Spirits Unbroken: Part II

…I shiver in the shadow of the truck, close my eyes and wait for it to come.  My only regret is that I don’t get to see my wife’s face or hear my son’s voice call for me one last time.  But then something very close by sounds like my son and, come to think of it—the truck should’ve crushed me by now.  So slowly I open one eye.

Then the other.

And I realize the semi-trailer has stopped in mid-air.

It’s just hangs there.

Without a sound.

I shake my head to clear it but my senses have come back to me now—and still I can hear my son against the frantic whinnies from the horses still inside the transport compartment.

And then the trailer slowly moves back and descends, revealing the cable suspending it from the underside of the Sky Fox.  The craft sets the trailer down gently, the top hatch opens and my wife emerges with our smiling son in her arms.  “What took you so long?”  I ask her with a relieved grin.  “Couldn’t find the right thing to wear?”

“Careful.”  She warns, bending down to strap our son back into his seat.  “Or I won’t risk dinner to save your butt next time.”

I wipe the sweat from my brow, or more accurately, rub it into the fabric of my cowl, “who says there’s gonna be a next time?”  I mumble to myself.  Then I rise from the dirt, walk over to the trailer and swipe at the lock securing the door with my claws.  The lock THUDS to the dirt and I peer inside.  “You good?”  I hear my wife ask as I inspect the horses who, to my surprise, appear to all be alright, despite the few cuts I noticed earlier.  A heavy sigh escapes me as I can’t help but think about how much worse this all could’ve turned out. 

And then I see him—the one who I spoke to earlier—Royale With Speed.  He’s bigger than I thought and more beautiful than I could have imagined.  The sun glistens off his perfect coat and his black eyes gaze into mine, filling me with a calmness I never feel when wearing this damn costume.  I move forward, past the others who all sense that I’m the end to their suffering.  I reach out and place my hand on Royale’s muscular neck.  Somehow he manages not to cringe at the touch of a human, after all he’s been through I couldn’t have blamed him if he had.  He moves his head up and down, moving the air around to get as much of my scent in as he can.  He still can’t decide if he can trust me.  His huge nostrils sink in and out with each strong breath.  His tail whips from side to side, swatting at flies.  Then he neighs softly and pushes his long face against my chest—it’s a gesture easily read without my invention.  Most of the time, if you care enough to just try, it’s not really difficult to understand animals—but most humans don’t see it that way.  No matter what our race, creed or religion, most of us are too hung up on appearances—if something doesn’t look like us, we can’t imagine them being like us—sharing thoughts or emotions.  It’s a god complex that has allowed us to accomplish many things as a species: our rank on the food chain, for example.  But it’s also given us the belief that we’re the only ones that matter and that we aren’t responsible for what happens to the rest of the world in our wake because it’s all here for our use anyway—so damn the consequences.

A full minute has passed since the horse nuzzled me and I still can’t take him eyes off him, somewhere in the distance, my wife asks me again if I need any further assistance.  I smile and breathe for the first time in almost a minute and I finally respond with a nod of my head, “yeah, I think we’re good.” 

“Alright then, I’d better get going before our quiches burn.”

“Hold on.”  I shout, my voice echoing inside the metal compartment.  I tilt my head at a button on the far end of the unit, a well-placed Fox Star depresses it and the locks keeping the horses in their stalls release.  I tell them to follow my wife home.  They all accept and the Sky Fox leads them through the woods towards the green pastures they’ve worked all their lives to find.

All but one.  But somehow I’m not surprised that he’s decided to stay.

Royale With Speed’s head thrusts violently up and down and he snorts angrily.  A sudden smile spreads across my face as I stroke the animal’s back, understanding his unmistakable body language, “well old boy, what do ya say?  You up for one last run?”  The slow, determined echo of his hooves against the metal floor of what, only moments ago, had been a horse hearse, is his only response as the exquisite equine brushes past me and exits the trailer.  “Well then.”  I say to myself, wondering if talking to myself is going to become some odd habit.  “Giddyup.”

 

Hooves cut tracks in the dirt as we dash through the undergrowth.  Leaves and random foliage leave green streaks across Royale’s pure white coat as he tears through dense thickets of saplings without slowing.  The landscape flashes and bounces by like I’m on a tilt-a whirl.  I barely feel the breath of the beast carrying me, this is nothing to him.  Running was what he used to live for.  And in that moment it becomes clear to me that Royale With Speed’s day had not passed as his former owners had believed.  Despite his age, his strides are long and smooth, I barely feel the jarring ride, even as we trample over uneven ground littered with rocks and sticks.

His grandfather would’ve been proud.

I feel a jolt and realize Royale With Speed has sped up.  I look ahead and see the tractor, despite its strong lead, it has stopped in a clearing—the drivers probably wondering how they’re going to explain what happened to their boss.  So Royale and I decide to do them a favor and make it so they won’t be able to form complete sentences for a while. 

The horse lowers his head towards the ground.

I hang on tight as we near the tree line.

And we erupt through the ferns like a volcano of muscle and revenge.  The thug pulling out his hair outside the rig sees us and tries to get back inside but the driver already spotted us and the engine rumbles to life.  The truck starts pulling away down the logging trail and the guy outside clings to the door handle for dear life.  Royale barrels ahead, intent on not letting the two escape.  The driver shifts his gears but he’s not fast enough and Royale gets right up alongside the rig, rears up and then kicks the clinging goon into the side of the truck, breaking a few of his ribs and leaving a nice impression of him in the door.  I push off the horse’s muscular back and take his place on the door.  I look back and a cloud of dust conceals what Royale is doing to the fallen man.  Serves him right.  I think to myself before bashing out the window with my elbow.  The driver picks up his gun to cock it and I grab ahold of the roof of the cab and pull myself in just as he pumps the action.  “You know it’s really not safe to shoot and drive.”  I tell him as I grab the muzzle and push it back into his face, breaking his nose.  Then I toss the gun out the window as the driver tries to figure out what to do with the blood oozing from his face. 

The truck comes to an anticlimactic stop in a knoll of ferns just a little off the beaten path of the old logging trail—the fight having drained from the driver like—well—blood from his nose, I suppose.  I pat the thug on the shoulder then we leave the truck.  We make it back to the spot where we left his partner and Royale.  The other thug is laying bruised and broken and covered with blood and dirt. 

But he’s alive.

I tell Royale I thought he’d killed him, that I wouldn’t have blamed him if he had.  <Of course you wouldn’t have,> he knickers.  <You’re human.  We so called “animals” don’t feel the same need for revenge as humans do.>  All I can think about the whole way back to the house is how lucky we are that that’s true.  Because if animals did feel the need for revenge—and if they ever tried to exact that revenge—mankind has much to answer for and we would surely loose that fight.

We supposedly have intelligence but animals have strength.

And as a scientist who survived public school—I can tell you which one usually wins on the playground.

 

In my driveway back at the house, Royale rejoins his herd who have already taken to my property.  All twenty of them pace around in the driveway, it’s a wonderful sight that I’ll never forget.  Their coats shine and their manes bounce, their spirits are lifted and I can’t believe how good they already look after only forty-five minutes of being out in the open air with a little bit of fresh grass in their bellies.  My wife steps outside the house, the aromas of the dinner she’s made me follow her and I can’t wait to sit down to a nice, warm meal.  The horses all look at her and she stares back, smiling. 

And at that moment I remember—she’s always been fond of horses.

“So what are we going to do with all of them?” 

And then the horses are looking at me, their long mane hair blowing in the warm breeze.  “They can stay here with us—if they want to.”  I say, not thinking about anything other than that meal.  My wife puts her hands on her hips and gives me a stern look.  Royale trots up along beside me and wuffles something softly into my ear, I nod in understanding then rephrase my last remark.  “…I mean of course—if it’s alright with you, my dear.”  Then my wife smiles satisfied, and with one sharp nod of her head, goes back inside to set the table.  The horses disperse, heading out into the trees in search for more grass.  Royale heads off with them, probably to find a nice, soft spot to lay down and rest.

He’s had a long day…they all…we all have.  And it frightens me to think about how close these beautiful creatures came to never seeing another sun rise.  But that thought is tossed away like a fly buzzing too close to the tail section of a horse.

Their story couldn’t have ended any better…

Their freedom returned.

Their bellies full

And their spirits unbroken.

Spirits Unbroken: Part I

The wind whips at my mane as I cling to the tree 300 feet above the forest floor—making the final adjustments to the first Hive-Cam; a surveillance camera subtly disguised as a bee hive.  Eventually the forests of Vilas will be covered in them—transferring footage from all around the area to my lab so I can keep an eye on my territory. 

But for now it’s just this one.  I straighten up and lean back just a little to get a wider view of my creation and I have to admit—it looks pretty authentic.  Like a real honest-to-God hive.  Heck, Winnie the Pooh wouldn’t be able to tell the difference and the compact solar panels disguised as leaves above the actual camera unit will keep it powered and hidden.

Sometimes I even amaze myself with my ingenuity.

Then the sound of a very loud, very close horn blaring through the otherwise peaceful woods muffles the tooting of my own.  BUUUUR, BUUUUR!  I glance over my shoulder and through the dense foliage catch a glimpse of a camouflaged double-decker semi tearing over an old logging trail.  “And I was hoping to just hang out all afternoon…”  I say to no one in particular as I let myself fall backwards off the tree and plummet towards the forest floor.  Young trees rise up from the ground, threatening to impale me and I shift my weight to avoid them—but I still wind up with oak leaves in my mane.  The ground rushes up and four feet before impact I spread my arms and let the wind catch the flaps of my suit and I shoot through the undergrowth in a fast, straight trajectory towards the semi.

And then my cowl starts beeping which means someone’s trying to get a hold of me, and there’s only one person I know of who has this kind of bad timing.  But I have a few moments to spare before the real fun begins so I answer the call with a tap against the ear on my cowl.  “Oh hey honey, what’s up?”  I ask my wife as pump my arms to clear a moss-covered boulder.

I can hear pots and pans clanging in the background.  “Just getting dinner ready.  Do you want peas or corn?”

I grimace at the thought of those pasty little green balls, “I think you know the answer to that.”  I say.  “

“Alright, well that’s all I needed to know, dinner will be ready at five o’clock.”

Here comes the part where she tells me I’m sleeping on the couch, “…actually, do you think we could push it to about five thirty?”

There’s a long pause, then “…why?”

I lay it on thick, we haven’t been married long so these types of shenanigans haven’t grown stale just quite yet, “no reason—I just want to see you, that’s all…and I think I may need back up.”

“Dear…”  She says in that annoyed tone she gets when she asks me to take out the garbage for the third time.  “…I can’t just put dinner on warm and go flitting off into the woods.  What am I supposed to do with Brock?”

“Bring him with!”  I reply cheerfully, inching closer to the semi.  “Our son needs to get a feel for the Sky Fox, anyway.”

There’s a certain kind of silence you tend to pick up on when your wife disapproves.  And then I hear the beginnings of her reply, “Brock will join you in this suicidal crusade of your over my dead bod…” 

Then I swoop up right alongside the truck, “oops—gotta go, hun!  See you soon!”  I tap the button and disconnect her.  I hope I won’t need her but somehow a semi rampaging through hidden back roads doesn’t exactly scream “legal”.

I reach the passenger side window and tap on the glass as the truck rumbles over a rough patch in the old logging road that’s riddled with large rocks and pot holes.  The passenger’s face turns a ghostly shade of white and his eyes flare—not exactly the reaction of a law-abiding citizen.  “So whatcha haulin?”  I shout to them, loud enough so they can hear me over the roar of the engine.

The gruff voice is muffled by the glass and the wind between us but the reply is clear, “dead meat…”  It’s also punctuated with the sound of a shotgun cocking. 

Suddenly the passenger ducks as the driver takes aim with the scattergun and fires.

A hailstorm of pellets and shattered glass sprays against my suit and suddenly I’m loosing altitude as I fall back towards the trailer.  I grab a hold of the camouflaged netting that covers the trailer and slam against its side as the truck speeds up, the path becoming so narrow that I have to suck in and press myself as close as I can to the trailer or get clipped by a tree.  I feel a draft and look underneath my arms and see what the problem is—the pellets from the shotgun have shredded the air-catching flaps of my suit.  I won’t be flying anywhere for awhile.

Then an unexpected sound jolts me out of my head.  It’s familiar—like a seal blowing its nose on a bumpy road.  I flip over and find small rectangular slats line the trailer beneath the netting and I peer hard into one of them and gasp at my discovery.

Inside the double-decker compartment are horses. 

Frightened horses.

Exhausted horses.

Neglected horses.

Some of them are have white tape or ribbon around their ankles like racing horses, while others just look like they’ve been worked hard and are noticeably malnourished with their ribs and spine showing and suddenly I realize what this semi is—I’ve heard of it before.  I just had always hoped I’ve never find that it was happening in my territory—but I should’ve been watching for it.

The beautiful animals inside glisten with sweat, many of them have suffered injuries to their legs from being jostled around and their tongues all hang slack and dry outside their mouths—they’re obviously dehydrated.  And with a flip of the Jargon and a few simple neighs I’m brought into the tragedy of their lives from the beginning.

They were race horses once upon a time, the majority of them.  Royale With Speed, a pure white thoroughbred, is actually the grandson of Secretariat and had recently lost six races in a row—that’s when his owner decided to sell him to the meat plant in Quebec—so is the case with many of the others who are crammed, cramped and chained into the transport.  The others are old farm animals who instead of being rewarded with a lush, green pasture for their years of back-breaking service to Old McDonald, were sold to a foreign market where they’ll end up as a hamburger.

I make Royale With Speed a promise that that won’t happen—not if I can stop the smugglers driving the rig.  I turn back around and get slapped in the face with a birch branch.  I try sucking in again but it’s not enough and the bark of a looming jack pine shaves off a patch of my suit and rips open a chunk of flesh.  I creep along the web of netting like a spider until I reach the hitch in between the bobtail and trailer, the two sections surround me like a canyon.   The sound is intense like I’m inside a rock tumbler and the vibration nearly knocks me to my butt.  I’m just about to make my way around to the driver when the passenger smashes out the rear window of the cab with the butt of his scattergun and fires at me through the hole.  I disarm him with a well-placed fox star and his gun clatters through the connections, the truck barely lurches as the weapon flattens beneath the tires.  I dodged the blast but the coupling attaching the trailer to the tractor is obliterated.  And suddenly the sound of metal rubbing against metal fills my ears as the trailer separates from the cab.  Oh crap.  I curse to myself as I realize what’s about to happen—the dirty drivers will get away while I’ll be thrown underneath the out of control trailer while the horses inside crash against each other and the aluminum walls of their pens.

In short: I’ve just killed every horse inside that transport.

I hit the dirt hard and skid into a tree, my head hits the coarse bark and my vision spins as my warm afternoon is swallowed up by the cold shadow of the haywire trailer barreling down on my helpless body.
        
                                                   To Be Continued...

 

Double-Trouble: Part II

Note to Self: Install air filter in cowl.

It’s a wonder I haven’t been caught already, I’ve been sneezing ever since I entered Madison Colleges’ duct system from the roof and I can’t help but hope my son hasn’t inherited my allergies.

I follow the tick tracer’s signal as far as I can in the ceiling and then find a vent over a brightly lit hallway.  Shadows from the vent slots darken my face as two men walk past below me in lab coats.  I wait for them to round the corner down the hall and I then I extend a retractable claw from my gauntlet and use it as a screw driver to remove the vent.  I turn the dial on my belt buckle and the camouflage-cameras in my suit turn me invisible, then I slip down into the hallway.

This area of the campus smells like a hospital—stale, sterilized air sending shivers up my spine—I’ve never been a fan of hospitals.  A row of fluorescents at the other end of the hall flickers, its click-whining sounds much louder than it actually is in the silence of the corridor.  I check on the tracer signal—no where to go but down.  I scan the hall for an elevator and spot one in the shadows behind the flickering light.

I reach the lift but a card reader panel stands in my way—I’m not getting in unless I have a security pass.  Just then the door leading to another wing opens and a single lab technician poking at a data pad walks through.

A single lab technician with a key card dangling from his belt loop. 

I press myself up against the wall and wait for him to move in front of me then, as silently as possible, I reach out and grab the card with one hand and swipe at the retractable cord clipped to the belt loop with my claws—the sound like that of scissors cutting through paper.  The sound doesn’t go unnoticed and the lab tech turns around just as I stuff the card into my unseen utility belt.  The man looks right at me, or through me, as it were.  Then snorts, shakes his head and keeps walking without a second thought as I use his card to gain access to the elevator and ride down to the lower levels.

DING!  The sound of the lift reaching my sub-level floor reverberates through my mind like a call for help in a canyon.  The metal doors open and the scent of the neglected sublevel hits me—moisture, age and blood.  The hairs on the back of my neck stand up—the kidnapped animals, the college, the people in lab coats; it all can only mean one thing: animal testing…

And I hate animal testing.

As I step out into the old red brick sublevel I hear it—it’s faint but the ears of the costume amplify the sound.  Tortured cries, howls and mews echo from somewhere down the corridor, dimly lit by sparsely spaced bulbs hanging by chains from the ceiling.  It’s all so creepy because aside from the weirdo lighting and the old, dingy floors this place looks like any other facility.

And that’s the scariest part—the fact that something so inhumane and vile can look so normal.  But that’s how atrocities like this are accepted in society—they hide beneath the veil of normalcy, giving them the ability to operate out in the open, protected by law because no one admits or really sees just how depraved it is.

But today I’m here, and my eyes are WIDE open.  And for all those stuck here—for all those poor souls forced to endure the senseless and outdated tests that tell the so called “scientists” nothing that a properly designed computer simulation couldn’t tell them—their voices have been muzzled long enough.

The cruelty stops here.

Today.

I come to a large window that overlooks the laboratory.  I scan the stolen keycard with the reader next to the door but whoever I stole it from does not have clearance for this area and the door doesn’t budge.  I peer through the blue-tinted glass and my mouth drops. 

And I’d been disgusted by the conditions of the animals in the back of the van.  Inside the lab sat cage after cage of animals. 

No.

These aren’t just “animals”… 

These are people’s pets.

Family members.

Best friends.

And then I spot her—Kayla’s cat, “Double-Trouble.”  Or as the sticker on her stanchion calls her: G07.   She’s sitting on a cold steel table, strapped into some sort of vice.  Her head’s shaved—prepped for surgery.  Though what kind of operation I have no idea, and then I see others who’ve already suffered the surgery—it’s some kind of hearing implant. 

Heavy metal, restricting head gear keeps the apparatus in place, and judging by the animal’s seemingly unawareness of the cries of the others around them, and with the nearby bottles of acid with tiny ear droppers next to them I’m guessing they were chemically deafened before the coiled device was implanted and the large metal rod was drilled into their skulls.  I tap my cowl and zoom in on a dog’s oozing infection.  The wound around the metal rod is swollen and yellow puss crusts the canine’s furry face.  He’s too weak to stand—his legs gave out long ago.  What these tests can possibly tell the lab techs is beyond my understanding but my years studying science has taught me at least one thing: there’s always another way.

My fists ball reflexively and I can’t wait to get my hands on those responsible.  I hang my head, with the little vein popping out of the forehead, and try to regain control of myself when I see the horror behind the glass right in front of me.  A steel table lined with the heads of dogs and cats who have recently died as a result of the experiments performed on them—dissected to find out what went wrong.  Their brains are exposed and many of their eyes have remained open and their hollow stares penetrate my soul and etch themselves in my mind.  I stagger back in revulsion and trip over something.  I land but it’s not on hard linoleum. 

It’s soft.

It’s cold.

And it’s wet.

I look down at my hands and find the pile of carcasses I’ve landed on.  My eyes flare, not because I’m startled by the horrific sight but as a reflex of anger.  And I feel that capacity for forgiveness—that one that supposedly separates us from the animals, disappear.  And as much as I’ve tried to condition myself to treat everyone fairly and justly, to never cross that line—I know that deep down inside I’m going to enjoy making them pay.

I lift myself up off the floor when a door to the left of the laboratory entrance swings open, “Who’s out here?!”  The feminine voice demands. 

At first I consider just staying quiet but she’s from this department and I need a way into the lab.  So I turn off my cameras, revealing myself to her and I answer with a gravely uttered, “me.”  The woman gasps and I read her nametag.  “Do you know who I am, Lydia?”

She nods and fights through the shock and answers with a yes.

“Then you know why I’m here.”

She peers into the lab through the glass, “I could take a wild guess.”  She says, turning towards the lab with her hands clasped behind her back, her demeanor is calm and short, and I wonder if she’s somehow already called security.  “Of course you don’t need a doctorate to figure you out—and I have one.”  She says.

“And we’re all very impressed.”  I sneer back at her.

She bats her eyes nervously at me, “so am I under arrest or something?”

She knows better than that—I hold no authority but the laws of the jungle. 

She’s testing me.  I smirk under my mask, “of course not, Lydia, according to the law you haven’t done anything illegal.”

She smiles back, “then why are you here?”

“Why are they here?”  I ask with a nod towards the lab animals.

“Tests.”

“Yeah, I got that—what kind of ‘tests’?”

“Auditory.  We’re trying to cure deafness.”

“Uh huh.  And have you gotten anywhere with these experiments?”

“No.”  She says simply.  “…it’s a lost cause.  But the funding we get for the program makes us a lot of money.”

I nod my head, assuming as much already it comes as no surprise.  Human greed always outweighs our sense of right and wrong.  “Open the door.”

“No.”  She answers, shaking her head.  “No, I can’t do that.”

I can’t help but chuckle, slow and dark.  “I’m willing to bet that you can.”  I tell her moving within an inch of her face.  She quivers at my presence and it’s more than just the onion and garlic bagel I had in the Sky Fox—I’m getting to her.  “And I know that you most definitely will...”

As soon as we’re in you’re going to free the animals.”  I notice that she’s about to abject and I advise against it.  I flip on the Jargon, ready to tell the animals awaiting salvation inside how we’re going to escape.  She opens the door and it hits me—fills my ears and crashes against my brain like waves against breakwater in the middle of a storm.  I stagger and grab at the inside wall of the lab wall for support.  The sound threatens to drive me insane—I’ve never heard anything like it.  I couldn’t hear it in full through the glass but now it’s in full force.  All the test animals, all the pets, all the family members and friends, all the cramped, tested, operated on, abused, neglected, bleeding, infected and suffering critter in that lab is all crying out all at once, their translated pleas like an orphanage full of starving children.  I fall to the floor screaming and clutching my head.  I try to turn off the Jargon but something’s wrong.  Lydia wastes no time, sees me weakened and cracks a coat rack over my back.

“I hope you’ve enjoyed your tour of our campus.”  She says confidently, taking another swipe at me with what remains of the coat rack.  “But I still have to show you our incinerator…”

“And what if I don’t fit?”  I ask her through the overload of sound in my head.

She smiles devilishly and replies, “If there’s one thing this job has taught me, hero—it’s that there’s more than one way to skin a cat.”

“Lady.”  I say, feeling Rascal’s collar bunched up inside my utility belt.    “I couldn’t agree with you more…”  Then I whip the collar around her ankle and sweep her legs out from under her.  When she hits the floor I pounce, “here’s an experiment for you.  I say, disconnecting the Jargon from my ears.  “Let’s see what happens when the abuser listens to the jumble of agony from everyone she’s hurt…”  And with that I force the Jargon on over her ears.  The myriad of animal screams fill her head and she immediately starts wailing.  She claws at her head, trying desperately to get the device off of her and I can’t help but notice the irony.  I reach up on the counter and pull down two of the leather straps used to hold the hearing apparatuses snug against the animal’s ears and use one of them to secure the Jargon to Lydia’s head and bind her hands together with the other but by now she wouldn’t pose a threat to a fly.  The tormented howls of those she’s damned has converted her into a drooling mess who’s staring off into nothingness.  I snap my fingers in front of her eyes but there’s no response save for strained breathing like someone trying to breathe while shivering in thirty-below weather.

I pass by the Lhasa Apso’s cage and thank God I wasn’t too late to save him like I was Rascal.  I karate chop the lock on his pen and he jumps happily as he follows me as I approach Double-Trouble who’s still in her stanchion.  She’s in worse shape than I originally thought.  Patches of dry blood cling to her fur where the clamps have forced her down and the smell of urine and blood is thick.  Shed, orange fur that she’s ripped out of her own body in her struggles to escape litter the table.  Gently I pet her back and even after everything she’s been through, she purrs.

I unhook the apparatus holding her in place and stiffly she sits on the table and her sweet amber eyes stare into mine while her delicate, pink nose sniffs the air as she decides if I’m a good human or a bad human as the other animals in the room stop their mewing and barking all at once.  I don’t have the Jargon on me, but some things don’t need to be interpreted.  Then I nod and smile at the survivors of this horror show, “alright you guys, let’s get you home.”

Four hours later we roll back into Vilas County.  I’d sent the Sky Fox home on auto pilot and commandeered the colleges’ white collection van to get all the disenfranchised pets back home.  I used a spare Jargon I’d had stored in the Sky Fox to find out where the other animals lived and they were now all safe back home with their families—including the Lhasa who I’d tied back up in his yard with a polite note attached to the collar, asking his human to please watch him more closely.

I learned where to leave Rascal’s collar from the address engraved on his dog tags.

The van is empty now except for one—and I drive to Kayla’s to reunite her with her best friend. 

I stay and talk with her for awhile near the tree line in back of her run-down old log house while she rustles a stick in the long grass so her furry friend can pounce at it.  She tells me about her life and about how happy she is to have Double-Trouble back—no matter how bald.  I know what I’ve done is good—I just always wish I could do more.  Because I know there are so many other reach facilities out there using live animal subjects that so many don’t even know about—that I don’t even know about…yet.

Lydia’s lab was only one of thousands.  The killing didn’t stop with what I did to her lab this day.

My faith in law enforcement notwithstanding—I doubt the evidence I collected from the lab will be enough to get the place shut down for good.

I’ve only delayed the inevitable—Lydia will most likely start all over again.

Lydia will recover.

And then, all at once, I’m troubled by something else.  Something I had not considered and now, having realized my mistake, could kick myself for being so careless…“Bye Mister Feral-Man!”  Kayla chimes, interrupting my self-loathing with that ridiculous name the news papers gave me.

It makes me cringe and I correct her, “call me Badger, Kiddo.”  Then she smiles sweetly, cuddling her kitty in her pink nightgown and walks inside her empty house.  I smile after her and hope I never have to see her again—at least not under the same circumstances anyway. 

The light of day begins to fade and I feel truly alone—frozen.  Not by the dropping temperatures, but by guilt—all I had wanted to do was punish that deviant doctor, and now I fear that I may have created an even bigger monster… 

Lydia, an auditory scientist, now had her murderously greedy hands on a Jargon, a semi-busted Jargon, but a Jargon nonetheless.

And the question haunts me: what won’t a corrupt, opportunistic scientist do with my invention?

This weeks’ post is dedicated to the real-life Double-Trouble or, as her abusers only knew her as, G07, who never made it out of that college in Madison, Wisconsin and for all the other defenseless innocents who have senselessly died as test subject during cruel and archaic lab experiments that have provided no real benefit to science at the cold hands of humans who saw them as nothing more than a number.  To learn more about Double Trouble the Cat, just type the underlined into a search engine or follow the link below to view one of several videos of Double-Trouble—but be warned, the content is graphic:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTaS7Z3z4e0&feature=player_embedded

Double Trouble: Part I

           

Like so many stories, this one began with a girl.

A ten year old girl named Kayla, to be exact-one who’d witnessed her best friend being forced into a rusty, white van right before her eyes. 

In the blink of an eye her best friend was gone—she’d been the one Kayla talked to while her parents were out drinking.  She was the one who’d made her feel needed.  And on occasion, when Kayla’s parents had spent the money for the heat bill at the bar, and left their daughter shivering in her bed with only a thin, stained sheet to cover her, her best friend had been the one who’d kept her warm.

Kayla’s parents weren’t around much, so they didn’t care if her friend was gone.

And the cops had “bigger fish to fry”—because after everything her friend had done for her, and for all she meant to Kayla, her friend was still “just a cat,” after all.

So that’s when Kayla contacted me.  It took a few days and some doing, (I don’t exactly have a 1-800 number), but eventually I got the message.

I’d gotten wind of other, similar reports coming in from all around Vilas County, which meant only one thing: this wasn’t an isolated incident and was probably a precursor to something much bigger than a bully terrorizing a small child. 

I staked out families with pets in nearby neighborhoods until finally I hear the sound of a bad muffler coming around the bend of the culdesack.  So far I’d come up with nothing and Kayla had mentioned the van was loud.  The hairs on my neck stand straight up as I watch tensely from the roof of an overlooking house, holding my breath in anticipation of what I hope is my first lead. 

And then it comes, chugging around the curve.  I tap my cowl, switching to eagle lenses and I zoom up on the van.  Two hoods are in the front—the driver and the spotter, and I catch sight of at least one shadow moving around in the back—he was the grabber.  “Baiters.”  I swear under my breath.  Baiters are people hired by dog fighting rings to go out and find smaller animals that’ll be thrown into the ring to get the blood flowing at the start of a match.  I grit my teeth at the thought and I can’t wait to break up their disgusting business.  The van parks outside a nice two-story home with white siding and red trim.  A man, maybe in his early thirties, plays with a brown Wookie-looking Lhasa Apso on his snow-covered lawn and the van backfires.  Nervously the man ties up his dog on a cable runner and makes haste back inside his house.  His dog looks agitated and he scratches on the door after him but his owner’s T.V. is already on.

The dog knows something horrible is about to happen.  And regrettably, if I want to get to the slime running the show, I have to let it happen.  But I also have to know for sure…

I turn the dial on my belt and my suit goes invisible as thousands of tiny cameras built into the fabric record and playback my surroundings.  I stretch my arms out as far as I can and the glider-flaps under my arms catch the wind.  I push off the slush-covered roof and glide down on thermals.  When I land on the roof of the van I hear commotion inside.  The rear door bursts open and a thug with a green trench coat and a five o’ clock shadow emerges with his hand hovering over his holstered pistol, itchy to use it.  I keep still, not wanting to press my luck and he eventually looses interest and turns towards the house, casually strolling up the walk and into the yard. 

I don’t have much time so I grab a hold of the roof rack and swing down into the back of the van with a nearly soundless metallic THUD, but it’s still enough to alert those up front.  “HEY!”  The driver shouts with a pound of his fist against the metal backing behind his seat.  “Keep it down back there or I’ll skin you all right now!”  The light is dim so I switch to owl lenses.  My mouth gaps open at the stacks of small cages with cats and small dogs crammed into them so tightly that some of them can’t even move.  The air is thick with the scent of blood and urine and I have to fight the urge boiling inside me to free the animals and take out the degenerates right now, but that would solve nothing in the long run—it wouldn’t stop anything. 

Not to mention the fact that Kayla’s cat is not among the imprisoned.  If I jump the gun now I’ll never find her cat—her best friend.  And I have to—the reason the cops didn’t help Kayla in the first place—the “bigger fish” the policeman referred to—is me.

I flip on the Jargon and let the creatures trapped in the van know that they’ll be freed presently.  I move in to place a small tracking device I engineered to look like a tick onto an old beagle in a cage on the bottom row but he doesn’t move.  I gently lay my palm on his belly—it doesn’t rise with breath and he feels cold.  His dry tongue lies limp outside his mouth.  I hang my head as I finally let myself realize what his stillness means…

I’m too late. 

A shiny chain-link collar around his neck catches my attention and I remove it, I don’t know why.

I read the name on the tag and promise Rascal that his death won’t go unpunished.  Then I slip the tick tracer on another prisoner and dive out of the van just as frantic high-pitched barking fills the air as trench coat nabs the Lhasa.  I reach a row of hemlocks on the opposite side of the street just as the grabber slams the van door shut and they peel out of the neighborhood.  I call for the Sky Fox, my hover craft, and within a few moments I feel it swoop in overhead.  I enter the craft through a hatch on the ventral side of the ship and the light filtering in through the green glass of the cockpit baths me in a pale glow.  The radar screen to my right blinks with the location of the tick tracer and I set the autopilot to follow the signal.  I place my hands on the accelerators and realize for the first time that I’m still clutching Rascal’s collar.  I stare at it for a moment before looking back down at the white house with red trim as the Lhasa’s owner comes back outside looking for his dog.  I glance back at the collar and for some unknown reason, shove it in my utility belt then I hit the thrusters and take off for the van and the nerve center of the dog fighting ring it’ll lead me to.

 

Three hours later we cross into the city limits of Madison, Wisconsin.  Five minutes after that we seem to have reached our destination—and it’s not where I thought we’d arrive.  Dog fights are usually held in little-known, out of the way places—abandoned factories, old warehouses or shacks out in the woods.

But the building the petnappers pull into is neither out of the way nor is it abandoned.  I check my scope one more time to make sure I’m hovering outside the right place.

I am. 

I rub my eyes through my mask and check the sign outside the buildings’ main entrance again, convinced that I’ve misread something.

But the name of the building remains the same—and I know I’ve had it all wrong all along.

This case isn’t about dog fighting.

This is about something far more sinister because the van has pulled into Madison College…

 

To Be Continued…

Redemption

Fifty dollars.  Would you say that’s all a life is worth? 

Yet that pittance is all it takes to legally murder someone.  So what if the vessel doesn’t have thumbs, speak our language or have a family unit as we think of one?  Does that make the creature any less deserving of life—or a death not filled with fear and torture in its last few moments?

I don’t think so…

Laughing and drinking, each of the five hunters, one in a ski mask, another in a wool-knit cap, a fat one in a blaze-orange coat, another with a scruffy beard and one in a snow suit, takes his picture with the wolf in the background—the wolf whose paw has been caught in a trap for the last three hours.  Bloodied fur stains fresh, white snow—proof that the terrified animal has tried to gnaw himself free—preferring to die from blood loss or lameness to a human’s hand should they be successful in their escape.

But few seldom are.

Shattered, exposed bone scratches the steel trap around its leg as the hunters stagger from too much alcohol taking their time in ending the majestic being’s life, allowing it that much longer to suffer as their blurred vision makes it impossible to find the shutter button.  The wolf howls into the encroaching night—the sound like a mother mourning the loss of a child, but none of its pack will come to its rescue.  None of them is a match for man’s gun.

None—except for me.

Dim light catches all five points of the alloy blade I release into the air and in the silence of the forest it’s easy to hear the high-pitched PING! as it connects with the lock of the trap.  It was a sound difficult to miss but somehow the hunters do.  For a moment the wolf sniffs the air and peers into the dark, surrounding forest with his piercing blue eyes in search for the source of his freedom. 

He never thinks to look up.  Not that it would help him anyway…none of them will see me until I want them to.

The wolf’s full coat of soft, grey and white fur blows flawlessly in a blustery gust that seems to come from nowhere as she approaches the five humans who should’ve ended her when they had the chance.  The wind lifts snow from off the braches of the surrounding pines and birch trees, creating a curtain of white that won’t draw back until show time.

And by then it’ll be too late.

I watch as the wolf stalks them.  She’s weary from exhaustion but she’s still stronger than any one of the humans—myself included.  She pins her ears back, she’s only a few feet away now.  It won’t be long.  My heart beats in my throat, harder with each staggering step the wolf takes towards revenge.  I really should try and stop what’s about to happen, but is not natural to want revenge? 

Of course it is.  And nature is what’s about to happen.  And just like the good film crews of National Geographic as the lion they’re taping takes out a zebra, I resign to stay out of nature’s way.

But then the wolf stops.  She relaxes her blood stained lips and they cover her bared teeth.  She sniffs the air again and cocks her head towards the woods to her left.  She looks back one last time at the hunters and then slinks away towards the gloom of the forest.  I pause to think about what I’ve just witnessed.  The wolf, despite the torment it’s endured, has resolved to let the hunters live—it’s a bigger gesture than most “civilized” humans would muster. 

And it makes me wonder just who the animals here are.

I respect the wolf’s wishes and turn to leave when the wind shifts.  The veil of falling snow lifts and the wolf in exposed.  The hunters stop talking, noticing the freed beast for the first time.  My heart stops as they, all at once, pivot in the snow and glare at her. 

She stops in mid stride, lowering in head in a plea of mercy for which they will give no quarter.

They each raise their scatterguns.

And I descend from my birch branch.

I land on the muzzle of blaze-orange’s gun, it fires and blasts a crater in the snow five feet in diameter and the scent of gunpowder hangs thick in the air.  I use the distraction to gain advantage and I spring off the ground catching him in the chin.  He falls backwards and into wool-knit.  “Get out of here, NOW!”  I command the wolf through the Jargon—a small device I invented that interprets animal sounds into human speech and vice-versa.  I can’t tell if the wolf hears me because the other’s fight or flight kicks in and they decide on the latter.

Their mistake. 

Before wool-knit can move his corpulent co-hunter off him, I move in, grabbing orange-clad’s discarded weapon.  As I roll towards him I bring down the butt of the firearm on his head with a THUD that makes the remaining members of his hunting party think twice as he sinks beneath the snow, unconscious, with a plume of white powder.  The remaining three trappers stand awe-struck, staring at me as I rise from the ground, clumps of snow falling from my broad, black-suited shoulders.  They didn’t move, either by drunkenness or frozen by fear.

Slowly I turn around, the wind blowing snow flakes out of my brown, synthetic-fur mane that extends down my back like a cape that ends in a point just above my keester.  Ski-mask and snow-suit’s shaking bodies block the other hunter, their alcohol-laced breaths hanging in the air.  “It’s a good thing you big strong hunter-types enjoy your brewskies…”  I say, cracking my knuckles.  “Because you won’t be taking in anything solid for awhile…”

“That so?”  The one with the scruffy beard asks from behind his friends.  Suddenly I see it—the muzzle of a double-barreled shotgun poking through in between the arms of his friends.  But it’s all too late, and before I can dodge out of the way the muzzle flashes and I’m propelled backwards as a thunderous BOOM! echoes through the woods.  My ears are ringing as I land behind a small snow drift where I check myself over.  Luckily all the buck shots have hit my armor—but the remaining three hunters don’t know that…

“What the hell, DUDE?!”  I hear one of them shout.  “Sober up, man—that’s murder two at least!”

Scruffy-beard chuckles, “no it’s not.”  He minimizes.  “It’s manslaughter at most.”

“Yeah well, either way—I’m not going down for this!”  The other shakes.

Scruffy-beard lights a stogie.  He lets the match fall and it melts into the snow.  I can smell the cheap cigar’s foul odor from here.  “Well I guess we’ll just have to go ahead and make sure he’s never found then, won’t we?”

They crunch though the snow towards my drift, “that’s cold, man!”  Snow-suit says.

“NO…”  I growl from my hiding place. 

“Huh?!”  They all three belch in unison as the first snow ball CLACKS against the scattergun, forcing it from scruffy-beard’s hands.  Scruffy looks up just as the second one belts him right in the nose.  His friends take off, running behind me as another snow ball whacks him in the forehead.  I pause as he staggers before I send a final ice ball, this one knocking him to the ground.

“…that’s cold.”  I finish my sentence just as I hear the mechanical whine of two snowmobiles sputtering to life.  I’m on my feet as ski-mask takes off, leaving snow-suit behind with engine trouble.  I take out three more throwing blades and hurl them at the thin birch branch ten feet above the stalled sled.

The first blade misses its mark entirely, the second chips out a chunk of the branch and the third severs it from the tree.  From fifteen feet away I watch as the branch plummets towards the Polaris, snow lifting off and scattering to the breeze as the soft wood gains momentum.

And then it cracks against the stranded snowmobiler’s head and he slumps against the steering column, unconscious.  I rush over, and push snow-suit off the seat.  Through the cracked windshield I can see the red tail lights of ski-mask’s sled fade farther and farther away.  I smash out the rest of the plastic windshield, pull the choke out and the sled fires right up.

Snow kicks up from the ground as the treads peel out.  The other trapper thinks he’s gotten away but I know these woods like the back of my clawed gloves and I easily weave the snow craft around trees and boulders that shoot up from beneath the powder like icebergs in the frozen tundra.

And then his tail lights disappear.

But as I said—I know these woods like the back of my hand. 

He’s gone down a hill into a shallow ravine, but as shallow as it is, there’s no way he can scale the sides with a sled.

He’s trapped.  And that’s where it’s going to end.

I skid around a dense thicket of raspberry bushes twelve feet from the ravine and speed up towards a large, uprooted jack pine.  The distance closes quickly and before I know it my snowmobile is rumbling over the tree.  Bark and snow ice off and follow behind the sled like an exhaust trail as it becomes air borne.  Shortly after take off I kick off the seat, I grab a hold of my cape and the special material catches the breeze and slows my descent as the snow craft crashes against the rocks of the ravine just ahead of ski-mask.  The explosion floods the area in a bath of violent orange and yellow firelight.  Startled, the driver of the other sled brakes hard, steers off to the right and skids to a stop.  “What the?”  He scoffs angrily as my shadow across his turned back gets larger and larger as I descend closer and closer until finally I let go of my cape and land on him with everything I’ve got.

He hits the ground harder than the others because the snow has melted from the blazing fire five feet from where he lays.  He’s still conscious—barely.  He moans and stirs in the mud and I flip him over and grab him by the collar of his vest and tear off his ski mask.  I recognize him—he’s the son of the founder of the Conversation Academy—a prep school that boasts support for wildlife conservation.  Within its walls you can find a museum dedicated to its founder, the kid’s aforementioned father—a man who’s shot and killed everything from lions to polar bears—his trophy’s are still on display there for the public, including the tusks from a bull elephant he shot back when it was still legal.

Conservation Academy indeed.

“Idiot.”  He growls at me.  “Do you even know who I am?”

I smile beneath my mask.  “Sure do.”  I growl back.  “And you can tell your father I said conservation should be more than just a reaction to our greed.  If we practiced it from the start, you wouldn’t be laying in the mud right now.  And if we don’t start taking better care of our planet we’ll all be laying in the mud.”  I say, letting him fall back in the mud.  “I’d better not see you back out here when deer season starts, or our next meeting won’t be so pleasant.”

“You tree huggers are all alike—such drama queens.  You can’t stop us—we’ll kill em’ all.”  He snarls from the dirt. 

My teeth clench.

My fist balls.

I swing.

And his vision goes black.

I bring ski-mask’s sled to a stop back at his trap site.  I drag him over beneath a pine tree and begin huddling his friends with him.  Bunched together like this, they’ll stay warm enough until they all come to.

And by then I’ll be long gone.

I switch lenses in my cowl to the snake lens in order to see their warm bodies beneath the snow but I find something else—a smaller body whose temperature is dropping fast.  I rush over but I know it’s already too late.

For the wolf. 

I kneel down beside her and scrape off the snow that’s melted and refrozen as small balls of ice against the wolf’s dying body and I realize that this happened with that first shotgun blast.  The animal’s chest heaves as it strains to supply the creature with its last few breathes.  It wuffles something that the Jargon interprets as a thank you.”

“For what?”  I ask, a pang of guilt coursing through me like acid in my veins.  “I couldn’t save you.”

People say animals, dogs in particular, can’t smile.  But as I gaze at the creature’s magnificent form, I swear she smiles at me.  Then it whimpers and the Jargon translates.  “Not for what you failed to do, human—but for what you meant to do, and for what you will do.  You’re the…”  The Jargon pauses as it struggles to find the right word for the sound and then it comes…  She tells me that I’m a catalyst.  And that her only regret is not living to see the hope I will bring to her kind.  Then, satisfied in knowing that someone will carry on the fight after she’s gone, she gasps heavily—it’s what creatures do when they take their last breaths of life before they leave this place and become nothing more than ghosts of a Wisconsin that once was.

Then her eyes rolled back in her head.

She falls limp.

And then, she’s gone.

I arrive back home and enter then Den through the hanger doors of the tunnel that connect the basement lab to the outside and I tear off my mask in defeated disgust.  Through the floor boards above me I can hear my infant son crying up stairs as my loving wife walks to the stove where his bottle waits in a bath of warm water.  The thought of the two of them warms my chilled heart and the snow melts off my suit and forms a puddle at my feet.  I sway from exhaustion and grab a hold of a steel table to steady myself then I sit down in front of the wall-sized computer monitor where I absently tap at the keys and just stare at the board, unable to get the image of the lifeless wolf, who was beautiful even in death, out of my head.  I run through everything again and wonder if I could’ve done something differently.

The possibilities of scenarios and alternate outcomes is endless and suddenly I fear that perhaps the only thing I did right was burying the wolf in the snow twenty miles away from the trap site so the hunters at least wouldn’t get the satisfaction of reaping the benefits of murder. 

Suddenly I hear footsteps behind me, coming down the stairs.

Her footsteps, and my heart sinks even farther.  How can I face her after such avoidable failure?

“Rough night?”  She asks.

At first I shrug without a sound, too ashamed to speak.  But she waits there, giving me the time I need, cradling our cooing son and eventually I come around, “…you don’t know the half of it.”

“Actually I do.”  She corrects.  “The latest ‘Feral Man’ sighting is all over the news.”

That’s the name the press gave me and I hope one day they’ll get my name right.

I nod my head and feel my face getting hot, I need to say something before I’m choked off completely, “so you know then—that I couldn’t save the wolf…”

I can see her reflection in the mirror surface of the computer screen.  She closes her eyes and breathes deeply.  She knows how hard I take it when things don’t go my way out there and she usually knows just what to say to put it all in perspective and make it all seem better.

This time is no different and she takes a step closer as Brock, whose name means “Badger”, begins to fuss.  “Here.”  She says, handing him to me.  “Your son needs his hero.”  Then she turns and walks away, back up the steps to the main floor of our home and leaves me, soaking wet and feeling like half the man she sees me as, with our five month old in my arms.  For a moment he just wriggles there but then he stops and grabs my finger with his chubby little hand and looks up at me.  And I hold my reflection in his eyes for what seems like a very long amount of time. 

I peer deeper into those two little balls of wonder and feel my heart soften as I start to forgive myself as a new thought replaces the one of my failure: the eyes of a child are truly amazing. 

When we look at our children we see ourselves and when that reflection falls short of who we want to be there’s always something else in their eyes if you just look deep enough.

Hope.  And the redemption of the next generation.