Zachary Peters

The white rabbit rambled through the snowy underbrush of the forest. It stopped to nibble on small plants breaking through the snow here and there. Soon the snow would melt, and the green of new growth would return. Its white coat would disappear. Other animals would come out of hibernation or would return from long migrations to enjoy the bounties of spring. Right now, though, the rabbit simply needed to not get eaten by some predator, like the old fox, the eagle nested on top of the big rock, or the small pack of wolves that sometimes roamed through the area.

Slowly, the rabbit made its way closer to its burrow under a snowy oak root. It positioned itself half inside its little home, looking out at the forest. A shadow passed over the den, and the rabbit disappeared into its house. The shadow was not the eagle or some other visiting bird of prey. No, a small airplane was coming in for landing at the small city airport. The plane passed relatively low over the forest, slowly descending back to the ground. It would land soon.

The plane, emptied of its three passengers, was rolled to a hangar. The passengers carried their luggage to a rented car and placed it in the trunk before getting in the car. They did not talk much, only giving directions to the one who was driving. The driver was a short thick man with coarse dark but thinning hair. The other two could have been brothers. They were the same size, taller than the short man, lean with bright eyes and tanned skin. They drove two miles to a deserted back alley near a dilapidated shopping center.

They got out and took the luggage from the trunk. They opened it up. Inside all three bags was an assortment of black clothing, an armored vest, and guns and ammunition. They changed into the unique garments, and took out the weapons and readied them. They had trained for this for several days. They got back into the car and headed back down the road to the airport, but they were not going to the airport. A few miles down the street from the airport was a small town community. That is where they would find their target.

An intelligence officer’s family lived in peace; far from the troubles that the officer had to deal with on a regular basis. The three men were hired by an organization that had recently been dealt a painful and costly legal blow based on the work of this particular officer. This was just like a million other jobs the team had completed. If anything, it was a little simpler than usual. There were no security systems, armed guards, or challenging environments. It would be like cornering a rabbit in a hole. The family would be helpless. “Get in, get it done, get out,” they said to one another.

The rabbit had slowly made its way back out of its little home. It hopped around the area for a bit, attentively trying to sense trouble. Then it headed down a well-worn trail through the snow and underbrush of the forest.

The rabbit had, over the winter, made the path after it stumbled on a consistent source of food. It stopped every so often to listen for danger. No sign of the fox or eagle. Then it made it to a road it had to cross.

The rabbit did not understand what this little strip of smooth rock was, but it did know things often moved up and down the clearing with a terrifying roar. The rabbit stopped at the edge and listened. What was it? Yes, there was something big coming down the clearing made of smooth stone, but that was not all. The rabbit’s wild senses burned with new danger. There was the fox!

The car went around a blind turn, the headlights revealing the shadowy road and the surrounding woods foot by foot. The lights revealed movement. The driver recognized that there was a rabbit and a fox moving near the road well before his body responded. How fast the mind works, the light showed two moving objects, and the brain quickly identified them. All before the hands, feet, heart, and adrenal glands have even begun to act in response. In a fraction of a second he thought the rabbit and fox would run back into the woods, but then realized they were going to cross right in front of the car.

As a boy, his father, a ruthless man, had always told him to just run over whatever was on the road in front of him. It was not worth crashing, and now the driver very much agreed. However, it is one thing to know what to do, and quite another thing to do what you know.

His body spasmed slightly, jerking the wheel to the right. He tangled his foot between the gas and brake pedals for a fraction of a second. This caused him to overcompensate and slam his foot onto the brake pedals.

At this point, the car was starting to turn to the left in the direction of the woods and had begun to slow. It would have stopped short of the trees if a patch of ice, a vestige of the last snow and the constant shadows on this part of the road, had not done away with most of the friction required to stop. The car continued effortlessly over the ice, and then over the small grassy shoulder of the road. Then into the trees. The cheap rental vehicle wrapped around two strong trees that had grown close together. The passengers, who did not have their seatbelts on, smashed into metal, cheap plastic, and wood. Their relatively frail bodies were crushed.

The rabbit made it across the road. When it saw the car, it darted in front of it. The fox started to follow, but it froze and dashed down the road away from the rabbit and the crash. The rabbit did not stop running until it squirmed under a wooden fence of a backyard. It hid in some shrubbery for thirty minutes before it moved on to a small mound of half-eaten vegetation. The security officer’s wife had just put it out for the rabbit who came to the house every evening during the winter. Spring would be here soon.