We dropped off our new acquaintance in the centre of the Industrial Zone. He had politely refused our offer to drive him all the way home and assured us he would be able to make his own way back, insisting he be left off in the middle of town.

Brian and I then had a long argument over whether we should tell Thurgood what we had just uncovered. Brian was of the opinion that the evidence at hand was too flimsy for Thurgood to believe us, not to mention that and that we should investigate further by ourselves. I said that the situation was too serious, and that we needed as much help as we could get.

Brian was right, after all. We knew that he was not lying, but nobody in their right mind would believe an old rogue. Eventually we lapsed into silence again, as we seemed wont to do.

I had a thought. "Well, it's simple. We just need to get to a supermarket and buy some Thunder Falls meat. And then we work out what it is."

"I think there's a Golden Mart around the corner here."

We parked on the roadside and I stepped out into the dusk. I motioned to Brian to wait for me. It was six-thirty in the Special Industrial Zone. Swarms of people walked past, carrying bulging shopping bags, heads down, completely engrossed in their own thoughts, ignoring the bustle and filth around them. Moths and gnats swarmed around the streetlights. Up the road, buses streamed out of the main bus station, filled with commuters heading back to the hostels and further out.

***

The Golden Mart had spotlessly scrubbed floors and the shelves were tightly packed, but it was clear that it had seen better days. The fruit and vegetable section was empty. I couldn't recall if this was normal or not; I usually shopped at Eldermart, but they didn't have any stores in this part of the Special Industrial Zone. Some kinda territorial dispute.

I brushed past a row of fish oil capsule bottles as I made for the freezers at the back.. A Rich Source of ---------3 fatty acid, the label on each bottle said. The word omega had been manually blanked out with black marker.

It was not hard to find the Thunder Falls stuff. They seemed to have taken over three-quarters of the freezer. Tenderloin. Belly. Ribs. Cutlets. Everything you could think of.

I pulled out a bulk packet of mince from the back of the freezer. I checked the label. Produced and packaged in the Independent Territories. I took another one, just to make sure, and headed for the front counter. 

***

"Hello. How are you?" The cashier had a broad smile on her face, but there were deep bags under her eyes, and her uniform was creased and noticeably dirty. I suspected she was thinking the same thing about me.

"I'm good. And you?"

"You're..." Her eyes flashed yellow for a brief moment.

"Yes. Just another customer."

"I'm fine," she replied.

I gave her with a sceptical look. There was a long silence. The only noise was the faint thrumming of the freezers and the sound of traffic from outside.

I looked around me. The store was empty. There was a surveillance camera hung above me. "It's broken," she replied. "It's been two weeks and nobody's come to fix it."

She lived in one of the many dormitory suburbs in the Zone. and hadn't been paid in over two months. Shipments of product had been sporadic lately as well, and sometimes didn't arrive at all. She had some savings and a small inheritance from her father, but that was quickly running out, and she was behind on her rent and struggling to buy food.

***

"What took you so long?" Brian asked impatiently as I emerged from the store.

"I was talking to the cashier."

"Did she get your autograph as well?"

"No."

"Well, what was the point?" Brian eyed the mince hungrily. "What are we even going to do with that? "Let it defrost, I guess."

I pulled into the traffic. "Thurgood's probably waiting for us."

***

I was riding shotgun with in the front of Thurgood's Toyota Troop Carrier, beloved steed of Australian pastoralists, fundamentalist insurgents, and now us. and Brian climbed into the back with the rest of the Willow pack squad.

I had stowed the Moon Goddess away in a dusty corner of the bus garage and stuffed the mince in the staff fridge to defrost. It would have to wait. Right now, our priority was the welfare of the Salmon Creek pack.

The last vestiges of the sun had finally disappeared on the horizon, and there was just the faintest lick of orange light still visible. The lights of the city were around us. People - mostly rogues - still thronged on the sidewalk, and the hawkers were still doing brisk business; soon, they would retreat into the shadows. The smells of used cooking oil and faint decay carried on the sultry evening breeze. The faint murmurings of conversation filtered through the wind noise blowing through the open windows. The yellow streetlights flashed past.

We crossed the Arrowhead, its strongly flowing waters menacing in the dark, and for a moment we had a perfect view of the East Side. Even in the darkness it had a completely different atmosphere to Copenhagen Town. The streets were haphazard and twisting, hugging the jagged contours of the steep riverbank. The houses were densely packed together, almost spilling onto each other, a patchwork of yellow and white squares of light reflecting onto the dark, glimmering surface of the river below. On the other side, the mansions of the few rogues that had made it lit up the opposite bank.

The roadside lights dimmed and blinked out altogether as our motley crew of rent-a-sentries left the Industrial Zone. The asphalt road turned to dirt and the grass verged turned into inpenetrable scrub. I sat silently, staring into the inscrutable darkness, trying to shift the weight in my gut. The world seemed to have shrunk. Thunder Falls were far more ruthless than I had ever imagined.

"You got something on your mind, Jim?" Thurgood didn't take his eyes off the road. "You haven't said a word."

I continued to look into the night. "The raid's scheduled in three days."

"The other packs are going absolutely mental. Roncalli's doing a 24-hour marathon broadcast to get people fired up. Just a whole 24 hours of the most ludicrous made-up bullshit about rogues.""Is he still going."

"You bet he is." Thurgood switched the radio on, Roncalli's high-pitched voice filling the cabin. He was clearly worse for wear talking for fifteen hours straight, but he was not letting such trivialities stop him.

"-they wiped out an entire pack! What makes you think that this- this isn't justified? Why do you vegan venison-eating hipsters think you have the right to meddle in our affairs? You just want-"

"Oh for the love of Monagh." Thurgood muttered under his breath, turning the radio back off. "I don't want to hear another second of his fucking voice. I've got other stuff on my plate. Water, specifically."

"You've got the creek."

"Dry for nearly three weeks now. It's unprecedented. Our tanks are pretty much running on empty. If it doesn't rain in the next week we're going to have to start trucking in water." He shook his head. "I think Groundnut Hill have already run out. They're on bottled water now, because Adrian doesn't understand the concept of money. Of course, his people are smarter than him, so they're currently digging a well. Long story cut short. It's not looking good." He was silent for a moment. "Meanwhile, you've got a fucking lake. You lucky bastards."

"It's like we're the lucky pack."

"Don't be ashamed about it, Jim." Thurgood kept his eyes on the road. "Monagh gave you good luck so you could do great things with it. So use it to your advantage."

"So you're saying we should start a water supply business? Just convert the entire Interpack fleet to water tankers."

Thurgood chuckled. "I imagine Stone River would be pissed about that."

"I mean, it wouldn't be too hard, actually. Most of our buses are already built on a truck chassis.""And then the day you launch your new business, there's a torrential downpour just as you're about to cut the ribbon. Three inches of rain in an hour."

"Thunder Falls will probably buy us out before that. So we'd be fine if the drought broke. And they'd probably just absorb the costs."

"Thunder Falls," Thurgood muttered, swerving to avoid a tree branch fouling the road. "What? They offered to buy you out, too?"

"I wish," Thurgood chuckled. "Then I could retire and just go fishing all day. No. It's not that. It's the raid."

"What about it?"

"Something doesn't sit right with me. It's just a gut feeling. That Stevenson guy. He gives me the creeps. Not too keen on Adlai, either."

I wondered whether to tell him about what we had found out. I decided against it. The only (possibly) admissible evidence we had was sitting in a fridge sixty miles away, and there was not much difference a day would make.

"Adlai seems to be interested in me for some reason," I replied. "He spoke to me at the Congress. Said something about us being the people's alphas."

"Hmm," Thurgood negotiated a hairpin bend. "That sounds like something Adlai would say."