The People's Alpha ✔

1: Things That Go Bump In The Nighttime

I awoke to the all-too familiar noise emanating from the bedside table. I instinctively reached for the phone, a sense of dread burning in my gut.

As usual, Lister was blunt and to the point. He didn't even bother with a hello.

"Single-car accident on the northern border road. Single occupant, occupant uninjured-"

I breathed a sigh of relief.

"...powerlines are down. Get here ASAP. Bring the truck." He hung up before I had a chance to reply.

I looked at the alarm clock on the bedside table. 2:17 AM. It was still dark outside, and I could see stars through the curtains.

Next to me Laura stirred. "Jim..."

"I need to go now. Something's come up." It was a conversation we had had countless times before.

"Is it the road again?"

I didn't reply. She already knew the answer to the question.

She sighed. "People are always driving too fast." She went back to sleep.

I had lost count of the times I had been called out at some obscene hour. I had seen a lot over the years. Head-on collisions, rollovers, people trapped in wreckage, people flung out of cars, people flung from mopeds, injured people staggering around in the fog in wolf form, zombie-like, you name it.

But it was the personal items that really got me every time. Wallets. Books. Soft toys. The lost livelihoods that they silently insinuated, scattered on the ground, often seemed more poignant than the sight of the carnage itself.

And then the wreckage would be towed away, another day would dawn, and all that remained of the accident would be some skid marks in the grass on the side of the road. Then there would be the paperwork, and finally, the most difficult part of the whole sorry affair: the obligatory journey to another pack to deliver the bad news.

I got dressed in work clothes. No suit for tonight. Overalls and steel-capped boots, and a hard hat.

The night sky was clear, and the frigid air cut like a knife on my cheeks as I stepped into the night. I hurried through the cluster of houses following the main street that led through the village, passing through the Agora at the centre, overshadowed to the right by the pack house. The square was shrouded in darkness, except for one second-floor window on the opposite side of the pack house, a small square of incandescent yellow cutting though the black night, its radiance glinting off the cobblestones below.

The old carbarn, where Interpack Bus Lines had been founded by my predecessor's predecessor, stood on the outskirts of the village, at the edge of the forest. All bus operation had long been moved out to a newer and much larger facility in the Special Industrial Zone; the barn now served as a home for the pack's fleet of emergency vehicles, and the backup diesel generators that were humming along now that the power was out.

The door was ajar, allowing a thin sliver of bright white light to spill out into the darkness. Inside, Mike, the pack mechanic and general handyman, and unofficial pack Omega, was just finishing the job securing a stepladder to the bed of the old Oshkosh army truck that served variously as tow truck, snowplow, troop transport, crane and makeshift ambulance.

"She's running a bit rough," he said as I entered, wiping grease from his fingers with an old rag he always kept in the top pocket of his overalls. "Be careful with the throttle." I had trouble understanding him over the din of the backup generators.

I climbed into the cab. Mike followed, carrying his trusty toolbox. There was new upholstery on the single bench seat that spanned the width of the cab, but the musty smell of the interior I remembered from childhood was still there. I was briefly reminded of a childhood photo of me in a turtleneck and jeans, sitting on the front mudguard. Then the memory faded away.

The old truck coughed into life without a hitch. Mike's words still fresh in my mind, I put it into gear.

It was a short and uneventful drive to the accident site. Pack patrol had already put up floodlights and blocked off the road.

***

"She's got no papers, no ID at all on her. And the car has no plates."

I was standing with my chief Warrior, Hendrick Lister, in the middle of the road, surveying the accident site. Lister was a full head shorter than me, but what he lacked in height and brute strength he more than made up for in cunning and strategy. He was an expert at drawing up battle plans, and claimed to have memorised the events of every single major World War II battle.

Before us, a pair of skid marks led to where a late-model Jeep Cherokee had left the road and embedded its front end into a power pole, which was now leaning at a crazy angle. thin tendrils of steam rose into the air from beneath the crumpled bonnet. The hazard lights were still blinking.

It looked bad, but in reality it hadn't been a particularly harsh impact. The front of the car was unrecognizable and all the airbags had deployed, but the passenger compartment appeared undeformed, and the doors still opened. Most importantly, according to Lister, the driver had got out unharmed.

"You tried talking to her?"

"She won't even tell us her name. She wouldn't even let me put a blanket on her."

I couldn't imagine that Lister's brusque manner could have helped matters. "She's in shock and she probably has a concussion as well. That's expected. Get Gerta to organise one of the guest rooms in the pack house."

"We don't have any idea who she is-"

I rubbed my hands together in an attempt to keep them warm. "We can't just leave her out here in the middle of the night. Get a guard to keep her under observation."

Lister thought about it for a moment, then nodded in agreement.

"Well, I'll leave you to it." He went to help Mike and the pack guards with separating the car from the pole. And I was left standing alone.

The girl was sitting alone in the grass on the side of the road, at the very edge of the circle of light thrown by the battery-powered floodlights. She was barefoot and wearing only a thin nightgown. Her long brown hair was unkempt.

A flash of recognition sparked in her eyes as I approached. She bowed her head slightly. "Alpha-"

She stopped, clearly not used to the sight of an Alpha dressed in grimy overalls and a hard hat.

I sat down next to her, but made sure to keep a reasonable distance as to not overshadow her petite frame. Intimidation would be counterproductive in this situation.

"You don't have to call me Alpha. You can just call me Jim." The sheer awkwardness of the situation reminded of my first day at the University of Canterbury all the way back in 1984, a tall blond kid from the backwoods on a scholarship, standing out like a sore thumb in a crowd of urbane city-dwellers.

"I'm Anna." She spoke very faintly, her voice almost drowned out by the droning of the tow truck's engine in the near-distance.

"So what brings you here?"

"I don't want to talk about it." There was a distinct edge to her voice.

I decided not to push the issue any further. "You're welcome to stay the night at my pack. Or however long it takes to work things out."

She nodded.

"I'll help you up." I extended a hand.

She pushed it away with surprising force. "I can manage on my own, thanks."

We walked in silence towards the source of the light, footsteps crunching on gravel, her figure trailing mine by a few paces.

Back at the accident site, they had secured the tow chain to the rear tow hook of the Cherokee, and were preparing to begin the long process of extricating the car from the pole.

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