The People's Alpha ✔

26: License to Kill

I walked through the same dusty streets that I had walked a week before. Some shot me odd looks, but most just ignored me. The East Side was not that far from here.

There were no longer people at the faucets. Now people were queuing up for the water trucks that were the now the only source of water, now that the river was close to drying up.

As I reached Herman's residence, he was tending to a rather intricate system of buckets piled up around him in the concreted rear courtyard of the house.

"I'm not sure if you should have walked here." His first words were. "I can feel it in the air. Something is happening." He had his hands in the air and his eyes half-closed in a gesture of mock enlightenment. Paired with his gravelly voice, it was almost comical.

"OK now, Herman." I shut the gate behind me. "You're right, by the way, but do stop taking the piss."

"Ok, I'll admit it, I was leading you on. Just a little bit. But you have come here for a reason, right? You want to talk to me about something."

"You're right," I poked at a bucket. "I did come here to talk to you about something."

"OK. let's go back in the living room, we can't really talk here." We threaded through the buckets. "Yeah, sorry for the mess. The water stopped flowing three days ago. Ignore the buckets. Those two are for cleaning, that one's for drinking, and that one's for bathing, those are for watering the plants. I hope it bloody rains sometime soon."

We both looked up to the sky. "I hope so too."

We entered his living room, sparsely furnished but it qualified for luxurious digs in this part of town. There was an open plan kitchen, with appliances and taps that looked a few decades old. He gestured for me to sit on the single couch, as he went into the kitchen. "You want a beer? Would you fancy a Thunder Falls Lager?"

"A what?"

"I told you." Herman fished a bottle opener out of a drawer. "They sell everything these days. Sooner or later they'll be selling air to us. In gas bottles or some shit. I'm almost certain they don't make this, though. They probably import this stuff from Zirconia or some human place, that's my guess. A lot of their other stuff is imported as well."

I looked at the coffee table. There were scratches and coffee stains and cigarette stubs accumulated from over the years. It had patina.

"How much do you know about the East Side?"

"More than I'll ever admit to." Herman walked over with the two opened beer bottles. "Why?"

"They're planning a raid on the East side."

Herman looked at me like I'd grown tentacles. "Well, I did not see that one coming."

I held out my drink. "Drink some of this shit, to feel like invading the East Side."

Herman guffawed. "I sure hope they have a lot of manpower. Because I'm telling you, man, if it backfires there's going to be a lot more than shit hitting the fan."

"But if we do pull it off-"

"You're gonna be heroes. Forever. Or at least supervillains."

"They're trying to get all the packs to help. They got us all together in this meeting yesterday. At 8:30 in the fucking morning, at their pack house in the middle of nowhere."

"I thought they were sensible people. Didn't they talk about all this outreach and reconciliation, and now they come out with this? I don't get it."

"They still do, they spent quite a bit ramming that point home in the presentation yesterday. Apparently the reconciliation and goodwill has a certain limit. They've had troubles establishing themselves there, or so they say."