He could only shake his head at the business smarts of the two smokehouse assholes who’d come up with the idea of auctioning off their wares during peak hour. A couple of guys from Houston, who’d already moved down under long before the Wave swept away their hometown, they’d run a successful barbecue joint in Sydney and expanded in a big way when the first American refugees poured into the camps there back in ’03. Assholes didn’t even work the grill anymore. They’d franchised and retired about a year after coming up with the idea of swapping set menu prices for a bidding war during the busiest hour of service – just after they opened up the pits for lunch. The Rhino didn’t know whether he resented them for making their baby back pork ribs so prohibitively fucking expensive that he could never afford to eat them, or because he hadn’t thought of some similarly cunning idea to enrich himself out of the end of the world.

All he’d managed was to get his ass nearly shot off in New York on a wild fucking goose hunt for some asshole who didn’t even exist, except as a lure for some other asshole who wanted him dead simply because he’d helped Miss Jules get out of Acapulco alive . . .

The cast-iron doors of the smoker swung open and an employee reached in with tongs to pull the ribs out. He held a batch of pork ribs up for all to see while the initial price went up on a chalkboard. Hands full of currency were in the air as the shouting began. Casting a sideways glance at the sailors, the Rhino saw their crestfallen faces as the price soon soared out of their reach.

He’d moved to the head of the line – or rather, the front of the crush – while he’d been contemplating his sorry lot. Well, at least he was still drawing breath. He hadn’t Disappeared, leaving behind a puddle of meaty gruel and stained clothes. He hadn’t gone down screaming in the great die-off that followed. He hadn’t been turned into radioactive glass in the Mid East.

Or been stomped to death in a food riot. Or gone into a mass grave in China.

He hadn’t been gunned down during the Paris intifada either. Even pirates and great storms in the Southern Ocean hadn’t come close to seeing off Rhino A. Ross.

He was still here. And by God, he was going to enjoy his goddamn buffalo wings. If he could just get his hands on some.

‘The tangled fucking webs we weave . . .’ Rhino muttered, approaching a second window, devoted to poultry. A stocky Korean leaned out to take the Rhino’s order.

‘A dozen hot wings?’

‘Fifteen dollars,’ the Korean said in impeccable English.

‘Ten?’ Rhino asked, hopefully.

‘No, no, American. Fifteen or nothing.’