The CCCP criers call: ‘Corpse Town is saved! Corpse Town is at peace! Corpse Town is a haven for all!’

The CCCP criers lie. But to be fair, that is part of their job description and were they to tell the truth they would weep.

Because, while the chaos has passed, all Corpse Town must know that this peace is, at very best, skin deep. For the Gangers feel it in their bones that something big, and most likely bad, will soon tear through this façade. Some even feel it in their muscles, a tension that cannot be eased, and on their skin, in an itching that scratching turns to welts.

And for the CCCP, they begin to have an inkling of what the Lost mean for them and Corpse Town. For now, they need more data and, more importantly, they need the gangs to make others than the CCCP the objects of their violent tendencies. If the gangs were to rest, then idleness would likely turn against the CCCP once more and with twice the bloodshed. Although resigned to the loss of their crates during the chaos, the CCCP cannot afford any more losses of men or materiel; nor is it willing to risk the secrets of the Lost it has learned are found by the gangs.

This need therefore gives added urgency to another – the need for the CCCP to control Corpse Town’s meagre resources and power their ongoing research into the Lost. The CCCP needs fuel, sustenance, and credits. The CCCP needs gunk.

Summoned from their dens, the Gang Leaders of Corpse Town are urgently given their orders, the promise of credits dangled before their noses outweighing their reluctance to have the smell of gunk there instead, and rush out of Corpse Town to harvest as much as they can before their rivals get their first.