Horses with Stripes

 I, the Lord your God, shall smite the human race by means of Zebras, God told Cyrus the prophet.
“Why?” asked Cyrus.
Why else would I have created Zebras? They’re just horses with stripes. 

“ZEBRAS!” shouted Cyrus. He ran through the city shouting to the skyscrapers and pedestrians. “Listen, people,” Cyrus screamed. “God just spoke to me and said that he is going to destroy us all with Zebras!”
“Zebras?” someone asked. “Why would God choose Zebras to destroy humanity?”
“What else did you think Zebras were for?” Cyrus answered. “They are coming in swarms to kill us!”
For a few days, no one worried about Cyrus’s warnings, but after a few days, they had enough. Cyrus was a prophet, sure, but he didn’t know everything. 
“He’s just trying to cause a racket,” one person said. Cyrus still continued to whine and croak about the incoming attack. Quickly, he went from being a common nuisance to a nuisance that had to be stopped. 

“Think about what wide-spread Zebraphobia would do to the zoo industry!”
“Let alone the Animal Print industry!”
Cyrus was causing more trouble than he was worth, at least in the eyes of the zookeepers and animal print makers, so the public had him shot. And that was the end of the Zebra scare for a while. 

“Well shit,” said the poor guy who first saw the Zebras running across the ocean. He sat at the top of a lighthouse, looking into a telescope over the sea. Just as Cyrus had predicted, swarms of Zebras were on their way. The peculiarity of Zebras running full speed to destroy humanity outshined the peculiarity of the fact the Zebras were running on water. In the grand scheme of things, this anomaly was little more than a footnote, and not entirely off-brand for one of God’s creations.
“Zebras are coming!” shouted the lighthouse keeper in the city. 
His words were not well received in the community, and even less well received by the zoo and animal print corporations. The lighthouse keeper was shot. 

Soon though, the truth became inescapable—Zebras were on their way. NASA released images of the Zebras taken from space, and despite their best efforts (approximately half of NASA’s staff was shot) Big Zoo and Big Animal Prints could not conceal the truth forever. People began to prepare for the oncoming invasion of Zebras. Sales of guns, bombs, and bombs disguised seductively as attractive lady Zebras skyrocketed. In a brilliant marketing decision, Zoos rebranded themselves as training facilities for Zebra hunting. Animal Print companies sold Zebra prints as camouflage for the oncoming invasion, which became the look of the season. 

The Zebras became the only thing people could talk about. Every action taken was in response to the Zebras. People no longer had time for anything else because they were constantly preparing for the Zebras. Only a couple months after the initial warning, the Military began preparing for the invasion. In the war room, generals discussed the best means for Zebra eradication. 

“How long do we have before the Zebras get here?” the head general asked. A team of a dozen military men sat around a large table deliberating on the matter.

“Our best guess sir,” said a man in uniform wearing glasses, “is thirty-six hours.”

“We have to act fast. What do we know about these things? Do they have any weaknesses?”

“Well we know they were sent by God,” glasses answered. 

“Ah,” said the general. “And do we have any way of killing God?”

“Philosophy?”

“Interesting,” said the general. “Do we have any philosophers?”

“I’m afraid we had them all shot, sir,” said the other general.

“Damn. Any other ideas?” the general asked. No one speaks.

“Well, we could nuke them, sir.”

“Finally,” the general said, slamming his fist on the table. “Someone with solutions.”

The day before the Zebras arrived, they were visible to the naked eye from the shore. Millions of them galloped over the foamy waves. The slosh of their hooves against the water slowly flooded the citizens’ eardrums. People stood at the shore of the city, grimaced, holding their guns at the ready. The swarm filled the horizon, the crowds of spectators, the beaches. Many had come wearing Zebra stripes for protection. Others for fashion.

All anyone could see at first was the wild manes and black and white bodies. Then, from up above, people saw a small plane fly over and drop something in the middle of the herd, now only feet away. There was a blinding light, and a vacuum of noise as the bomb went off. After the explosion, everyone looked around. No humans were harmed, but the Zebras were destroyed. Zebra parts covered the entire city—black white and red all over. Hairs, hooves, teeth, eye balls, and every other part of a Zebra were dismembered across the concrete jungle. The bomb did not kill all of the Zebras, but it got most of them. A few stragglers found their way onto the shore, but everyone was so well prepared that they easily finished them off. 

After the explosion, there was much hugging and celebration. Cities across the country and the world held parades to honor the work done by everyone in killing the Zebras. The world, it seemed, had survived a fatal impasse and come out all the better. War stopped, people began to treat each other nicer. Our iceberg-hairline stopped receding for once. Even global hunger was solved, as there was now a surplus of Zebra meat available to everyone.

Unfortunately, someone undercooked their Zebra meat before they ate it, and in doing so created an airborne respiratory virus that wiped out all of humanity in about six weeks.

The End.