A thick-fingered, well-worn hand gripped her arm tight. Roberta was being led through a maze of wooden corridors to one of the Mayor's guest rooms. The air was stuffy and close, swirling with brown dust as she was dragged violently by the arm. Her skin felt like more bruise than not bruise right now. She thought one of her ribs might be cracked for the pain it was causing with each shallow breath.

The chunky hand jerked her suddenly and she stumbled, falling sideways towards the wood-panelled wall to her left. Instinctively, Roberta reached out with her arm to stop her from slapping against the wall, but instead slammed her still-healing arm stump into the wood. Blood started to soak through her filthy bandages as her body tumbled to the side. Agony burned through her brain, drowning out the bruising elsewhere.

The hand jerked her forwards again, ignorant of her pain. She was taking too long. Roberta thought she could smell the skin rotting beneath her stained bandages, but it didn't make her sick; it made her mad.

* * *

She had arrived about a month earlier, maybe less - it was hard to tell the time when you were kept indoors most of the day, and beaten into unconsciousness if you got too smart. Which, considering how much more intelligent Roberta was to the majority of her captors, was almost impossible to avoid.

Prior to being a prisoner of this arrogant wooden mansion at the heart of a bustling, heavily defended Can't Be Buried fort, Roberta was, unfortunately, still a prisoner - but of other people. A bandit tribe known as the Awesome Squad, operating out of the derelict town of Burnt Ham maybe two, three days walking north of the fort, were the fuckers who purchased Roberta from her starving bastard parents. She had been kept as a dancer, nurse and maid, held in a cage until she was needed to either dance, stitch, clean, or a mixture of all the above. Dancing while cleaning was becoming a bit of a specialty, but she was still working on how to dance while stitching a wound. She was lucky not to have been an 'entertainer' as well, but the Awesome Squad had a significant female population and despite being the cocky bitches that they were, they at least protected her from that.

But those days were over, now. The Awesome Squad had pissed off the local lord, Mayor Barns, and one of his death squads had sieged Burnt Ham in the middle of the night. Roberta had watched from her cage as men and women slaughtered each other with tools and utensils she didn't even know could be used to slaughter. She'd never seen real gouged eyeballs before, but it was the kidney that haunted her nightmares. Just one, sitting on its own perfectly happy in the dust. Where had it come from? Why was it there? It made her shiver just thinking about it.

But fear aside, while the sticky rivers of warm blood soaked their way through the drought-stricken dust beneath her cell, Roberta frantically worked at the lock on her cage so she could escape during the chaos. She had almost gotten the damn thing open, too, before a giant of a man (meaty, some might call him) stepped out of the madness, drenched head to toe in blood, and unlocked it for her with the key - still clutched in its previous owner's hand. But it wasn't some daring rescue by a handsome adventurer. It wasn't even a passing good-will gesture from an assailing Barnsville bandit. No, he was just another bandit looking for a new prisoner.

He pulled her out by the hair and tossed her to the ground. And, just because she was obviously a woman with the gall to try and escape, he held her left hand down and lifted a huge, bloodied axe...

* * *

Back in the wooden hall, the meaty man and Roberta arrived at a peeling, faded door and stopped. The giant turned a fierce gaze on her, gripping her tight by the shoulders with hammy fists.

"Now you listen real good, Berty," he spat. "Diz guest is import'nt t' Mayor Barns, an' you gonna treat 'er wid r'spect, hear? Give 'er an orgasm she'll remember f'r years. Dat'll make 'er easier t' do bidness wid, he he he."

Roberta glared back as the beast cackled, imagining all the things she would do to the man's ugly face if she got the opportunity. Why she reckoned she'd start with an eyeball, that'd work. But she'd leave the other, so he could watch. Fucker.

"Diz is yer last chance, Berty. If ya don't make our guest happy enuff t' talk 'bout money tomorrow, da Mayor is gon' give ya t' me as an example t' yer udder slavey bitch friends. An' ya know I don' keep my toys f'r long."

He growled with the throat of an animal, then turned sharply away to open the door. His demeanour changed dramatically as it opened, the anger melting off his face, morphing into an awkward customer service smile. There was a woman inside what turned out to be a very small room. She sat still on the lone bed, fingers steepled by her face in thought. She looked up with an offended, stern face, no fear of the meaty man apparent in her dark eyes. Roberta found herself peeping from behind her captor, trying to get a better look at the stranger. She was an adventurer, by the looks of things. She had that long adventurer's trench coat they so often wore, with a big, wide-brimmed hat on her head that looked like two hats sewn crudely together in the middle. But more importantly, adventurers always had a secret stash of weapons.

An idea was forming in Roberta's mind.

Her captor smiled a wide, rotten grin. "Wid his r'spects, ma'am, da Mayor offers ya diz gift."

Roberta was suddenly gripped harder and yanked into the room, presented to the stranger like some prized object. She lingered awkwardly in the centre of the room, not really sure how to stand. Her dress - which she was forced to wear - plunged and rose in places a dress should neither plunge nor rise, but it was better than the costume she had before she dug her thumbs into the quartermaster's eyes, which was mostly just a few strips of old cloth covering, well, not really covering anything. But this strange, dark-eyed woman did not slobber or whistle like the bandits of Barnsville. The woman stared straight into Roberta's eyes, as if searching them for something.

The meatman spoke again, smiling his horrible grin. His decrepit breath filled the still air. "Take yer time, OK? Ya gots all night if yer wants it."

The door shut gently behind Roberta, leaving the duo alone. The woman remained seated in the same position, her backpack and pistol placed tidily on a small table on the other side of the small space. Its bone handle gleamed in the dim electric light. Roberta stared at it just a moment too long.

"You could probably get it before I do," the stranger said. Her voice was deep, confident, but silky smooth compared to the rough grating of Barnsville bandits.

Roberta jumped, rapidly turning her gaze back to the stationary woman. Her face began to flush red - she could feel its heat filling up her cheeks.

The woman narrowed her eyes. "But let's say you do. What then?"

The sudden adrenalin made Roberta's stump ache; the itch was almost maddening. She controlled the urge to scratch, instead digging the nails of her intact hand into her palm. "Escape," she croaked, suddenly realising how dehydrated her throat was.

"With one pistol? Not likely, especially not in your condition. You'd need to sneak your way down to the mess before you can start shooting. A body as weak as yours looks needs at least water before you go exerting yourself."

Roberta stared at her with suspicion. Who was this person?

"You could probably steal some weapons on the way out. The guards who patrol the mezzanine looked armed with automatic rifles. Grab yourself a knife from the kitchen, slit their throats on the way out, then you've got two guns."

"Why are you telling me this?" Roberta asked, finding her voice somewhere in the depths of her uncertainty.

The woman arched an eyebrow. "Hmm. You aren't prepared, are you? The only way to survive in the Waste is to be prepared for anything. Learn to adapt."

Roberta scowled. She didn't like being condescended by some strange woman with a tacky hat. "I've survived this long," she countered.

"Yes, perhaps. But as a prisoner."

This shut Roberta up.

"Of course..." the woman continued, stroking her thin face, "you could try to recruit some assistance. Perhaps you ask me for help? Or arm your fellow prisoners."

"Why would you help me? Aren't you here to deal with the Mayor?"

She narrowed her eyes again. It was a dangerous look, Roberta felt. It sparked something buried in the human brain's animal instinct, something that suggested 'fight' might look better with an L in the word. She wondered how many people had seen that look before they died.

"I was. But he has been pressing me quite unsubtly for the secret location of my money, and I suspect he intends to betray me the moment he knows where it is."

"Prepare for anything," Roberta found herself saying. The words just tumbled out before she knew it.

"Exactly. He has told too many lies, even after a single day I've seen through them. No, I intend to leave in the night and never return, but..."

"But?"

"Hmm," the woman said, finally standing up. "But perhaps before I do, we can help each other."

Now it was Roberta's turn to narrow her eyes.

"There's a trailer with food and drink supplies out back," the woman said, now standing before Roberta. She was tall, very tall, and muscular. She wasn't a woman to pick a fight with. "It hasn't been unloaded yet, but it's guarded. I need those supplies to start my new bar, but I cannot steal them alone. And if I'm correct, neither can I purchase them."

"Start a bar? Wait, what?"

"You heard me. Help me get that trailer out of Barnsville and you can come with me. Work for me and I'll even pay you."

Roberta couldn't find the words to respond with. She stammered and stumbled, her mind racing a million miles an hour trying to comprehend the situation. "How do I know I can trust you?" she finally said, feeling it to be the next best question before thoughts of escape could infiltrate her mind.

The woman cocked her head. "You can't. But you can follow along with my plan and prepare you own in case I betray you. So long as you can get a weapon, you can kill me and try escape on your own."

Roberta and the woman stared at each other in silence for a moment, their gazes fizzling in the air between them. She felt the familiar ache in her hand stump, and the pain of something as simple as trying to breath. Every muscle she tensed, another bruise sang out in protest. The decision practically made itself, really.

"Fine, I'll help. But on one condition."

"And what's that?"

"I need to pay the man who brought me here a visit before we go."

"Ah," the woman replied. She cocked her head to the side again, pondering. "OK, I accept your terms. We'll draw him in here and you can do what you like."

Something strange happened to Roberta's face, next. Her lip felt like it was trying to push up at the corners, something they hadn't done in a long, long time. Meanwhile, the woman was gathering up her weapon and backpack, drawing a short, stubby knife out of a pouch.

"You'll need this," she said, handing the weapon to Roberta hilt-first. "What do I call you?"

Roberta, hand beginning to shake from anticipation, softly took the weapon and held it like it was sacred. She could feel her future laying out before her, a giant cavernous maw of hope finally widening its jaws after years of neglect. Roberta couldn't even remember the last time she felt ... what was the word? Oh yeah, optimistic.

"Roberta," she said. Then she paused, feeling the weight of the blade. "But you can call me Bert."

* * *

Oh man, that sweet sweet backstory. If you like the Woman With No Name, you can actually find a little short story of her on my website: www.duncanppacey.com/short-stories. That story was actually the original Introduction to "Smack-dab", which I swapped out at the last minute to replace it with the one you can see now.

As always, if you're enjoying the book please Vote and comment!