It was a bright new day in the Waste, and Can't Be Buried was looking as lovely and green as ever. The sun was shining, the birds were singing, and the little pixies were all holding hands and singing whilst they toiled away on the day's glorious work.

...

...

...and then whoever dreamt that woke up.

It was indeed a new day in the Waste, but to say Can't Be Buried was looking as lovely as ever would be like telling a Waste Beast it had a pretty smile. The sun was maybe shining, but the greasy, roiling smog still had it in a permanent chokehold. And if a sparkly little ray ever broke through, the smog would power slam it back into submission. Mind you, one might argue that the birds were singing, and some of the more intelligent gullpidgeons were actually very good at Puccini's Nessun Dorma (not that anyone knew what that was anymore, except maybe the gullpidgeons). However, the vast majority of the Waste's bird species - almost all carnivorous man-eaters - hung about the air in complete silence, waiting for an unwitting traveller to tie their shoelaces.

Now, near the bottom of a thick, towering mountain range, a little bar called Smack-dab was preparing for a brand new day.

"Phoenix!" Bert shouted, calling to the adventurer-turned-chef she knew would be milling about the kitchen at this time of morning. This yell was a very common way the day at Smack-dab began.

It took a few moments, but shortly Phoenix rested his arms and chin against the service window and peered through at Bert. His eyes were still groggy from sleep, his rough-cut hair sticking out at defiant angles. There was a bit of luminous green eye gunk clinging to one of his tear ducts, but when Bert glanced at it, it scuttled back into Phoenix's eye.

"Wassamattaboss?" Phoenix sighed, his voice still begging for five more minutes.

Bert pried her gaze off the man's tear duct and looked him in the eyes, frowning. "Why is table three still at table three?"

Phoenix cocked his head. "You lost me."

Bert sighed and shook her head, beckoning for the man to come into the room. He let out an audible grunt of dissatisfaction, but didn't dare say no to Bert. Shuffling on tired feet and wearing home-made fluffy slippers, the adventurer grumbled his way to stand next to his boss by the bar counter.

"Present and 'counted for, boss," he said, slapping his forehead in tired salute.

"Right," she replied. She spun him to face table three and pointed with her human hand. "Why is table three still at table three?"

She was asking because, sure enough, the two traders at table three were still sitting there. Now, this might not seem like that big a deal, it's a bar and eatery, right? People come to drink and eat, and then sometimes sleep, and then sometimes have breakfast. But the issue was, and Bert could not make this clearer to Phoenix, that table three had literally not moved a muscle since finishing their meal and drinks the night before. Literally. They were stalk-still, frozen in place in an upright position, their faces locked in a twisted look of confusion and minor aches and pains.

"Oh," said Phoenix.

"When I went to bed, Phoenix," Bert said, sighing once again, "I asked you to clear the bar. Surely you noticed them?"

"Weeell..." the man replied, scratching at his scraggly beard, still bearing dried brain matter from the day prior. "I saw them of course, but I reckoned they looked as happy as can be. I told them just to find their way to bed when they were finished, and then I went to sleep."

"And you didn't think that ... this, was weird?"

Phoenix shrugged. "One day we had a customer made entirely out of bees, you know?"

And once again Bert found that her only responses could be to grit her teeth, sigh openly, or rub her face. She decided to cycle through all three. "What the hell did you put on that salad?"

"Umm ... I just grabbed anything vaguely organic from my Bits 'n' Bobs box."

"But that's been sitting there for months."

He shrugged again. "All the mould fled deeper into the box when I opened it, so I reckoned that meant the stuff on top was clean."

Bloody hell, thought Bert. Look, Phoenix certainly had his uses around the place, especially when push came to gun violence. She didn't regret taking him on board, but sometimes ... sometimes he pushed it. "Go get Meatsack," she said, defeated, "and move them both outside. Bury the plates."

The man's face dropped. "But Bert, I don't wanna work with Meatsack," he cried. "He smells weird, and I never know where he's looking."

Bert glared at him warningly. "You work with Meatsack or you move them both yourself. Then you're scrubbing toilets for a week because you fucked up."

Phoenix considered this for a moment. "Actually Meatsack doesn't smell too bad, when you really think about it. Relative to the toilets and that."

The man shuffled off to go find his overgrown, potentially smelly colleague, while Bert stared at the frozen customers. But before Phoenix disappeared down the hall at the back of Smack's seating area, Bert called out again.

"And Phoenix?"

He turned to look.

"Just ... check their pockets, OK? Maybe we'll, you know, find a next of kin. And, um, be sure to keep their money, you know..."

"Safe?"

"That's the one."

He nodded and vanished.

At this point, the front door creaked open and a gust of wind blew in around Bert's feet. She pried her gaze away from The Mystery at Table Three to greet the newcomer.

"Howdy, welcome to Smack-dab. Kitchen isn't open yet, but if you grab a table I can ... I can..." and then her voice trailed off. The man was tall, muscular, but ageing. The skin around his eyes was folding in on itself, his hair, where it hadn't receded, was turning a dull shade of grey. But that didn't seem nearly as prominent as the fact that he not only carried a large automatic rifle on a sling, but that his black leather coat was smeared with ... was it entrails?

Her welcoming Hi Please Buy Things face evaporated almost in an instant, melting down into a suspicious stare. The man had stopped just inside the door, eyes narrowing right back at Bert. "Look, stranger," she stated, her human hand moving down to her hip, where a glittering bone-handled pistol lay in wait. "You walked into the wrong bar if you're here to cause trouble."

The man sneered openly, revealing yellowed teeth. He spoke in a coarse voice, rusty with dehydration. "You don't know who I am?"

Bert's finger twitched, scraping her weapon's smooth handle. "Should I?"

He continued to sneer, his dark gaze fizzling against her sapphire fire. "You young fuckers are all the same."

"Excuse me?" Twitch, twitch.

The man shook his head. "No respect, no education. Everything's the way it is because it's the way it was when you were born, right?"

"Listen, pal-"

"A drink will be fine," he cut in, before Bert could finish her statement. "And a place to wash once I've wet my throat."

She stared at him in silence a moment longer, the wind outside whistling and rattling around the walls. It was almost as if it screamed a warning of danger, but a warning to whom? The wind didn't care, it just liked whistling.

Then Bert submitted, something she'd fume about later. She waved the angry, messy stranger over to an empty table. "You got cash to pay for that drink?"

He nodded silently and sat down.

"Fine. And you can wash through there once you're done," she said, pointing to a door marked 'Bog' just off the side of the seating area.

The room fell to a tense silence immediately, with the man brooding in his own grubby thoughts while Bert set about getting a drink. She hated backing down, but she was a professional, and professionals needed folks to spend money so that professionals could keep being professionals. Bert smiled an evil smile, at least, when she spiked his drink with her secret stash of, well, she didn't know what it was, but by heck was it strong. And drunk people always spent more money, in her experience.

Phoenix reappeared as Bert was delivering a stout glass tumbler filled with a sparkling brown liquid to the stranger's table. She placed it down firmly in front of him and was about to say something when, suddenly, he sat upright and locked eyes on her chef.

"You," he stated coldly.

Bert looked back. Phoenix's mouth was hanging open and he was pointing straight at the stranger. Meatsack was just behind him, looking between Bert and Phoenix with a growing, desperate look of uncertainty.

The big lug always knew when trouble was afoot.

* * *

Dawn should be charged with crimes against humanity, thought Jeb groggily as a ray of light slapped him in the eyeballs. It was breaking and entering, not to mention aggravated assault with intent to wake. He rolled away from the rusting, mouldy tin wall that had more holes in it than Lord Ash's last radio play. Alas, comfort was not to be had on this bitter Can't Be Buried morning. Jeb just couldn't find a good position on his bed of stony rubble.

Jeb and Orsen had spent the night in a cramped Old World tin shed, with battered old walls, a roof that could barely be constituted as such, and a timber frame so eaten away by rot that these days it was the tin sheeting holding the support framing up. It had been a fairly typical night in the Waste, with two people attempting to sleep by a fire while all sorts of shuffling, groaning and bumping went on outside. Smart folk always slept indoors in Can't Be Buried, and even smarter folk had a fire, or better yet, a highly advanced automatic sensor lighting grid and a constant source of electricity. The smartest folk had a highly advanced automatic sensor lighting grid, a constant source of electricity, and automated drone defence turrets set to kill anything that so as much as tiptoed in the night, let alone went bump.

Jeb, though, had a little electric lantern that he made himself, and sometimes a fire - when he could get one going. Hey, life wasn't perfect, but at least he was alive to say it wasn't perfect.

Slowly, the old man propped himself upright and blinked the sleepiness from his eyes. "Orsen," he grumbled, "do ya want hot water for breakfast, or the last o' th' mouldy bread?"

Silence responded.

"Orsen?"

Jeb looked around the shed. Orsen wasn't there.

"Orsen!" he called out, jumping to his feet, knees cracking like gunshots. "Orsen, m'boy!"

Jeb battered open the shed's door with a thick-soled boot and stumbled out into the morning smoglight. An icy wind bit into him with chilly fangs, blowing up and around to sneak into his clothing. He shuffled a panicked two steps forwards, clutching his puffy jacket tight to his body. "Orsen!" he cried, his eyes darting all around.

"Mornin' Jeb!" a cheerful voice called out behind him.

The old man spun to see Orsen sitting by the side of the road, stroking the wolfcat pup. Jeb's breath spiralled out of his mouth in thick wisps, his heart hammering like it was trying to beat up his other organs. That boy'll be the death o' me, thought Jeb. The bloody death.

"What're ya doin' out here?" he said aloud, walking over to the lad.

"Couldn't sleep 'cause I was worried 'bout Mr Tinkles, Jeb," Orsen replied. The animal purred softly under the boy's red fingers. "When mornin' hit, I thought I'd take him for a wee walk. See how his strength was."

Jeb looked down at the skinny, bruised creature. It was sitting on its hind legs, nuzzling its small face into the boy's hands. "Looks alive t' me," he stated.

"You wanna pat him, Jeb?" Orsen asked, looking up with wide, innocent eyes. "He's only bitten a couple o' times."

The wolfcat cast an eye at the old man, and gave just a hint of fang. Hint enough to know that those teeth were large enough to put a good hole in Jeb's arm, and the pup knew it. "Err, maybe not today, Orsen."

Orsen nodded and turned back to his pal, scratching it gently under the chin.

Jeb shivered, his boots crunching on the gravel beneath him. It certainly was a cold day today, make no mistake. The smog above, normally a cottony white (a dirty cotton, that is), was all congested with dark, slimy grey. Jeb wondered if that meant another rainstorm was on the way. He sure hoped not - most of the leftover sheds around these parts would be as much use in the rain as a bra on a Waste Beast, and the intact buildings weren't safe to enter. Too much of a risk - could be Things hiding in there. Jeb and Orsen needed to get moving as soon as possible, to reach Second Thought where it was safer.

"Jeb," Orsen piped up all of a sudden.

"Aye lad?"

The boy nodded down the road, to where two Old World street signs clung to the very last dregs of their life. They flanked the cracked, weedy road on either side. "Wassat mean?"

Jeb squinted, reading the signs. One was illegible, too rusted and acid-beaten. The other one was a little more defiant, but had taken a few gunshots for its troubles. It might have once been green, with a number in a big red circle with a rough, faded word beneath it:

80
Cu t

"Well, lad," Jeb started, squinting again, "I reckons it means ... err ... that there were 80 cun- I mean, folk, livin' 'ere back in the Old World."

Orsen stared thoughtfully at the signs, his skinny fingers dancing in Mr Tinkle's wiry fur. "Think there's anyone still there?"

Jeb's eyes peered off down the straight, dishevelled road. There were derelict Old World buildings all along either side. Burnt-out vehicles of sorts were littered between them, rubble strewn between those. Most of the buildings were shells; carcasses of once-charming houses that the dust storms and acid rain hadn't managed to topple yet. But there were some with four walls and a roof, with dark, shadowy interiors that Jeb couldn't see into. It was these that he was worried about. The ones where something, or rather, some Thing, could creep into and wait for you until twilight.

The old man nodded slowly. "Aye lad, but I don't think they're the friendly human sort they once were."

* * *

"don't think they're the friendly human sort" doesn't sound so good. Hopefully things don't go wrong and everyone is happy. Right? ...right?

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