Tyler looked like a corpse. He was in a far worse condition than Travis had been. Yet here he was trying hard to breathe, even though his mouth was thick with his own blood, and fractured ribs were puncturing his lung.

Peter felt a little sick, but he leant in close.

"Tyler?" he whispered. "Tyler, can you hear me?"

Tyler tried to open his eyes. One of them was too bruised and swollen and the eyelid was sticky with a black line of congealed blood, but they could see the eyeball moving beneath the skin. When he managed to open the other one, the eye looked misty and blind, but it swivelled up to regard Peter.

A gurgling sound came from Tyler's throat.

"Tyler," Peter gasped. "What happened?"

"Pe... ter..." Tyler rasped. It hurt him to say so much as a syllable. He winced and squeezed his remaining eye shut again.

"Try not to move," Peter suggested.

"Mop... sy..." Tyler gurgled.

"He said Mopsy!" Tom cried.

"Tyler, where is she?" Peter asked.

Tyler started to choke on the blood running down his throat. He spat some out, but it was a weak, pathetic splutter and just brought more blood into his mouth. With no energy to spit, he just let it drool from the corners of his mouth.

"Tyler, who did this?" Peter persisted.

That eye opened again and looked straight up at Peter. In that moment, he wasn't so sure Tyler couldn't see him, after all.

"Ra... ra..." Tyler began. He had gone all still, petrified, and went silent for a moment, as if reliving the horror of the attack.

"Tyler? What attacked you?"

"Was it a fox?" Mark hissed.

Then Tyler's eye flickered back into the present and looked at the three rabbits standing around him. He flinched. Peter thought he was fitting. But then he realised it was them Tyler was suddenly afraid of. Tyler tried to move.

"No, Tyler, don't move. What is it?"

"You... you... you..." Tyler groaned.

"We didn't attack you, Tyler," Peter insisted, but the little rabbit was trying to move away from them. Except his limbs were all twisted and broken and he was only hurting himself trying. He began to sob thick, wet tears.

Peter looked up at Mark, disgusted.

"Why does he think we attacked him?" he muttered.

Mark and Tom just shook their heads.

"Ra... ra... ra... bits..." Tyler managed.

"What? What are you saying?"

"Rabbits attacked him?" Mark said.

Peter glared at him, then down at Tyler.

"Rabbits, Tyler? Did rabbits attack you?"

Tyler gurgled and tried to nod.

"What about Mopsy?" Peter cried.

"Mop... sy..." went Tyler.

"Yes. Where is she? Tyler?"

But Tyler just spluttered and gasped like he was being strangled. He flailed his floppy broken forelegs and kicked out with his unbroken hind leg. Then that eye shut once more and Tyler exhaled noisily.

"Tyler!" Peter bellowed.

"We're losing him," muttered Mark.

Tyler's head drooped to one side as weariness overcame him. Peter nudged him sharply in the side. It should have hurt him, but Tyler barely registered the pain. He opened that eye briefly to check it was still Peter.

"Pe... ter..." he murmured, not much strength left in his voice.

"Please, tell me, where's Mopsy? Where'd she go?" Peter begged desperately.

"She... ran..." Tyler slurred slowly.

"Ran? Where?" Peter demanded.

"Don't... know..." Tyler closed his eye again.

"Did they get her too?" asked Mark.

"Don't... know..." Tyler was starting to look quite peaceful.

Peter nudged him again, but he just let out a groan of acknowledgement.

"Tyler, quickly, tell us how to get to Roadkill Turnpike."

"Am... die... ing?" said Tyler.

"No," Peter quickly lied. "You just need a rest."

"Yes," Tyler agreed. "Sleep... now..."

"No, not yet," Peter said shortly. "Which way is it to Roadkill Turnpike?"

Suddenly Tyler went rigid with pain. He let out a pitiful agonising cry that was half wince, half gurgle, and originated in the very depths of his tortured body. Then he lifted his head up, trembling, to stare Peter right in the face with that one eye.

"The... island..." he rasped. "The... island!"

And then his head fell back into the bloodied weeds and he exhaled for the last time. That eye of his remained open, just lifeless, until Peter went round and solemnly nuzzled it shut again with his nose. He bowed his head for a moment, contemplating how he would break this news to Damien and Eleanor.

"What was all that about an island?" wondered Tom.

Peter sighed tiredly. "Just the ramblings of a rabbit in his death throes..." he said, passing Tom and returning to the side of the road.

"Maybe he was answering your question, Pete," Mark suggested.

"I hardly think we're going to find Roadkill Turnpike on an island, do you, Mark?" Peter retorted crabbily over his shoulder. He immediately regretted it, but the other two didn't take it to heart. They followed him to the curb.

"She could still be alive, Pete," Mark said softly.

"Yeah," Peter said with a snort. He didn't turn round.

"You heard what Tyler said. He said she escaped."

"No, he said she ran," Peter wearily corrected him.

"Doesn't mean they caught her, though," Mark muttered.

"D'you think rabbits really attacked them?" Tom asked nervously.

Mark shuddered. "Maybe they trespassed onto their territory."

"It's not impossible," Peter muttered.

"Okay, so what do we do now?" said Tom.

"We wait here. Until Angus' help arrives, we don't have any choice."

"But... but what if those rabbits come back?"

"Then we'll have to fight them, won't we?"

Tom didn't look too enamoured with that idea.

Mark looked around cautiously. "You know, Pete, what I said before still stands. This was only a recent attack. It couldn't have happened long before we arrived. Tyler just wouldn't have lasted long enough..."

Tom gulped. "You mean the attackers could still be nearby?!"

"Maybe, but that's not what I was getting at," said Mark.

Peter turned and looked at him cautiously.

"And just what were you getting at?" he asked.

"Well, all I'm suggesting is, maybe Mopsy's not too far away," he began. It wasn't often he was called upon to be the voice of rationality. "If we've been here three hours, and Tyler can't have been attacked much more than an hour before that, then for all intents and purposes, we've caught them up."

His logic was beginning to dawn on Peter, whose eyes kept flitting around.

"They had more than a day on us when we set out," Mark continued, more confidently. "And now we've narrowed that to a few hours."

"For the time being, yes," Peter said. "But Mopsy knows where she's going and we're still stuck here until help arrives. Every minute we don't move she's getting further and further away again..."

"Unless she's been hiding since the attack."

Peter raised his eyebrows. "Hiding?" he said, unconvinced.

"Yes," Mark replied. "You only needed to look at the wounds on that poor kid to see the rabbits who did this to him were bigger and probably faster than he was. Now, I don't know about you, and I don't know about Mopsy, but if I was outnumbered and outran, but had a chance to escape, I'd use it to find a good hidey-hole and lay low for a bit." He paused. "What's that saying?"

"You can run but you can't hide?" suggested Peter.

"Oh, yeah, that one," said Mark sheepishly. "Well, it's wrong."

"I don't know. If she's been hiding until it's safe, where is she now?"

"Perhaps it isn't safe yet!" Tom hissed. "Perhaps we're surrounded!"

"Now look what you've done," Peter mouthed at Mark as Tom pricked his ears up and started leaping around and jerking his head at every little noise. "I'd like to believe she wouldn't just leave Tyler to die either, but I can just see her running and running and not looking back. And I don't blame her. We've been here three hours now. I think if she was still in the vicinity, she would have come out."

Mark shrugged defensively. "All I'm saying is, maybe, instead of just sitting here waiting for help, we should spend some of the time looking around. One can rest, one can keep watch, and one can search."

"Fine. You search. I'll rest."

Mark was puzzled by his animosity. "Anybody would think you don't want to find her nearby," he grumbled.

"That's right! I don't!" Peter snapped, baring his teeth. "Because if we find her nearby it's gonna be in the same fucking state as that poor bastard in there!" He gestured the bushes where they'd left Tyler's body.

"We don't know that," Mark muttered.

"If she's dead," Peter declared, "I'd rather just get to Roadkill Turnpike, or wherever the hell we're going, and find out she never arrived, okay? I could deal with that. I just don't want to see her in the same condition as Tyler."

Mark nodded. "I'm sorry," he said awkwardly.

"Tom, you're on watch. I'm going back to rest."

"Okay," said Tom, who was always more comfortable adhering to the established pecking order anyway. Peter brushed past him as he returned to the undergrowth, just a little further away from Tyler's corpse than before.

"I don't care what he says," Mark said bitterly, quiet enough so that Peter wouldn't hear him. "I'm going to looking for Mopsy."

"Mark," Tom began, but Mark didn't hang around long enough for him to just repeat what Peter had just told him.

Mark's life had been one long rebellion from birth to the present, and there was a reason for that. He just never believed anything anyone ever told him. He never took rabbits at face value. He always suspected them of lying. And if not consciously lying, then unwittingly believing their own deception. That was the most insidious kind of untruth, the fallacy that even the purveyor has faith in.

Mark went along the roadside, further than they had gone as a group, following the curb as it turned the corner. And then he slowed down. At first what he thought he saw was the road splitting up yet again. But as he went down the A414, he saw that same road he thought had split up reappear again and rejoin the A12, almost in a circle. It was as if those funny humans, when building their roads, had suddenly missed the target and lopped off the opposite headland - like the spot where he had sat all through his watch, just on the other side of the road. That left it slap-bang in the middle of the junction, surrounded by the tarmac sea.

It was like... like an island!

Mark froze. Of course, what he was staring at was the roundabout at the heart of the junction, but this isn't what it looked like to him. None of the rabbits had ever seen running water, let alone the sea, let alone an island in the middle of the sea, but oft-dismissed folklore taught them that their warren was in the middle of one such island, in the middle of some grand ocean.

Mark was not often one to believe in myths and legends, but here he was on the way to Roadkill Turnpike, and here was an island en route. He immediately started running. Tom was on watch, squatting in the grass by the edge of the road and looking very bored with it all. Mark bounded right up to him.

"There's an island! I've found the island!"

"W-what?" said Tom. "What island?"

"The island! Like Tyler said! I've found it!"

"You've found it?! Nearby?!"

"Yes! It's just round the corner!"

"Is it now?" said a voice. Peter emerged from the undergrowth. He hadn't been able to get to sleep and had heard every word.

"Pete, look, I was only snooping around," Mark said defensively. "But you have to come and look for yourself. There's this island in the middle of the road. It must be what Tyler was talking about. It must be!"

Peter frowned. "Why do I have to see it?" he said.

"Because think about what this means," Mark cried. He couldn't believe Peter wasn't thinking laterally. Perhaps the old boy needed more sleep, he thought. "If it's round the corner and Tyler knew about it, then that must be the way they were going when they were attacked. They must have chased him and he got back here before they caught up with him. Think about it, Peter!"

"So they did turn here, after all!" Tom said eagerly.

"Yes!" Mark cried. "Peter, can't you see that?"

Peter nodded. "Actually, yes," he said, with a wry smile creeping across his lips, the first glimmer of positive emotion they'd seen in his face ever since they'd left the warren for the last time. "I think we better check your island out..."

Mark squeaked happily - something he was always embarrassed to do, but it's a reflex action for many rabbits - and spun round. He charged back round the corner and into the mouth of the A414. Peter and Tom bounded after him.

They got about thirty feet before two huge rabbits loomed out of the bushes in front of them and a third stepped out behind.

"Ambush!" cried Peter.

NOTES:
The shortest chapter so far (2222 words, rather suitably for chapter 22), being the only one that came in under the 2500 template I set with the very first chapter. I've always aimed for 2000 word chapters on other projects, but 2500 became the standard for this story, and most reached 3000. This chapter was going to entail all of the post-ambush shenanigans, but that's quite a hefty plot development, and instead of being the shortest chapter, their inclusion would have made this the longest.

Still, only another chapter and a half to go until they finally reach Roadkill Turnpike. And about time too. Even I thought I'd get there about 25,000 words ago. This chapter marks two milestones. Not only the 60,000 word mark, but also the 100 page mark. In fact, it's only a few hundred words short of that other milestone: being the longest single project I've ever written.