"Orsen!" Jeb screamed.

The lad took the bullets dead on and toppled immediately forwards, the chair flying out of his young hands. His blood hit the floorboards moments before his body, but the chair carried forwards at the speed of Orsen's sprinting. It collided into old Bob and knocked him back, his finger twitching on the trigger and shooting himself in the foot.

Jeb ran forwards as Bob yelped with pain and surprise, shouldering past Rob to knock him to the floor as he charged for Orsen. Behind him, a grunty, drunk voice yelled "Get 'em!" and Jeb heard the pounding of many footsteps as the long-suffering traders and wanderers of Can't Be Buried saw an opportunity to deal a little bit of suffering back.

Soon the whole bar was filled with the shouting of a brawl, now far louder than the waning wind outside. Jeb got to Orsen seconds after, sliding to his knees next to the lad and slipping a withered old hand beneath his skull. The boy had landed on his front, but rolled to his back. His blood pooled on the floorboards, mixing with the dust that was still swarming in from the storm.

"Orsen, can you hear me?" Jeb cried, checking the boy's eyes.

"Blah," Orsen replied, frowning. "I think I bin shot, Jeb."

"Yeah lad, you bin shot. Twice, like an idiot."

"Sorry, Jeb," he croaked. "I'm tryin' t' save Smacks. We gots t' save it, Jeb."

"I know, lad, I know. We'll save it, OK? We'll save it. I'm sorry I didn't help sooner - I didn't want anythin' bad t' happen to ya, lad."

Orsen reached up and put his young hand on Jeb's, smiling up at the old man's face. "I know, Jeb, ya always got my best interests at heart, I know ya do..."

Jeb watched as Orsen's eyes swam in and out of focus. His heart thudded loudly in his ears, his fingers trembling on the boy's. Somewhere nearby, Bob was being swarmed with more wanderers, fighting them while his toes flopped freely around his boot, sliced away from the foot. Rob was already somewhere in a pile of bodies, unable to reach his morning star, not smart enough to be able to fight off multiple drunk opponents. The air buzzed with the slams of a good beating.

"Orsen?" Jeb said, seeing the boy become particularly dazed. "Orsen?! Don't you die on me, lad."

The boy's eyes shot open wide. "Oh shit, Jeb, do ya think that's gonna happen?

"Wait, I didn't mean-"

"Oh man, I thought I was gonna be fine!"

"Orsen, wait, you'll be-"

"Oh no, oh no, oh no, I'm gonna die. Oh no, oh crap, oh no."

Jeb squeezed his hand tight, staring into Orsen's eyes. "Shut up for once in yer life, lad. You'll be fine."

Orsen stared back, a watery film across his glittering pupils. "Is it jus' a flesh wound, Jeb?"

"Aye lad," he replied, briefly pulling back some clothing to check the wound. He almost recoiled at the sight, feeling a significant amount of vomit bubbling like a cauldron in his stomach. "Aye ... lad. The flesh is definitely wounded, there."

"Alright, Jeb," he croaked. "Ya gotta go stop the bomb. Save Smack-dab, Jeb. I'll be fine lyin' here. I feel alright, I do."

"Yer've been shot twice, Orsen. Ya don't feel fine."

"Naw, I feel great. Just horrible pain is all. It's nice t' lie down for a bit. One o' the other traders can help me out."

"No they can't, lad, I gotta stay with you until I can patch ya up."

"Yes I can," said a deep woman's voice somewhere behind. A trader was moving in next to the pair, a haggard old woman with blood on her knuckles and a toothless grin spread on her face. Her breath stank of rancid gums and grog. "You go deal with th' bomb. I'll stay here and patch up th' boy."

Jeb looked between her and Orsen. "No, I need to stay with him. You can deal with the bomb."

She shook her head. "Hell naw, old timer. I ain't dealin' with a bomb, but I know how t' patch up a bleedin' lad. Go, piss off an' save the day or whatever."

"Go on, Jeb," said Orsen weakly. "I'll be alright."

Jeb looked once more between the two and then groaned loudly. He stood up slowly and stepped away from Orsen's prone figure while the drunk old woman moved in. He almost sat back down again, but she glared up at him and made a shooing motion with her hands.

Finally, Jeb gave up. He ran for the kitchen entrance as he heard the old woman mutter, "Now lad, this is gonna hurt a shit load, so buckle up yer boots," before Orsen screamed at the top of his lungs. It almost shattered Jeb's resolve and brought him running back, but he steadied himself, steeled his nerves, and marched through the kitchen door to find a bomb and defuse it.

Something he had never done before in his life.

The kitchen was a mess. Pots and pans lay scattered about, and most of the knife racks were emptied of their knives. But there, on a metal bench in the middle of the room, was the green crate, its lid open. Jeb scurried up to it and peered nervously inside, spying a large mess of wires and chipboards, with a clock smack in the middle. It counted down, but Jeb couldn't tell from what because the left-most numbers had been damaged and were displaying weird shapes. All he knew is that he either had thirty seconds, or an undefined amount of minutes and thirty seconds. OK, actually twenty-nine. No, twenty-eight. Oh bloody heck, Jeb thought, his mind a whirlwind of panic.

He moved around the room as quick as he could, checking every drawer and cupboard and surface for anything that might help him somehow defuse the bomb he had no idea how to defuse. He thought about maybe cutting the wires like he'd heard on Lord Ash's radio plays, but all the cutting utensils were gone - being field tested, most likely. But he did find a mouldy, rotten wooden crate labelled Bits 'n' Bobs. Inside was all manner of horrid-smelling organic material (undefined), and plenty of glass jars with 'contents' in them. To determine what those contents were would be impossible. But one particular jar stuck out in Jeb's eyes. It had a kind of black liquid inside, a sort of tarry substance, but a bit more watery. Scrawled on the side of the jar was:

DO NOT USE
May contain traces of freezing people in place

Jeb looked it, then at the bomb, then back at it. What if he could ... you know, freeze the bomb? The heroes in Lord Ash's old plays had never tried something like that, but plenty of them had splashed liquids on defective Old World security drones and made them short-circuit. What was a bomb but just a series of circuits designed to explode instead of come to life? There were plenty of exposed circuits, certainly...

Jeb quickly examined the time counter again to see that it now said there were forty-two seconds remaining. But was that forty-two seconds, or over a minute? Sweat started to form on Jeb's brow again, and he could feel the panic rising. He was about to bloody vomit into the thing at this rate.

Well, it was do or die. If this was the Orcklands, he wouldn't have thought twice about chucking an unknown substance into a strange electrical device. It was just how things were done back in the day. But he had a lad to look after, now, and everything seemed so much scarier. But, there would be nobody to protect if a bomb went off.

Not quite resolute but at least still trying his best, Jeb grasped the DO NOT USE jar, tore open its lid and splashed it into the bomb. The black liquid sloshed out with minimal enthusiasm, and Jeb had to hit his palm against the bottom of the jar to try and encourage it out and onto the circuit boards. Eventually enough of it came out to have any kind of effect, and soon the whole circuit board was crackling and buzzing with strange noises. The clock was going wild, too, displaying whatever time it felt like. It counted up, then down, then shut off, then turned on and displayed random numbers at random intervals.

Next the circuits themselves started to spark, drifts of smoke rising up from somewhere beneath the tangled nest of wires. The crackling got louder, the sparks grew larger, and Jeb honestly had no idea if he had saved the day or doomed Smack-dab to immediate and rather sudden oblivion.

Finally, a huge fountain of sparks burst up from inside the green crate and showered Jeb in hot embers. He staggered back, patting his coat as a cloud of smoke wafted out of the crate and up into the ceiling. The box sparked and crackled, embers cascading out in all directions.

Jeb shut his eyes.

But then, that was it. Only smoke came from the crate. The other noises died out.

Jeb dared to peer back into the box, through the smoke, to at least know if he was going to die or not. It obviously wouldn't matter in the end whether he was aware of its coming or not, but Jeb still wanted to know. While he was still alive.

Inside the box, the clock and circuits smouldered, great black streaks smudged across them with smoke coming from the surface. But importantly, the clock was no longer functioning. And nor, would it seem, was the bomb itself. That is, provided the clock truly wasn't functioning, rather than simply not displaying. But, Jeb felt that a small victory had been won today, and that deserved at least some recognition.

He spied a dusty bottle of cooking grog sitting on a shelf and figured, well, hadn't he earned a reward? And so he popped the top, took a swig, and staggered back to go see how Orsen was doing.

* * *

So, place some more bets, people. Is the bomb truly dead or am I just being mean?

Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

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