Zombie Gundown and Other Tales

Steven Ringgenberg’s new short story anthology, “Zombie Gundown and Other Tales” is an entertaining, energetic, and very readable adventure into multiple genres.   The first (and eponymous) story is an apocalyptic tale with an interesting twist.   What would a zombie apocalypse be like in Arizona, the land of guns?  The answer is that you need guns, guns, and more guns, and if you think you have enough guns you are wrong and need to collect more guns. 

The story involves a group of lounge lizards in a local watering hole.  On the very first night of the living dead, their immediate response is to collect as much fire power as possible. I particularly liked the small detail of the narrator asking who had guns and discovering that nearly everyone in the bar had been packing….only in Arizona. 

The still-living spend the night gathering up the individual arsenals that everyone in Arizona apparently has and bringing to a central base…which should logically be the aforementioned watering hole.  It is a particularly telling comment on the Arizona mentality that on the very first night of the coming of the undead, when civilization has hardly broken down, the denizens of the Red Onion Lounge see nothing wrong with breaking into a gun shop and looting whatever they think they need.   It’s the logical thing to do.   

The story ends at sun up, when the Red Onioners now in possession of more arms than the Iraqi army and setting up on the roof of the bar, finally ready for the masses of undead that will surely come.

This all works well, with the one false note of having the governor of Arizona warning folks that the zombies are upon us.  It would be the role of the police to make these warnings, not the governor.  Nor can I imagine the current governor of Arizona, Jan Brewer, would be so empathetic to the plight of the people. 

 

The second story, “Brides of the Wasteland,” is a more typical post-apocalyptic yarn.  Set in the far future, the story revolves around Synwulfe the bounty hunter, working on gaining his freedom by killing his quota of the hordes of mutants that ravage what is left of the earth.  It is an action packed story which exposes its comic book origin.  While the style is very visual and easy to read, the story begins with an overly detailed exposition.  That would have made sense as a sketch for a separate and longer piece but it is unnecessary for the story that follows it.  The salient details of the back story could have been incorporated inline. 

The final story, “The Lurker in the Shadows” is an old-fashioned science fiction bug hunt.  I’m told this was originally intended to be Star Trek fan fiction and it does indeed read like an episode of the show. 

While Mr. Ringgenberg does present us with three entertaining monster tales and has a breezy comic book like style, there is one affectation that just didn’t work for me.  In the two first-person stories, the narrators occasionally have internal conversations that are much more erudite than their spoken conversation.  Consider this passage from “Brides of the Wasteland”:

With practiced insouciance, I took a short pull off my drink and began speaking, “Ya see a lotta weird shit out in the wild zones o’ the Shattered Earth. Hell, I been at the center o’ plenty o’ bad craziness myself…”       

I thought this was an interesting character affectation the first time it appeared.  When it showed up in a second story, I realized that it was a voice error.

This is a minor problem however and does not take away from readability of the stories.  “Zombie Gundown and Other Tales” is not classic literature, but that is not its purpose.  It is meant to be an enjoyable and fast-paced read and on that it succeeds well.