direction for any reason yesterday?” Richard asked as he pointed at the place Riva had marked.

The man shook his head. “No. We kept Mickey just around this part…close to the tent.” His eyes widened to the point where they started to bulge. “Have you found him already?” he asked excitedly.

“Not yet, sir,” the silver fox replied. “But we have found the direction he initially took.”

A quick conference with Carol and Terrence got all of them on the same radio frequency and the medical teams standing by as the four Furs turned for the deep woods. Before the quartet was out of sight of the large tent and emotional parents, distant thunder rumbled through the woods to add to the urgency of the situation.

“Richard, you are better at tracking. You will lead,” Sofiya told her mate then turned to the others. “Toshiro will go next followed by Riva. I will be last in line. Now, let us go quickly. I am thinking we have very little time left.”

***
Evolution had given foxes a better sense of smell than most canid types, though the tradeoff was diminished eyesight. The genetic engineers attached to the Anthro Human Colonization Program had actively rectified this deficiency with eyesight that was normally a bit better than 20/20 vision once the transformation from human to Fur was complete, along with the ability to maintain the ability to see colors. Of course hearing was still far better than what a human had, and enable the Furs to hear frequencies that Homo Sapiens were deaf to.

Richard Tavington used all of these senses as he followed the scent trail of the wayward four-year-old boy they were hunting for. What wasn’t helping him or the others at the moment was time. Over the thick emerald canopy of the Pacific Northwest woods clouds darkened and roiled, filled with moisture that would soon come down upon the area in a torrential storm.

They had already come a little more than four miles through undergrowth that even they found daunting as briars, vines and undergrowth that snagged clothing and fur coats alike while leaf debris and moss hid rocks and divots that caught feet, toes and fingers as the Vulps made their way through the dense foliage on all fours. Considering their difficulty, the silver fox surmised that human searchers might have gone around terrain like this with the logical but mistaken belief that the tyke wouldn’t have been able to make it through either.

What the searchers wouldn’t have factored in was the sheer stubborn factor of a little boy that wanted to explore and not see such terrain as an obstacle at all, but a fun challenge. Had he not had a scent to follow, the silver fox might have surmised the same.

Richard had to smile at that thought as he followed the little boy’s trail. He could recall a time in his own childhood where he would have also found it a fun obstacle course.

The smoky colored fox halted, his ears cocking forward as he strained his auditory senses, a feeling of dread filling his belly. “Sounds like a waterfall ahead,” he told the others quietly. “We need to hurry!”

“Go as fast as you are able without losing the scent,” Sofiya told him just as quietly, her own ears picking up the sound of rushing water and urgency coloring her words. “We can keep up. That is another reason I wanted us to all wear very bright clothing. We will still be able to see you and each other.”

Richard nodded, taking strength even now from the little vixen as she drew from him, and dropped his head, his steps faster than before. So intent was he on the trail of the lad’s passing, his ears filled with the sound of the ever-nearing waterfall that the male Vulps encountered the ledge that suddenly opened in the edge of the wood and looked down a rock face to a turbulent watercourse thirty feet down.

“STOP!” Richard cried, leaning back on his haunches. There’d been no warning that the forest ended so suddenly, or that the river had cut a track right up to the trees. There’d been no increase in light with the heavily overcast sky obscuring the sun, and if not for slightly better reflexes, the silver fox Fur might have gone right over the side himself.

“Which way does the scent go?” Sofiya asked, a hint of frantic desperation in her voice.

“Straight over the rocks,” her mate said, the icy feeling in his gut increasing.

The red fox lowered herself to her belly and inched forward as far as she felt she could safely go and peered down for a long moment before pulling back. “Get the ropes and harness!” Sofiya ordered as she pulled her pack off her shoulders. “It looks as if there is a shelf of rock twenty feet beneath!”

It only took a few minutes for the others to rig three ropes for the Fur, Sofiya being the lightest of the group, and the ends were secured to a tree further back as she got the harness in place around her waist and thighs. A quick kiss from Richard for luck was all that was needed before she leaned backwards over the edge and kicked off with her powerful legs. With the strength that had been bestowed upon her with her transformation, the vixen found lowering herself to be fairly easy, and from the training that she’d had the Abeona colony group going through, she knew that she had powerful enough arms to also climb back up if need be.

The rock wall already sloped in a little bit from the overhanging ledge above, but at twelve feet down it cut in drastically. There were roots dangling out of cracks that in a worst case scenario she would more than likely be able to use to get back up with. Another nine feet down the rock formed a thick shelf that had the appearance of flooding occasionally when the watercourse that roared in her ears swelled with rainwater. Tucked into the back as far as he could go was a little boy with sandy blond hair. He was huddled in a flannel blanket that could use a good washing after the leaves and twigs were removed, similar to the pajamas with little racecars that he wore.

As Sofiya made the ledge, she saw that the little boy wasn’t really the worse for wear. He had a few scratches and scrapes that cleaning and antiseptic would do well for, but that was all she could detect. Mickey was also sound asleep, his rosy colored cheek pillowed on his own folded hands.

“Richard! He is here!” the vixen said into her radio, the sick tension of expecting to find either a broken little body, or worse, nothing at all, vanishing. “Let me have a few minutes to wake and secure him and I will let you know when we are to be coming back up!”

“We’ll be waiting, Honey,” her mate’s voice said back, relief evident in his tone as well.

Making sure there was enough slack in the rope and pulling the excess along with her, Sofiya made her way to the child. She reached out a gentle paw-like hand and brushed dirty hair back from the boy’s head. “Mickey? It is time to be waking up, little one,” she said softly. “It is time to go home.”

The child opened his eyes at the touch and sound of his name. When he was finished yawning and saw what was talking to him, a look of wonder took over his face along with a delighted grin. “Frannie!” he all but screamed in joy before launching himself at the Fur

The vixen was almost knocked off balance and if not for the hand paw that she threw behind her, she and the boy would have tumbled to the rock surface of the ledge. As it was, she couldn’t help but laugh at the last reaction she’d anticipated. “I do not know ‘Frannie’,” she replied, one arm curling around the child protectively, her furred cheek resting against the boy’s. “I am Sofiya.”

“But you’re Frannie Fox! I watch your show on TV!”

The Fur chuckled again. If being this ‘Frannie’ character helped her get the child back up the cliff and to his parents, then Frannie she would be. “You are right. I have come to get you back to your mother and father. They are missing you very much!”

“How come you sound different?” Mickey asked.

The Fur chuckled again and pointed at her nose. “Cold.”

“Oh!” the boy said before grabbing her and kissing her nose with an exaggerated sound. “I make it all better!”

It only took a few moments to fashion a way for the child to hold onto her back, further secured by a harness that Sofiya tied around her body. She radioed up to her mate before turning so she could see the little boy. “Are you prepared?” He nodded enthusiastically and held on with his hands firmly grasping the ropes she’d looped around her shoulders. When she swung out over the edge of the shelf and began hauling herself and the boy up, her ascent was assisted by Richard and the others pulling on the ropes to speed up the process.

Mickey was astonished to see the other Furs and called each of them a different name. Richard was now some character named Wendel and Riva became Fiona. Toshiro had already headed back to the campsite to inform the others that they’d found the boy as the weather was preventing them from getting through on the radios.

Once the ropes had been retrieved and stowed, Riva had examined the boy and given him his medication, a different kind of harness had been tied so that the child could ride on Sofiya’s back while they ran back to the camp. He laughed and chortled as the three Furs sped through the woods and the people that were waiting for them.

***
Paramedics were waiting with the parents and took the boy to be readied for a trip to the hospital after receiving Riva’s diagnosis. The Furs sat at the table under the pop-up shelter enjoying hot drinks with blankets over their shoulders once they were dry enough, the last half mile being through the heavy rainfall that they’d almost outrun, and all of them had gotten soaked.

“When Toshiro came back because the radios weren’t getting through and said that you all had found Mickey at the river, I thought…well, I thought the worse,” Carol Wilson admitted. “That river is some kind of dangerous. We have at least half a dozen kayakers that try to shoot it during the summer that pay the final price. A lot of us wish we could just rope it off, but the trout fishers that come here every year, not to mention the salmon run in the summer, prevents that.”

Trooper Terrence Gibson nodded in agreement. “We get almost a dozen calls a year because of that section. Class 5 rapids aren’t what you want to try and go down.” He tipped his cup to the Furs. “I’m just glad you guys were able to find the kid so quickly. Things don’t really turn out so well after the first twenty-four hours. You all have my thanks.”

“And mine,” Carol agreed fervently.

Sofiya set her cup down and looked at the two humans. “What I do not understand is who this ‘Frannie Fox’ is and why Mickey called me this name?”

Before anyone could answer, Toshiro had his PBJ open and passed it to the red fox vixen with a wide grin. “According to the Net site, this is a children’s animated series, and one of the most popular shows here and in Japan. And not just with children, but also adults and has started a new trend of toys, clothing and even bento boxes with the characters depicted in rice cakes.”

On the screen was a cartoon character and when she tapped the arrow icon on the screen, it began playing. The animated short was definitely geared towards a younger audience and had the main character, a blond haired anthropomorphic vixen getting into a series of adventures with different friends named Wendel and Fiona and a whole host of others along with human friends. It was easy to tell that she and the other Furs were the influence for the characters. There was a moral to each segment, normally of accepting others even though they might be different, and every single episode had a happy ending that would appeal to a child. When the credits rolled, Sofiya paused the screen and pointed to two prominent names in the credits.

“Produced by Skarbek Entertainment Group and directed by Robert Knowels,” Richard said with a grin. “Yeah. That would explain it!” the silver fox exclaimed with a bark of laughter.

“You know these guys? My nieces and nephews love this show,” Terrence told the Furs.

The foxes told the two humans of the events that brought Rob Knowels to the Adirondack Institute, and the link to Andy Skarbek. The humans found the story interesting and were smiling by the time the Furs concluded. Then Terrence brought up something else.

“So what was the deal with the bear skin back at your guys’ training site?”

— NEXT CHAPTER —