Peter had been born in the warren on the eastern side of the road and visited his home every year on his birthday to bring news of the warren on the western side of the road. He had been living there since before his first birthday, having discovered the road as a precocious six-month-old bunny at 3am one morning. Of course, there was no traffic on the road then so he just ambled across thinking that it was some bizarre New World he had discovered beyond the bushes. His first encounter with the aliens from across the A12 had stretched out until he realised, on his first birthday, that he'd actually spent more of his life living amongst these strangers than he had living in his own warren.

So at 5pm one day he tried to return across the tarmac, but there was gridlock. Cars, lorries, trucks and vans were crawling along the road, not fast enough to get anywhere soon, but quick enough to outrun him. It was a young lass named Beatrice who eventually persuaded him to give up trying, but only by promising he could try again that night - and she would come with him. By the time they reached his own warren, everyone there was excited to see him, and readily assumed Beatrice was his wife. By the time he returned to his new home on the other side of the motorway, Beatrice had become his mate and Flopsy was born a few months later.

"Where have all these people come from, pa?" asked Mopsy. Mopsy was Peter's second eldest, and had been born a few months after Flopsy. It was her job to look after the youngest, Cottontail, who nuzzled her side.

"I don't know," said Peter, tasting the air with his twitching nose. There was a funny smell coming from one direction. It didn't surprise Peter that all the traffic was coming down the carriageway nearest them, getting away from the acrid pong. There wasn't a single car coming down the far carriageway. As soon as they got to the central reservation, they'd be safe.

"Maybe we should go back to the warren and wait," Beatrice suggested. "Maybe try again in another hour or so. Peter?"

"No, we'll wait here," he decided. "The traffic could clear any minute."

He'd never seen a traffic jam at 2am before. There was something distinctly unsettling about it. He wondered if that large orange mushroom that had sprouted in the sky earlier that day was anything to do with it. All the humans seemed to be driving away from it, after all.

Suddenly, Peter was hungry. It was all those thoughts of mushrooms. He felt like one of Beatrice's toadstool surprises - a nice ripe toadstool served on a bed of fresh dew-dripping grass. His mouth watered at the thought of it and he grazed for a while on the grass beneath his feet to sate his hunger, but it just wasn't the same.

"Are we nearly there yet?" whined Flopsy.

"I'm tired," Cottontail squeaked.

"Shut up," said Peter. "We all are."

"The kids need their sleep," Beatrice muttered.

"We all do," Peter replied. "But we will sleep in our own burrow tonight."

So they waited, Peter beside the curb, his eyes on the unending snake of human vehicles and Beatrice beside him, with the kids playing a half-hearted game of chase behind them.

Beatrice tried to talk to Peter, but he was too busy counting in his head. He was counting how many seconds it took for one car to pass him. He started counting when the front fender passed before his nose, and stopped counting when the exhaust pipe choked on past. The first one took 20 seconds. That wasn't a long time, by rabbit standards, but by human standards, this was a slow crawl.

Peter counted a second car, identical in make and model to the first. This one took almost 30 seconds from fender to exhaust. Peter stood up on his haunches proudly and turned to Beatrice to announce his feat of deduction.

"The cars are slowing down."

"Oh, good," she said.

"Are we going now?" asked Flopsy.

"Nearly," said Peter. "Are you kids ready to run?"

Mopsy and Cottontail stopped their game and joined Flopsy beside their parents. The five rabbits stood at the side of the road, watching the traffic gradually slow to rabbit speed and then finally stop.

As he led his family beneath the first stationary car, Peter wondered if the endless stream of cars had simply reached the end of the road - wherever that was - and would be stuck where they now were in perpetuity. He had never been beyond the two warrens, so there being anything more at either end of A12 was beyond his conception. He did wonder from time to time whether there were rabbits there.

It took about three seconds.

No, not crossing the road. That took several minutes.

The A12 had four carriageways, two on each side of the central reservation, both going in the same direction. Peter had crossed the first carriageway, beneath the first car. Beatrice and the kids followed closely behind. There was a gap between the two carriageways, an open space and a clear run. Peter ran it.

Beatrice and Flopsy followed.

In the first of those three seconds, there was nothing there. In the third of those three seconds, there was nothing there. In the second of those three seconds, a motorcyclist zipped along the gap between those two carriageways so quickly Peter only saw a blur. And somewhere in the midst of that blur he'd seen Beatrice and Flopsy vanish completely.

"Mamma!" screamed Cottontail.

"Nooo!" went Peter.

Mopsy had also begun to panic. She fled back beneath the first car.

"No, Mopsy, no! This way!"

Mopsy was all of a daze and heard nothing.

"Mopsy! Mopsy! Quickly!"

Then the traffic began to move again. Peter hopped backwards, out from under the wheel of a car, but beneath the vehicle itself. He cowered with fear, pressing himself against the tarmac as this new metal sky bore down on him, rumbling with mechanised thunder and raining black drops onto his brown coat. He buried his face into his paws as the choking mist from the exhaust smothered him.

When he could breathe again, he looked up. He couldn't see Mopsy anymore, but Cottontail had frozen right in the spot between the cars where his mother and brother had been killed.

"Cottontail, when I say run, run!" Peter screamed.

Cottontail was too shocked even to tremble, but Peter could tell he was still alive. Cottontail was looking him straight in the eyes, and he saw fear. The dead had no reason to fear. Cottontail was still very much alive.

Peter watched the cars. They weren't slowing down again. Whatever was at the far end of the A12 had decided to let them in after all. He counted the seconds between the wheels. The wheels were what mattered now. The cars were almost bumper to bumper by this time, so the longest window for Cottontail's escape was between the front and back wheels of any one car. Peter waited. And waited. Cars passed over him. He blinked through the fumes and ignored the oil, looking down between the cars. There was a long car coming up soon. He took a deep breath.

"Get ready, Cottontail," he said.

Cottontail blinked. He'd heard.

The car slowly reached Peter. As soon as its fender passed overhead he called out to Cottontail. "Run, Cottontail, run, now!" He knew Cottontail would be running straight toward the front wheel, but by the time he actually reached it, he would be running straight through the gap between the two wheels.

Cottontail ran. When rabbits run, they hop forward, front legs together, then back legs together. How fast they run depends on how long their body is. Cottontail was only a baby. If he'd stretched any further he would have fallen on his belly. He reached Peter. Peter went to nuzzle him. He needed to nuzzle him.

But Cottontail kept running.

"No, Cottontail, not yet!" Peter screamed.

Cottontail reached the other side of the car just as the back wheel rolled across his path. Peter squeaked. He didn't know what other noise to make. But when the car passed and Peter saw between the back wheel of this one and the front wheel of the next, he saw Cottontail standing on the central reservation, waiting for his father.

"Good boy," Peter breathed.

But there was still Mopsy. Peter looked back. The fumes were beginning to make him feel faint. Car exhaust sinks to the ground. Many exhaust pipes, he noticed, aimed their noxious gases at his level.

Mopsy had already vanished. Peter couldn't see her anywhere. He didn't know what had hit her. His attention on Cottontail, he hadn't seen or heard anything. For a while he hoped she was just hidden by the wheels of a car. But after three cars had passed, there was no sign of her. Part of him wished he had seen it. At least then he'd know for sure. Now he would be forever wondering if she'd felt any pain. He knew Beatrice and Flopsy hadn't. They didn't have time to.

He had to think about Cottontail now. There was just him and his youngest son left and that meant more to him than mourning the rest of his family. But Cottontail was safe. He was the one waiting for his father to reach him now.

"Don't move, Cottontail," Peter said hoarsely. "Papa's coming."

Peter edged closer and closer to the edge of the car. There was another long one coming up rapidly. Peter waited beneath the cars. The oil and the smoke could have no further effect on him now. Then it was his time to run. He bolted through the wheels and didn't stop until he reached Cottontail.

He nuzzled his son in the back. Cottontail immediately curled into a ball in the long grass and began to shake uncontrollably.

"It's okay," Peter whispered. "You've been very brave."

He tried to smother Cottontail with his warmth as he looked over the two carriageways still ahead. He didn't look back again. There was still no traffic on this side of the central reservation. He and Cottontail were as good as home already.

"We're nearly there," he told Cottontail soothingly.

"They're dead," Cottontail squeaked.

"I can't lie to you, Cottontail..."

Cottontail began to cry, his sobs muffled by his being curled up into that ball. Peter stopped nuzzling him and started pushing him with his nose. "There's just one more road to cross," he said.

Slowly Cottontail unfurled. He looked up at his father, his face all wet with tears, his mouth turned down at the edges, and he nodded. Peter tried to smile, but rabbits can't smile as easily as they can look unhappy.

"Come on," he said, then the pair of them crept through the grass of the central reservation and started across the next carriageway.

Peter thought he understood the rules of the road. He didn't understand why roads existed, where they came from, and why humans couldn't just hop along like rabbits, but he had recognised certain patterns. Like cars that were going one way always went down one side of the road, and those going the other way always went down the other. That suggested to him that people only had two places to go. He wondered what would happen if one of them suddenly decided they didn't want to go north or south, but wanted to go east or west like the rabbits.

However, his understanding of the rules of the road was very much tied up with his understanding of human behaviour. Like how they never went out at night. That rule had been singularly quashed tonight, but as he crossed the last carriageway ahead of Cottontail he assumed the others were still intact. Instead, he shouldn't just have been looking down the carriageway the direction the traffic usually came.

Somewhere down the road, further along it than Peter had ever been, somebody else - somebody human - had made Peter's own observations about how the other two carriageways were completely empty. The traffic had been at gridlock for a few minutes at that point. Those two empty carriageways were a waste of good road, they'd thought, so they'd backed up as far as the other cars would let them and taken the central reservation at 60mph.

The first Peter knew of it was the terrible screech of the car wheels as the driver spotted Cottontail and tried to stop. Peter didn't think the screech was a sign of someone desperate not to kill his son. He saw it as a war cry of a bloodthirsty human being going in for the kill. He could only stand and watch as the slowing wheel caught Cottontail in mid hop.

"Noo!" he screamed.

Cottontail didn't make a sound. The car wheel had only just caught him. Another inch further and he wouldn't so much as lost his tail. But instead the car crushed the back half of him instantly. Cottontail opened his mouth as if to make a noise. Peter watched his son's eyes roll back into his head and his neck bulge. When he thought about it again later, he wondered if Cottontail's guts had been forced into his chest and his heart forced into his throat, suffocating him.

"Noo!" he screamed again.

Then the car stopped. A couple of other cars coming up behind swerved to avoid it and forced Peter to retreat to the safety of the curb. From there he watched the culprit climbed out from behind the wheel, go over to Cottontail, prod him with his foot, and then kick him into the gutter.

"Motherfucker!" Peter screamed at him.

The driver got back into his car and sped away.

"Motherfuckers!" screamed Peter in general.

But the other cars weren't going anywhere.

NOTES:
Okay, I admit it, I only threw "comedy" into my genre definition because nobody would have been able to take it seriously. As long as they were expecting a comedy, they'd buy talking animals without questioning it. There are precious few laughs in this chapter. Perhaps Peter's profane reaction is comical, taking a bit of the sting out of the tale, but maybe that's just a juxtaposition.