Smoke dribbled out of Bert's pistol almost as fast as blood gushed from the lead cultist's new arm stump. Her face glowed with a dangerous tinge of crimson, the skin between her eyebrows knotted tight in a glare. The sound of her shot ricocheted around the dusty wooden room, rattling windows and one old customer's square glass eye (he didn't know how to carve a sphere). Phoenix was frozen in place, meat cleaver in hand, his wide eyes darting between Bert's weapon, her blazing sapphire glare, and the shocked O-shaped lips on the leader's face.

In seconds the echoes died out, and for a moment there was no sound but the wind whistling loudly through cracks in Smack's weatherboards. Then...

"This ends right fucking now," Bert growled, gritting her teeth. "The only way you're getting any grog is if you pay for the stuff. And you can be damn sure you're going to deliver a message to this new Const- this leader of yours about what happened today."

The man in front, staring at where his arm used to be, blinked twice. His mouth slowly drooped lower, and he glanced back at his companions. Phoenix clutched his cleaver close to his breast and took a further step back.

But Bert was still mid-rant. She waved her gun at the door. "Out there, you do whatever the hell you like. But in here?" She stamped her foot hard on the floorboards. "In here you play by my rules, and I'll floor any one of you who disagrees."

A little pool of blood was forming at the armless leader's feet as the colour drained from his face straight out the new hole...

"Hey, assholes," Bert shouted, "are you listening to me?"

...and then he clutched his stump with his remaining hand, collapsed to his knees and started screaming.

And the flimsy illusion of peace shattered into a thousand itty-bitty pieces.

The guy's buddy with the spear howled and leapt into action, literally. Tipping the polished blade of his long weapon forwards, he pounced over his colleague's kneeling figure roaring with energy, pushing forwards to the bar.

Bert hammered back her pistol to unleash another shot, but a bloodied meat cleaver spiralled in out of nowhere and caught the attacker in his shoulder. It spun him in an arc sideways, swear words escaping from his lips as though he couldn't get enough out in just once sentence. Then the man with the bugle also moved, spinning his instrument to grasp it like a club with both hands. He sprinted for Phoenix by the kitchen entrance while the spear-wielder stumbled in a drunken circle.

This is where Bert started to lose control of the situation.

The man with the spear was stumbling, his friend with the bugle was charging. Phoenix was weaponless and preparing to use his carroty moves, while Bert was picking a target. The guy who lost his arm was still screaming, but the noises had morphed from a high-pitched squeal of pain to a mad howl of rage.

Phoenix stepped forwards to meet the guy with the bugle, but his opponent hefted the small metal instrument straight at Phoenix's face. The adventurer was too close to properly combat roll out the way, and so took the instrument fully on the nose. He went down with a squeak that he would one day deny, landing on his back with his hands over his bleeding nostrils. The instrument clattered down next to him.

At the same time, the guy with the spear had fished the cleaver from his flesh and was back on the offensive, thrusting his spear forwards towards Bert as one arm dangled loosely at his side, cleaver dropping to the floor. His leader was still howling, but now he scrambled madly in his own blood for the pistol - which still had fingers clinging to it.

Bert lined up a shot as urgently as she could and squeezed the trigger, the force slamming into her right shoulder as a fresh new bullet went to say hello to the cultist with the spear. As the deafening bang bounced once more into Smack's customers, who were now laughing at the unfolding scene, the bullet tore a gash in the spear-wielder's ribs and disappeared through the front door. The man coughed out an "Oh bloody hell" and spun once more, his spear whistling through the air to catch the armless man in his leg.

On the other side of the room, Phoenix was beating off the musician with his fists, who was doing an admirable job of beating Phoenix with his. Now, though, the leader, who had shaken the fingers from his pistol, was crying a second time, flopping over onto his side. He let the pistol go in order to clutch at the spear protruding from his thigh, only for the thing to land in the pool of blood, bounce from the impact and let out a shot of its own.

Bert dove beneath the bar as the bullet whizzed past where her torso would have been, hitting the floor hard and grunting with frustration. Above her, the bullet shattered one of her bottles, bore through the kitchen wall, bounced off a rusting iron pot and flung itself back into the front area, where it embedded itself in the skull of the musician, who promptly fell over.

So now the man with the spear was wriggling on the ground with blood coming from his ribs, his leader could not clutch at both his thigh and his stump, and the musician had exploded all over Phoenix - who was spitting out brain particles from his teeth.

Having not seen this new development, Bert sprang up to her feet, droplets of booze and shards of glass catapulting off of her back. Instinctively she brought up her pistol, hammered and ready, to defend against whatever the hell would happen next. Her eyes quickly scanned for the most immediate threat.

But nobody seemed to be paying her any attention anymore.

And the traders, oh how they applauded.

Cautiously and ignoring the traders, Bert stepped around the wooden bar, exploring the scene with her gaze. One headless cultist, one armless, all three bleeding on her more-or-less (particularly less) clean floor. She kept her weapon forwards, finger on the trigger, ready to respond at the slightest of changes. To her side, Phoenix was sliding away from the corpse and futilely wiping his face with his bloodied sleeve. Little did he know that he'd be tasting brain matter for hours.

Bert was above the cultists' leader, now, the barrel of her gun casting its hollow eye on his forehead. He was squirming, writhing on the ground with moans of pain interrupting his heavy breathing. The spear hadn't completely gone through his leg, so the point was embedded somewhere in his thigh, with nearly two metres of wooden shaft flopping on the ground. That's not to mention his stump, which was now foaming green. Bert didn't know why it was foamy, but she didn't want that crap on her floor, that was for sure.

She cast a quick sideways glance to the least-injured invader, who had managed to sit himself up to inspect the bullet graze. He didn't seem like he was going to attack, namely because his attention was quite firmly fixated on the fact that he could see his skeleton through his robes.

"Meatsack!" she called behind her, "bring out the first-aid kit!"

The armless man glared at her as she squatted down next to him, her gun still trained on his head. "Now you listen close," she said through gritted teeth. "You go back to whoever replaced Fred and you tell them, you tell them that unless he, she, whoever, is willing to pay for grog, it's gonna end the same way every time." She grimaced openly at the man while a door creaked in the background. Heavy footsteps padded towards the front room. "And it ends with you bleeding on the floor, and me telling you to get the fuck outta my bar. You hear me?"

The man's lips set in a grim line, his brows twitching with barely contained contempt. "Thee..." he said, his voice cracking, "...will never have'th an a ... an alliance with the Starry Place again, Devil Woman..."

Bert's eyes narrowed as Meatsack's overbearing shadow passed above the pair.

"We ... we will return. We will return with an ... an army the likes of which thee hath never seen."

Behind them, Meatsack knelt down nervously and held out the first-aid kit: a little wooden box with a crude white cross scrawled on the top of the lid. Bert, nostril's flaring, pulled her gaze away from the injured invader and forced a smile at Meatsack, gently taking the box from his thick fingers. "Thanks, bud. Now I need you to go get your mop, OK?"

He nodded hastily and vanished backwards.

She brought the box forwards, opened the lid and pulled out a roll of bandages and a splint. Then she placed the box to one side, gripped what she'd revealed from it, and stared down at the man. Her face was still glowing, and she could feel sweat forming on her forehead from the sheer heat of her blood.

"Take these," she said, pushing them into his grip, "and get the fuck out of my bar."

* * *

Later in Smack-dab, the cultists who had survived were but silhouettes limping over a hill in the distance. Phoenix and Bert had moved the corpse outside to be taken by whatever came crawling around at night, and Meatsack was now in the front area swooshing his mop around. He would never be able to clean up the blood and gory bits such as they were, but he had learned that with enough swooshing, you could spread it out so thin that nobody noticed it was there.

Bert now leaned against the bar, feeling exhausted. It was barely even late-morning and she felt like night was falling, that she'd worked a full day and it was time to either shoo customers out, or get them to buy a room. And she could always convince people to buy a room, because nobody wanted to be out at night this close to the Dead Church.

Phoenix was sitting on the bar next to her, watching Meatsack move the blood about. He had just returned from table three, taking a tepid (at best) plate of salad to their table, and reminding them that salads could be served either hot or cold - so the fact that it was somewhere in between was just the best of both worlds.

Bert rubbed her tired face with her human hand, leaning on her left. "Fuck me, what a day," she said, quietly.

Phoenix turned to look at her and grinned. "Well, I would if you'd only let me."

She looked up and smiled wryly at the man in the sad chef's hat. "I told you what you'd have to do to get that."

He pouted. "But how am I supposed to kill a Waste Beast with my arms tied behind my back?"

Bert shrugged, but her smile felt more genuine. Giving Phoenix crap always cheered her up. It was like playing with a baby wolfcat, only Phoenix wouldn't grow up to maul and eat her innards.

As a gentle silence fell over them both, Phoenix turned back to look at the blood stain. There were still chunks of exploded arm lying on the floor, which Meatsack was actively avoiding.

The adventurer shook his head. "You sure love this bar, huh?"

"Phoenix," Bert said, her smile fading. "If anyone walks in here and tries to take what don't belong to them, it will always end the same way."

"You're gonna get yourself hurt one day. Some big boulderfrog you can't intimidate."

"I've already been hurt," she replied, her eyes falling on her robotic prosthetic. Little servos whirred in the silence as her fingers curled into a fist. "This bar is my home. We'll see if this big boulderfrog of yours has the balls to take it from me."

* * *

Hmm. This smacks suspiciously of foreshadowing. But what is to come? And how will things go wrong? Find out in the next chapter of "Smack-dab, in the Middle of Nowhere"!

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