Revenge of the Dust Bunnies
“They’re closing in!” he screamed wildly over the phone. She heard heavy breathing, as if he were running hard, and then the sound of the phone hitting the floor. Heavy steps followed the sound, and, soon after, the sound of a large crash, as if something, or someone, had fallen.
“What’s the matter?!” she cried, knowing he couldn’t hear. In answer, a blood-curdling shriek reverberated in her ear. Then, silence reigned.
* * *
In another part of the world, the President calmly stepped out of a helicopter and stepped up to where the Secretary of Defense waited to meet him. “Mr. President,” the Secretary of Defense said, nodding in recognition.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Secretary,” the President of the United States of America replied as he continued moving. The Secretary of Defense turned quickly to match his pace as they walked to the White House, urgency speeding their stride.
“Mr. President,” the Secretary of Defense said again. “I’m afraid we have a problem.”
* * *
In a small town in Utah, three teenagers lounged in a small ice cream store, seeking a reprieve from the sweltering heat of the unusually warm summer.
John, a tall, muscular guy in his late teens, leaned back against the counter. He was the eldest of the three, and was the only one who owned a car. “Sure is dry this year,” he said.
“Yeah?” said Bonnie, making the word sound like a question. She was short, yet powerfully built. She tossed her blonde hair over her shoulder, “Did you think we hadn’t noticed?”
“What bothers me is the dust,” Jim said, and sneezed as if to prove his point. With his red hair, freckles, and thick-rimmed glasses to complement his wiry frame, Jim was often teased and relied on the on the other two for protection. However, he was also a hacker, a computer genius who often traveled the Internet in search of a new challenge. Many times he had almost been caught and had only been saved by the fact his two friends were extremely nervous and constantly monitored a stolen FBI scanner. They would switch through the different frequencies quickly, listening for any hint that Jim had been discovered.
“Just hurry and hook it up,” John said anxiously. “The owner will be back any minute.”
Jim pulled his laptop out of his backpack. “Why don’t you just use this one?” asked Bonnie, pointing to the owner’s computer.
“I will, but first I have to make sure they aren’t tracking me and how much time I have if they do try,” Jim replied. “I know of a website that will monitor it for me, but I need two computers to do it.”
“Whatever,” Bonnie said. “You know what you’re doing.”
Ten minutes later Jim clapped his hands. “I’m in!” he cried. “This has got to be it because everything’s encrypted.” His fingers danced across the keyboard, and the screen flashed and began to change the characters to English letters. “Got it!” he shouted emphatically.
“Wait a minute,” Bonnie said. “That can’t be right. It says something about an attack by . . .” she paused. “Dust bunnies?!”
* * *
“Mr. President, this story must be stopped before it gets to the civilians.”
“How many people, just a rough estimate mind you, are going to believe that there are dust bunnies out there who have decided to try and take over the world?” the President said sarcastically. “The report has already been sent to my computer. I must confess that I thought someone had decided to play a joke on me.”
“Which report, sir?”
“The report about the kid who was mauled while his girlfriend listened. Two police officers were similarly slaughtered, and a third barely made it to his car to radio for backup. It took three fire engines to blast the dust bunnies from the property so they could get out, and they almost caught up to the engines and the squad car before stopping their attack.”
“Mr. President, I was talking about the soldiers I lost fighting these things. I haven’t seen this report. May I?”
“Of course,” the President said. He wheeled over to his computer and attempted to access the file. “Someone’s hacked into it!” he shouted angrily.
In answer to the Secretary of Defense’s surprised face, the President turned his monitor toward the Secretary of Defense. On the monitor flashed the error message “UNABLE TO ACCESS FILE. THIS FILE IS ALREADY IN USE.”
Then, the President's own face paled as he saw a shadow raise behind the Secretary of Defense.
* * *
“We got company!” shouted Jim as he heard the pounding start on the door. Bonnie and John ran to the back door as Jim folded up his laptop, slammed it in his backpack, and grabbed a disk out of the floppy drive in the owner’s computer. “Gotcha,” he muttered as he dove out the door and into the back of John’s pickup. “Go! Go! Go!” he shouted.
Unseen under the cover of a cloud of dust, three rabbit-like shapes paused in the road. One bounded back toward the ice cream shop; the other two turned in pursuit of the red truck.
“Yeah!” Jim shouted a few miles later. “We made it!” He squeezed feet first through the window of the truck. “Now, let’s see what I’ve got,” he said, more to himself than the two next to him.
His laptop slowly warmed up, all the while Jim’s hands drumming the sides. “Finally,” he said when the computer stopped thinking. Carefully, he slid the disk into the floppy drive.
Slowly he read all of the information on the disk. It didn’t take long; he’d had to stop in the middle of downloading the information. “All this says is something about some kid in Colorado being mauled by what they’re calling a dust bunny. Two officers were killed, and a third was badly wounded by ‘a rabbit that seemed to be made of nothing but dust.’ Every time they hit it, it reformed in front of their eyes and would either force itself into their nostrils, suffocating them, or make a part of itself hard enough to cut through flesh like a knife through warm butter.”
John took his eyes off the road for an instant to glance at Jim and then at Bonnie. “Oh, boy,” he said. “Sounds like someone was playing a joke on whoever you got that report from.”
“Watch out!” Bonnie screamed. A dark figure stepped in front of the truck. The truck ran right through it as if there was nothing there. Or as if it were dust.
“Just a trick of the light,” John said uncertainly as he brought the truck to a stop. A fiendish light came into his eyes as he opened the door to step out of the truck. “Or maybe it was dust bunnies!”
As Bonnie and Jim laughed uncertainly, John stepped out of the truck. “Just like I thought. There’s nothing out here—oomph!” John’s body slammed against the door, and the door broke off from the impact. Bonnie and Jim watched in horror as both John and the door flew twenty feet down the road. The door’s edge landed on John, and Bonnie closed her eyes to avoid seeing his gruesome demise. When she opened them again, Jim had slipped into the driver’s seat. He steadily pumped the gas pedal. The engine revved a few times. A dark shape appeared outside where the driver’s door had been. In a panic, Bonnie shoved Jim’s leg on the brake, shifted to drive, and yelled, “Let’s get out of here!”
Jim slammed down the gas pedal and they sped off. Bonnie cringed as they ran over what was left of John, but said nothing. Tears ran down her cheeks at the loss of her friend.
“It was true!” Jim shouted suddenly. “The report in the President’s computer. It was true!”
“Do you mean to tell me you were hacking into the President’s computer?! Not a police department somewhere, but the President’s computer?!” Bonnie almost screamed. “You are either the stupidest person alive, or you are the best hacker out there,” she paused. “I’d say you’re somewhere in the middle.”
“Do you know what this means?” Jim asked excitedly.
“Yeah. It means that we have quite a few problems. One: John’s dead. He was killed by something that got hit by a truck and still had the strength to throw John, break off the door, and still send both of them down the road. Two: You’re driving down a road, you have never driven before, and I have a license. Stop and switch me.” Jim braked smoothly to a stop and allowed Bonnie to take over.
Bonnie continued, “Three: You broke into the President’s computer. Even if the FBI and the CIA are concentrating on the dust bunnies, you’ve committed a federal offense and they’ll be finding out who you are.”
Jim was silent for a moment. He said, “I was thinking more along the lines that we have to warn everyone on earth, but you bring up a good point.”
They pulled into town. Strangely, the streets were deserted. Bonnie stopped the truck and she and Jim stepped out. They walked into Joe’s Barber Shop and found Joe and three of his customers lying on the floor.
“I think that we had better get out of here,” Jim said slowly.
“I think it’s a little too late for that,” a deep voice rasped behind them.
Slowly, Bonnie and Jim turned around. In the doorway stood a giant rabbit. Light actually streamed through the skin of the rabbit, and Bonnie could tell that it was made from no more than dust.
“Why have you done this?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.
“Why have I done this?” the dust bunny echoed.
A chorus of voices, of varying pitches but all hoarse repeated the question behind them. Bonnie and Jim turned and watched as more dust bunnies filed into the room and formed a circle around them. The dust bunnies slowly tightened the circle around Bonnie and Jim. “Why have your people destroyed legions of our kind?” they asked.
“What do you mean?” Jim asked nervously.
“Your incessant need to clean! We used to coexist with humans. For some reason about two thousand years ago your race decided that dust bunnies were a scab that needed to be removed. Your ancestors nearly wiped us out, literally.”
“We had no idea that dust bunnies were living creatures,” started Jim.
“You should have paid attention. Now, those of us who have survived have nurtured our young and we have finally taken over your miserable existence. Congratulations, you two are the final remnants of the human race.”
Bonnie’s and Jim’s screams lasted only a few moments. The extinction of human race was complete.
“Now what do we do?” asked one dust bunny to another.
“Normally I’d say we should try to take over the world, but since we’ve already done that . . .”
THE END
(This will be a true story)
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