Date: Friday, 17th of August, 2275 A.D
Personnel: Gabriel Angelus, Brother-Captain of the 101st Blood Raven marine squad
Subject: Remembrance

It’s been about a month since we started our mission to hunt down the queen’s nest among the ancient and desolate ruins of what used to be the thriving city of New York, or Los Angeles, or… I’m not really sure. None of us are sure. The last recorded history of pre-21st century human civilization was lost forever after the bunny rabbits overwhelmed the last human city of Honolulu, Hawaii when they somehow figured out how to swim in salt water and annihilated the city with a beach-head assault several decades ago. Now that city lies in ruins along with the rest of the Great Ruins of the Ancient World of Man.

Sigh. Bunnies. It’s hard to imagine that a long, long time ago we used to associate that word with small, cute and furry little creatures that hop and scurry around in meadows and gardens. Of course, their physical form stays the same to this day – they are still small and furry and cute - but what changed them was their evolution during the late 21st century – from gentle, carrot-munching rodents to flesh-eating, man-hating little devils capable of forming a hive-minded society. According to the Old Wisemen from the Cave of Chronicles, when humanity finally found out what was really going on, it was too late. Within less than 10 days they rampaged and scourged their way into almost every major city in the world, decimating the 8 billion population of Man to just a barely surviving 48 000.

Yes, only 48 000 of us survived the bunny apocalypse, and my great, great ancestor was among them. Humans lived in unspeakable hardship ever since then, forced to live in underground silos and bunkers to hide from the common yet terrible danger of bunny attacks. I remember the last time I saw the faces of my mother and father as they tried to run away from a horde of the furry beasts, trying to reach into the safety of our underground bunkers. They were running too slow, and those…bunnies…hopped too fast. The horrifying scene of my parents screaming in painful agony as they were devoured alive while I helplessly watched as the hatchet closed still haunts me in my dreams to this day. I even swore on my parent’s graves that I will send as many of those furry little bastards to hell, my plasma rifle as the primary tool for me to reach that goal.

Sigh. Why do I even bother writing this journal? Nobody will read it, most of all me, because reading the depressing entries of days gone by only makes me sad. Sad that people are being killed not by plagues, earthquakes or wars, but by being eaten by rabbits. Cute, little, furry bunny rabbits.

My wristwatch says the time is 2357 hours. Time to get some shut eye so that I can prepare for the preliminary recon mission to search for the cave of the Queen’s nest tomorrow.


Date: Saturday, 18th of August, 2275 A.D
Personnel: Gabriel Angelus, Brother-Captain of the 101st Blood Raven marine squad
Subject: Ambush

My god, we didn’t even saw them coming. It was dusk. Our squad of 50 men was somewhere near Perimeter 16-7 scanning for rabbit burrows when the bunnies ambushed us from out of nowhere and from every direction. They came out of the ruins and abandoned buildings, the dilapidated vehicles lining the desolate streets, the cracks and holes on the ground, everywhere. They were hundreds of them - our squad had finished emptying about 20 clips of plasma against those wretched rodents within a minute, yet they still came pouring in strong.

The fire fight lasted about half an hour. The aftermath was an incalculably huge number of rabbit corpses littering the whole scene, all mutilated by the hot plasma from our rifles, their blood still hot all over out boots. Unfortunately, we lost Rodriguez and Barclay in the fight. Both of them were cut off from the main group during the attack and were surrounded by the bunnies when they ran out of ammunition. They were brave soldiers.

(Although depressing, I think it should be worthy of note that it took the clean-up crew about 5 hours to pick up both of the soldiers’ torn and mutilated bodies strewn everywhere. Both of them have families back home.)

Before we left the scene, we cut off the heads of 20 of the bunny corpses and stuck each one of them on a pike. I just hope that rabbits have already evolved to have even a small bit of a conscience to recognize the decapitated heads as a sign of warning not to mess with us again. Ever.

We made camp near a riverbank in Perimeter 13-3A. Tonight we’ve held a ceremony, biding farewell to the fallen soldiers for one last time before we cremate their bodies. We cremate our dead not because of some religious or supernatural belief. Instead, it’s a long tried preventive measure so that those bunnies won’t be able to reproduce after nourishing themselves by eating the remains of our dead. We cannot bury them, because the hatred of those bunnies towards us humans goes so far that they would sniff out the buried bodies with their hyper sensitive noses and dig them up again. Once, we even tried injecting our dead with harmful poisons and chemicals, hoping that the bunnies would die after devouring them. It turned out that the bunnies have evolved to such a high degree that they are immune to most poisons and other harmful substances.

Nature has a way of telling us to sod off.

It is 2230 hours now. Once I’m done writing this, I’m going to take a shower and then go straight to my bunker for some sleep. After an entire day of seeing carnage and blood, a relaxing hot shower is the most I look forward to. It lets me wash away the blood of those who died under my command, along with the white strands of fur from all the bunnies that I’ve slain.


Date: Sunday, 19th August, 2275 A.D
Personnel: Gabriel Angelus, Brother-Captain of the 101st Blood Raven marine squad
Subject: Jake McLeod

We finally found the cave harboring the queen’s nest. At 0930 hours, the five-men scouting team that was sent to search the cave returned to the camp with only one survivor, Jake McLeod. Apparently, they had come too close to the cave and the bunnies were alarmed by their presence. The result was nobody except Jake escaped from the bunnies. Just barely that is – he was bleeding all over his uniform and missing a left arm when he stumbled into our camp. He was able to tell us the location of the cave and other important strategic details before collapsing into unconsciousness due to blood loss. He died moments later. Jake McLeod, just 17 years old and still a virgin. Sad

I held him in my arms when he drew his final breath, but then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw something peculiar hiding behind lumps of rubble and dirt several yards away. I only managed to catch a glimpse of it before it noticed me and scampered itself out of sight. The thing was small and had long ears. A rabbit. Darn it, the little bastard must have followed the smell of Jake’s bleeding all the way to our camp.

The cremation ceremony was held tonight, each one of us swearing in our hearts that we would not let his death be in vein. Throughout the night, me and several of my lieutenants went over the battle plans on how to strike the Queen’s cavern. By the time we were all finished, the time was 0145, and I almost didn’t update this journal due to exhaustion.

I’ve posted extra guards around the perimeter of the camp, suspecting that the bunnies would attack the camp after their little bunny spy trailed Jake and managed to discover our camp earlier. The thought of a malignant army of bunnies swamping our camp in the middle of the night made me feel like sleeping with one eye open and a gun under my pillow, but no matter. Tomorrow, I’m going to kill so many of those freaking rabbits that hell will smell like road kill by the time I’m done.

(Journal extension, logged at 0346 hours)

At the time of this writing, we already succeeded in defending the camp against an invasion by the bunny horde, although with heavy loses to camp equipment, several regretful casualties and a dozen others suffering from minor to serious injuries. It turned out that my hunch was right – that bunny I saw earlier today had informed its ilk of our location and launched an offensive towards our camp at night when most of our forces are asleep and non-alert. In the end, the whole camp is torn apart, with rabbit carcasses everywhere. Below is a list of the brave soldiers who lost their lives during the attack:

John ‘Cheese Man’ Farlane
Bertha ‘Black Biatch’ Simmons
Jay ‘Crazy Legs’ O’Hare
Ricardo ‘Lowtax’ Kyakina
Stephen ‘MC Hawkins’ Hawking
Kelsy ‘Oooga Booga’ Grahambell

Those names were procured from the dog tags that we found on the horribly mutilated, half-eaten bodies of the dead soldiers. About 3 or 4 more personnel are still unaccounted for, but I’m willing to make a pretty safe bet that if they are out there somewhere right now, they’re probably far from being alive.

I thought I should just stay awake all the way to next morning, but then good senses came to me and decided to go back to sleep to prepare myself for tomorrow’s mission. After we’ve done the cleanup of the ravaged camp, I posted several more of the surviving troops to guard the camp through the rest of the night, updated this journal and went back to sleep. Again.


Date: Monday, 20th August, 2275
Personnel: Gabriel Angelus, Brother-Captain of the 101st Blood Raven marine squad
Subject: True fear

This might be my final log in this journal. I’m not sure why I’ve decided to stop, but after reading what I am about to write, perhaps you might understand.

It was an hour past afternoon, 1300 hours, when we silently made it to the edge of Perimeter 32-B, the site where Jake told us about the cave housing the Queen. Me and four of my most elite men sneaked to a spot on top of a high cliff overlooking the cave and took out my binoculars. There it was, the terrible cave where the Queen gives birth to approximately 300 baby rabbits a minute. Several groups of bunnies seemed to pace about the area surrounding the cave entrance, probably guarding the cave from intruders, especially the human ones. It was a rabbit fortress.

I zoomed my binoculars closer to the cave entrance and saw two Bugs Bunnies standing on guard. We call those things ‘Bugs Bunnies’ because, unlike the other rabbits, this particular breed are about as big and tall as a human, much like the famous Warner Bros. cartoon character Bugs Bunny. And like the cartoon character, they have very tough hides and extremely resilient bodies to the extent that they would probably survive from having an anvil dropped onto their heads. They represent the bunnies' milestone in warrior breed perfection.


I put away the binoculars and signaled to Larry ‘Blaskowicz’ McPherson, our demolitions specialist, to ‘smoke the hole’. It was a code word for launching a nuke bomb with the shoulder-mounted Redeemer AR-90k type heavy warhead launcher and detonating it from the inside of the cave, killing everything in it, including the Queen. Larry took about a minute to ready his aim with the Redeemer launcher, trying to target-locking the mouth of the cave on the LCD display panel on the launcher. As soon as the panel bleeped for a target-lock, Larry pulled the trigger and sent a nuke bomb propelled right out of the weapon and flying right into the cave, passing the two Bugs Bunnies who were shocked after having a missile of unknown origin zipped right pass them. The smart path-finding system guided the nuke bomb through miles and miles of the labyrinthine maze inside the cave and straight into the heart of the earth where the Queen was most probably residing.

Larry dropped the Redeemer launcher aside and pulled out a remote detonator, waiting for a bleeping sound signaling that the nuke bomb has found the target.

The detonator bleeped. Larry said a few prayers and pulled the trigger button.

Boom.

The earth shook with seismic force as the nuke bomb exploded. The mouth of the cave seemed to roar violently, and then a tremendously powerful burst of nuclear energy rushed out of the mouth of the cave, sending the two shocked Bugs Bunnies flying high and the rest of the patrolling rabbits around the area in bewilderment. I pulled out a flare gun and shot it into the crimson evening sky, the signal for the assault team to come out from hiding in the hills and move in and kill all the surviving rabbits. Within minutes, the sound of plasma rifles and the smell of burnt rabbit meat filled the air.

The mission was a success.

After the main confrontation, we gathered all the rabbit carcasses into a pile and burned them. About 1915 hours, we set off into Perimeter 56-H to make camp there. There are still many Queens out there – the one we’ve just slain was just one among thousands that are infesting our world. This fight of ours won’t end for a very long time. There might not even be an end to it that is in our favor, the only end being that all of us humans are driven into extinction.

As I said, this will be my final post in this journal of mine. Why?

Before we left the scene, we made our way above the hills overlooking the blasted land surrounding a huge smoking crater which used to be the cave of the Queen. It is at this moment when I saw, far in the horizon, a thin white line stretching along the horizon as far as 10 miles, the line getting thicker by the moment. And it was moving. I took out my binoculars.

They were bunnies - an ineffable number of them, marching this way to answer the distress call of their now-dead queen. My god, there were so many of them, probably millions or even billions, that from afar they looked like a giant white blanket. The earth must be crying out at their damnable weight.

I used to think I knew what fear was. After seeing their infinite ranks of rabbits, it is now that I really know true fear. When my men saw the bunnies marching, I could tell from the look on their faces that they had already lost hope.

When you're a soldier fighting a losing battle, hope is the most important thing you must hold on to. Hope for peace, well being, prosperity, anything. No amount of plasma rifles and power armor is enough to substitute the psychological power of hope. When a you lose hope, you lose yourself.

And then the rabbits will take this chance to devour you alive.

As I write this very post, tear drops wet the pages of my journal after realizing that our situation is hopeless. Humanity is hopeless. With each rabbit we kill, another 1000 will replace it, and for every man we lose, another 10 000 of them will be given birth. The army of the dark is upon us and it has no end. With such great numbers, there is no hope to defeat them, and it is only a matter of time before every single human being is wiped out from the face of this earth.

We are doomed.

THE END

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