Meanwhile elsewhere, after a night camped hiding in a large bush, and then a morning spent untangling from a large bush...

A sticky body suit of sweat clung to Phoenix like the slimy, detonated entrails of his last adventuring partner. It slithered down his face in gloopy streams, poking at his eyeballs with salty fingers, then oozed all down his back, each warm streamlet sending little shivers up his spine as they made their tickly migration to his ass. And his balls? He didn't even want to think about his balls. But the words 'wet sponge' were coming to mind. Phoenix's entire body ached to some degree or another, but it was his feet and legs that were suffering the worst. If you shot him, then punched the bullet holes, then stuck something in them, twisted it, and then released burning acid into his veins, it still, in Phoenix's mind, wouldn't be nearly as uncomfortable as what he suffered now in his poor little legs and feet.

On the bright side to all this, though, Phoenix no longer felt the stinging, icy cold from the day and night before that had rolled up the bottom of his coat and lodged itself into his nervous system. In fact, right now, at this very moment in time, Phoenix was prepared to strip completely naked so long as it meant the pain and the sweat and the awful, rasping sandpapery noise from his lungs would have mercy on him.

Needless to say, and right now Phoenix couldn't really say a whole lot without sounding like someone was standing on his windpipe, it had been a long time since the heroic, brave and mighty adventurer had climbed a mountain. But that's exactly what his mission called for, and so here he was. Climbing some dumb-ass mountain. But for a good cause, at least.

Well, for a cause, anyway.

The mad, often in all senses of the word, star-worshipping cult known as the Star Gazers lived in some crappy little village at the top of Mount Butt - or at least that's what Phoenix thought it was called. It may also have been Hutt, or Futt, or something -utt, anyway. It was said that they had formed the Starry Place - the name of the village - at the point where their original members, no doubt mutants and inbreds and idiots the lot of them, first saw the stars however many years ago. Folks say that in a stroke of sheer luck, the greasy smog had dissolved a hole in itself that fateful night, if only for a moment, and the very sight of what lay beyond drove the group quite startlingly insane. Successfully insane, albeit. They must have made a killing on cult entry fees.

Now? To the descendants of those wealthy bastards, the fatty layer of gristle coating what constituted for a sky in these parts was considered a great wall, separating the land of man and his many, many sins with that of the Stars, and all their godly goodness. Phoenix always assumed they were naked and bonking up there, because why else would they want privacy? And what else were gods of the Waste meant to do? Repair the land and free mankind from the toils and perils that lay in the night to brutally murder him? HAH! As if. Naked and bonking, that was for damn sure. And there'd be little three-eyed cherubs floating between the orgies with drinks of water, keeping everyone hydrated. Sometimes the gods would spill something, and that's why it rained. And, more importantly, that's why the rain was of inconsistent textures.

The trail Phoenix now climbed was an unsealed Old World road that had fallen largely into disrepair, literally. Whole sections had slipped away, ripped from the mountainside by whatever natural or man-made disaster was occurring at the time, to tumble off down the slope. One moment, Phoenix would be clambering over an ancient mound of fallen dirt, rocks and tree corpses (quite assuredly dead, Phoenix checked), then the trail would then narrow to barely a man's width, and each footstep would get the cliché crumbling of rocks and one foot slipping, just to keep things dramatic for anyone watching.

The landscape itself, in Phoenix's critical eye, was as boringly, unyieldingly brown as brown could be, beginning in the brown foothills of the slope and winding up through brown ridges, brown saddles, brown gulleys and some seriously brown-ass florpadorps (the little wrinkles that mountains sometimes have, or so Phoenix was told by a trader once). A small amount of dry shrubbery clung here and there unmoving and so far not man-eating, and yep, they were akin to the colour of one's shit.

Phoenix slowed to an exhausted halt, let out a hoarse huff and scratched at his beard. Then he furrowed his brow in disappointment, for he had intended to let out a deliberately long, slow huff, but what came out was more a little wheezy puff, like that of a dying old man who had nothing good to say for last words. With grumpiness mounting, Phoenix stared up the winding mountain road before him, which had once again widened into an acceptable road-like shape. Somewhere up there, near the smog and the stars and the idiocy, was a village. And in that village was a leader.

And that leader had no idea just how awesome a hero was coming their way.

He shook his head and began pushing himself up the slope once again. Bert sure better be grateful after all of this. Damn grateful, with clothes flinging to the floor faster than he could say "Let's do it, you gorgeous monster."

If she wasn't, or didn't, well, well ... he'd ... he'd quit!

Hmm. Well, maybe he'd threaten to quit, but then he'd see her shocked, sad face and he'd pretend to give her a second chance. That was bound to work.

Yeah.

* * *

Meatsack shuffled back into Smack-dab's main room, where he had set up one of the chairs near the front door, but facing back into the bar. He had just come from the bar's generator room down the hall, where, repeating Bert's strict orders over and over in his head, he was performing his daily morning task of switching off Smack's perimeter of electric lights - which helped create a Thing barrier around the building so guests didn't have to worry about anything other than sneaky lovers climbing into their windows.

Although it took some degree of strategy and contortionism, Meatsack managed somehow to scrunch his bulky frame just enough so that he could curl up on the chair, knees by his head, one huge arm wrapping around his shins all the way to his other side, and the other arm making an effort at the same, but not quite achieving as identical nor as functional an effect.

He was alone, except for his long-time friend Windy blowing through gaps in the weatherboards. He and Windy often played together as children, but now that he was an adult and had a serious career, he just didn't have the same amount of time to give Windy the attention it deserved. But, much to his delight, his sheer and complete loneliness made for the perfect opportunity to grab a pretend drink and have a thorough conversation about what everyone had been up to.

Meatsack had plenty to tell Windy about Bert and Smack-dab and Phoenix, and all the many adventures they had been up to. Like that time they had served customers together, and when Berty had yelled at a trader who was delivering the grog late, or that one day Meatsack had joined Phoenix for a hunting trip but, oh what a laugh it had been, had come back with a giant fang stuck in his big arm. It had truly been the best of times for Meatsack, a fact he was delighted to share with Windy.

Windy hadn't been sitting about, though. In fact, it had become a highly successful entrepreneur in the dust business. Windy was a travelling salesman and dust expert all rolled into one little gust. It'd scour the Waste for only the very best dust, then with the utmost speed and efficiency - as Meatsack would expect from his long-time pal, who had always been the leader of the duo - it would transport the dust through Can't Be Buried to be delivered on time, on budget and in the right place.

But then Windy had to go, which wasn't great but was OK. Windy was far too busy to hang around Smack-dab pretending to drink and having long, thoughtful conversations, as much as Windy assured Meatsack that it would prefer to be doing. There was simply too much dust to be transported, and Windy had a family now. It had to provide. Meatsack understood, and let his friend seep out back through the cracks in the walls.

His friend disappearing down the road, Meatsack swept his gaze, or at least half of it, around Smack-dab. He was asked to Watch the Bar, and there was no way he was going to let Berty Bert down.

And so he sat alone.

And so he watched.

* * *

Further south along the highway, the ocean could be seen ravaging Can't Be Buried's coastline in a show of quite extraordinary aggression. Giant, angry waves puffed their chests out as they stormed forwards, frothing at the mouth, before piling onto the beach and dragging whatever they could back into their watery domain. The sand and rocks made a bold defence, adopting their regular tactic of going all slimy and difficult to move, sacrificing a small number of their army to be relinquished into the dismal depths, but at the same time grabbing as many of their allies back as possible. It was a constant tug of war, and it had been going on for billions of years - ever since the land dared to challenge its enemy, to fight back against the oppression of the deep blue, and rise up out of the ocean to form its own air-dwelling dirt nation.

Their war was long and brutal, and piece by piece, the ocean sought to reclaim its territory. But after thousands of years and very little erosion to speak of, in the larger scheme of things, all seemed lost for the watery warriors. That was, however, until strange lifeforms atop the land suddenly allied with the ocean in a last-minute change of politics. Within the past two or so centuries, these lifeforms began doing everything in their worldly power to poison the world's atmosphere and free the ocean's additional reinforcements that had been encased in ice since what seemed like the beginning of time. Each passing decade, more reinforcements were released from the ice caps and the ocean grew in strength. It pushed further into the land's territory, engulfing the pitiful attempt by beaches to blockade this onslaught.

With victory after victory racking up for the ocean, its army was rejuvenated, and though the lifeforms had done their fair share of poisoning the water, too, this was the moment the politicians and warmongers of Ocean had been waiting for. No amount of acid would stop their conquest, no amount of nuclear fallout. And so, the waves rose, they frothed, they roared and they crashed. And this time, they were winning.

But the civilisation of these strange lifeforms persevered, despite their over-eager oceanic ally destroying much of their coastal cities, towns and roads - including large chunks of what is now known as the Dead Church. It was on land, on the other side of the highway, that a shadow, unseen behind a cadaverous Old World shed, crouched low and watched intently as an angry-looking woman stomped down the coast road, her head looking hither and thither, and then a bunch of other directions. She appeared to be what one could only assume was a deeply troubled mix of intense disgust and hyper suspicion; her eyes threatened death, but her jittery head movements and the tension in her body seemed like, perhaps, the parliament in her brain was trying hard to pass a vote of no confidence.

The shadow narrowed its equally shadowy eyes and beckoned to a second shadow, which was hovering nearby. The second shadow stooped down to peep through a hole that had been eaten through the corrugated metal of the shed, saw the approaching woman, and gave a quick, professional nod of understanding. The second shadow then hastily beckoned to a third shadow, which immediately started whistling like a bird (species undetermined) over its shoulder towards a giant, rotten tree that hadn't survived Gachook's wrath. Straight away, a garbled whistle sung back.

Now, the second shadow leaned in close to the first shadow. "She looks a little angry, sir," a female voice whispered hesitantly.

The first shadow nodded slowly and twitched its quite incredibly luscious, if a little worse for wear, moustache. "She does, my dear," the male voice whispered in response, "but look at that fine weapon at her hip. I bet we could fetch a jolly price for it, wouldn't you say? Or perhaps we could use the extra firepower if we are to thwart that mad farmer and his robotic companion."

There was a moment of silence between them as the female shadow pondered this. "Is that the weapon she's gripping tight, sir?"

"The very same."

Another moment of thoughtful pause.

"The weapon she looks intent on using, sir? Potentially on those who would try to steal it, sir."

"Err, yes. We are talking about the same weapon."

The woman was getting closer, but no less angry or suspicious. Angspicious, you might say, particularly of the sudden warbling of local birds which, as far as the woman was concerned, had gone extinct decades ago.

The female figure nodded in agreement. "Yes sir, it's definitely a pretty gun."

Now the third shadow, the one which made the original if undefined birdcall, shuffled over awkwardly, trying to keep low and its footsteps light. "She's gettin' close, sir. We doin' this or what?"

The female shadow glanced back at him. "I think we're just deciding that now."

The moustachioed shadow fingered an old wooden hunting rifle in his hands, his gaze transfixed by this angspicious stranger and her gleaming bone-handled revolver pistol. "It certainly is a very lovely weapon," he said.

Another silence loitered awkwardly between the trio, kicking its feet and checking its watch impatiently.

Then: "I'm sure it only carries six or so shots, sir, assuming it's loaded," offered the woman.

"That size of weapon? Yes, sounds about right, Doris my dear."

Another pause.

"Well, sir, there's a good few more of us than that."

"Excuse me?"

"There are a few more than six of us, sir, if you understand my meaning."

His moustache twitched, indeed both hither and quite thither. "Ah," he said slowly, "I think I see your point. Indeed, the odds would seem in our favour, despite our rather miserable state of strength."

The woman's stomping was now audible through the roaring of the waves. The shadows could see that her face was red from the constant salty spray whipping up all around her, but as far as stature went, she was not an impressive being. Not physically, anyway. Her face, though, seemed to have that "I dare you" quality about it, which suggested that physical prowess meant little to a woman with a robotic fist, a pistol, and blue eyes so intense, the shadows uncomfortably tried to avoid them even from back here.

"She does look quite ready for a fight, though, sir."

"Oh yes, terrifying face indeed. The stuff of nightmares, really."

"If our nightmares weren't already full, sir."

"Yes, quite right, Doris. Quite right indeed."

"She's almost on top of us, sir, gettin' a bit close for comfort. What're your orders?"

"Hmm."

After a moment he nodded, the confident nod of a leader who was making a confident decision, whether they were genuinely confident in its confidence or not. "Well," he finally said, "I rather think we can handle a few bullet wounds, can't we? Henry certainly took plenty for the team last time, didn't he?"

The lady shadow smiled warmly. "He did, sir. A real gentleman and scholar, may he rest in peace."

"Right, well, I think I'll jolly well start us of, shall I?"

A kachunk echoed out from behind the shed and bounced excitedly across the road.

* * *

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