an: This was a Christmas present for a friend of mine who I'm convinced has terrible taste in literature. He considers Clive Clussler and Larry the Cable Guy accomplished and talented authors. And I recently learned that he thinks the Twilight books are well-written, poor soul. Anyway, I decided to write a completely plotless, sexist, action story with a lot of explosions. He loved it.

Action Story

Zane Conn was a big man.

He was a big man, and he was a big man with a gun—a gun that he knew how to use. Bullets thudded into the dummy down the target range, snapping out of his 44 Magnum in loud pops. Zane’s face was rigid and content, the sadU c pleasure of the shooting range glinting in his eyes.

He was intense about this. He was intense about this because his wife, Candi, a five-foot-seven bleached blonde with an affinity for all things sparkly, was mad at him. And, being a hard-ass cop who was always On The Edge, he figured it was better to shoot the dummy than his wife.

The dummy exploded in a puff of stuffing.

These things tended to happen when Zane was in the room.

The chief entered the room. He was a fat, stout man with a cigar, and he tended to get on Zane’s nerves. You didn’t get on Zane’s nerves. Zane would throw you out a window.

You didn’t throw the chief out of windows. That particular act of defenestration had nearly lost Zane his job, though, and since then they’d reached a sort of mutual hatred.

“Zane!” the chief shouted upon sighting the pile of training dummy. “That’s coming out of your paycheck.”

Zane shrugged. He was a laconic man. “You wanted to see me, Chief?”

“I got a job for you.”

Zane threw the gun over his shoulder. It hit the wall and exploded.

The job was to go investigate a suspected kidnapping—a creep in the Warehouse District had taken home a stripper named Jewell, and she hadn’t returned.

He has, in fact, kidnapped her, and Zane’s about to go fix that.

I say this because I know you just hate suspense.

His name was Randy Jacobs, but to his perpetual ire, Zane called him Weasel. He was tall and thin with wiry red hair. His uniform looked too large on his body, and his holster always slid down his him. Something in the way Weasel moved was slinky and annoying, and Zane disliked him.

“Zane, this is crazy, man,” said Weasel, gesticulating wildly against the steering wheel. He was driving a Porsche Cayenne S. It was Zane’s car, but Zane had plenty of them. “We’re just s’posed to check out the perp’s house, make sure she’s in there, wait for backup. You remember the last time you didn’t wait for backup?”

Oh, yes. Zane remembered. He’d kicked the door in, guns blazing, and shot two of the filthy bastards dead before he realised he had the wrong house. They were all terrorists, though, so Weasel had arrested the others and Zane had gotten a raise.

“I don’t wait for backup,” said Zane, and got out of the car. Weasel barely managed to brake in time.

“You crazy, man!” Weasel said. Weasel also thought he was black.

Zane gripped his gun, got his centre of gravity together, and kicked down the door of the back-alley house. There was a hollow crunching sound as his foot went through the wood.

Zane paused. His foot was stuck. This was not, usually, how things went. Usually, the bad guys took care of their doors—not this one. The wood was rotten.

He took out his gun and shot holes in the door until the rest of the wood collapsed. By this point, Weasel had parked the car and climbed through the window.

There was blood on the floor.

“She’s hurt,” said Zane, kneeling to examine it. “Oh, if he killed her…”

“Could be the perp’s,” said Weasel. Zane ignored this.

The blood led to a door with a red-tinted knob. This was unlocked, but Zane kicked it down anyway. His foot did not get stuck this time. Weasel and Zane, guns drawn, went down the stairs.

The basement was dark.

“Well, well, well,” said a voice out of nowhere. The creep materialized out of the poorly-lit cellar. He wasn’t handsome or strong—he was a fat little man with glasses, a balding head, and a gun to Jewell’s head. Also, he had a rather random Swedish accent; all the good bad guys had them these days.

“If it isn’t Zane Conn.”

“No,” said Zane, “It’s Santa Claus.” He held up his gun. “Ho, ho, ho.”

Zane fired. There was a scream from Jewell, and a grunt of pain from the Swedish creep. He fell to the floor, stone dead.

Zane, suddenly angry, threw the gun at the wall. It exploded.

Jewell leapt away, stared for a second at the body, and screamed again.

“He’s dead!”

“Yeah,” said Zane. “You okay, baby?”

Jewell nodded, chest heaving in terror. “He like, paid me to go upstairs, and then like, threw me into the car and like, kidnapped me and stuff.”

“Sounds pretty rough, yo,” said Weasel.

Jewell nodded. She ran over to Zane and pressed herself to him. Zane ignored this.

“Weasel,” said Zane. “Go drive the car home. I’m gonna walk this pretty lady to my house.”

“You’re married, man!”

“And I don’t give a fuck,” said Zane.

“You crazy!”

They left the house, which exploded a short time later.