The property was a pre-fab shack set back, a hundred metres or so, from the ragged coast highway. Drusher had lived in it for seven years. It was weather-worn and set on waste gravel, shrouded by bleached undergrowth and gnarled saltwood trees. From the front porch, by day, he could see the ocean, but that wasn’t necessarily a good thing. To the rear, where the property backed into the dust dunes and the ridges of silt, were the coops and pens and outhouses. Everything got covered in a fine white dust blown in by the sea wind.

At night, it seemed a ghostly place, the white dunes silver against the low black sky. The air was still. It was a warm night, breathlessly warm. Even in winter, the Bone Coast was a thirsty place.

Drusher scuttled towards the outbuildings. Sweat was already dripping off him. He considered making a run for it, but there was nothing around for kilometres. The war, twenty or so years earlier, had scoured the Peninsula. The area around his home was a Throne-forsaken waste of bone-dry dunes, dotted ruins, inshore refineries, long since closed down, and the rusted carcasses of ATV carriers. The remoteness, and lack of amenities, were key reasons why the place had appealed to Drusher, and also key reasons why he’d been able to rent it for a manageable sum. He remembered the landlord, a property dealer in Tycho City, actually smiling with relief when Drusher had signed the lease and forked over the first quarter rent.

He decided to hide in the outbuildings, among the clutter. Most of the stuff had been there when he arrived. He’d added to it over time. Scavenging on the shore and inland had provided him with materials to use in various projects, the coops and pens for instance. Steel poles and wooden posts for frames, chain-link and mesh fencing to make the cages. Fuel cans hacksawed in half to make water troughs. There was some old sacking he used for windbreaks and lagging. He imagined himself under it, being very still.

He froze when he saw movement. A man appeared, walking around from the front of the property. He had a stablight in his hand and was playing it around. Drusher’s eyes had adjusted to the darkness. He made the man to be young, slight of frame, fair-haired. Then the stab-beam pointed his way, and the glare ruined his night vision.

He ducked down, wincing, and crawled behind a pile of rotting cargo pallets. They had been going to be a lookout tower, a blind from which he could observe the winter migrations. But he’d never worked out how to engineer the old pallets into a platform that wouldn’t collapse under him.

He heard the man call out. He heard footsteps on the chalky gravel. He dashed towards the pens and let himself in.