"Phoenix!" Bert called, noticing that the couple of traders at table three were sitting without food. "Where's table three's order?"

Smack-dab was mercifully busy today, or at least busy by Smack-dab's standards. That is to say, there were customers today, and they weren't asshole bandits just looking for a quick bit of thieving. A group of traders had wandered in an hour ago, and all of them were thirsty, hungry and most importantly, armed with money. Money Bert needed to keep the place from falling over (literally, one side desperately needed shoring up).

She turned and reached out with a chunky robotic left fist to grip the kitchen service window, her human right fist pressing firmly into her loose-fitting white shirt, which was covered by a dark-coloured, slightly tattered pigcow-leather vest. There was a dull thud as her belt knocked against the wooden wall, revealing that she carried an ammo pouch, money bag, and finely carved revolver at her waist. The creamy bone handle of the weapon glimmered gently in the light.

"Table three..." Phoenix muttered slowly, sliding up to the other side of the window. His rough beard had bits of food stuck in it, and his chef's hat had deflated, again. "Two steaks and some bread?" he asked, wiping his hands on a blood-stained apron.

Bert's brow twitched, but she swallowed her frustration. Smacks was busy, mistakes would be made - or at least that's what she reminded herself. "No, dammit Phoenix. One steak and the salad of the day."

She glanced over her shoulder quickly at the traders of table three, who looked up in return and smiled awkwardly. Bert smiled back, if only to look confident.

"But Bert," Phoenix mewed, putting down the rusty meat carver he was holding, his body shifting closer to the window and his voice lowering. "We don't have any salads. The last batch I caught ran away before I could boil it."

Oh great, Bert thought, so that's what was next, then. Fort gets toppled, roof dissolves in the rain, and now the only customers who are actually willing to pay anything were going to miss out on an opportunity to do so.

Bert scratched at her short-cropped hair with her human hand, the servos in her robotic fingers whirring quietly as they curled into a fist. "What about our vegetables? We could throw something together."

"I'd love to, Bert," replied Phoenix, his stressy face now expanding into an awkward, slightly frightened grin. "Except, err, I used up the last good ones for table five. The rest exploded."

Her other brow twitched. "They exploded?"

"Um, yeah. Not really sure why. They just sort of exploded into mist, then I got this rash on my arm."

He pushed his lanky, muscular arm through the window, sliding the sleeve back on his dirty brown shirt. The forearm was red, little bumps forming all over beneath long, luminous scratch marks.

At the back of Bert's mind, she felt The Woman's voice talking to her, echoing forwards from some far-off memory of a better time. Adapt, she had always said. The key to surviving in the Waste was to prepare for a lack of preparation, to keep your knees bent, your feet moving, and your mind alert. Because the one sure thing about the Waste, from the Orcklands in the north all the way down to Stewart's Island in the south, was that you truly had no idea what was coming. Even in Smack-dab, The Woman always maintained that the rules applied.

Except even she wasn't ready for the day it ended. But then, maybe she knew and just didn't tell Bert. She could never tell with those broody, silent types. She preferred her adventurers loud and stupid, like Phoenix.

* * *

Terrance Leeland lifted his shiny black boot off the ground before the fresh streamlet of gooey blood could cause a stain. It was bad enough that he'd gotten someone's entrails smeared all over his leather coat, he didn't need it on his damn shoes as well.

A half-hearted wind blew past, whistling through the metal trailer that now lay abandoned in the middle of the Back Road. Terrance narrowed his dark eyes as he took a wide step around the mutilated corpse at his feet. His black-gloved hands held a scuffed automatic rifle, the barrel still cooling, its ammo half-spent.

He scanned over the scene, pausing his steps every now and then to better see if there was movement nearby. After a short moment, he'd begin taking another step, his heavy soles grinding against the Back Road's crumbling, rain-soaked tarmac. His eyes carefully scanned across each of the four corpses, checking for breathing, signs of eye movement, finger twitches - anything that might suggest one them was going to spring up and attack.

But they were quite assuredly dead.

The trailer was a fairly standard scavenged Old World model, with two basic wheels and a shallow metal box to store goods in. This one had a roofless cage around the sides, with enough metal bars and handles at the front for two or three people to pull. It was stacked with goods, and that was the only way to describe them. There was no order, they were of no particular category, it was just a random assortment of things both big and small thrown haphazardly into the cage.

Terrance didn't know who these bandits were, or where they had come from. But he did know that the dungarees-wearing fools didn't know who he was, and that was a problem. More fool them, and even more more fool whoever gave them a pitiful education in famous Waste heroes, such as Terrance.

He sneered, his stubbled upper lip curling to reveal stained teeth. With a face of contempt, he squatted next to one of the corpses and yanked hard on a rusty metal canteen hanging by rope from its belt. The bastards had caught his own bottle with an arrow - a fucking arrow! - so he needed a new one before dehydration got its claws in his throat.

The bottle unclipped easy enough, but he recoiled at the contents. Whatever it was, it certainly wasn't water. And to the tune of muttered grumbles, Terrance discovered that each of the bandits was the same - water that tasted foul. He'd have to go clean up and fill somewhere else.

Gerald was probably closest, but after what he did to the innkeeper there, he'd probably be run out of town with pitchforks. Well, the uneducated bastard had it coming. These Can't Be Buried folks had no respect for their veterans. And to think they owed some of their happiness to his sacrifices.

Bastards. All of them.

So where else could he go? If he went off-road he could probably bypass Behinds and make the Ash Fort by nightfall, but rumour had it Lord Ash was six feet under, and in more than one location. A bandit city was a dangerous place for a famous adventurer like Terrance, not without a pre-existing relationship with the lord.

So, Smack-dab it was, then.

Once more Terrance looked at the scene of death around him, his teeth bared to the world. Someone really ought to have educated these morons better.

* * *

The three hooded figures were close, now. They marched in a tight group, eyes locked on the approaching silhouette of a two-storey wooden structure sitting in the middle of nowhere.

One of them revealed a long spear.

Another drew a pistol.

The last drew a bugle.

* * *

Adapt.

"Alright..." Bert said.

Customer wants the salad of the day, check. Customer has money to pay for it, double check. But ... customer won't know what a salad of the day is, because the menu is really quite vague and nobody ever serves salads. The answer, then, was an easy one. She nodded to herself.

"Grab that steak over there," she said firmly, pointing with her human hand past Phoenix, "and then peel off some really thin slices. I don't care how, just do it. I reckon it'll look like red leaves, so the customer won't know any different. Top it with something that looks vaguely like a vegetable and serve it up. We'll give them a couple of free drinks to hide the flavour."

Phoenix nodded a "Yes, boss" and vanished back into the bowels of the kitchen, leaving Bert alone by the window. She turned away from it, letting go of the frame to...

...come face-to-chest with a hulking monstrosity of a creature. Bert stepped back suddenly, gazing up the beast's monumental chest. It was somewhere between six and seven feet, that was for sure. It wore a patchwork set of clothes, a disfigured, lumpy face with one eye gazing intently down at Bert, the other ... would get the message later. It had a tiny, skinny left arm tucked up by its chest, but its right arm was easily the size and girth of a small human - a terrifying limb with muscles that looked like they had been stolen straight from a Waste Beast.

The beast, chest labouring with heavy breaths, stared hard down at Bert, who stared back.

Then they both burst into wide, childish grins.

"Good morning, Meatsack," Bert said warmly, reaching forwards to rub the creature's skinny arm gently. Being a woman of small stature, her hand looked pitifully small next to his titanic form. "Ready for the day's work?"

Meatsack, lips widening into a large, happy grin, nodded quickly.

"Alright, big guy. I want you to start by taking table three some drinks, OK? Their food is delayed."

He nodded again, taking an enthusiastic step around Bert to the shelves, but then hesitated, foot in the air and arm half outstretched. One of his eyes was gazing at the bottles, all different shapes, sizes and colours.

Bert followed his stare after figuring out which eye had his brain's attention, and patted him on the arm again. "Doesn't matter which one, bud. They won't know the difference, anyway."

His happy head turned to her, smiled widely once more, and then he moved forwards to fulfil his task.

Few people knew the full story of Meatsack, only that one day, after The Woman was already gone and Phoenix had appeared, a giant, grey mutant with the naive, innocent mind of a child turned up at Smack-dab and started working there. That is to say, he had the mind of a naive, innocent Old World child - most modern kiddies matured pretty quick. It was hard not to when they'd nearly died six or seven times before so much as taking their first step.

But despite Meatsack's intelligence, or the lack thereof, Bert treated the creature almost as a pseudo-child, helping him learn about the Waste, about running a bar, and about who not to trust (e.g. bandits). And if anyone so much as swung a fist at him, they found their hands exploding before the punch even got close.

Bert watched Meatsack fret about picking bottles and glasses, her angry blue stare having softened to almost a motherly smile at the big lug. He picked up every glass at the bar, inspecting them all against the daylight to find what he perceived to be the cleanest. Little did he know that none of them were truly clean, and they likely never would be again.

It was then, at the edge of hearing, she heard what sounded like ... music?

The disjointed notes were wafting in from far away, carried on the wind from somewhere south. Although muffled, Bert could hear an upbeat, jolly tune, something with regular notes almost to the pace of soldiers marching. The bar owner's face dropped.

She placed her robotic fist on the counter, her right hand dangling loosely by her side, fingers poised instinctively by the glittering bone handle of her revolver.

Bert knew exactly what the noise was.

The tune was growing closer, and had quickened its pace, now beeping and bopping to the gait of humans running - charging, even. It was angrier, too, harsher tones interrupting the noise. You couldn't exactly call it music, for the wielder of the instrument likely hadn't even heard the word, but Bert suspected that wasn't the point.

Some of the customers were turning their heads now, uncertainty spreading on their tired, dusty faces. Phoenix, too, placing a steamy plate of shredded steak and misc. other foodstuffs on the kitchen window ledge, poked his head through, bushy eyebrow raised.

"Hey, that sounds like the bugle you told me about," he said, cocking his head at the noise, which had grown louder.

Bert didn't nod in response, but stared at Smack-dab's front door, fingertips now dancing on her pistol's hammer.

"Didn't you sign a treaty or something to stop this from happening again? What is this, the fourth time?"

"Fifth," Bert stated bluntly. These assholes hadn't returned in years. Why today of all days? The day she actually had customers. Bloody hell.

Meatsack stepped back towards Bert and the bar, having delivered his drinks to table three. The strange tune outside was very loud, now, and getting closer with each rasping, breathy note. The giant mutant stared hard at the front door with one eye, his fingers tangling and untangling from each other, feet tapping the floor.

Bert pried her eyes off the door to see his worried face. "Meatsack, go hide in your room, OK? You can come out again when it's over."

Meatsack was never allowed to fight - when he got angry, well, let's just say that the last time, it got messier than expected. He glanced quickly at Bert, fingers still dancing, then nodded hurriedly and withdrew. He scampered away down a hall near the bar, the noise of a door opening and almost shutting squeaking out from somewhere within.

Bert turned her head the other way, to speak sideways back at Phoenix. The music was almost at Smack-dab. Footsteps could be heard running in the dust, the sound of muffled voices crying out unintelligible words.

"Phoenix, you got your rifle back there?" she asked, her face firm.

The adventurer shook his head. "Sorry, Bertio, it's upstairs in my room. I got plenty knives, though! And I learned some sweet carroty chops from a travelling guru a couple months back, so I mean, my arms are basically like guns now." The man grinned, showing a neat row of surprisingly intact teeth while he moved his arms vaguely in a carroty-chop-like manner.

Bert swivelled her body to glance properly backwards, meeting Phoenix with a straight face. "Maybe just the knives," she stated.

Her head was glaring forwards again before she saw Phoenix's sad little eyes turn downwards.

The footsteps, yells, and those strange, incoherent bugle noises were now practically upon the bar. Bert heard the familiar crunch of boots meeting Smack's gravel pathway, heard the pace quicken to a full-on sprint.

Someone outside screamed a battle cry.

Bert's fingers tensed around her pistol.

The footsteps sprinted for the front door and...

...it thudded loudly, dust scrambling off the surface in fright. But it remained, quite noticeably, shut.

* * *

So, how do you think the next chapter is going to go? Leave your thoughts in a comment if you like before reading on. And, please remember to vote!

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