The A12 proved to be longer than Peter had ever imagined. It felt faintly queer when Peter turned round on the second morning and saw the old oak tree on the horizon. He'd occasionally sat by the roadside and looked down the motorway to the point where the tarmac tapered into the distance. He figured he was at that point now, as his old warren was blending into the sky back the way they'd come.

As evening descended later that day, and the silhouette of the old oak tree vanished into the approaching night, Peter felt the bond he had with both warrens weaken. He felt sick to his stomach and a little dizzy. Mark and Tom felt it too, so they all agreed to rest awhile. Even though the two brothers had been estranged from their home for a year, they'd never actually been too far away from it. On clear nights all they had to do was stand on the curb long enough and they would see rabbits further up the road. It didn't matter that they didn't know who they were. They could pretend it was Angus or Benjamin Bunny and they felt safe.

But this felt different. When night fell and they couldn't even see the upper branches of the oak tree with their superior rabbit night-vision, they suddenly felt lost and without a sense of direction. It had always been a beacon, something to guide them, something to follow home. After a brief rest - in which none of them spoke, in case somebody else suggested they go back - they continued their journey into the night. By the time the sun came up again and they found an abandoned burrow to rest in during the day, they couldn't even see the tree on the horizon.

It was during the third night that Peter awoke thinking dawn had broken. The night sky had suddenly lit up like a bright sunny day and the warmth that spread over him reminded him of summertime. He opened his eyes, but by that time the brightness was already waning and Peter could see quite clearly that it was still night. A wall of dust and detritus, whipped up from the gutters by a hot, powerful gust of wind temporarily blinded him. It woke Mark and Tom up sharply. Peter rubbed the grit out of his eyes with the backs of his paws. None of them spoke.

Another mushroom had sprouted, the first for days. It was the largest yet, Peter thought, and without a rabbit hole to run down, he felt afraid of them for the first time. It looked less solid this time. It looked puffy and billowy. All of a sudden that orange didn't look like the pretty orange he'd admired in marigolds growing by the hedgerow, but the searing orange of flames, like those that had licked at the wheels of the crashing ambulance. This mushroom didn't make him feel hungry.

In fact, it didn't really look like a mushroom anymore. The longer he sat and watched, the more it lost cohesive shape. As it began to dissipate and fade, it looked to Peter more like the old oak tree. And that in turn reminded him of something he'd noticed from the top of the car wreck Mark, Tom and Travis had taken him up onto. The oak tree had looked pretty small in the distance from up there, but as he got closer to home on the way back, it had got larger. So perhaps, likewise, this mushroom wasn't actually larger, it was just nearer.

Peter shuddered. Most of the mushrooms had sprouted to the north, and the humans had been running away from them. But this one had sprouted in the south, where all the humans had been running to. It was also - roughly - the direction in which Peter and his two brothers-in-law were heading. He had a sudden premonition that these mushrooms were terrible human weapons being used to squash the rabbits of Roadkill Turnpike, but then he remembered he didn't believe any of those stories.

Throughout the fourth day and the following night the A12 was congested once again. As the rabbits walked along the roadside they watched with bemusement as two humans had a fight in the middle of the road, cheered on by the beeps and parps of nearby cars. Then everybody got back in their cars again and sat there for a few hours until the traffic cleared. After that, they saw no more humans. After a few more hours, that horrible smell of burning returned in their place.

At one point on the fifth day, it got too warm to keep going so Peter, Mark and Tom stopped to rest in the shadows. The sun appeared just before noon from behind some darkening storm clouds. It quickly disappeared, but as the rabbits started moving again, it began to rain. Tom opened his parched mouth to let some of the rainwater in, but promptly spat it out again, saying it tasted funny. Peter and Mark thought he was just acting peculiar, but none of them stopped to lap at the puddles that were forming by the roadside after that.

In the late afternoon of the sixth day, the three of them stopped again for their daily nap, even though Peter didn't feel like sleeping. With every day that had passed since their departure he knew they were getting closer to Roadkill Turnpike and every day he grew increasingly more excited that it was just beyond the next bush, past that tree on the horizon, just another day's walk away. And when they didn't find it, the anticipation became even harder to bear.

Leaving Mark and Tom to doze beneath a bush, Peter returned to the roadside and looked back the way they'd come. For the first time he noticed they had been going around in a slight curve for the last day or so. He wondered why he hadn't realised. He thought he'd been walking in a straight line all along. This wasn't a particularly disconcerting discovery. In fact, it meant the A12 was taking them away from the path of the killer mushrooms. In the absence of the old oak tree, his memory of where the mushroom had sprouted now served as a marker.

It was on the seventh day that disaster struck.

"Um, how are we going to know when we reach Roadkill Turnpike?"

It was Mark who said it, but they had all been thinking it to themselves as they walked in silent file down the A12. Mark was leading at this point, though there wasn't much leading that could be done. He was just following the road.

"I've been thinking that too," Peter announced.

"Me too," Tom muttered grimly.

"I mean," Mark said, slowing down, in case he might pass Roadkill Turnpike and miss it at this pace. "If we're not looking for some fiery pit of death and destruction like my father thinks we are, how will we know when we get there?"

"Presumably there will be lots of rabbits there," said Peter.

"Yeah, but we could have passed a warren full of hundreds of rabbits during the day and not even known they were there."

"We have been walking a lot during the day, Pete," Tom said.

Peter shook off their concerns. "And we've got to assume Mopsy's making the same kind of progress we are," he said. "This isn't about finding Roadkill Turnpike, it's about matching Mopsy's movements as closely as possible. That way, wherever she ends up, we'll be able to find her there."

"Would she be moving around on her own during the day, though?"

"If she's worked up enough, then yes, Tom," Peter began. "And she's not alone, is she? At least, I hope not. Er, I think. If Tyler's all she's got for company, she might have been better off alone, actually." He began to ruminate.

"Why?" said Mark. "What's he like?"

"Think Benjamin Bunny, but with wilder ideas."

"Wilder ideas?" Mark and Tom cried together.

"Yes," said Peter distantly.

Whenever they started talking to each other - which admittedly wasn't that often anymore - the pace always started to pick up. It was as if when left alone to their thoughts they were just walking down a road, but when they started talking about their goal and destination, it was a reminder of their mission.

So they started walking in silence again, just a little quicker. The road ahead started to curve sharply. Peter noticed this time because he wasn't able to consciously walk in a straight line. He glanced behind him as they walked, and found he soon wasn't able to see much of the A12 back the way he'd come. Not looking the way he was going, he suddenly walked right into the back of Mark and Tom.

"Oomph!" he cried.

Mark and Tom had stopped abruptly. When Peter had picked himself back up he saw why. They were standing on the curb. The roadside didn't so much curve here, but turn a corner. But this wasn't the end of the A12. It was a junction. The junction between the A12 and the A414. The first junction he'd ever seen.

"Oh, shit," said Peter. The word rolled perfectly off his tongue.

"What the hell is this?" Mark hissed.

"The road splits!" Tom wailed.

"Father never said anything about this!"

"Oh, wait," Peter groaned. "Yes. Yes, he did. He was trying to tell us something. Just before Nicholas and the others appeared. Don't you remember? You interrupted him, Mark." He shook his head.

"This isn't my fault!" Mark cried.

"No, it's not," Peter said dejectedly.

"But why did he let us go, then?" Tom squealed. "Why did he let us go if he knew we could never find it without his help?"

"I bet he didn't even know himself..." Mark muttered.

"Are we lost? Are we lost, Pete?!"

Peter scowled. "Calm down," he warned. "You both know he didn't have any choice. Nicholas and the others were almost on top of us and if we'd stayed any longer we would have been caught and executed."

The two brothers nodded.

"Well, then." Peter ruffled his fur. "If he knew we couldn't find Roadkill Turnpike by ourselves, but also knew he couldn't tell us, then what can that mean?"

"It means we're fucked," Mark spat.

"No," Peter said shortly. "It means he's going to find another way to help us."

"Huh?" Mark and Tom said together.

"I know Angus. He'll find a way."

Mark sighed. "We've been walking how many days? Five? Six? Seven? Or is this the eighth day already? I don't know. I've lost count. If he's sending help, then where is it? Hmm, Pete?" He paused. "Face it, we're on our own."

"I'm not so sure," said Peter quietly. "Think about it. We've been making a pretty swift pace. We've been sleeping irregular hours and spending more time awake and more time walking than we normally would. It would take a rabbit sleeping even less and walking even more to catch us up already, wouldn't it?"

"Hmm," went Mark, unconvinced.

"So what are you saying, Pete?" Tom asked. "That there might well be somebody coming to help us? That we just have to wait?"

"That's exactly what I'm saying," Peter said.

"But father couldn't come, nor Travis..."

"No," Peter muttered. "So somebody else."

"Who?" Mark grunted. "Who would give up living in the warren, probably for good, to risk life and limb coming looking for us?"

Peter shrugged him off irritably. "I don't know," he snapped. "Perhaps one of those who came to the secret meetings but kept quiet before. Maybe Angus can appeal to the part of them that's feeling guilty right now, I don't know."

"Wouldn't count on it..."

"And what if they don't?" Tom chimed back in. "What if nobody comes? I mean, how long do we wait? A few days? Another week? And then what? Do we take pot luck and just go one way or the other? Or split up?"

"We're not splitting up."

"No," Peter agreed. "That'd be pointless." He hesitated. He didn't really have any answers to Tom's questions. "We'll just wait here as long as it takes. Someone will come. Angus wouldn't just abandon us."

"Yeah?" Tom wasn't so sure.

"Yeah," Peter replied confidently. What he was confident about was that Angus wouldn't abandon them, that he would send help. What he wasn't so confident about was that the help would ever reach them. But he didn't tell them that.

Tom sighed. "So what do we do now, then?"

"We rest," Peter announced. He looked about. There weren't hedgerows around the junction, just tangled shrubs and undergrowth around the bases of a few trees. That would have to do. "Take turns on watch."

"I'll go first," Mark said quickly.

"And I'll go second," Tom added.

"Thanks," said Peter. They both knew he had hardly slept either of the times they'd stopped the day before. "Wake me up in six hours."

They both nodded, then Peter rustled into the shrubbery and found a nice spot to sleep between the roots of a tree. His limbs had been put through so much they felt like they were glowing. He just concentrated on that pleasant relaxing warmth that coursed through his muscles and by the time Tom followed him into the undergrowth, Peter was already fast asleep and snoring.

Mark's watch was uneventful. He watched the sunset from the curb and listened to the roar of blood in his ears that he only ever heard when surrounded by silence. It was not a peaceful silence. It was a cold, empty silence and for a while Mark entertained the thought that he had mysteriously gone deaf. He even coughed gently to himself to make sure he wasn't.

In the final hour of his watch, as darkness fell, he became restless. He'd been staring so hard in one direction for two hours his brain had started to imagine rabbits were coming down the road to meet them. At one point he swore he saw Alexander trundling toward them, but when he squeezed his eyes shut and shook the weariness out of his head the former patriarch was gone again.

He decided to wake Tom up early. His younger brother would never know the difference. It wasn't as if rabbits had timepieces. Three hours could just as easily have meant two-and-a-half hours. Mark pushed into the undergrowth and nuzzled Tom awake. He'd slept soundly the whole time.

"What? Already?" he said thickly.

"Yes, it's your turn. Get up."

"Okay, okay," Tom groaned, picking himself up and stretching his legs. He yawned, even after such a good nap. "Just give me a minute in the bushes first, all right?" And he slipped even further into the undergrowth.

Mark rolled his eyes and returned to his watch for another minute. He didn't imagine that any rabbit passing by could miss them. He had spent the entire watch on the exposed corner that jutted out like a headland into the tarmac sea. This was an analogy that obviously never occurred to Mark, though the feelings of vulnerability he had felt for much of that time on watch were comparable.

Suddenly, Tom bounded back out of the bushes.

"Quick!" he cried. "Quick! I've found a rabbit! I've found a rabbit!"

Mark spun around in shock. Peter burst out of the undergrowth.

"What? What did you say? A rabbit? Where?"

"It's dead!" Tom wailed. "It's dead!"

"Where?" Peter and Mark hollered.

Tom led them back into the bushes. Sure enough, there was a small grey rabbit in a dark clearing beneath a spruce. It was lying face down on a bed of flattened weeds stained with its own blood. The blood was still wet. Mark stepped in it.

"This is a recent kill," he hissed.

"It's Mopsy!" Tom sobbed. "It's Mopsy!"

"Turn it over," Peter murmured.

Tom couldn't. Mark had to do it himself.

"NO!" Peter gasped. "Oh, no!"

"It's Mopsy!" Tom wailed.

But it wasn't. Mark gulped.

"Who is it?" he mumbled.

"It's Tyler..." said Peter.

And then Tyler spluttered.

NOTES:
This chapter is notable for a few things. I knew I had to clearly separate the next part of the story from the last, so the first 1000 words of this chapter end up covering a larger timescale than the last 57,000 words. It's the first time in this story I've covered events in such a detached, narrative style, but I think it's necessary to establish just how far away Roadkill Turnpike is.

I made some attempts at grounding this chapter in a more real version of Essex. First of all, the nuclear explosion in this chapter goes off to the south, whilst all the previous ones went off to the north. That's a little unlikely, seeing as Colchester is at the north end of the A12 and London is at the south. Grotty cesspit Colchester may be, but I don't think it would be a target for nuclear attack ahead of London. The A414 is also a real road, close to Chelmsford, and is actually the road that leads to Hylands Park, where V2003 was held, so I know the area now.