“They swim?” Doris’ eyes opened wide. “They hiss?” She shook her head. “They flare their nostrils?” Oh, yeah, she knew that last part already. It’s practically the only thing they do.
“They surely do. The government’s got pictures and everything. April 20, 1979. Like I said, BunRabs get mean around the time of the vernal equinox.”
Clementine might be crazy, but she wouldn’t make up stuff that could be checked with a quick Internet search, even if all Doris could do was hunt and peck on a laptop keyboard. But even if it was true, it was still incredible, unbelievable.
“BunRabs?” Doris asked in confirmation.
“I’ve heard tell,” said Clementine softly, as if in confidence, “that even demons are afeared of ’em.”
“Demons . . . afraid of BunRabs,” murmured Doris in a daze of disbelief and confusion. “The cute little adorable furry things that hang out near the garden and do nothing but eat carrots and . . . flare their nostrils?”
Clementine bobbed her head. “Didn’t you ever wonder why they do that?”
“Flare their nostrils?” Doris was growing more and more bewildered and, truth be told, a little scared.
“Eat carrots.”
“I don’t know,” babbled Doris. “They’re vegetarians? The beta-carotene makes them see better in the dark?”
Clementine gave a squawking, guttural laugh. “If they’re vegetarians, what do they need to see so well in the dark for, anyway?”
That really ruffled Doris’ feathers. “Carnivorous? You’re telling me that BunRabs are carnivorous?” Her body shook involuntarily in irritation and fear, but she quickly tamped down her growing dread. “I’ve never seen them eat anything but carrots and leaves and berries . . . maybe a little grass.”
Clementine shrugged her buffalo wings. “Most times they do, but when the season comes, the taste for flesh grows. Makes them omnivores, like humans, and you know how dangerous they can be.Yessirree, come spring, the BunRabs hunger for blood and meat. Nothing moves upon the face of the earth that they won’t devour. No human, no bovine, no fat croaking toad, nor stampeding rhinoceros is safe from the BunRabs when the taste rises with the new spring moon. But it’s us they crave, us they most seek out to devour. ‘Tastes like chicken,’ they say to each other wistfully when snacking down on a stranded motorist or a water buffalo cut out from the herd or even one of their own fallen in the fray. ‘Tastes like chicken,’ they say, their fur matted with blood and veins caught between their ungodly huge gnawing teeth. ‘Tastes like chicken, but, boy, I wish I had me some real chicken instead. Ain’t nothing like real country chicken, maybe with a side of . . .
“ ‘... eggs!’ ”
Doris screamed and fainted straight away.
When she awoke, she knew her life would never be the same. She was a believer now.
“When did it start?” she asked.
“No one knows for sure,” clucked Clementine. “The killer BunRabs, they’ve always had a taste for our ancestors, far back as anyone can count.”
“At least that means that there is hope for us . . . I mean for all of us collectively, as a species.”
Clementine cawed sadly. “I wouldn’t count on that, dearie. It’s only when the promiscuous beasties are kept in check that we have reason to feel safe, as a species even if not individually.” She pecked absentmindedly at a piece of straw clinging to her breast. “They hump anything that moves. I saw one mount a groundhog once—it did ugly, unspeakable things to that poor, fat rodent. All they do is eat and breed, like the virus that they are. Some say . . .” Clementine trailed off, her eyes glistening with tears.
“What? What do they say, Aunt Clementine?” asked Doris in a quiet, trembling voice.
“They say . . . they say that killer BunRabs are what drove the dinosaurs to extinction. BunRabs are a bigger threat than avian flu and fast-food restaurants combined,” sniffed the old biddy.
Doris let that sink in. Once her distant ancestors had ruled the world, roaming the steppes and marshes, bellowing their dominance for millions and millions of years, until the BunRabs came. She had to know more.
“You say they always come from the east?” she asked. Suddenly it made sense why Aunt Clementine’s young stud stood looking east in the darkest hours before the dawn and heralded each new day with a triumphant crow of survival and joy.
“In New England, they sometimes come from the east northeast—no doubt you’ve heard tell of the killing Noreasters up that way. But hereabout, they always come directly from the east . . . the dreaded easter BunRabs, close to the new moon just before the vernal equinox, although the hare-y beasts can’t be trusted any time or place.”
She had to ask. “And what do they do? You say they come for the children?”
“They take the children, yes,” sighed Clementine, “but they don’t simply take them. Those rabid little BunRabs are a damn sight more perverted than even that. They come into the coop and start chasing and terrorizing the youngest of the youngsters, herding the peeps until they run in circles in panic. Then they just snatch a poor defenseless peep up, biting off its head, and put it back down to run around in circles headless amongst its terrorized siblings, until it falls down. Then the BunRabs will snatch it up again and drink its blood, before crunching down on the lifeless feathers and bones and spitting the beak at those still running. Those, those are the lucky ones . . .”
“The lucky ones?” peeped Doris, afraid to ask more.
“They pluck the hens alive, plunging metal rods into them and roasting them over an open fire of burning corncobs.”
Doris’ teeth would have been chattering, if she had had any, she was so afraid. “And the eggs?”
Clementine’s old voice dropped to such a quiet whisper, Doris had to stretch out her neck to get closer to hear. “Some they eat, cracking them open, guzzling them down like the free drinks at a trailer-trash wedding reception. Some they stuff whole into their fat cheeks like crazed carnivorous chipmunks.”
“To eat later?” It was sick, but Doris had to know.
“You’d think so, but no, those furry little monsters have crueler plans. They, well . . .they boil the eggs alive, then decorate them with their gang colors and garish graffiti. Then in the dead of night the weekend after the next full moon, they hide them all around the yard, atop fenceposts, under flower pots, in rain spouts, and in the mailbox, anyplace where they can be found and terrorize the survivors. Then, somehow . . . no one knows how . . . they make the little human children go hunt for the desecrated, dead eggs, crack them open, peel away the shell from the boiled unborn and eat them while surrounded by chocolate idols of the easter BunRab’s leering visage.”
“How ghastly,” mumbled Doris, suddenly afraid to look at her own eggs nestled under her, lest she find they had been tagged with some hideous gang sign while she had dozed the night before.
Clementine nodded vigorously. “Those BunRabs are mean, sick mother . . .” She blushed beneath her wings. “Well, they hump anything that moves, relatives included, the carnivorous little pervs.”
Doris was quiet for a while as she pondered the sick, cruel world. She was nesting eggs right now in an attempt to bring innocent chicks into that world, but she had no idea how to protect her eggs or her chicks from the bloodthirsty butchery of the BunRabs. She thought so long and hard about the bleak fate that awaited her and her flock that Clementine fell asleep beside her. Finally, Doris woke her wise old aunt up.
“What can we do?” she asked.
“About what, dear?” came her aunt’s reply.
“About the killer BunRabs,” said Doris. “How can we stop them?”
“Squawk and peck,” replied Clementine as her head nodded down and she fell back asleep. “All you can do is squawk and peck.”
On the night of the new moon before the vernal equinox, the night on which the carrot-crazed fiends would have their greatest night-vision advantage, the killer BunRabs came from the east. Multiplying in number as
only BunRabs can, they peeked out of culverts, crawled out of holes, scurried out of groundcover, and hopped out of woodpiles.
Doris was the first to know they were coming. While the rest of the henhouse slept the sleep of the soon-to-be-rotisseried, while the cock still doodled the night away roosting on a fence post where he could avoid the dewy damp of the alfalfa sprouts of the field below, Doris was awake. She had been awake since the cock had last crowed, waiting in trepidation for the night of the lepus to begin. The rest of the flock slept, but this was no time to be chicken.
Doris wasn’t sure exactly what slight alteration of the night’s gestalt heralded the BunRabs’ evil presence. It could have been the subsonic, rhythmic thrum of the padded, furry rabbits’ feet as the fearsome critters hopped silently in time through the cornfield east of the farmyard. It could have been the gentle breeze stirred by a thousand, nay a million, tiny BunRab noses wiggling and flaring in unison to suck in the breath of life to power their unholy quest for death and destruction. It could have been that the hypersonic background wail of the carrots and other root vegetables ceased as the omnivorous varmints forsook their vegetative delights for a maniacal dark night of carnivorous revelry. But most likely it was that a mother hen, once it has identified a threat to her offspring, has a sixth sense that no science experiment can detect and no fairy tale can explain—a sixth sense that squeezes the adrenal gland that makes all mothers sit bolt upright and spring up to the defense of their babies no matter the time of night.
Doris covered her somewhat sparsely strawed nest with a piece of corrugated cardboard she had pecked loose from an old feed box, then assembled a second—fake—nest atop it, leaving what would appear to be an empty nest in the keen eyesight of her beta-carotene addicted adversaries and leaving her eggs snuggled safe and warm below the false-bottomed nest. Then she woke up Clementine and Gertrude and Sadie and Mrs. Sanders and all the other mothers in the hen house and warned them of the coming battle. While the others scurried about blocking entrances and securing defenses, Doris strutted out into the night and flapped up awkwardly to a fence post to watch the coming slaughter.
Even though Doris’ depth perception was not great (eyes on either side of the head will do that), her eyesight was keen. She could see the fuzzy, furry horde of death coming through the field. An advance scouting party led the way. Though disguised in fox-pelt clothing, there could be no mistaking the rabbity movement of the alleged fox as first the front BunRab, then the back BunRab hopped forward. If that wasn’t scary enough, it quickly became clear that the pack behind the disguised and disquieting scout had already seen battle that night. The BunRabs were smeared with blood and—she shuddered—dried egg yolk. The oversized bicuspids of the sinister hares gleamed in contrast to their dark butcher’s garb. Worse, the sharp relief of light and dark revealed to Doris that some of the twitch-nosed murderers had sharpened their pearlies into fangs of annihilation.
But, ultimately, none of that mattered to Doris. They could carry knives and brass knuckles for all she cared; guns and bandoliers of ammo, grenades, javelins, even suitcase nukes, it wouldn’t matter.
She waited for it, waited until the horde was fully committed to the field, ’til the stupid-looking undead fox scout was at the ditch on the far side of the road before she gave the signal.
Then the cock crowed and the cornfield blazed with light.
Not sunlight. It was still two o’clock in the morning. No, the cornfield blazed with the light of gunfire as a bizarre collective of farmhands, hunters, and survival ist militia members enjoyed the benefits of their NRA memberships. Shotguns pumped lead furiously, until the shots churned up the roots of the fledgling corn stalks and they toppled over. Rifles cracked sharp and fast, followed by the clackety-clack of the bolt being thrown and another round being chambered. Automatic weapons thundered as scoped spotlights snapped on, directly into the beta-carotene-soaked eyes of the BunRabs, blinding them, making even more sure than usual that they would not see the bullets that whined forward at supersonic speed to crash into to their big, dumb foreheads and explode out the back of their skulls, leaving a hole the size of an entrance to the warrens, dens, and hidey-holes the little buggers frequented and not much brain matter behind. The barely controlled bursts of fire simultaneously riddled the brainless bodies of the dying BunRabs until they twitched faster than their little BunRab noses ever could, ripping flesh from bone, rending limb from limb and creating the largest collection of unlucky rabbit’s feet this side of the dollar store near the interstate highway.
As the carnage continued, some big, dumb jerk with a box of M-80s started lobbing the quarter-sticks of dynamite from an oak tree blind into the middle of the field. Between the bullets and the explosions and the blood and entrails and the screams of the maimed and dying BunRabs—yes, BunRabs scream a high-pitched scream like a little girl who has found a spider crawling into her blouse—the battlefield just east of County Road 14 ri valed Borodino, Gettysburg, and Omaha Beach.
Even after the initial barrage guaranteed that no easter BunRab would emerge from the cornfield of death to terrorize chicken or egg, whichever came first, again, the gunfire continued, first in a steady stream, then intermittently, as if those firing were unsure whether the BunRabs might be firing back or somehow dangerous to the conglomeration of good ol’ boys armed with guns and fortified by copious amounts of corn liquor.
Finally, there was silence, both in the field across the road and in the henhouse behind. No BunRab had encroached one lucky foot or twitchy little nose into the farmyard. And as the second dawn of the morning came, Doris didn’t wait for the Clementine’s stud to crow the morning’s welcome. She crowed herself, a crow of victory and joy and survival.
The final count: 862 BunRabs perished that night on what is now known as Easter Cornfield. Doris knew the deadly sum ’cause the good ol’ boys, they collected up all the rabbit’s feet, counted ’em up, and divided by four. Three squirrels, seventeen field mice, one thrush, and a fox were also caught in the crossfire and tallied as collateral damage, although Doris knew that the fox was already dead long before its pelt was aerated on that fateful field. Four hunters also managed to get themselves shot or wounded by flying debris during the skirmish, though none seriously. The night would have been a complete success from Doris’ perspective if not for the fact that the good ol’ boys decided to go chow down on bacon and eggs at the Sit-A-Spell Diner, down where there is an exit from the interstate onto County Road 14.
There was one additional death that evening, but Doris refused to give any credence to the notion that the frightful noise of the barrage is what caused old Aunt Clementine to die of heart failure back in the coop. Clementine was simply an old hen, though not as addle-minded as Doris had once thought, whose time had come.
The important thing was that not one chicken, peep, or egg was taken by the BunRabs that night. The chicks, they grew up without the fear of the easter BunRabs coming for them in the night. And that’s real chicken goodness (unless you, gentle reader, are one of those barbarians who likes your chickens extra-crispy fried).
And, oh, by the way, in case anyone ever asks you: “Why did the chicken cross the road?” you can tell them it was so she could get to the other side, fly into the window of the farmer’s daughter’s bedroom, ignore the traveling salesman, flutter to the glowing screen of the laptop, access the World Wide Web, and post the following advertisement in the Lincoln County Herald Tribune:TEN THOUSAND DOLLAR PRIZE
for most rabbits killed
Saturday, April 12
in the cornfield east of Jenkin’s Farm
along County Road 14.
Cock will crow to signal beginning of tournament.
Lincoln County Animal Control Board.
Eat more rabbit and save your crops!
“Tastes like chicken.”
Even if you can only peck at the keyboard, the Internet is a powerful tool for good . . . or evil.
Heaven help us if the BunRa
bs learn to use it.
FOR LIZZIE
By Anton Strout
Fantasy author Anton Strout was born in the Berkshire Hills mere miles from writing heavyweights Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville and currently lives in historic Jackson Heights, New York (where nothing paranormal ever really happens, he assures you). He is the author of Dead to Me and Deader Still, the first two books of the Simon Canderous urban fantasy series. His short stories have appeared in Pandora’s Closet, The Dimension Next Door, and City Fantastic. He is also the co-creator of the faux folk musical Sneezin’ Jeff Blue Raccoon: The Loose Gravel Tour (winner of the Best Storytelling Award at the First Annual New York International Fringe Festival). In his scant spare time, he is a writer, a sometime actor, sometime musician, occasional RPGer, and the worlds most casual and controller-smashing video gamer. He currently works in the exciting world of publishing, and, yes, it is as glamorous as it sounds.
Godfrey heard the sound of a voice calling his name before noticing someone standing next to his giant oaken desk, but as usual his brain didn’t register it or the fact that it was female until the sound of it became the fact that it was female until the sound of it became more stern.
“Godfrey!”
Before looking up, the senior most archivist finished scribbling down the last of his thoughts into the moleskine notebook in front of him. One of the newer assistants in The Gauntlet stood there. She was an Asian girl with dark brown almond-shaped eyes and long black hair pulled back into a ponytail. Probably to keep it out of her face or to keep it from falling against the pages on some of the older books, Godfrey thought. He was pleased to see that she had taken the precaution, given the stack of books she was carrying. It didn’t take much to set off rapid deterioration down in these caverns beneath the Department of Extraordinary Affairs, and the oil in hair could be just as destructive as fire.
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