Each one they prised open proved to be an Aladdin’s cave of treasures. Some of the boys had found a red Lamborghini in one and wheeled it out onto the wharf where they’d been pushing and shoving each other to take turns to sit in the front seat and pretend to drive the thing. The impromptu party, however, had begun shortly after some of them had stumbled upon a container filled with stacked pallets of alcopops and bottles of spirits.

A fire now shimmered in the afternoon light as the boys took turns in tossing on the bone-dry slats of broken pallets, throwing on bottles of brandy and vodka, delighting in the explosion of glass and rolling mini-mushroom clouds of blue alcohol-fuelled flames.

‘S’getting out of ‘and, Chief,’ muttered Jeff.

Maxwell looked at his pilot, sitting beside him on the foredeck of the tugboat. Even from here they could feel the wavering heat of the boys’ growing bonfire. ‘Relax. They’re just letting off some steam.’

Maxwell had smiled beneficently when a group of boys had emerged from the maze of containers to present Edward, Nathan and him with some of the bright orange and yellow coloured bottles of Froot-ka they’d discovered. The boys had already started opening and chugging away at them.

So he’d smiled and told them, since they’d all been such good boys, they bloody well deserved a party. The girlfriends had already been pulled out of their cots from the bowels of the second barge and plied with copious amounts of alcohol and were now, as he watched from afar, busy servicing clusters of boys. It had the look of a Roman orgy; a last-night bender before the end of the world. In fact, it very much had the look of the first few nights of the big crash. Maxwell wondered what would happen if he tried to flex his authority this second, right now - step ashore and announce that the party was over and it was time for them all to go to bed.

He felt the hair on his forearms stir and prickle.

It would be an open challenge to his authority; a dangerously open challenge. He realised the answer to that question was that he daren’t step ashore. It wasn’t a sudden realisation, more a gradual clarification, a truth he’d half suspected for a while that was now, finally, sliding into sharper focus for him. He didn’t truly control these boys, not really. Sure, they were happy to follow orders, follow the schedules and routines that he’d assigned them over the years, happy to cheer his habitual party night opening speech, call him ‘Chief’ and knuckle a salute as he passed them by. But that was because he was the Chief, the guy at the top who made sure every one of them got their perks.

Another recurring, wake-up-sweating nightmare was that one day he was going to publicly give an order to one of the boys and the boy would turn round and tell him to fuck off.

What kept the boys knuckling their foreheads and nodding politely as he passed was a residual deference to him as their school teacher, as the official authority figure put in charge of Safety Zone 4. But more importantly, he was the man who made the lights happen, the arcade machines go on, who opened the sweetie-box and handed out grog and dope on party nights. He was the man promising them even more of that; promising them enough power that every night they could play on the games consoles they’d brought along, watch the library of action movie DVDs they had tucked away.

He shuddered at the thought of what would happen when he finally had to start telling the boys they couldn’t have a party. If they’d stayed on at the dome, that day would have eventually come. And not too far off, that day, either.

With these rigs at least there was the leverage of limitless oil or gas, whatever their generator was tapping for fuel. DVDs, games and girlfriends would keep them busy, keep them happy for the foreseeable. And this container port looked like a useful place to come back to for more booze and fags later on, should he need to sweeten his leadership.

‘You okay, Chief?’ asked Jeff.

Maxwell forced a smile. It felt uncomfortable and ill-fitting and fled quickly. ‘Fine.’

‘We heading off again tomorrow?’

‘I think we’ll give it a day before we move on,’ he replied, ‘see what other supplies we can forage here first.’

Getting the boys to mobilise tomorrow morning, with their heads pounding, was going to be difficult. At least back at the Zone the grog was under lock and key. He put some of it out for them once a week, and once it was gone, it was gone. Tomorrow morning, whilst the boys were all nursing their heads, he’d get what was left of that Froot-ka stored down below on the tugboat. After all, if they were going to have to fight their way on, the boys would be all the better fired up for a scrap with a little alcopop buzz inside them.

He picked Edward out of the milling crowd, his dark face shimmering on the far side of the vodka- and wood-fuelled fire; holding court, relaxed and reclining like a lord on a chaise longue of car tyres covered with fake-fur coats. Beside him, Jay-zee, now proudly wearing the ‘second dog’ jacket inherited from Dizz-ee; the jacket the other boy - Jacob - would have worn alongside Nathan.

He sensed, with a creeping disquiet, that the balance of power was one day going to swing Edward’s way. The young man didn’t need to bribe the boys with perks or parties. They followed his say-so because he was one of them, because he was like the big brother. He looked right, he sounded right. He acted right. The top dog.

He watched the boys dancing around the fire like wraiths, playing with burning sticks and daring each other to leap over the flames as they waned. Snoop had tried a bottle of the sugary drink and curled his lip in disgust. In any case, he wasn’t in the mood to get totally smashed. Not like these morons in front of him.

When they got this off their heads, this stupid and infantile, the boys truly embarrassed him. When they got too rough with the girls, he felt ashamed of them. Watching them now, he wondered what the real difference between them and those feral children was. They looked just as wild and out of control.

Snoop shook his head with irritation as two of them started to spray mouthfuls of whisky onto the fire and yipped with glee at the billowing clouds of flame.

‘HEY!!’ he shouted. The stupid fuckers were going to set themselves on fire. ‘Stop that shit!’

They stopped and contented themselves with waving smouldering slats of wood in the gathering darkness and making smoke trails.

This was the Chief’s plan, wasn’t it? This is the long game. This. Just this. Keep them happy. He wondered if Maxwell had actually bothered to think any further ahead than taking possession of these rigs. Because he had.

How long does this shit last? Because at some point the hidden treasures that can still be foraged out of a stack of freight containers had to run out, right? It all runs out eventually; the bottles of alcopops, the cartons of cigarettes, the cans of corned beef and baked beans.

Just like the oil once ran out.

He wondered if any of the other boys had bothered to think about that. He wondered if Jay-zee sitting beside him, whooping and clapping his hands as he watched the boys getting their ends away, had ever given that a moment’s thought.

He wondered what Maxwell was going to do once they were on those rigs and running things. Was this going to be their home? A going concern? Or some place to simply strip clean and move on from?

Just like locusts.