Fight Scenes And Fighting Experiences

Another writer's fine blog post kicked off a few things in my head about writing fictional combats. I have always felt it one of my strengths in writing, but never bothered to delve into why I think that is.

So, here we go:

I have been in more than a few fights as an adult, many of them serious.

The majority were open-hand, or transitioned from weapons, namely impact or aerosol to open hand techniques. Less often, I have gone from open hands to weapons.

I have fought one on one and been part of a rat-pack trying to subdue an individual.

I have had to fight either sex, with instances of females larger and heavier than I am.

I have fought  the wounded, the cracked-out, the week-long cocaine-binger, the PCP smokers, the drunkards, the mentally ill, and those that combined a number of the above altered states into a gestalt of mayhem.

I have fought clothed people and very memorably, naked people. Just not at the same time.

I have made people bleed, and been made to bleed. I have sent people to the hospital. I have been sent to the hospital.

So, more often than not, after all the sound and fury was over, I had to write a narrative of the event. It is there that I developed what experience I have narrating combat.

It is difficult to recall events in their proper sequence,  especially when those events happen in a highly charged atmosphere of danger and fear. Then add the requirement that I describe what both parties did that led to the conflict and  do so in a manner the lay-person can easily understand, and you might be able to see where one could develop some ability with describing combat scenes.

For fiction, all that is left is to make shit up; something that is expressly and entirely forbidden in my day job. So of course, I love to do it in my writing.

Stupidity Is A Social Solvent

I rant. My inner gorilla stirs at the stupidity of others. I grow irritated with the bloodless shenanigans of asshats.

Why do I let my blood pressure climb over the colossal stupidity of others?

Because I give a fuck, that's why.

One might ask why I give two drips of ball-sweat?

Because if allowed to run rampant, asshattery will underwhelm all things. Stupidity acts on society like a solvent, eroding all reason.

Perhaps a personal example:

The other day I was riding in. As I rode along the on-ramp, a largish chunk of styrofoam blew in my way. I narrowly avoided it. There was no telling what it might do if I tried to ride over it.

A mile down the road, another piece, this one more easily avoided.

Three miles more, another, this one the size of my rather large cranium. Not so easy to avoid, coming as it did from behind a minivan.

Two more miles, a chunk or two more, this time added to by a stretch of cardboard. Ahead, I see a small red pickup truck. Shit is blowing around in the back, cardboard and the like.

I think, perhaps, this is the person who does not know they have a loose load in their bed. Perhaps, I reason, they are unaware that the cover must have slipped back from their load. I shall try and catch up, let them know dangerous and expensive things are falling from the back of his vehicle.

My reasoning that the individual is merely a hapless victim of circumstance begins to erode upon continued observation of their actions. The man, in his fully loaded tiny pickup, is driving well in excess of the speed limit, and I have a hard time catching up, as I have to dodge the shit flying from it. Indeed, it is not until we reach the tunnel and traffic backs up, twenty miles later, that I am able to catch up to the speeding litterer.

I pull up on his right, seeing the large quantity of loose styrene biker-killers barely held in place by two bungee cords crossing the bed. I advance to beside the cabin. I look inside. An Indian male driver with an i-Phone 4 in hand, glasses on, and earbuds jammed in both ears looks back.

I gesture for him to roll down his window. He does.

I yell to him that he has littered a string of styrene land mines along his path, that he needs to pull over and secure his load.

He rolls the window up. My Inner Gorilla body-checks the gates of his prison, nearly making my eyes explode from my head.

We are traveling at a walking pace, a difficult feat of clutch control for a moto rider without a raging Gorilla in his mind.

I bang on his window.

He starts to shuffle through his iPhone.

Had I my service weapon and cuffs, I would have shown him my star and ordered him to the side of the road. No, I was unequipped to take police action, and therefore couldn't safely take him on as anything more than a private citizen.

I bang harder on the window, my Inner Gorilla barely held in check.

He continues to act as if I am not there. Fucking pussy. My Inner Gorilla howls in impotent rage. I curse, swear, and then fall back, wishing I had a cigarette to drop in his bed. He would surely pay attention when his shit caught fire. My Inner Gorilla wishes for a molotov cocktail.

Instead of the contemplated mayhem, I get his plate.

I ride on. I look for some CHP. No dice. I even check their favored duck blind. No love.

Shit.

I go to work, run the plate. It's still registered to the tow yard where the asshat bought it.

So, nothing else I can do.

So. You might be tempted to ask what the above has to do with my point.

Well, here it is:

Never mind that the litter he left across twenty five miles of roadway will take decades to dissolve into the background of shit we are already wading through.

More important to me specifically is that had I been injured or killed by the debris left behind, my family would have lost their primary wage-earner, and because it would have been seen as a single-vehicle accident, most likely would not have seen a pay-out commensurate with what they were denied.

My wife would surely soldier on, but my child would grow up without her father.

The social fabric of my family would be dissolved. Those who like my company would be denied it.

And even thinking within the least extreme extrapolation on what this asshat did; that of what actually followed these events: I am left so impatient with the average asshat that I barely make it through the rest of my day without biting the head from those whose only crime is to be a moron, or late, or just blind.

All because of the stupid asshattery of one fucktard too cowardly to pull over and cover his shit, a process that might have taken five minutes.

Stupid is the solvent that will destroy us all.

More Bridge of The Broken

Wrote this today. There is a preceding section that is all pursuit. I am taking on officer involved shootings with this, or I plan to.

Hope you enjoy:


“Fuck it. Go. I’ll be-” Baptiste started. Caron didn’t hear the rest, already out the car and running for the ramp.

The officer from the Eastern Station unit was putting on distance, sprinting. She was alright with that. Some were built for speed, some were built to run all day.

She grinned, breath coming in easy drafts, ’And this is for real, girl.’

“Going to force a dismount,” Trudeau broadcast as the officers negotiated packed vehicles at the corner.

A car door opened right in front of the other officer, some lookie-loo thinking to see what the hold up was. The officer hit the man in the back, crushing him into his own door, the rebound sending both to the pavement, hard.

Caron turned between cars, put one foot down on a bumper and vaulted the narrow space. Her hip bumped the barricade as she turned back on course, helping to restore her balance.

She couldn’t see the rider ahead, could see the light bar on the sergeant’s unit about twenty-five meters ahead. She put on more speed.

The distinct whip-crack of a stick discharging reached her ears. A second later and the sound was followed by the shriek of metal on pavement.

“Got him off the bike, but he’s still running,” Sergeant Trudeau’s voice, sounding a bit odd.
Caron was sprinting at her best speed. Uphill, armored and carrying all her gear, it was nothing like the speeds she posted for her daily runs.

The bike was down, smoking. Trudeau was limping to her unit. Beyond, the man was running along the barricade bordering the elevated freeway, glancing over his shoulder at the continuing traffic and his pursuer. Caron continued to run, quickly closing the distance on the sergeant.

Trudeau, uniform torn and bleeding at the knee, waved her on, “Fucker caught me with the bike. Keep him in sight, I’ll bring the car up.”

Hacking at Pierpont’s lead one step at a time, Caron managed to close the distance considerably in the next few seconds. At about twenty-five meters, the suspect ran into the roadway proper.
A motorist slammed on his brakes, sliding to a stop. Other cars did the same, with varying degrees of success. There were several crunches and at least one explosive hiss as liquid hit something very hot.

Caron continued to close on the suspect, who was approaching the motorist that had just prevented his vehicle from making a hood ornament of him. The suspect’s hand went into his jacket.

Hardly slowing, Caron broke leather, weapon coming free in her hand.

‘Don’t run with a gun,’ the words of her instructors ran through her mind. She held the pistol down and to the side, trying to comply with that sensible order and still get close enough to safely engage the target.

Pierpont reached in the open driver’s side window, pulling at the man behind the wheel. His other hand held a metal object.

Not sure it was a gun, Caron stopped as fast as she could and raised her service weapon, “Drop it or I’ll shoot!”

Pierpont turned his head, face a mask of rage and fear. He'd skinned his head in the wreck of his bike.

The motorist used the distraction to pull from the man’s grip and scramble for the far door.

“Drop it,” she said, lining up her sights between brown eyes.

He looked down at the gun in his left hand, back at her.

“Drop it!” she yelled.

She saw it coming; watched his eyes go hard with resolve.

“Don’t!” she screamed, even as he raised the gun in her direction.

She pulled the trigger.

The gun hand kept rising.

She fired again.

Pierpont’s weapon discharged. Something stung her cheek.

She fired again.

He dropped.

Bridge of The Broken Excerpt

Schrader, stuck in stop-and-go traffic, was bored out of her mind. Gone were the days of flitting from scene to scene in an AFV, her people ready to do violence on her behalf. Now she had to drive herself, and since the government had yet to fully define her position, she had relatively few police powers, including the fact her car had no siren she could use to bull her way through dense afternoon traffic.

Her passenger was not all that great a conversationalist, despite being a relatively good guy. She supposed that, like her, he was working outside his training, and therefore his comfort zone.

The boredom was shattered by the explosion. Debris shot skyward less than ten car lengths ahead, closely followed by the teeth-rattling sound of the detonation.

She slewed the car sideways, dropped it into park and had her handgun out before her passenger could even ask, “What the hell?”

Larissa didn’t answer the doctor, just forced his head down and scanned for threats.

A smoke trail drew a faint line from the second story of a building ahead into the line of cars she’d just occupied. The silence which followed the detonation was eerie.

The usual screaming cut through the silence as people slowly began to react to the incident. Smoke began to billow, drifting back across the vehicles stopped by the sudden violence unfolding before them. The smell of burning plastics and hot metal drifting in through her open windows made her nose twitch, put her in the zone like nothing else.

Moments slid by without a second strike, which meant either the ambushers were out of missiles, had destroyed their target, or were displacing for another shot.

It went against all her trained instinct to stay put while an ambush went on, but the more time went by, the more certain she was that she wasn’t the target, ‘And you’re certainly not geared up for combat,’ she thought, trying to reinforce the sensible notion she shelter in place.

A coilgun went off. From her front. She couldn’t see the shooter.

Another shot, this one sounding like a handgun.

A man appeared out of the smoke ahead, firing a carbine into the line of parked cars as fast as he could pull the trigger. More screams. People were starting to flee their vehicles, fleeing the sudden war zone that had erupted in their midst.

Schrader ignored them, kept her eyes on the gunman, who stopped shooting, gestured in the direction of the parked cars, then turning his hand to point in Schrader’s direction.

Another gunman darted into view between the first one and Schrader’s car, the launch tube on his back explaining the lack of additional missile fire. He read his comrade’s hand signal, began sprinting her direction.

‘Shit,’ Schrader thought, ‘Their target is moving this way.’

“Stay down, Doc,” she said.

“Where the hell you going?” Doctor Z asked, raising his head.

“Nowhere, just don’t want you getting plugged ‘cause someone mistook you for a threat,” Schrader whispered, pushing him down again.

Only two cars in front of hers the gunman slowed and turned into the line of parked cars, weapon at the ready. The first gunman reared into view in the background, mounting the hood of a car.

The nearer gunman fired once as he reached the far side of the line, his shot drawing a flurry of return fire. One round got lucky, spreading a thick red mist for near a meter from the back of his head. Brain dead, the man collapsed like string-cut puppet.

Schrader blinked, saw the gunman atop of the car aim, fire. She heard a pair of shots that must not have come close, as the gunman didn’t even flinch. In fact he reloaded and sauntered closer, still using the cars for his path.

It was the casual, careless nature of his walk more than anything else that engaged Schrader’s rage, ‘Ambushing- No, murdering people in the street like it’s nothing? Fuck that!’

Fighting the loss of control the anger tried to drive, she dragged her attention from the man to look for any further accomplices. Seeing none, Schrader pulled her upper body atop her passenger to poke the barrel of her sidearm out the window. She settled her sights on the man’s head as he stopped moving.

She drew a breath, the smell of Zoltan’s cologne registering even as she released the air through her nose.
Empty, she squeezed the trigger.

Her sidearm discharging just centimeters outside the vehicle jabbed needles of pain in her ears. She ignored it, gave a feral smile as her target dropped lifeless atop of the car he’d been standing on.

Again she checked for further targets. Still none.

“Who’d you kill?” the archeologist asked from beneath her.

She noticed he didn’t try and raise his head to check for himself, “Damned if I know, Zoltan.”
“You mean you actually shot someone? Across my back?” his voice was high. Not panicked, but not happy either.

Sirens began to wail, adding their noise to that of the screaming bystanders.

She chuckled, the archeologist wasn’t a bad guy, just very civilian, “Yes. Thanks for staying still. Stay here. Call the police.”

Schrader checked again for shooters before sitting up. Still seeing no threats, she popped the door and exited the car in a fast crouch, ‘I know the gunmen are dead. Now to check on their target.’