FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

"Someone go with him."

Chef wanted to go looking for mangos.

"I will," said Willard. "C'mon, Chef." The Labrador, and fox, leapt from the boat, and onto moist, humid ground, that matched the stifling air. Giant trees with triumphant green leaves surrounded the riverside, and the two crawled their way into the unknown bush.

Willard walked with a slow and casual air, and yet kept his guard up, of course. Charlie could be anywhere. Anywhere. A screaming buzzing flew past him. He did not jump, or flinch, as the miniature helicopter-sized orange and green mosquito, grazed his golden face fur.

Behind him, Chef, a once feral fox who was given some kind of experimental chip to live on twos, allowed his weird luminescent yellow eyeballs to circle around, in hopes of spotting some delicious mangos. His fat tongue hung out between his thin, red lips, and great, glassy beads of sweat dripped from his brow, onto his Coke-bottle glasses.

They continued to walk, and the trees, and leaves, gathered closer, as if to leap upon, and gestate them. Very little space was there to toe a walk. The thick Army boots that both men wore, and the inches between leather, and fur, and blood, and the troubling green, and haunting nature surrounding them, did not seem enough. Inside the greenhouse-type environment, the temperature in Fahrenheit could have been 110, or so. Maybe more.

Above, gumdrop-thick gray clouds began to release torrents of sheeting rain. While this cut into the sticky humidity some, this created extra mud gashes in the lack of path to wherever the mangos were. The sick and sweet smell of rotting nature grew with the increasing moisture. Willard, and Chef, crept on.

"Why do they call you that?" interrogated Willard.

The half-feral, most-"anthro", threw back. "Call me what, sir?"

"Chef?" offered Willard.

"Oh!" followed by a Southern style laugh, for Chef was from New Orleans, and had spent quite a few hours lazing on Bourbon Street corners, sucking bourbon from vacant plastic cups, and also coating some of the most delectable barbeque, and all kinds of Bayou cuisine, from within the occult walls of the Big Easy. "Oh, well, that's easy, sir. I'm a chef. Yeah, a real chef. Man, there's got to be some mangos around here somewhere." Chef continued to gaze up, down, upside down, left, and right, in every direction.

A sense of a dry, scraping sound was heard.

"Hey, what's that?" whispered Chef. He looked around, his yellow eyes looking like super poached eggs behind his thick, weird lenses. "Charlie?"

He turned left, and saw a huge blue/green snake about thirty feet from him, long, twiny muscles twitching, and contracting. The snake made an open "hahh"-ing sound, and leapt at Chef, who screamed, and pissed himself.

"Sir!" By the time Chef had had a chance to bring his gun up; Willard had already targeted the enemy, and blown its head off with a grimy, gutty explosion. The whitish-brown tree bark, and the once perfect blue/green body of the snake, was now a red beefy masterpiece of decaying gore.

"Wow, sir," commented Chef. "That was close." Both men lowered their weapons.

"Where are the mangos, Chef? We need to get back to the boat."

"Where we going, anyways?"

The lab's ears perked upwards, and his long, otter tail rose high, looking over his left shoulder, in Chef's direction. "It's classified, Chef. I've told you this. So, what are we going to do with these mangos, once we find them?"

Chef grinned, and bobbed his head a bit, glancing around, smirking. "Make a mango pudding, sir. What else?"

The dense army of giant, translucent green trees grew even more so, so that there was little light flowing in from a horizontal playing field, although from above, the grayness that came from the clouds shed its own sad shine. The sheets came down so that now it was like a wall of rain, and everything became like walking through Chef's Coke glass lenses, thick, and surreal.

"Wow, sir, this is crazy."

The two crept on, and now, a wall of tight, locked-up bushes, lay in front of Willard, and Chef. A floating diverse army of oversized flying insects, mixed with hostile cries, filled most of the area surrounding the bushes. Behind them were more large, dark trees, and behind Willard, and Chef, and to their left, and right, and every direction, the putrid unknown marsh of which they had stepped into, of which God knew what had been there before, human, anthro, or not, enemy plant life seemed to multiply before them.

"C'mon, Chef, we're heading back now. I don't like this. Let's go." Willard took Chef's right upper forearm, the arm with the gun, and began to pull him towards the direction of where they had come from, towards the boat. The boat was familiar, but not safer than here. However, it was familiar, and that was something.

"C'mon, Chef."

Willard, and Chef, began to stride back the way they had come, just minutes from the boat, although it seemed miles, and miles, within the dense brush of centuries-old vegetation, which seemed to wish disease on its visitors. Chef, although somewhat upset at not being able to find any mangos, relaxed some, and followed the golden Lab, whose ears were down, and the gun in his left paw, a medium-sized dog paw, somewhat bigger than most others' paws of his species, keeping it at a downward tilted 30 degrees.

They turned right, up over a pointy table sized branch, and Chef almost fell over, flat on his face. "Shit."

"C'mon . . . shh, stop."

Chef was an extreme, and nervous, vulpine. All of the red hairs on his body stuck out, and his eyes doubled in size. His tail grew bushy, and he leaked again. "What?"

Willard froze like a cloud, and, except for a blink of his eyelids, and a turn of his thin blue eyes, did not animate. His ears were up, but back, and his gun was now raised at an 80 degree angle, to his center. The rain stopped. It was like a heavy faucet being silenced after flushing out heavy water for long hours.

His lips jittered, and Chef whispered. "Is it Charlie? What?"

The fact that there was no longer sound, except for the atonal hum of the seeming faraway boat, gave way to small scratches that felt to come from all around.

"What is that?"

The feral tiger jolted from the tiny gap of bushes to Willard's immediate left, and plowed him over. "Jesus Fucking Christ!" yelled Chef, who began to pump rounds at the tiger's head. "Go!"

Somehow, Willard managed to keep his snout, and muzzle, attached to the rest of his body, and the two ran toward the bank. While Willard was alarmed, he was in Zen, and composed, and reached the boat in a matter of less than a half a minute. Chef, having squatted fudge on his green khaki pants, and vegetation beneath, ran backwards, and continued to spray erratic fire, screaming with lunatic glee when a few rounds sheared giant jelly doughnut holes of finality into the tiger's cranium.

As soon as Chef dove on the boat, his fur still strung tight, he threw the gun down, and began to wail, and rant. "It's a fucking tiger! Holy fucking shit, I didn't sign up for this shit, man, no, I fucking didn't, no, I didn't, goddamnit!"

Chief, a large black polar bear, turned to his right from the wheel. "TIGER!"

Willard sat curled near the bow of the boat, breathing hard, but still somewhat composed. Goddamn, what a trip. That motherfucker had almost taken his head off.

"I just wanted to cook, man! That's all! Oh, God!" The fox's body was racked with shaking, and Lance, and Mr. Clean both tried to comfort him. "It's alright, Chef. You're alright. There's no tiger, now." The two, a gray timber wolf, and giant field mouse, held onto their comrade, attempting to comfort him. "There's no tiger anymore. We're here."

Above, the wall of rain again commenced, from a sky laced with gray and black canvasses of clouds. The river reflected more darkness than light, and the boat moved on, slow, and yet, like a magnet to steel, the boat seemed to quicken to some horrible end. For the meantime, Chef went without his mangos.