The Gumshoe, the Judge, and a Tooth Fairie

[This is a flash fiction entry for Chuck Wendig's Must Love Guns flash fiction contest, and my own flash fiction challenge, Teeth. Enjoy]

“How’d you find me gumshoe?”

Horner looked up into the barrel of the gun, a five shot revolver with a barrel half as long as the cylinder. “Answer me!” Frankie growled.

“It wasn’t that hard,” Horner said. “You weren’t what anyone would call careful.”

Frankie snarled and pushed the barrel of the gun against Horner’s temple. “You think you’re funny gunshoe?”

“And you think you’re smart. So I guess that puts us both in the wrong.”

Frankie dug in his pocked and pulled something out, tossing it on the table in front of Horner. “Know what that is gunshoe?”

“I’m gonna guess…Pez dispenser.”

Frankie pulled the hammer back. “No more jokes, gumshoe!”

Horner reached down and opened the Leatherman pliers. “What do you want me to do with these?”

“Your teeth. Yank ‘em out.”

Horner almost laughed. “You think you’re gonna fool anybody that way?”

“Tooth Fairie Killer’s all over the news,” Frankie said. “No way they’ll trace this back to me.”

Horner looked at the pliers and then up at Frankie. “Which ones?”

“You know which ones. Now shut your mouth and get started.”

Horner grabbed his left front tooth with the pliers and started to pull. He could feel the metal digging into the white of his teeth, and the pressure on his tooth sent jolts of pain shooting through his mouth.

“Faster gumshoe!” Frankie screamed. “You need a little incentive?”

And before Horner could answer Frankie pointed the gun down at his leg and pulled the trigger. The blast from the shot shredded his pants and peeled the top layer of skin from his thigh, but didn’t seem to do much else.

Frankie laughed. “Birdshot,” he explained. “But who knows? The next one might be solid lead.”

Horner looked down at his hand and realized that he had managed to yank out his front tooth. It was bloody and still attached to fragments of the root.

“That’s real good,” Frankie said. “You shoulda been a dentist.”

Horner put his tongue up into the space made by the tooth. His mouth throbbed with pain, but it was nothing compared to the fire that burned in his leg.

“Keep going,” Frankie said.

The next tooth came out easier. Horner was falling into a place where the pain faded into a mind numbing haze. He forced himself to focus. Two more teeth. Then Frankie would kill him. He would pull the trigger on the ridiculously overpowered pistol and blow Horner’s brains out.

And it wouldn’t matter to Frankie that the real Tooth Fairie Killer never used a gun. Frankie wasn’t the kind of guy to be troubled by details. Frankie was dumb. But was he dumb enough?

“That’s quite a piece you’ve got there,” Horner said.

Frankie grinned. “You like? Got it off some old broad who thought it’d protect her from guys like me. They call it the Judge. Shoots 45′s and them little shotgun shells. That’s what I just got you with.”

“They’re called .410′s,” Horner said.

Frankie’s brow lowered. “You better not be stalling for time gunshoe. Not that it matters anyway. You and I both know nobody else is coming.”

Horner yanked at the his bottom front tooth with the pliers, pulling it free.

Three down, one more to go.

“You know nobody says gumshoe anymore right?”

“Shut up. You talk funny with no teeth.”

The blood from his leg had started to drip from the chair down to the floor. The wound wasn’t deep, but it was still bleeding heavily. Horner didn’t know how much more blood he could lose before he lost consciousness.

“Stop stalling,” Frankie said. “One more tooth.”

“Why don’t you do it yourself? You’re going to kill me anyway.”

“This is more fun,” Frankie said.

Horner obliged. He gripped the Leatherman pliers with both hands and grasped the tooth. He felt so tired. But he wasn’t ready to give up. Not yet.

The final tooth came loose with a sickening tearing sensation, and Horner tossed it onto the table with the rest.

“Not bad, gunshoe,” Frankie said. “Not bad at all.”

“I told you,” Horner growled as his fingers fumbled under the table for a grip on the blood soaked Leatherman, “Nobody says gumshoe anymore.”

The knife finally folded out of the handle of the Leatherman as Frankie snarled and took aim at Horner’s head. Horner used every ounce of spare strength he possessed and rose from the chair, his left leg screaming in agony. He knocked the gun aside and brought the knife plunging down into Frankie’s neck.

Frankie screamed a gurgling scream as blood welled up around the knife wound. The Judge clattered to the floor as he pressed his hands into his neck trying to staunch the flow of blood.

Horner leaned over and picked up the gun. “You were lying about having solid lead in the next chamber, Frankie.” He pointed the gun at Frankie’s face and pulled the trigger. Birdshot ripped his face to shreds.

Frankie collapsed to the floor screaming in pain, and Horner murmured to himself, “Here come da judge.”

And despite the blackness closing in around the edges of his vision he managed a smile. A big, toothless smile.

Zombie Tuesday: The Evils of Overkill

Good news! Through grit, determination, and a whole lot of dumb luck, you have managed to survive the first wave of the zombie apocalypse.

You are now alive in a world filled with the rotting corpses of your deceased loved ones, who all want to eat you. Food is in short supply. Civilization is in turmoil. Oh, and you can’t play video games anymore so that’s a bummer. You’re sure you don’t want to just lay down and die? No? Okay then, onward and forward.

In last week’s post we talked about the dangers of digging in. No matter how strong your fortress, or how high your walls, eventually staying in one spot will get you killed.

Today’s precept for zombie survival: Overkill is Overrated.

Regardless of TVTropes‘s opinion on the subject, overkill is dangerous and downright stupid during the zombie apocalypse. This is another thing the movies get wrong all the time. Our heroes are almost always brandishing shotguns and high-powered sniper rifles which they use to splatter the brains of the undead all over the big screen.

Um, right…couple of questions here? First of all, you do realize that thing is heavy right? It’s bad enough that you have to keep moving like…forever, but you really want seven pounds of wood and metal hanging off of your shoulder for the rest of your life?

“But Albert,” you say “Seven pounds doesn’t sound all that bad.”

I’m sorry, but I assumed you might also be carrying food or water. You know, important stuff. But if all you’ve got is the gun, then by all means, lug it on through the wasteland.

Except it isn’t going to do you much good. Why? Because ammo ain’t gonna be in easy supply pardner. We’re talking about the zombie apocalypse here. You think all the other yahoos just laid down quietly and let themselves be bitten? Heck no! They were firing off every round they had into them golldurn zombies. Which means odds are good you’re not going to just find cases of 30.06 shells or 12 gauge buckshot lying around for the taking.

And lets say you do find a few rounds here and there. What good are they going to do you? The undead are massing in the millions. How much good do you think that box of twenty rounds is going to do you?

And that’s not even mentioning the sound. But sure, go ahead. Satisfy your manly urge to blow that stinking corpse’s head into smithereens. Just know that you’re ringing the dinner bell for all his friends.

Okay. Don’t panic. Take a deep breath.

There are a couple of good solutions.

First, get yourself a .22, preferably a handgun, something you can stick in your pocket.

Why a .22?

Firstly, because that’s all you need. Think about it. We’re talking about killing dead people here. Of course, there is the slight inconvenience that they’re still up and walking around, but still…dead people. Dead bone decays just as fast as dead flesh. It’s not going to take a lot to punch through those skulls.

Second, there’s bound to be a lot more ammunition for it. Most shotgun shells are sold in boxes of fifteen. Most rifle ammo comes in boxes of twenty. Pistol ammo, boxes of fifty or a hundred. But .22 shells? Those suckers come in boxes of five-hundred or more. And they’re tiny. You can easily fit upwards of a hundred in your pocket.

The the coup de gras? They’re quiet. Don’t get me wrong, you’ll still have to be careful, but the sound produced by a .22 is nothing compared to what you’re going to get from a shotgun.

But even the .22 is problematic. Because eventually you’re still going to run out of ammo. Ultimately anything that requires a renewable fuel source that isn’t naturally occurring is going to drag you down. So what do you do?

You say hello…to my little friend.

You wanna kill zombies? You really wanna kill all the zombies? I mean, that’s the plan isn’t it? Because, ultimately this is about more than just your survival. It’s about the survival of the human race. Well, you’re gonna have to go melee on those suckers, zombie killing the old-fashioned way, up close and friendly, one customer at a time.

An axe, a baseball bat, a well placed brick: almost anything will do. But the weapon pictured above is my personal favourite. It’s a two-handed machete with a light-weight synthetic handle and a super sharp cold steel blade. It’s sort of a cross between an axe and a machete.

I’ve personally held one in my hands, and it’s nothing short of beautiful. This sucker will cut through anything: wood, metal, your sister’s big toe. Anything. It’ll take a zombie’s head clean off in one swipe, and as long as you don’t try to take on too many of them at once it should be more than adequate to protect you from the undead.

So put down your shotguns and your sniper rifles. Let go of that grenade launcher. I know it makes you look cool, but let’s face it, there’s no one left to be impressed. You need to get the job done cleanest, safest, most efficient way possible.

Do the smart thing. Eschew overkill. Embrace effectiveness.

And maybe, just maybe, you’ll make it through alive.