He never dreams. Well he doesn’t think he does anyway. But he has a recurring nightmare. When he wakes from this he pulls a carrot from the top pocket of his flight suit (he always sleeps fully clothed in a fresh flight suit – ready to go) and gets up.

In the nightmare he walks into a bar that is an amalgamation of every airfield watering hole and roadside club he has ever been in. And it is full of everyone he has ever flown with. They all turn and smile and raise their glasses and shout
“BOSS!!!”
And he is happy.
But during the course of the evening, as Boss watches, one by one, in the middle of telling a joke, or going to the bar, or having a conversation, they all – one after another – start to burn.

And scream

And no one notices or takes any action.

Except Boss, he sees and stands fixed to the spot, screaming silently.

On bad nights, they also explode.

When it is all over Boss is still screaming in silence, looking at the flecks of blood from his own throat covering his paws in front of his face.

Then he wakes up, grabs a carrot and filling his pockets with as many as he can carry, walks round the perimeter road of the airfield. And every time his right foot comes down, he has to say, “fuck” under his breath. He can’t go back to sleep or stop till he can bring himself to not say it.

Some nights it takes three laps.

Two rabbits stand in the midday sun. The younger one shivers despite the warmth. They stand in front of the Bank that was had been their home for the past three months. Only now it looks like it has been ripped open by a giant Ant eater, smoking impact craters cover the ground, shrapnel shines in the sun, personal effects and things best not focused on litter the site.

“Well, at least we know what the fighters were doing,” said the older rabbit.

“But we stopped the bombers Boss, they broke and ran after 15 minutes”

“Hazel, it was a suicide mission – for us. You said yourself you’d never seen so many gun positions on a bomber. They were gun ships, not bombers – just up there to cut us to bits”

“But..” began Hazel and stopped as Boss turned to her with an angry look in his eyes.

“What is the first thing bombers do when they abort a mission eh? Drop their bomb load and get the fuck out of dodge! Did you see ANY bombs being dropped? No! We were suckered into the air so the fighters could come here and kill the rest of the squadron!”

Boss turned back to the bank.

“How many got out?” Hazel asked.

“Oh, all but four”

“What! Who?”

“The four white rabbit brothers, I told them to stay and study. If they wanted to make it.” He took the carrot stub out of his mouth and threw it into a smoking pit, and replaced it with another. Hazel thought she heard him say something under his breath that sounded like

“Four more for the bar”

“I never knew their names”

“I did” Boss said quietly

“So where are the others?”

“Getting royally pissed in the bar with the Old Man. They thought they were all going to die and we were dead, so they figured they might as well go out pissed. I am going to join them. And you?”

“Not half!”

They turn to walk off through the smoke, Hazel starts to giggle.
“What’s funny?” asks Boss.

“Skit. Sitting in his ejector seat in the middle of the field with his parachute over his head. What did he say when you lifted it off him”

“Are you God?” Boss is giggling as well now.

“Sooooooooo, when exactly did you put the remote switches on the ejector seats”

“When I saw that you young idiots would not have the sense to get out of a sky full of shit, or a burning plane”

They walk towards what’s left of the main buildings.

“Hazel, we ARE gonna win this, believe me”

The rabbit opens his eyes slowly; the first thing he notices is the blood on his left paw, dripping out of the sleeve of his flight suit.
“Oooooooo, hurty bunny!” he says to himself and realises he can’t hear anything at all.
The next thing he notices is the blood dripping apparently horizontally from his head onto the smashed dials in front of him. The ones that are not smashed are counting down numbers very quickly.
“Oooooooo bunny do magic!” Again no sound. “I’m sure I said that out loud,” he thinks.
Looking up further through the smashed front screen of his canopy, he sees a slowly spinning countryside way below, with a thin strip of tarmac at its centre.
“I can see my house from up here!” nothing, “Hmm bunny deaf!”
He then realises he is being blasted by cold air, and must be moving very fast.

He also starts to notice that everything is going white, the dials and the spinning countryside below are fading out. But he can now just hear the wind. And screaming. Someone is screaming. Someone is screaming his name. A woman is screaming his name. Hazel is screaming his name. Hazel is screaming “Skit! You daft bastard! EJECT! EJECT!”

“But I can see my house from up here”

And the world goes white and spinney again.

The plotting room was full of smoke, it was a non-smoking area but no one was going to tell the Old Man that.

Expectant eyes watched the circling blips on the screens - Green for the three SU37's, Red for the 30 heavily armed bombers of the Howling Fuck up Monkey tactical air force.

"They have got 6 so far! Go Boss, Hazel and Skit!" some young fool rabbit yelped, obviously not used to interpreting the data coming in.

“Hmm, only 24 heavily armed bombers to go then. They, or rather we, are getting cut to ribbons, if you look carefully” Said the Old Man.

“They can do this!” said another young voice.

Just then Skits marker began to flash and move irregularly. It broke off and started to loose height at a rapid rate.

“We are so fucked” the Old Man muttered under his breath.

As if on cue, the muffled sound of sirens started to filter into the ambient noise of the plotting room and the sound of anti aircraft rockets could be heard tearing off into the sky.

Behind this followed the sound of high performance fighter engines and the heavy thud of high calibre cannon shells smacking into the buildings overhead.

“Sneaky bastards those monkeys” said the Old Man, having another big sip of his drink.

A quiet grassy bank in the English countryside, just outside London, sprinkled with rabbit holes and frost. In the distance the mounds of three camouflaged hangars are visible through the chill mist.

Suddenly a blaring siren cracks the frosty air and almost immediately a rabbit comes running at full pelt out of one of the bigger holes.

“Scramble you daft carrot munchers!”

“Eh? What now? We only have three planes ready and we are not fully trained, well apart from you Boss” The speaker is a young female rabbit, also running and pulling on a life vest as she goes.

“Hazel, just get in your plane and do what you have been taught” barked the bunny called Boss. He is grey around the chin and as usual has the stub end of a carrot wedged firmly in the corner of his mouth. Already in his flight gear he jumps straight into the cockpit of his SU37 and starts to shout questions at the C*nt puppies yipping and yapping around his plane.
“Fuelled and full of ammo?”
“YIP!”
“you sorted the targeting problem?”
“YIP!”
“Then move out the way or get run over!”
“YIP” with that the chief c*nt puppy bounced up into the air, ripped off a crisp salute with his little paw and bounded away with the others.
“HAZEL! Where the fuck is Skit!”
“Here, coming, oh fuck, it must be Tuesday” Skit was half way up the ladder of his plane and trying to scramble into his flying helmet.
“Hmmm. No self respecting rabbit should be that thin” thought Boss, watching the only other one of his young rabbit charges who was at a combat level or readiness strap himself in. “must try not to get them both killed first time out. Or me even”

With all checks done and without waiting for clearance the three multi-role fighters blasted off down the runway, thrust vectoring nozzles throwing flame all over the shop. At the last minute, all three leapt up in a near vertical climb straight off the tarmac and were lost in the low cloud in seconds.

“Skit! Go vertical and get in the sun, watch for top cover. Hazel, your on my six and don’t let me get shot down Purr leeeeez.” Boss was calmer now he was in the air.

“Hokay boss, ladies and gentlemen, Skit is going vertical, me like this bit!”

“Nutter” muttered Hazel as she kept position on Bosses wing.

“Right, 15,000 feet level off and lets find the monkey bastards”

“There Boss! There! At 10,000 on your 1 o’clock”

And there they were. Wing after wing of black heavily modified B52’s, just visible skimming through the cloud layer below, like fish below the surface of a pond.

“Christ could they not get any more gun positions on those things?” said Hazel. She looked at her left paw as it reached for the missile control settings. It was shaking.

“Skit, any sign of fighters yet? Stay high and watch our backs as we go in. Hazel, no sidewinders on the first run, switch to QRAM’s. We need to get as many of these fuckers on the first pass as possible”

“QRAM’s selected boss!” and I’ve stopped shaking thought Hazel.

Watched by Skit in the top cover position, the two sleek fighters flipped over onto their backs and dived down in an arc to bring them in behind the Monkey formation.

As they screamed toward the enemy and the distance counted down to a missile lock, Boss muttered quietly over the radio,

“Duck you suckers”

And in the airfield bar, the commanding officer stares into his pint and whispers to himself-
“Go get ‘em bunnies”