This is a draft version of a chapter from John Saye’s book, The Attack of the Atomic Bunny Rabbits!
The rabbits were on the move. They snuck between the buildings. They romped through the bushes, and they stayed out of sight for the most part, but when they were obvious, they were really obvious, and people were reporting sightings all over the place.
“911 emergency… Rabbits Miss?” they would say.
“Really, red rabbits hopping down the street? A whole pack of them? Yes, I’ve got that noted here. Can jump ten feet, can they? I’ll mark that down as well. Where are they? I see.”
They’d type into their computers and ask “Were they dark red or just sort of pink?” and that would get a laugh sometimes if a nervous one.
In the control van, Mrs. Orange was cranking up the engine, and Prof. Blue was feeding all that data into his computer.
“Where are they headed?” said Mr. Green.
“It looks like there is a kid’s science expo down at the Free Town Convention Center. It looks like they are headed that way.”
The buses idled by the street in front of the Kid’s Science Expo, all thirty-seven or more of them. Behind them in the parking lot, there was a sea of yellow buses. Kids were everywhere. Some students stood in lines, getting directions from their teachers while others were in circles talking.
Mr. Phillips and Mike stepped off their bus. They only had a few other students with them. The rabbit rode in, tucked into Mike’s backpack.
Mike’s backpack started to twitch. Mike checked on him. The rabbit was no longer sleeping, but standing at attention, and looking around, like it was listening to the air, or smelling the hot dog carts that were way down the street. Its ears were like little radars, working independent of each other, and taking in as much as possible around them.
They walked through the crowd.
“How are we going to find your Dad?” said Mr. Phillips.
“Don’t worry. He’s got a big crowd.”
“Keep an eye out anyway.”
They made their way to the front entrance. Inside there were lines of tables, rows, and rows where all kinds of experiments both for and my kids were on display. Lots of kits. Everything from hydroponic gardening to raising tadpoles was here. Over in the corner, someone was beating on the bottom of a trashcan that was fitted with a plastic sheet on one end with a hole cut in the bottom, sending large smoke rings across the room.
At the center of the expo was a carrot. It was massive, some fifteen feet tall, and standing on end, the larger end floating above them, supported by cables. It was surrounded by kids, all reaching out to touch it. In front of it, were the kids who grew it, and a lady handing out baby carrot snack bags.
There were twisty drinking birds, potato clocks, robots made out of tin cans, sparklers, and piles and piles of books and workbooks. In the middle of the trading floor was a giant jungle gym where teenagers were clipping into a rope and following it through an obstacle course, that went up into the air above the rest of the exhibits. There were a bunch of kids up in it at the top looking down at everyone coming through the door and waving at them. Near the back, someone was high-dive jumping, next to two or three jumping houses, one of which was shaped like a gigantic whale and one of them was shaped like a giant clown’s head. You could see kids inside bouncing up and down by looking through the large clear eyes.
Mike couldn’t believe what he was seeing, but he thought that maybe it was places like this that helped his Dad keep the attention of his students so well.
They walked the isles, looking at plant systems and fish tanks, through stacks and stacks of books and in and out of one exhibit after another. Mr. Phillips was on high alert, missing the fun for looking for Destin, and Destin was doing the same as he led his troop through the other end of the gallery.
No one was showing rabbits doing anything out of the ordinary.
Destin allowed his students, who were younger and all planned to meet their parents here at the end of the day instead of returning on the bus, to split up and look at whatever it was they wanted to. Many stayed with him on the off chance they might see the rabbit fire it up again, but just as many were ready and willing to escape from their teacher for the afternoon with the expectation that they would tell the class the following Monday what they had seen.
They were wandering the aisles, and looking here and there when Mike thought to text his father.
Destin’s phone buzzed in his pocket, he looked at it.
“Meet us by the Mr. Science booth,” it said.
Behind him was a huge display of giant, oversized carrots, each as large as a child. They were stood up on end and had little lights shining down on them.
Destin looked around, then he texted back a quick “OK.” He turned the corner, his students still with him, and saw the Mr. Science booth. It was tall and black, covered with green lettering, and complex-looking equations. In front of it was Mr. Science himself, who was in life an actor who hosted children’s television shows. He had a bunch of kids gathered in front of him while he showed off a pair of large plasma balls.
The lighting inside of them was bright purple and zapping from the center to the glass spheres as he ran his hands over them. The kids were in awe, but happy to start pawing the plasma balls on their own while he explained the principals going on inside.
Mike and Mr. Phillips were standing to the left of the crowd as Destin came up.
“Hello there,” said Destin. He ruffled Mike’s hair.
“Hi Dad.”
“Hello Mr. Kelly,” said Mr. Phillips.
“Hello Mac,” said Destin.
Mr. Phillips laughed. “Destin,” he said.
“Got your rabbit?”
“I feel like I’m doing something illegal or something.”
“I know. Doesn’t make any sense, does it?”
“Not a lot. Fire breathing rabbits.”
“I love science.”
Mike felt it in his backpack, the rabbit was twitching.
“Hey,” said Mike. It’s moving.
“Mine is too,” said Destin. “I can feel him in there,”
Destin’s box shook and fell to the floor. Destin grabbed for it and pulled it back up. Mr. Phillips helped him hold it up.
“This one looks just like Mike’s,” said Mr. Phillips.
“I thought he might.”
In the corners of the expo, the rabbits were finding their way in. One of them slipped in through the back door while a trucker was offloading something for a big banquet that was going to happen later that night. Another one made his way in through one of the back doors of the expo, next to the concession stand as someone was coming from taking a quick break. Several more came in through the front door. Whenever anyone saw them, they would stand as still as possible until the person’s eyes just passed over them, then they would move on. In this way, they crept through the expo, hiding behind displays, near stacks of books, and in plain sight until they were all congregated around the Mr. Science booth.
Their fur was deep, dark and red with the occasional darker patch. They hopped together in an open space on the trading floor. Destin’s box shook again, and the rabbit freed itself scurrying out to the gathering of rabbits as Mike’s did the same, tearing itself out of the bag, and out into the floor with the rest of them.
“Woah!” said Mike. “Come back here!”
Mike went to grab for his rabbit, but Destin held him back.
“Dad!”
“Hang on, son.”
“But…”
“This might be interesting, watch.”
The rabbits gathered into a circle and began to stamp their feet in unison. Everyone around them stopped talking. Mr. Science stopped talking. People started to back up, but they also started to crowd around which created this concentrated circle of people about twenty feet away from the rabbits.
There were about ten of them there, including Mike and Destin’s rabbits. All around them, people started to hoot and grunt, as more rabbits were jumping into the crowd, hitting people in the legs, jumping up on their shoulders, and then out into the circle with the rest of the rabbits, then the pattern changed. Instead of a steady beat, the rhythm changed up, and the rabbits began to thump out a soft pattering song.
“What are they doing?” said Mr. Phillips.
“That!” said Mike, as the first one belched a stream of fire into the air, and the rest of them began to follow suit.
The crowd parted as the rabbits began to breathe fire and reign down terror in the middle of the expo. Rabbits jumped and blew scorching tongues of flame across the exhibits. They tickled each other and punched and seemed to giggle. They jumped up and down and punched their little fists in the air, and gave each other hugs, and then ran around in circles jumping over each other and running this way and that, blowing fire on a plant here, setting fire to a stack of books there, and having a great time with it all before concentrating together to take the Mr. Science booth down together in a towering inferno of flame.
Mr. Science jumped out of the way, doing a kind of a crazy cartwheel off his own stage. Mike could hear him saying “Is anybody getting this on film?”
About five hands shot up around them, each a person experiencing their life through applications on their cell phone rather than with their own eyes. Some of them were dangerously closer to the rabbits than they realized. Some sensible folks were actually screaming and running for their lives.
Mr. Science cartwheeled away from another onslaught of bunny firepower saying “Send me your video links later through your favorite social media sites!”
“Bunnies!” he yelled as they finished torching his booth to the ground. The plasma balls tipped over and exploded when they hit the concrete floor. Then the rabbits split up.
There was a gasp from the crowd.
People split apart from each other as the rabbits started bounding in all directions. One jumped upon a man’s head, then catapulted itself onto another woman, jumping from head to head. Others scurried underfoot, knocking people over and tripping them up.
“Red bunnies!” said one lady.
“Fire breathing rabbits!” said another.
“Of doom!” said someone else.
The rabbits ran through the other exhibits, setting everything on fire left and right. People not so much, but things in general, lots of paper and posters and signs went down, and not for lack of trying, it didn’t spread that far. Most displays landed on concrete floors and went out. That’s not to say that the initial blaze itself wasn’t spectacular, which it was. Destin and Mike watched as they fanned out across the expo floor from one booth to another, jumping up to stand on people’s heads, chasing each other, and setting things ablaze.
“Where are they going?” said Mike.
“I don’t know,” said Destin, “but we’ve got to catch them!”
“Which way?”
“Anyway! Do you know which way yours went?”
“I don’t know, this way?”
Mike pointed over towards where the jumping houses were.
“Let’s go then! Lead on!”
