Switch Blades And Shootin' Irons
D Grant Mulhern

"Aw shit Buzz, check it." Randy's eyes flicked to the rearview mirror and back. Buzz followed his gaze to the mirror, but from his position in the passenger seat, he couldn't make out what Randy was looking at. Probably a goddamn bird or something. Randy didn't exactly possess balls of steel. And with all the hardware in the trunk of the car, Buzz was surprised that Randy had gone this long without pissing himself.
"What?" Buzz craned his neck around and looked out the back window, expecting to see nothing more suspicious than a big, geriatric, Winnabego. But it was quite the contrary.
"Shit. Cops." Buzz turned around and slammed the back of his head angrily against the headrest. "Shit, shit, shit!"
"What're we gonna do, Buzz? I ain't going back, man. No way! Not if—?"
"Would you shut up! I'm thinking for Chrissake!" Buzz screamed at Randy. He was beginning to regret ever cutting the kid in on this action. He was small time. Strictly bush league. Car theft. Armed robbery. Buzz had met him in stir and told the kid to look him up when he got out. Maybe he'd have a little something going that he could get in on at the ground floor, so to speak. And at that, Buzz had bid Randy Biggs and Ralway Prison a fond adieu.
But Randy had taken him up on the offer, looking Buzz up the very day he'd been served his walking papers. He never thought the kid would actually do it. He'd been talking out his ass when he'd made the offer, but he’d felt kind of bad for the kid. He couldn't have been any older than nineteen, and he did have something in the works. He was planning on moving a shipment of guns across the border for a former associate. A real hard ass named Eddie the Prince. Five K up front, another five when he delivered the shooting irons safe and sound to the address he'd been given. Some abandoned pulp and paper mill in the middle of nowhere, in some town called Earlton, Ontario. Up in Canada, of all places.
Of course Buzz hadn't given the kid all the details of the operation, especially the one concerning the money. After all, a grand was a grand. The kid should be grateful. Buzz didn't have to let him in on jack-shit. Besides, someone had to drive the eighteen hours from Detroit. And it sure as hell wasn't going to be Buzz.
"Did they flash their lights?" Buzz asked, rather urgently. He was thinking of the hardware in the trunk and the special compartment under the back seat. Nasty shit. Some very nasty shit. Automatic weapons. A lot of it foreign assault rifles by Heckler & Koch and a shit load of Glock 17 handguns. If they got nailed with all that—especially in a foreign country...
"Wha? Huh?" The kid was starting to get a little flaky.
Buzz resisted the urge to open the kid's door and push him right out of the goddamn car. He repeated himself, more slowly this time, through tightly clenched teeth. "Did they flash their lights?"
At first Buzz thought he either hadn't heard him, or didn't understand the question. Randy only glanced furtively at the rearview mirror and began to fidget in his seat.
If we get out of this, I'm going to kill him, Buzz promised himself. He grabbed the collar of Randy's jean jacket and jerked him toward his face. "Did they or did they not flash their fucking lights!" Buzz screamed at him.
"Wha—? No. Not yet," Randy answered like a man waking from a dream. A particularly unpleasant one.
Well, that settled it. There was nothing to get worked up about yet. They hadn't been speeding. Just play it cool and everything should work out. "Good, that's g—"
The cruiser’s lights began to flash lazily in the dim light of autumn dusk, filling their car with red, strobe-like light. Buzz felt his scrotum tighten, pulling his boys up to what felt like his throat. This was not good. Most definitely not good at all.
Buzz could tell by the sudden tensing of his shoulders that Randy was about to punch it and try to make a run for it. "Don't even think about it," he said dully. "Try it and we're done."
Randy looked at him, wild eyed, "I can make it Buzz, I know I can!"
Buzz pulled out the .357 magnum that had been under his seat since the day they had left. It was there only to be used in an emergency. This was one. "You try it and I'll ventilate your fuckin’ head, Randy. No shit. The way I see it, they're already wonderin’ why we haven't pulled over like a couple of upstanding citizens, and I'd say we got another ten seconds before they start getting edgy. Now I'm not asking again. Pull this bitch over, or I am going to shoot you." As if for confirmation of this little factoid, Buzz cocked the hammer.
Randy, looking like the victim of some particularly cruel joke, did as he was told. "I hope you know what you're doing’, man," he said in a small voice.
They pulled onto the soft shoulder, right in front of a fluorescent green sign which read New Liskeard 120 km. The white cruiser pulled up and stopped a car length behind them.
"All right Randy, it's crunch time, now listen," Buzz said, stuffing something cold and hard into his hand. It was a switchblade. "This is in case things turn bad. I'd give you a gun but this is the only one I got up front here." It was a lie, of course, but the last thing Buzz wanted to do was give the little puke a gun.
The cruiser door opened slowly.
"Play it cool. Probably just a busted tail light or something. But if they want to check the trunk, don't argue."
The cop was getting out of the cruiser now.
"We show em. Then we kill em. Got that. Don't do nothin’ less you have to. Remember, I got the gun."
Randy nodded. He looked scared. Buzz only hoped the kid wouldn't do anything stupid.
The cop tapped their window, motioning for Randy to roll it down. Randy obliged.
"Evenin’ officer," Randy smiled nervously. Buzz couldn't see it. It was probably better that way.
The cop peered into the car. Buzz nodded amiably. "Evenin’."
The cop ignored him, turning his attention instead to Randy. "I don't know how you folks do things down in the states, but up here we don't pass vehicles on a double solid. License please."
Busted. Buzz felt his stomach do a slow roll. He runs his license and sees his rap sheet we're done.
Randy fumbled around in the front pocket of his jeans.
snikt!
Buzz had only a microsecond to take in what was happening, as Randy jerked his hand up. Too fast, he thought. Randy wasn't handing the cop his license at all. He was going to hand him seven inches of cold steel.
Buzz watched in dumbstruck horror as the world seemed to speed up. Not some slow motion action sequence like in the movies, but some hopped up version of reality, where everything else moved with the jerkiness of stop action photography. Everything, that was, except for Buzz. He tried to reach for Randy's arm but couldn't seem to move fast enough. What the hell are you doing! he wanted to scream. But most of all, he wanted to kill the stupid little—
"Goddamn pig fucker!" Randy grunted and brought the blade up in a tight, savage little arc. The cop took a small, shuffling step backward and tried to fumble his gun from the confines of its holster. He was too late. The knife caught him just above his belt buckle, and Randy unzipped his guts with the fluid motion of a trained killer, not some two-bit thug from Peoria.
The cop took another two shambling steps backward, and Buzz finally got a good look at the man, who wasn't really a man at all. In fact, he looked only a few years older than the punk who'd just handed him a bellyful of steel. Buzz wanted to puke and scream at the same time as he watched a stinking stream of the young cop’s guts spew forth from his bloodied shirt. The cop opened his mouth to speak and only managed to vomit a torrent of blood instead, "Glurt!" It splattered part of the windshield and most of Randy.
Randy didn't seem to notice. He kept reaching out of the car’s window, slashing madly at the empty air in front of him, seemingly oblivious to the situation. Buzz however, was not.
"Aw, shit!" Buzz yawped as he saw the young cop finally pull his gun free and level it at Randy. Two thoughts entered his head at once. You're fucked, Randy and nice knowing ya, asshole. Buzz pulled the door handle, shouldered open his door and dive/rolled out of the car just as the gun went off. There was a wet, meaty thud as the bullet hit flesh, and a dull spang as it continued its brief journey, burying itself in the door Buzz had just exited, stage right.
Buzz rolled into the grass and brambles of the ditch below, coming to rest in a puddle of icy cold water that smelled like shit and dead fish. Water seeped into his pants, cupping his balls like a corpse's hand. Someone—probably Randy—was screaming like a woman somewhere above him. You couldn't have just killed him, could you? he cursed Randy and began to scramble up the embankment, gun still in hand.
Buzz popped his head up over the edge of the steep bank to gauge the situation. What he saw looked like something from one of those living dead type movies he used to watch—stoned— as a teenager. Randy had managed to get out of the car. A good portion of the kid's face was gone. His nose had been replaced by a ragged, bloody hole and he had no top lip. What was left of his teeth was now set in a permanent snarl. His left eye hung from its socket and slapped lazily against his cheek. He was locked in a death waltz with the young police officer, slipping and sliding in the cops guts, which still hung in a bloody knot from his midsection—although most of it seemed to have been trampled into the pavement around them.
Buzz was almost hypnotized by the grisly sight. But one thought seemed to snap him out of his brief paralysis: if someone drives by and sees this, we are most sincerely screwed. He crawled to his feet and walked nonchalantly around the car, taking care not to step in the cop. As he came upon the pair, Randy's good eye rolled frantically in its socket, spotting Buzz.
"Shoot the vastard, Vuzz!" Randy screamed, "Flease!"
Buzz walked up behind the young cop, placed the gun against the side of his head and pulled the trigger. At such close range, the powerful handgun took the top of the man’s head off from the nose up. The rest of his body—not registering the fact that the boss had vacated the premises—continued to shuffle about with Randy for a few more seconds, then toppled to the ground, face down (or what was left of it, anyway) in his own mess.
Buzz turned to Randy. The kid stood there, swaying lightly. That permanent, sickening grin on his bloody face, his good eye wild with either fear or excitement. Buzz couldn't tell, and didn't really care.
"We got uhn, huh Vuzz? We got uhn good." Randy gurgled, dead eye still swinging.
"Yeah, we got him all right." Buzz agreed. He looked down at the young man lying dead on the highway. A ropy length of intestine was wrapped around one of the cop's ankles. There was blood everywhere. What a fuckin’ mess.
Randy touched his face gingerly, "How vad izh it, Vuzz?"
Buzz wasn't sure if he meant his face or the situation. It didn't matter, really. Both were about as bad as they could get. "Been better," he replied. He ran a hand through his black, spiky hair. He was tired. More tired than he thought he'd ever been in his life.
Randy leaned weakly against the side of the car. It too was covered in blood. He started to cry. Tears oozed from his good eye, cleaning a single thin track through the blood on his cheek.
If snot starts leakin’ from that hole in his face, I think I'll go bugshit. Buzz thought simply, then shot Randy in the head before the thought could become a reality.
Randy was flung over the hood of the car and rolled bonelessly down the embankment on the other side, where he came to rest in the puddle of stagnant water Buzz had occupied only moments before.
Rest in peace, Randy. You stupid fuck.
Buzz stepped in front of the on coming vehicle's headlights and held up his hand to stop it. He pulled the cop's hat down slightly over his eyes and zipped up the cop’s jacket to hide the plaid shirt he was wearing underneath. There was blood all over the stuff, but from a distance he figured you probably couldn't tell. And when he got in close—well—it would be too late for the poor bastard to do anything about it, anyway.
"What seems to be the problem, offi—oh my God!" The little bald man behind the wheel of the green Mazda tried to roll up his window, but the man in the bloody cop clothes was too fast. His arm pistoned through the open window and grabbed the man by the throat, making him squeak. Buzz pressed the gun against the side of the man's head. "Shove over," he told him. The little man obliged eagerly. Buzz got in.
"D-don't kill me, puh-p-please. I have a—"
Buzz brought his arm around, slamming the ridge of his open hand against the bridge of the man's nose. The ugly sound of bone breaking went of like a rifle crack. The man slumped silently back into the passenger seat. A single thread of blood seeped from his nose, down to his chin.
"Shut the fuck up," Buzz said thinly. He put the car in gear and drove away, leaving the mess—guns and all—behind him. Eddie the Prince could find someone else to run his errands.
Buzz Johnson had retired.

D. Grant Mulhern <mailto:dmulhern@mb.sympatico.ca> is 26 years old, currently lives in Southern Manitoba (Canada), and has been writing for as long as he's been able to put pen to paper. He would like to make writing my full time career because he would greatly enjoy saying good-bye to the joe jobs he's been working for the past few years. This is his first publication.