I needed this vacation. After spending months on a study on the environmental effect of opening two square kilometers of new-growth forest in eastern Montana to development, a fire spreads through the area and makes the entire thing moot. They gave me two weeks of vacation and I took a train to Alaska to camp in real wilderness. It was great getting away from the pollution and noise that humans usually didn’t notice. People don’t realize that Zooforms, like me, can often sense things that only the Zoo- part of them can. I have the hell of seeing as good as a human and smelling, hearing and having the disconcerting pheromonal “sixth-sense” of Vulpes vulpes — a Red Fox for those less scientifically inclined. Luckily my parents were Third Gen Genalts so I don’t look as unnatural as Second or, heaven forbid, First Genner’s.
The train ride was relatively uneventful. A good looking middle-aged woman decided that I looked good enough to hit on me. I might have reciprocated but an earlier slip about a husband stopped me. Some people call our existence immoral, but I have better morals than half of the humans I know. I politely told her no and she called me the usual string of slurs and stormed off. I didn’t let it bother me, she was just another Fur Coater wanting me for the thrill of screwing a Zooform. I let a few women use me for their fur coat when I was younger, but I decided it wasn’t for me. Zooforms make better companions since we tend to understand each other better. I spent the rest of the ride watching the scenery roll by.
When I got there I had to prove to the baggage that my name is Read Fuchs. The woman snickered about my name but I blew it off. Finally, I could truly relax. The air was crisp and as I hiked my way out into the forest the coolness felt wonderful. I chose the site for my camp on the train ride up here. Nice and level but with a slight slope about 500-meters up. No one had been there for decades and they were biologists like myself. I set up camp, gathered firewood and cleared a fire ring for later, and did what I originally came here for and took a long nap. I really meant to do more, but after a ten-kilometer hike uphill I needed it.
A smell woke me up. In this clean of air I can smell a large animal well enough to wake me up. I looked around for whatever was out there. I couldn’t tell what it was yet but I have a good record with guessing. That’s part of why I do field work, I can usually find the species I’m researching without having to see it. Nothing, the smell was gone now. “Oh, well,” I mumbled and groaned getting up, “Let’s get the fire started.” Easier said then done. I’d lost the touch I had in the Boy Scouts when I could get a huge bonfire going with one match. I started whittling a fuzzy stick the when the scent from came back much stronger then before. Whatever woke me up was probably right only a dozen meters away. I glanced around but shrugged it off and went back to making the tender. Moments later I saw it. A ruddy color in my peripheral vision made me look up and — what the fuck?
A Zooform vixen hunched in front of me stark naked and dirty. I froze for a second then said, “Hello?” She just stared at me. “Who are you?” I asked, she looked at me like an animal interested in someone. She’s young, definitely not a kid mind you, more like her late teens maybe early twenties, or she’s been undernourished for a long time. She took a few steps closer, still staying low with bend knees and her tail level, her hand almost touching the ground. I scooted back a meter or so and hoped the Swiss Army Knife and the partly shredded wood in my hands wouldn’t scare her. I didn’t want to look threatening, if anything because I didn’t want to get attacked. I could smell her musk drifting over and worried over what it had in it.
“What do you want?” I asked as the vixen stalked up to me. She made a circle sniffing me. “Can I help you?” I felt humiliated but I don’t know for whom. I twisted my head awkwardly to keep her in sight. I really started worrying about her health when I saw her glutes. They had hard bony angles, not the rounded curves of even skinny women. Her small underdeveloped breasts made me concern more. This woman has had a hard life, but why? Who is she? So I asked again, but more urgently, “Can I help you? Do you want me to —?”
She tackled me! Suddenly, I had her on top of me and she smiled like a child at play. “What are you doing!” I shouted and tried to push her off. She nipped my ear and hopped off running a few meters and turning to look back at me coyly. Did she want me to “mount” her now? Jesus fuck, if she did — where was she when I was sixteen? No, she didn’t want sex because she came at me again. I tried dodging to the side but she flipped over me and pulled me down anyway. “Jesus Christ!” I shouted and tossed her off and tried to put distance between us but she jumped at my feet and I fell hard. I don’t know if she turned me over or if I did it, but I found my self crawling backwards away from her. She nipped me again like before, but kept holding me down and bit my ear again. “Bitch!” I shouted and tried freeing a hand, but she held me tight, then she ran off again leaving me free.
It didn’t take long for me to realize she was playing. Was she that feral? I knew she was already, but I’ve never heard of a wild child playing like an animal, but I’ve never heard of a Zooform abandoned like this either. Maybe she was a Zooform Kasper Hauser; the young man who came out of the German woods only able to say “I want to be a soldier like my father,” with bloodied feet. In the end he died suddenly of “natural causes” but, some say murdered for a theoretical connection to German nobility. I always felt sorry for him like I was feeling sorry for her now.
I lost sight of her for a minute and decided to start working on the fire again. I wouldn’t get full night up here, but it was cold. I worked on the stick some more, but gave up when I nicked myself. I just did the old stand-by of piling pine needles, twigs and kindling into a lean-to and started the fire that way. While I was nursing the weak flame I heard something then found myself on the ground with the vixen on me. I struggled for a minute, but gave up and said as kindly as I could, “get off me please.” She licked my nose and rolled off of me. I went back to the fire when she sat in a squat and watched me a few meters away. I felt like trying to explain what I was doing, just to make some kind of conversation, but I didn’t.
When the fire was catching and I could step away I looked at her closer. She was skinny, very skinny and still had lots of muscle, but no fat. Her head hair, which was tawny, was practically in dreadlocks and was tangled with seeds and pine needles. I could see faint blood stains around her mouth and, when I took her hands for a second, on them too. Beneath the dirt and grime and the I-don’t-want-to-know she would have been decent looking. She watched me as intently as I looked at her but didn’t act like she wanted to play again. I walked back to the fire ring and sat in my chair and watched her from the corner of my eye.
The fire was going fine, it would need some more wood in a few minutes, but I let it go. I had brought my usual camping fare — Spam, Vienna sausages, ramen noodles and other simple to make foods — but not enough for two and I couldn’t eat in front of her knowing she was hungry. She stalked up and squatted beside me again and looked at me.