I was walking back to where we had slept last night to meet up with Kyle and August when I found another car that had hit a landmine.
On the one hand, it was nice to know that other people were trying to survive, that we weren't the only ones left. But, judging from the charred corpses in the mangled wreckage of the car, they had failed.
This incident told me something else. That our car blowing up wasn't a fluke. There must have been many landmines on the roads to the channel tunnel, the question was why?
Right now, I didn't have an answer for that, so I pushed it to the back of my mind and moved on.
I was on my own, as August hadn't felt up to walking back due to his injuries. He had decided to stay behind and clear out a barn for us to sleep in.
The house was too small and partly destroyed so we would be staying in a barn from now on. It wasn't exactly glamourous, but it was better than nothing.
Since I was walking back to our campsite by myself, it didn't take me long to get there. At a light jog, of 50 miles per hour, I managed to make it to the camp in 20 minutes.
It was late afternoon and the sounds of nature were in full swing. The noises of cows and sheep and crickets burst out of the fields in a great symphony of nature.
When I arrived in the clearing, it was empty. Everything was exactly as we had left it that morning, meaning Kyle and August hadn't come back yet.
I looked around for something to do but found nothing. Then, after wallowing in boredom for an eternity that was actually only 5 minutes, I decided to go and find the other two.
Since I had told them where the rabbit warrens were, I knew where they should be. I leapt out of the clearing and sprinted across the grass so fast I almost floated.
It wasn't long before I came to the base of another tree. This one was smaller than the last one I climbed and covered in bright purple berries that were about the size of an apple. 'Can they even be considered berries at that size?' I wondered.
If I remembered correctly, this tree should be near the warrens, so I activated (Light As A Feather) and bounded up it like an untethered balloon.
After reaching the midsection of the tree, I was greeted by screeching. I paused on one of the thick tree limbs that could easily hold the weight of a car and looked around, trying to pinpoint the source of the sound.
My gaze came to rest on a bushy tail and then it travelled down to the rest of the animal. A giant squirrel with small almost humanoid hands that were clutching a bunch of the oversized berries against its furry chest like a baby.
Its beady black eyes glared at me, full of wariness and distrust. All told, the squirrel was about as big as me. It had bright red fur with white stripes running down its tail and back.
It hastily stuffed the berries into its mouth and its cheeks bulged out massively like an inflated balloon.
Then, it looked back at me and gave another screech that was muffled by the sheer amount of berries it had in its mouth. It seemed to be saying, that I couldn't have any of its food. Not that I wanted any.
I ignored the squirrel with trust issues and gazed down at the rabbit warrens that lay in the shadow of this massive tree.
Huge white balls of fur streamed in and out of the warren, like water into a river mouth. Each ball of fur had long fluffy white ears and glowing red eyes. As well as a pair of huge front teeth that could snap a man in half like a twig.
The rabbits that left the warren hopped into the grass and quickly disappeared into the undergrowth. The rabbits that were entering the warren had huge pieces of vegetables and nuts in their giant mouths.
While I was trying to concentrate on the sight below me, the squirrel edged closer, following my gaze as if it was trying to see where I was looking. It squeaked in a tone that sounded like something along the lines of, 'What are you looking at?'
I turned to look at the squirrel and it froze in place along the branch it had been edging towards me on.
Shaking my head and sighing, I looked back to the ground and soon found a clue as to where August and Kyle were.
Something I noticed when watching the rabbits return to the warren, was that almost none seemed to be coming back from a certain area outside the shadow of the tree.
Unless all the rabbits that went that way kept getting lost, chances were that something was interfering with them returning. That something was probably August and Kyle.
Now that I knew where they were, I wondered what I should do about it. If I went over now, I might just get in the way of their hunting rhythm. I would probably throw off their balance if I just showed up so there was no point.
Instead, I lay down on the wide branch and rested beneath the shade of the leaves of the tree. I felt kind of like a panther, lazily watching the jungle beneath it like a king on his throne.
I made sure to keep an eye on the area that I thought Kyle and August were in while I lay there and rested.
Every 10 minutes or so, I would see a rabbit hop off into the area they were in and never come back. I began to wonder how long it would take before the other rabbits noticed something was off.
In the meantime, the squirrel had edged closer and was now almost on top of me. It stood perched on a branch beside me, staring down at me curiously with those beady black eyes.
When it saw no reaction, it swept its long bushy tail out and tickled my face with it.
I sneezed, "Stop that," I said, brushing away the tail.
The squirrel jerked back but didn't flee. It simply jumped up a few branches and kept staring at me.
Down below me, a commotion had started inside the warren. Clearly, someone had noticed that rabbits were going missing.
Slowly, out of the shadows of the hole the rabbits had built into the side of a makeshift hill, a large rabbit emerged.
To say that it was large is misleading because all the rabbits were large. Every one of them could give a kangaroo a run for its money. This rabbit was large compared to the other rabbits.
It stomped out of the warren and stopped for a moment to bask beneath the fading rays of the evening sun.
"That's almost bigger than the cat we fought!" I exclaimed. I have never seen a rabbit that looked fierce, and yet somehow, this one did.
The glowing red eyes looked hungry and sinister, the long front teeth were chipped in places and stained yellow so that they looked more like fangs. Its fur was matted and patchy in places where long scars had marred its flesh.
"That's some rabbit," I whistled appreciatively, "Are you seeing this?" I asked the squirrel, not expecting a reply.
The squirrel, who had inched back to the branch it had stood on earlier shook its head and pointed at the rabbit, chittering something unintelligible. Although it seemed to be derogatory as if it was saying, 'That's nothing, I could take that rabbit easily,'
It beat its furry red chest confidently, almost humanlike before waving at the huge rabbit tauntingly.
"Ah, but it's easy to say that when you are all the way up here. How about we try going down there to fight it?" I asked the squirrel.
It seemed to understand what I was saying because it shrank back and shook its head fiercely.
"All bark no bight eh?" I taunted, finding it slightly weird that I was taunting a squirrel.
It turned around and tickled my nose with its tail again, causing me to sneeze violently while it scampered away into the tree in embarrassment.
Below me, the large rabbit, who I shall henceforth be referring to as The Enforcer headed off towards the direction where the other rabbits had been disappearing.
A few other rabbits surrounded it, squeaking and egging it on like hypemen. All of these interactions with animals today had a distinctly human feel to them. It made me wonder if there was more changing about the animals than just their size.
The Enforcer stalked off into the grass and for a moment, I thought about getting up from where I lay and going to help Kyle and August fight it.
And then I remembered how Kyle had ruthlessly robbed me blind in poker yesterday and thought better of it.
If they couldn't even kill a couple of rabbits, what could they do?
A few hundred meters back from where The Enforcer had entered, the grass exploded. Rabbits, earth and August were sent careening up into the sky, revealing a wide clearing in the grass.
The Enforcer stood shakily in the centre of the clearing, one of its long white ears was missing and blood streamed out from gashes all along its body.
Opposite The Enforcer, Kyle, who was missing an eyebrow wobbled as he clutched a pair of dice in his slightly singed hands.
I'm pretty sure I heard him shout, "It actually worked!" And then, he began to laugh.