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They came in over the hill shortly after dawn, slipping through the grass with a gentle susurrus that slipped about the edges of hearing. From the porch the grass looked like it was merely swaying in an energetic breeze, but as the motion swept closer glimpses of sickly pastels flashed briefly through the overgrown blades.

Tom stood on his porch, hands gripping the barrel of his shotgun, and wondered where the hell they had all come from with so little warning.

Jemima stuck her head out the door. “Tom, what the hell are you doing out there with a shotgun?” she said, and then looked beyond him at the waving grass and within it the teeth and twitching wet noses that flashed in and out of sight. “Good merciful God,” she said.

Tom turned his head and spat off the porch without taking his eyes off the hill. “Get out of here, Jemima,” he said. “I don’t know if I can hold ‘em.” His grip on the shotgun left his knuckles standing out white and bloodless against the black of the barrel.

“What are they?” said Jemima. “Tom?”

“Never told you what I was hunting all those times I went east,” said Tom. “Didn’t want to worry you.”

At the crest of the hill, two prongs of quivering shadow thrust into the sky, silhouetted briefly against the red glow of sunrise as something raise its head to sample the air. Tom’s arms jerked in an aborted attempt to swing the shotgun up into place, but the thing dropped out of sight, disappearing back into the grass as it proceeded down the hill with its brethren. The wave of swaying grass had almost reached the circle of dirt that bordered Tom and Jemima’s home.

“Jesus God,” said Jemima.

“The son-bitches,” said Tom. “I never thought they’d swarm like this. I could have swore I cleared them out years ago.” With a practiced gesture, he broke the gun open and checked its magazine.

“Bastards can have both damn barrels,” said Tom as he slammed the action home and gave the pump a pull.

Jemima at last gave the shotgun more than a passing glance. “Christ, what’s that?” she said. “That’s not your shotgun. I thought those things were only in movies.”

“Bought it off eBay,” said Tom, taking his eyes off the grass for a moment to admire the sleek, semi-automatic, double-barreled beauty of his firearm. Its matte black surface had an infernal glow in the strange light, every oiled line of its body speaking of barely-restrained brute force. “Had to mortgage the house to get it.”

Jemima went slack-jawed. “You did not mortgage our damn house,” she said. “God, you did not.”

“I told you to run, Jemima!” said Tom, his attention snapping back to the hill. “They’re coming out!”

Beady eyes peered out of the grass, and as one a line of pink, yellow, and white fuzzy bunnies shuffled from the grass and onto the dirt. There they paused, their adorable little paws shuffling quietly in the dust as their beady eyes surveyed the porch.

Tom whipped the shotgun up to his shoulder. “Try it,” he said. “I’ll take the lot of you.”

Jemima looked confused. “But they’re bunnies,” she said. “Like at Easter.”

Some of the bunnies wiggled their button noses. Others twitched their precious little ears. Tom’s finger tightened on the trigger, the gun’s barrel moving first left, then right. The pause went on for an indefinite second, tension suspending bunnies and Tom and Jemima in a timeless state of adrenalin. Then, without any apparent signal, the bunnies surged forward, more bunnies in the grass hopping over the heads of the front ones even as they pelted for the house, the grass whipping as if in a hurricane as bunnies poured over the hill in a now visible stream, leaping and kicking their feet in a frenzied animal rush.

With a roar Tom’s shotgun went off and punched a hole in the front line of bunnies, blood misting the air as bunny bodies tumbled and spun violently backward. Jemima screamed once, loud and shrill, like an angel starting its fall from heaven and realizing how truly far it had to go. The desperate dual shunk-shunk of Tom’s pump action melded with Jemima’s scream, and then the bunnies were there, bouncing wildly, eyes black as the inside of a coffin.

And then there was silence. Pink, fluffy silence.