We passed the power pole, freshly replaced. The skid marks on the road had long been worn away into dust by passing traffic, but the tyre marks in the grass verge were still visible.

The dappled sunlight was just beginning to seep through the dense tree cover overshadowing the road. As usual, the road was already crowded with bicycles and mopeds trying to dodge the numerous potholes.

At the bus stop on the roadside, a large group of schoolchildren stood, waiting for the bus. Some commuters stood next to them, briefcases in hand. They didn't give us so much as a second glance as we drove by.

Mike braked as the mopeds in front of us suddenly slowed down. It didn't take long to realise why.

Blaring sirens and flashing blue lights assaulted our senses as a convoy of black pickup trucks materialised ahead, private security guards crowding the beds, heading towards us at a cracking pace. Mike wound up the driver's side window in anticipation of the incoming wake of dust.

The clouds of dust left by the trucks revealed a semitrailer rumbling towards us, with a single lonely vehicle looking almost lost on its bed, covered under a tarp, with more black Ford Raptors bringing up the tail end of the motorcade.

"I believe that's Clayton's new McLaren," I said, eyeing the sleek outline of the car as the trailer rattled by.

"Who's Clayton?"

"Alpha of the Golden Fir pack."

"There are so many packs. I can never remember who's the Alpha of which."

"Well, now you know who the Shadow Bluff pack is led by." I pointed to myself.

"So who's this Clayton guy? He seems to have a nice taste in cars."

"You probably remember him from the time he got sloshed and proclaimed himself Alpha king."

"Oh. That guy. We were watching his coronation on TV, and then he woke up and started freaking out because he had no idea what the hell was going on. It was the only thing we talked about for about a month after."

Mike chuckled at the memory. "That might have been the least crazy part of the whole ceremony. Some of those costumes looked like they came straight out of a Disney movie."

She watched as the dust cloud faded in the passenger side mirror. "Why would he spend so much effort just to get it delivered? Why doesn't he just drive it home?"

I gestured at the road surface. "Just look at all the potholes."

"You should see this stretch when it rains," Mike added. "It's a quagmire."

"So why would he buy it if he can't even drive it around?"

"Good question. He doesn't. The lucky bastard's got a private racetrack on his pack territory."

"Why would he spend all that money for a racetrack for himself?"

"To his credit," I interjected, "it was built long before he was even a glint in his mother's eye. Back then there weren't even any roads. They had to drag the cars up here on sleds in the wintertime."

"But it must cost a fortune to maintain. Why doesn't he just fix the roads?"

"He? You mean the OPLU." I wound my window up a little. The wind noise was getting rather annoying as the truck sped up.

"Why don't they fix the roads?"

"When's the last time they built something they promised in Copenhagen Town?"

"The closest we've got is that time Wethermore visited six years ago."

I watched the scarred trunk of an oak tree flash past, a small bunch of flowers resting at its base. "Wethermore's not a bad guy. But he's pushing 80 and I'm not sure if he even knows what the hell is going on in his own organisation."

"Most of us don't have a problem with him. But the Organisation? That's a different story, to put it mildly."

Mike shifted into fourth. "The original idea was good. A nice independent organisation with no affiliation to the packs. Keep the bastards honest, and hopefully get them to talk to each other without going at each others' throats. Kill two birds with one stone. That's why it's called the Organisation of Pan-Lycan Unity. Get them to unite.

"Then Cameron became chairman. Filled all the positions with his own packmates, turned it into his own fiefdom. You probably remember him from when he tried to fix the economy by printing too much money. And when they finally kicked him out and drafted in Wethermore he went back home and turned his own pack into a fake-gold-plated gambling den. But that's another story..."

"A lot of people we know lost their jobs. A lot of them went back into the forests."

The cabin was silent for a moment.

"It must have been tough."

"We joked that we were starving billionaires." She laughed weakly at her own joke.

My mind flashed back momentarily to last night's events. "Do you know if any people stayed in the woods?"

"Not that I know of. Most of them returned after the economy bounced back. But there might be a few still hanging around."

Mike wound the driver's side window back down again then reached for the dashboard radio. Anna moved over slightly; it was really rather cramped in the cabin of the Hilux. "It's time for our daily dose of 97.3 FM."

"What's 97.3 FM?" Anna looked confused.

"You've never heard of 97.3 FM?"

"We don't really listen to pack radio stations. Only the standard Pine Hollow stuff. Some of us also get the ZBC stations."

"Surely someone's talked about it on ZBC."

97.3 FM was the official radio station of the Upper Quaking Tree Pack, and Beta Albert Roncalli's main conduit for breaking news, swinging attacks on their sworn enemies, the Lower Quaking Tree Pack, and mostly unintended gaffes. Quotes of his such as "no shit Sherlock, humans are the worst" had long become shibboleths among online Zirconians.

"You don't know what you're missing out on," Mike replied, turning on the radio.

"...blasphemer and bigot Oliver Cardwell has drawn yet another disgraceful cartoon slandering our Dear Alpha! I think I speak for all members of the Stone River Pack when I say that I condemn this low and disgusting act."

She recoiled slightly at the burst of sound. "Who even is this guy?"

"The Beta of the Upper Quaking Tree Pack. You know. One of those two packs that are always fighting."

Alpha Reid of the Upper Quaking Tree Pack and his brother, Alpha Mason of the Lower Quaking Tree Pack, had been battling each other ever since they were children. Their father had split his realm into two in the hope the two brothers would be able to rule peacefully, but the brothers had simply resumed fighting for control of the entire territory.

"He's got a very high-pitched voice for a Beta."

Mike smiled. "I say, Jim, she tells it like it is."

"What on earth is he talking about?"

I gave a quick rundown of the events. Alpha Reid had allegedly assaulted a maid with an electric toothbrush. The maid, having her wits about her, had immediately run for the Industrial Zone, where she had family, before Reid could get his underlings to do damage control. She promptly got in touch with the Zirconian tabloids, whereupon Toothbrushgate, as the incident had been since christened, had gone viral.

Cardwell, meanwhile, was a Zirconian cartoonist and satirist, famous for his provocative art. He had gained notoriety after a particularly offensive cartoon of his, depicting the moon goddess in the midst of an unprintable act, had resulted in death threats and his banning from the territories of several packs. He was currenty in hiding at an undisclosed address somewhere in the Zirconian capital, Canterbury, under 24 hour guard. Not that this slowed his artistic output in any way.

"I haven't seen this in any of the Pine Hollow papers."

"This isn't Zirconia, sweetheart." Mike did a passing imitation of a deep, gravelly Alpha voice.

"Isn't that what they're meant to do? Report inconvenient truths? Hold the Alphas accountable for their bullshit?"

She gulped as the last sentence left her mouth. "Oops. I didn't mean to be disrespectful-"

"I don't feel disrespected at all," I remarked.

"I personally believe that most of them deserve nothing but total disrespect," Mike added.

She relaxed visibly. "That's all they ever talk about on ZBC radio. Freedom of speech. Talking truth to power. Inconvenient truths. Holding the powers that be accountable for their actions."

"Well, I bet no employee of the Zirconia Broadcasting Corporation has ever been woken at two in the morning by a black car pulling up outside their front door."

Beta Roncalli's tirade continued. "...dear leader Reid will be filing a defamation suit in response to this disgusting attack on his character. Serial blasphemer Cardwell has once again slandered the good name of Alpha Reid with baseless and completely untrue allegations."

"So first, he doesn't need his chief warrior anymore, then he doesn't need his chef anymore, and now he doesn't need his maid. Really showing no weakness."

Reid had had a rough couple of months. His chief warrior had found love with a Zirconian aid worker who to had come to their pack to distribute antibiotics. and left for a new life across the border. His chef had walked away a few weeks later for undisclosed reasons. The rumour was that he'd been on the receiving end of one of Reid's intermittent temper tantrums. 

I barely suppressed a snigger as I watched a road gang patching up a pothole at the side of the road. "I can just see the documentary about his life. Set to the tune of Yakety Sax."

I could almost hear the fizz of the froth on Roncalli's lips through the speakers as he continued. "These salacious rumours that Dear Leader Reid is a maid-beater and misogynist are unfounded and blatantly untrue. it is well known that dear leader Reid is an ardent supporter of women's rights..."

Mike cracked up again. "Now he's just lying his face off. The poor guy's so far up Reid's asshole he doesn't even know what way up is anymore."

Anna was staring at the dashboard with a look of mild bewilderment. "Is this guy for real?"

"Yes," Mike replied. "Sadly."

"Hang on. If he's blowing up about this on pack radio, then wouldn't make keeping the story out of the papers totally pointless?"

"Very good question," Mike deadpanned. "Maybe you should ask him why."

"Most people in the packs probably know of it already," I explained. "Word of mouth. Spreads fast."

Meanwhile, on air, Roncalli breathed in deeply and leaned in closer to the mic.

Mike turned the volume up slightly. "I'll bet you a hundred the next thing he says is that the Alpha should never show weakness."

Roncalli was almost yelling at this point. "Did you really think Dear Alpha Reid would be bowed by such a slanderous and cowardly attack on him, you mutts? As all of my regular audience will know, A true Alpha never shows weakness..."

Mike and I burst into hysterics in unison. Mike nearly drove into a roadside ditch.

Mike was beaming, struggling to hold back laughter. "See. Told ya. It's like bloody clockwork."

I was struggling to hold back tears.

"What's the joke?"

"It's his favourite thing to say." I reluctantly reached for my wallet.

Roncalli continued his rant about Cardwell's latest transgression. "And on that note, dear Zirconians, I have a message for you. You do not cross Dear Supreme Leader Alpha Reid! He is the strongest Alpha of this land and the leader of the most powerful pack in the Independent Territories! He is far greater than you puny weak cockroach scum will ever be! You will live to regret your actions!"

"That's rubbish," I mumbled absentmindedly. "He doesn't even have as many men as our pack, and we're about the 174th-largest here."

Roncalli wasn't stopping anytime soon. "You'll regret it, you human-loving eunuchs! You'll end up like that photographer guy!"

Mike stepped on the gas slightly as the road straightened out. We were getting close to our destination. "I hope someone out there is taping this for posterity."

"And you lily-livered Lower Quaking Tree cowards, don't think you're off the hook! If I find out that you were in any way behind that disgusting and completely untrue cartoon, there will be hell to pay! And did you think that was funny, sending that little group to spy on us yesterday? You Lower Quaking Pack upstarts think you can pull funny shit like this on us without any consequences? Man up and attack us, you sleazy mongrels! We will be victorious!"

My ears pricked up suddenly.

Mike's hand hovered over the radio controls. "This guy is getting boring."

"Hang on. What did he say about a little group?"

Mike changed the channel anyway. "I wouldn't put it past him to straight-up make up stuff."

***

The forest around us gradually thinned as we entered the floodplain of the river Arrowhead. The mist had long cleared, and the clear sky offered no respite from the harsh sun. The smokestacks and office buildings of the zone, their figures distorted by heat haze, lay on the horizon, overshadowed by the faint bluish outlines of the distant mountains.

We reached an intersection. With its fresh zebra markings and clean concrete edges, it looked almost alien in the middle of the desolate plain that stretched out on both sides. It was only the rogues, standing on the verges looking at us, and the crudely made signs they were holding, that gave it some kind of earthly quality.

We turned left.