The flames died right down and the wreck stopped billowing smoke. The manic Benjamin Bunny ran around the corpse until he got giddy, then he tripped over himself and giggled as his head swam. Peter walked around the body slowly. He wanted to pull that plastic yellow hood off and see if there really was a man inside.

The other rabbits were more interested in the ambulance itself. To many of them, this was the real enemy. They'd never seen a man just walk along and trample over a rabbit. Humans always used their machines for that. Except the rabbits didn't really see them as machines, either. They saw them as living things, because they moved and made nasty noises. They were the humans' slaves. Mankind made these powerful creatures do their bidding. But now both master and slave were lying dead in the field. And rabbits were responsible.

Peter went up to the body and gave it a nudge. Beneath the yellow plastic human flesh was as tough as bone, Peter thought. He wanted a closer look. He went up to the head and tried to take the hood in his teeth. The shiny yellow plastic just slipped through his light grip. So he bit harder the next time. He pulled the hood so far, but then the plastic slipped through his teeth once again and the hood sprang back. Peter frowned. Even in death mankind was having the last laugh.

Nearby Benjamin Bunny was still lying on his back with his feet in the air. He sighed wearily as he came down from his fit of dizzy giggles. Then he got up, with the intention of doing it all again, only to find Peter gnawing at the guy's head.

"Er, Pete, what are you doing?" he asked.

"Come and help me get this off," Peter said. He was trying again and spoke to Benjamin with his teeth clenched on the hood. It was moving. Every time he pulled on it, the hood came a little further off. If he only had some help...

Benjamin went over and copied everything Peter did. Side by side the rabbits had a more effective grip on the hood. It slipped through their teeth once more, but Peter could already feel it yielding to their efforts. Putting all their strength into one final attempt, the hood suddenly popped right off and Peter and Benjamin fell backwards on their tails. Benjamin giggled again, then he ran off with the hood to go and play with it. On the other side of the tree, he climbed into the hood.

Peter picked himself up slowly. He felt his heart gallop in his chest as he walked around the body looking at different angles of the man's face. The man had mousy straight hair, sticky with dark blood seeping from a deep split across his crown. His skin was paler than pink, and dusty in texture. Peter stood on his hind legs to peer over the man's high cheekbones at his nose. It had little pockmarks all over it. His lips were dry, and there was a trickle of blood running down his chin.

On the other side of the ambulance, Mark was in scavenger mindset again. In his mind, the ambulance had to be full of weird and wonderful things he couldn't identify that were therefore priceless. All he had to do was find a way in. Those two doors at the back seemed his best option, but the handles that opened them were too high above his head. He stood back and tried to picture how many rabbits it would take to reach them, each one standing on the back of the one below.

Going up to the rear bumper, Mark found he could reach the bottom of the doors with his forepaws if he stretched to his full height with his back legs. And then just as he was looking up, trying to project himself above his head so that he could count how many Marks it would take to reach the handles, he heard a scrape. He wasn't sure he heard it the first time, so he ignored it, but then he heard it again. He stopped to listen.

It came a third time, perhaps even closer. There were rabbits all around the crashed ambulance. It could have been any one of them. But it just sounded closer than that, perhaps on top of the ambulance, or beneath it. Mark had watched Tom trying to impress some young females before by daring to go under the wreck where it was still smoky. Perhaps he was still under there. Then the scrape came yet again, and this time Mark knew where it was coming from.

It was coming from inside the ambulance.

Beneath all their feet, there were rabbits trapped perilously deep inside the warren, and the rabbits on the surface were oblivious to what had happened to them. Most of those trapped were already buried alive. Most of those buried alive would never be found. Some, however, were digging their way out. Angus believed he was making headway and that was all that kept him motivated. Others, like Nicholas, were running up and down tunnels in a panic. They didn't recognise the warren anymore because exits that use to be there had vanished beneath the mud.

Nicholas bounded around another corner squeaking madly. He'd escaped the mudslide that had consumed Alexander only to find his way out blocked. If he got to the old tunnels inside the four points he'd be safe. They survived. But the tunnel he'd run down from the old warren to reach Alexander was gone now.

Suddenly, another rabbit loomed out of the earthy gloom. It was Fiver. Neither stopped in time so they bounced right off each other. For a moment both of them were too shaken to speak. Secretly, Nicholas was very glad he wasn't alone. He didn't believe he could die if he wasn't alone. Fiver was here to rescue him. Fiver, however, hoped Nicholas would rescue him.

"You can't go this way," he said. "It's blocked already."

"This way's blocked too," Nicholas wailed.

"How the hell did this happen?" Fiver growled.

"Peter Rabbit's meddling!" Nicholas spat.

Fiver caught his breath and looked up and down the tunnels. Back the way he came, another wall slumped in as he watched. He nudged Nicholas to go back the other way. They were still in the new part of the warren here, outside the four points. Fiver knew parts of that collapsed all the time, particularly after heavy storms, but there hadn't been any storms lately and he'd never seen it on such a scale before.

"Have you been as far as the old oak tree yet?" he asked.

"It's too far away," Nicholas cried.

"It might be our only way out."

"We'll never make it..."

"Move it, Nicholas!"

Fiver squeezed past him and started running. When the roof of the tunnel started crumbling again, Nicholas' whimpering quickly caught up. The oak tree exit was an unofficial one and there was a good chance it had already collapsed, but Fiver prided himself on always seeing the potential in uncertainties. To get there they had to go deeper into the warren, where strangely enough even the newest tunnels remained intact. Fiver didn't stop to find out why. He ran straight through, only stopping when they reached a junction. Nicholas ran into the back of him.

"Which way now?" he squealed.

"It's one of these..."

"Oh, god. You're lost!"

"Rubbish," said Fiver, but it wasn't entirely true. There were four tunnels leading away from the junction. One of them was already gone. The one behind them collapsed as they stood there. That left two options, and he didn't know which one to take. He looked down both. He'd completely lost his bearings and at the rate these tunnels were falling in now, he might not have time to make a mistake.

"All right," he breathed. "We have to split up."

"Nooo!" Nicholas cried. His rescuer was abandoning him.

"It's the only way," Fiver explained. "You go one way and I'll go the other. One of them won't lead anywhere. We don't have time to make that mistake together. If you find the exit, you come back here and yell. There should be enough time to do that. And I'll do the same for you. Okay?"

"Fine." Nicholas grunted.

Fiver nodded. He picked the nearest tunnel and ran straight down it. Nicholas didn't hang around either. He ran halfway down the other tunnel before he stopped again and frowned to himself. Why did Fiver choose that tunnel and not this one? He must've have been pretty sure it was the way out, Nicholas thought. So he turned round with an angry squeak, then ran back to the junction and chased after Fiver.

Overall, Peter was disappointed. He climbed onto the driver's chest. His arm was hanging down and his hand was gloved in the same yellow plastic that covered the rest of his body. Peter ran up his arm and sat on the three-leafed clover that emblazoned the man's front. Standing on the ground he could only see the man's face in profile. Peter wanted to see his features all at once. From his new seat he looked right into the man's eyes. He saw no fear. For a second he saw a flash of Cottontail in the corpse's ambivalent expression. So Peter was disappointed. He was expecting something demonic but all he got was a dressed-up piece of meat.

Off to one side, Tom cleared his throat. Peter looked round. Tom was standing between the man's feet. They too were covered in yellow plastic. This time the yellow plastic formed booties tied off at the ankle. Peter ran down the man's leg and hopped off between his thighs. He gave Tom a sheepish look.

"What is it?" he asked awkwardly.

"Mark wants you to come and look," Tom told him.

"What is it?" Peter repeated.

He followed Tom back to the ambulance. Quite a crowd was gathered now. The scrapings had stopped but all the rabbits were silent and listening, waiting for their return. Mark was putting his plan into effect. Two rabbits stood beneath the rear bumper of the ambulance, one on top of the other. The bottom one, William, was muttering quietly that the top one, Sebastian, had his foot in his face. Sebastian retorted that William was too fat and squashy and he was just slipping all over the place. Meanwhile, Mark was orchestrating the whole thing. He even had another rabbit named Lloyd lined up to climb on top of both of them.

"What's going on?" Peter asked.

"We're trying to open the door," Mark said.

Lloyd began his ascent. He kicked William in the back and clawed Sebastian in the neck. Both of them aimed their complaining at him now. The rabbit column swayed when he reached the top. He put his forepaws on the door to steady himself. By Mark's estimate, he needed one more rabbit.

"Why do you want to?" Peter asked.

"Because there's something in there, Pete," he said. He cocked his head sideways. "Come and have a listen. It's gone now, but it'll be back. There was a scrabbling inside. We think they've got some animal prisoner."

Peter waded through the crowd and put his long brown ear up against the door. Mark hissed at William and Sebastian to quit whining for a minute whilst Peter listened. But Peter couldn't hear anything. "You probably just heard something fall over," he said. "Why do you think it was alive?"

"Because I could tell," Mark said firmly. Then he realised he didn't need one more rabbit. He already had one more rabbit. He had himself. As soon as the other three steadied themselves he started to climb, pulling himself up by their flanks and ignoring their moaning as he did so. When he got to the top, he hooked his forepaws over the top of the handles and pulled downwards.

Meanwhile, deep underground, Fiver was out of breath. His tunnel rose rapidly toward the surface. He was running uphill. He felt the cool air. It was the first fresh air he'd breathed since getting trapped. It made him feel lighter and he ran toward it. He didn't know how much further it was, but had it been day he was sure he would have been able to see daylight by now.

This was a new tunnel, only recently built, in fact. Fiver could feel his feet slip into the imprints of a hundred rabbit feet before him. In the older tunnels the floor would have been flattened over time. There were several new tunnels. One of them led beneath the oak tree. He thought about going back for Nicholas now, as he'd promised, but thought he better make sure first.

Fiver felt the vibrations return as he passed a couple of side tunnels that joined this one at an oblique angle. Like Nicholas, he hadn't known what the vibrations meant. Unlike Nicholas, he put two and two together. He ran faster, but no rabbit could outrun the vibrations, as Alexander had discovered. Fiver felt the cool air suddenly get all muggy. The tunnel ahead was caving in. He turned round, running back down the tunnel. All of a sudden he hoped this was the wrong one after all.

It was as he ran past one of the side tunnels that he felt the first grains of loose dirt tumble over his feet. That just made him run faster. The side tunnels hadn't collapsed, but another tunnel to which they were both joined had. Fiver had just one more side tunnel to pass. He sped up even more. As he belted past, he only saw the wave of mud out of the corner of his eye and up until the moment it caught him, he still thought he'd escape.

The mudslide caught his back legs, immediately dragging him off his feet. The wall of earth moved with such force that it carried him back along the tunnel. For a brief second, Fiver thought he might jump out and keep going. But then he turned over and over and when the mud finally came to a stop, he was stuck fast. The soil had him gripped around the belly. He couldn't move. He could hardly even breathe.

Nicholas found him a little while later, stuck on his back, clawing frantically at the dirt around his belly with his forepaws. The dirt was loose. He cleared it easily, but as quickly as he cleared it more fell into the vacuum left behind. The ground would never let him go. He heard Nicholas arrive and stopped. "Nicholas, quick, I'm stuck, help me get out of here!" he cried.

Nicholas ran straight over and dug. He burrowed a hole right above Fiver, kicking the earth into the tunnel behind him. Soon Fiver could feel his hind legs again. He began to kick against the mud that had a hold on them. But then Nicholas suddenly stopped, his nose twitching. "Can you feel that?" he murmured.

The loose earth poured back in around Fiver's waist.

"Don't stop!" he cried. "Not now!"

Nicholas looked back toward the junction. Roots had held the ceiling together so far, but it was still crumbling. He could make it in a single leap. But if he got stuck this side of the junction, even if the other tunnel was clear, he was dead as well.

He leant in close to Fiver's ear. "I'm sorry," he said.

Then he took that single leap and was gone. Fiver threw his head back and screamed after him. Seeing the passage upside down, it looked like the crumbling earth was rising to the ceiling. His last thought as the tunnel finally crashed down on top of him was how much he wished that were so.

Just before Nicholas burst from the nearest rabbit hole, Mark took his feet off Lloyd's back. These handles were made for human hands with human strength but maybe with his whole weight hanging off it...

Then Nicholas leapt out of the hole and made them all jump. "Alexander's dead! The warren's collapsing!" he shrieked. He ran amongst the crowd, repeating himself over and over. "The warren's collapsing! Alexander's dead!"

He showered them all with dirt from his muddy coat. Beneath Mark, Lloyd, William and Sebastian all lost their footing in shock and fell on top of each other. One of the old bruisers finally managed to pin Nicholas down.

"What's goin' on?" the veteran rabbit rasped.

"Alexander's dead!" Nicholas squealed. "And the warren's collapsing!"

"Someone look," Peter said. Rabbits disappeared into the nearest holes.

"You!" Nicholas spat. He squirmed beneath the bruiser's paw, clawing at the ground and trying to escape. "You! You don't give orders around here! You're not the leader! This is your fault! Alexander said you'd bring calamity!"

The rabbits returned. They all reported the same. Nicholas told the truth.

And then Mark finally fell off the handle. His rabbit paws just couldn't grip the smooth metal. He slid right to the end, and just before he fell to the ground, the door clicked open. The others didn't even notice.

Until the other human fell out.

NOTES:
This was quite an awkward chapter to write because I knew where I had to get to in a few chapters' time, but not how to get there in the most interesting way possible. So whilst Peter and Mark have their little subplots arising from their curiosity, the focus is on Nicholas being stuck underground. I knew I had to make him into a loathable semi-villain character as quickly as possible, and how better than to have him betray another rabbit to save his own skin.