Hallo, it's me again, posting for 'DD' I hope to post a chapter a day if I can get online so as not to spam. Anyway...


*Chapter 26: Confrontation*

Officer Marco dragged himself to his feet and dusted himself off; next to him Sidera yelled something incomprehensible. The sheer deafening tone of the white noise around him made talking impossible; the world was a landscape of screeching noise and flickering flame. Out of the corner of his vision he saw a wall of wind, a pressure wave of sound blasting across the landscape. The barrier still stood, flaming higher and more fiercely than ever, but somehow, something had escaped, the sky overhead had turned a sickening blood red, punctuated with clouds the color of infected bruises. As he watched more and more of the horizon was consumed by the strange aspiration. Around him rabbits were fleeing in every direction, screaming silently against the noise, scattering like ants from a hemorrhaged anthill, the flimsy wrecks that had scattered the barrier were being flung into the air like children's playthings and the landscape buckled and twisted like a writhing snake. Yet somehow, something was missing; something about the situation told him he should have been burned to a cinder or similarly eliminated, yet here he was.

He looked over again at Sidera who was steadying herself against a stripped tree. She'd been nearly stripped herself; the day’s events and the recent blast had rendered her once neat uniform [The pride and joy of the little neat freak] little more than soaked tatters. Marco dimly realized that he had to resemble something similar. For a brief moment the two rabbits locked gazes; they weren't going to live through this, both of them knew, they were young, they were rabbits and they were doomed. Simultaneously both officers dove into a nearby ditch out of the wind and did something that cannot be printed here.

* * *

Will DeSchmitt looked on in horror; he'd stopped trying to pull the fuses from his computer minutes earlier and now simply stood in that numb daze that people adopt when their brain is convinced that whatever is happening can't possibly be real. His logic centers had shut down entirely and he merely stood, gently swaying as his comrades ran blindly around him, hammering on sparking keyboards, smashing on closed doors till their hands bled or simply kneeled down and prayed. Then something else caught his attention; the planet below him which had been shrouded in cloud, now sported a bright spot that pulsed and grew as he watched it; a burning red blister growing across the entire world. He sat down heavily, missing his chair but not noticing; it was official then, the apocalypse was here.

* * *

The group leant into the screeching wind that had arisen from nowhere to blast them from all directions. The landscape had changed as soon as they'd climbed the hill; in some strange way the sky had opened, and staring down upon them without seeing were row upon row upon row of... things.

No two were alike; in some strange way they packed the sky, like one of those crazy pictures by Escher, where if you looked hard enough, ever little gap was just another creature. Some had wings, some didn't, some had three eyes, or five, or none, there were claws and talons and limbs and tails, but in some strange way, all the creatures seemed to be waiting. Like an army headed out to march. thought Lori. And there, directly below them, just a few feet from where the group now stood were the generals.

Like the things above, they were hard to describe; one was a rabbit shaped pile of slime, glistening in an unnatural way, breathing noxious fumes into the air. Another was a tall blood soaked figure, teeth of bullets and draped with weaponry. A third flickered in and out of focus, first a rabbit, then a bird, a hint of turtle, then something else entirely. There was a winged and robed creature also, with only the fifth, a grey rabbit in a black cowl, looking anything near normal.

The red creature, vaguely rabbit-like in appearance, strode forth and looked at the intruders disdainfully. When it spoke it was in a voice like a machine gun, words spattered out in short sharp bursts, making war on the ears. "So; these are the vermin It sends against us?" It looked at Erst, who was standing, sword raised and glowing, with a strange look in his eyes. "Ah, and this must be your leader, no? We're a little too late aren't we?" It turned back to its comrades, held its arms up expansively and boomed. "Brethren! Now is the time to ride out! Let us finish this rabble, and take this world!"

The sky itself spoke back, a million voices raised in approval, squawking, screeching, howling and shouting back. Lori wet herself, Kira shrieked and Schrock cupped his hands over his ears. [Or what passed for them on a turtle.] "Great! Can you do that again? I can still hear a little out of this ear!"

.