Another day had passed, and Meatsack still sat hunched in an awkward ball upon his chair. The bar had behaved today, and Meatsack was proud of it. A few hours ago he'd found a giant spider in the bar, but after he pried its fourteen hairy legs off his neck, it had scuttled away into the shadows - sadly, with one fewer leg. All up, though, it had been quite a successfully uneventful day. Berty Bert would be happy. She'd say, "Good job, Meatsack," and it would be true, for he had done a good job, and he was Meatsack.

Now, the big lug rubbed gently at the thick bruises on his grey neck, tapping his feet on the floor nervously. The warm fuzzies of a day's job well done were slipping away as each hour passed, sliding along the floor with the rest of the natural, shadowless daylight. Night was seeping in fast, circling Smack-dab before deciding how to pounce. Darkness bubbled out of dusty corners and snuck its way under chairs and tables, hiding and making angry hissing noises.

Meatsack tapped his feet, vibrations bouncing through the woodwork from the weight. He didn't like the night time, for that was the scariest of all the times. Morning was a good one, but that was when Berty Bert Bert was usually at her grumpiest, and Phoenix was meanest. Meatsack liked mid-afternoon, when everyone was happy, busy and being nice(r) to each other. It was a good time.

Not like right now.

Outside, the sun - behind its wall of clouds - crept silently behind Mount Butt as if slinking out before anybody noticed it. A blanket of shadow inched across the Waste.

Meatsack tapped his feet.

He wished Berty was home. She always made him feel better. She was so nice and kind and loving.

He drummed his fingers on his lap.

It was time to turn the lights on.

* * *

Down the road, Randolf the Conqueror, Ruiner of Worlds, Bringer of Shadows, Lord of Rabbit-Like Kind, was sitting on his furry hind legs sniffing the wind, observing a group of wanderers doing the thing that wanderers tended to do, that is to say, wander. A group of sneep (or 'three' in human language) humans was hasting along, and had noticeably increased in speed somewhere between an hour ago and now, when daylight had quite rudely gone from being a commodity you could take for granted, to being rarer than good personal hygiene. He did not blame them for their frantic pace, for the night was dark and terrible, and not to mention bloody cold.

Randolf the Conqueror, Ruiner of Worlds, Bringer of Shadows, Lord of Rabbit-Like Kind, had been observing the strange human pack for some time, quietly bouncing along the Waste in parallel to them, debating all the while whether or not to strike. He figured his size would be a disadvantage, but one of the humans was old and ragged, one was young and unseasoned, and the final looked like a twig in garish robes. His ferocity could far outmatch any of theirs, but then, there were sneep of them and only snip of him. The numbers were the numbers, and Randolf the Conqueror, Ruiner of Worlds, Bringer of Shadows, Lord of Rabbit-Like Kind simply couldn't deny that, no matter how confident he felt.

So he had simply observed, waiting to see if they would leave the old man behind, as most human packs tended to do eventually. That was when he would close in, and the human's decrepit corpse would be a feast to remember, not to mention a magnificent trophy to take home. Human feet were highly valued in rabbit-like society - they brought good luck, or so it was said.

But it never happened, for despite his extensive years on this planet, the old man seemed determined to keep up with the pack, who must surely have been tired of his age and smell and wrinkliness by now. Or at least that's how it appeared to Randolf the Conqueror, Ruiner of Worlds, Bringer of Shadows, Lord of Rabbit-Like Kind, anyway, who admittedly was not an expert in human society. His fifteenth sister, Freydis, was far better at that sort of thing, and he silently wished he hadn't eaten her years before. She'd be quite useful now that he was a Conqueror, Ruiner of Worlds, Bringer of Shadows and a Lord. But anyway, that was another matter, and there was no time for regret in the Waste.

A chill wind washed in from the ocean, bringing with it a significant drop in temperature. Randolf the Conqueror, Ruiner of Worlds, Bringer of Shadows, Lord of Rabbit-Like Kind, hunkered down into the folds of his fur, shivering to himself as he observed the group grow closer to the rickety human structure, which now lit up in a brilliant spectacle of ugly yellow light. It appeared that his prey was going to go inside, which meant they would be temporarily unavailable for feasting. A disappointing result, to be sure, but there were always ants and other unlucky creatures around to consume in the meantime.

Randolf the Conqueror, Ruiner of Worlds, Bringer of Shadows, Lord of Rabbit-Like Kind, could wait.

And wait he would.

* * *

Finally, Jeb took the trio's lead and walked through Orsen and Lorry to be out front. Three triumphant heroes were returning after a long adventure, and Jeb felt he was the triumphantest. At the very least, he was the one with all the money, which was essentially the same thing.

Smack-dab rose above them like a brilliant wooden totem, a precious holy icon dedicated to the god of grog. It was a little sad that the icon of Smack-dab was so slanty, but then it was said that some of the humans in the Old World built towers made of pizza, and that those towers were never straight. So who knew when it came to Old World structures - most traders, Jeb included, just accepted that dems da facts, and Smack-dab is as Smack-dab leans.

All around the group, night was circling in. Small, rolling hills were growing into towering, ominous bulges, tiny shrubs and grasses morphed into vicious spike pits in the dust, and any movement that could not be immediately identified as either Jeb, Orsen or Lorry was filed under "Run Away From". The Back Road was swiftly becoming a dark and most foreboding of places, and only the very brave, very foolish, or very, very unlucky would be caught out without a light or shelter.

But here stood Smack-dab, a veritable beacon of sanctuary for hungry, thirsty, frightened travellers. Its hideous yellow lights could be seen spilling ungainly over the horizon for miles around, and although they flickered and threatened to explode almost every night, the bar's floodlight system regularly, if not confidently, provided a magnificent barrier of light between food, grog, and sleep, and the Things that lay beyond.

And now three weary travellers - the teacher, the pupil, and the one that paid to be there - were enveloped in this glorious bastion of sickly yellow. Jeb took point to blaze a trail up Smack's gravel pathway, with Orsen in the middle and Lorry in the back, eyeing up the two-storey building with open cynicism. As Jeb mounted the first creaking planks of the front porch, he turned back over his shoulder and grinned wide.

"Wait til' ya get a load o' this, Lorry," he announced cheerfully. "Best bar in the Waste."

Lorry sneered in response, distrust apparent over her frowning, narrow-eyed expression. "Is it always this quiet?"

"Huh?" Jeb replied, his happiness faltering. He glanced back at the bar, which, quite noticeably, was devoid of any of the more classic Smack-dab noises, such as laughing, fighting, or Bert yelling. He scratched at his travel-weary face and pondered for a moment. "I, uh, I'm sure it's just one o' those quiet nights. It'll prolly pick up soon."

"In the middle of the night?" An eyebrow, one of two dangerous blades on Lorry's face that, coincidentally, was also pierced with dangerous blades, rose sharply.

Jeb laughed nervously. "Aye, well, maybe not soon soon, but ya know, soon. Like, soonish. Hey, you alright, Orsen?"

This last comment was directed at the young lad, who was staring in horror at the tall statue of a woman loitering in the middle of Smack's lawn. She grimaced openly at the Waste, long coat billowing out behind her, wide-brimmed hat blocking Smack-dab's embrace of light so that her face was cast in a dark shadow. But she looked ... different, to what Jeb remembered. Orsen carefully crouched down and fondled a disembodied arm at The Woman's feet, touching it with the delicacy normally reserved for things you expect to touch back.

"Oh no," Jeb whispered, the significance of this amputation dawning on his face at about the speed of, well, of dawn, actually. "Did ya break Th' Woman's statue, Orsen? Oh my sweet mercy, what 'ave I told ya about touchin' it?!" He started towards the boy.

Orsen looked up suddenly. "I didn't break it, I swears, Jeb! It was like this when I got here."

Jeb was practically leaping off the porch, now, moving to intercept Orsen before he could cause any more damage. "Don't lie t' me, lad! That statue is never anythin' other than pristin- bloody hell don't pick it up!"

The boy squeaked with the sudden rebuke, releasing the long arm from his skinny fingers. Pistol in hand, the arm fell quickly to The Woman's feet and promptly slammed into the dirt in a little cloud of shadowy dust. Orsen's face was bleached white.

"Oh for the love of-" Jeb said, flinching wildly back as gravity had its way. "You can't just drop The Woman's arm like that!"

Orsen gasped an "Oh no" and stooped to pick it up again.

"Oh mercy don't pick it up again!"

He dropped it out of his fingers.

"And stop dropping it!" Jeb's voice was quickly ascending in both pitch and panic.

Behind them, one hand on her narrow hips, Lorry shook her head with a Tch noise and scowled at the pair. Sometimes, although she would rarely openly admit it, but sometimes she questioned the choices of Gachook, Our Lord and Saviour. She understood that humans were like germs and had to be almost eradicated in order to evolve, but the one per cent that survived the initial wrath of His Seven Deadly Chickens was at times ... odd. It felt like the Gachookian theory of only the strongest and the smartest surviving was put to the test far too often in this horrible, dusty land. But then, who was she, just a simple human mortal - one of the germs - to question the will and the word of Gachook, Our Lord and Saviour? It was blasphemy of the highest order.

No, Jeb and Orsen, however stupid they might seem on the surface, and quite possibly deeper beneath as well if Lorry was to be the judge, must have had some kind of redeeming feature, or else Gachook, Our Lord and Saviour, would not have ordained to let their ancestors live. Maybe they were particularly skilled at, at, oh Lorry didn't know, probably whistling, or something like that.

Well anyway, she decided that, regardless of their suspected whistling prowess, it was time to leave them to their pointless bickering over a false stone idol - that Gachook, Our Lord and Saviour, would probably crush soon anyway - and go spread His word to whatever backwater scum inhabited this particular establishment. So, she spun on her heels, marched straight up the path onto the porch, and reached for the front door. Her face composed itself, and she prepared the opening dialogue to one of her favourite sermons, simply titled: "Have you got a minute? Oh good, well let me tell you about your salvation, your holy protector, and the answer to all your problems, Gachook, Our Lord and Saviour".

Lorry turned the door handle and sucked in a confident breath.

"Praise be to Gachook, Our Lord and Saviour, for He has sent His follower to- hang on a second..." Lorry paused, turning the handle again and again and pushing gently at the door.

It wouldn't budge.

She scowled at this sudden trial from Gachook, Our Lord and Saviour, but steeled herself. No mere door would undo the great work she was yet to do, but soon would do, and would do extraordinarily well so long as the ruddy door opened. Her fingers grasped at the handle again, turned it appropriately, and then she put a little shoulder into the action.

Still, the door wouldn't budge.

"Oh you've got to be fu-"

"Havin' trouble?" Jeb asked, springing in out of nowhere. The debate about the arm seemed to have ended precisely where it started, except now the faces were a little paler and the arm a little dirtier.

Lorry turned on him like a Waste Beast suddenly noticing someone is there at the same time it suddenly noticed it was hungry. Her tall, spear-like figure towered over the shorter, hunched man, her many piercings sparkling yellow in the barrier of light.

"You damn old fool!" she roared, seeming even taller and angrier and more pierced. "It's locked!"

Jeb blinked. "Locked?

"Locked! You dragged me all this way to preach at a bar that isn't even open!"

"But ... but," Jeb stammered in disbelief. Smack-dab was never shut! Open all hours, that's what was written on the big roof sign. Jeb glanced quickly upwards for reassurance, but was met with no such sign. OK, he quickly thought, maybe that's not what's written on the roof, but it's what's unwritten, just like all the best Waste laws. Like 'Don't get caught at night without a light or shelter', or 'Don't pick a fight with the Overlords', and 'Don't trust when a man-shaped figure made entirely of bees comes to your door.'

Lorry was storming off back down the path when Jeb managed to fight his way through the immense confusion and back into Nowland. With her long, leggy stride - like a pissed-off giraffe, an animal that somehow still existed, but not in Can't Be Buried - she was hurriedly approaching the end of the yellow barrier.

"I followed you for two fucking days!" she screamed.

"Wait, Lorry!" cried Orsen, skipping down the path after her. "You can't go out into the night!"

"Piss off you stupid little boy," Lorry yelled back, her feet breaching the invisible yellow wall that separated certain death from Smack-dab's less-certain death.

Jeb shuffled after Orsen, who had already arrived at the edge of safety but hesitated at the precipice. "Lorry, wait!" Jeb shouted. "It's too dangerous out there! Smacks bein' shut is prolly just a misunderstandin', it'll open up soon!"

Lorry's figure was hungrily enveloped in the Waste's nightmarish shroud of darkness. Tendrils of black eagerly wrapped themselves around her as she stormed back up the Back Road.

"Gachook will protect me!" Jeb and Orsen heard as her slender figure vanished completely. Then slightly after: "And he'll do a damn site better job than you idiots ever could."

And then she was gone. Blackness took her, and around here it rarely spat people back out.

Jeb glanced at Orsen, who glanced nervously back. Their feet perfectly lined up with the edge of the light, but neither was brave enough to step over. They just stood and stared, mouths agape, eyes perfect circles, peering into the nothingness in case somethingness peered back.

A tense moment passed with only the wind breaking up the ambience. Then, Orsen shivered.

"Will Gachook really protect her, Jeb?" he asked, his voice barely a peep.

Jeb stared hard into the night, searching for any sign that Lorry was coming to her senses and returning. When no such sign waved back, he let out a long, slow, icy breath. "If I knows anythin' 'bout them religious types," he muttered, "not a chance."

* * *

Nighttime really isn't to be messed with in the Waste, a theme that comes up time and again in this book and the subsequent Waste Stories.

Good luck to Lorry is all I can say. Got some thoughts on her storming away? It's always a pleasure to hear from you in the comments.

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