Bait Dog An Atlanta Burns Novel - By Chuck Wendig Page 0,101

the vet says.

A wall slams between them. “What? You said he’s stable.”

“But he’s going to lose an eye. And some of his skull. The brain is intact but…” She pauses, finally gets to the heart of the matter. “This is going to be very expensive.”

“I don’t care.”

“It will be thousands of dollars.”

“I don’t care. I got a couple grand.” The mortgage money. You need that to live. You told your mother you had it. “I can pay for some of it and, and, and you can bill for the rest.”

“Please. There are no guarantees. The world has many dogs. It is painful, but if you were to put the animal down…”

Atlanta narrows her eyes. “You put that dog down I’ll put you down. You fix him. You hear me? You fix him.”

Chennapragada nods, clearly taken aback by Atlanta’s fervor. “…As you wish.”

* * *

Four hours later, Atlanta’s lying across the chairs in the waiting room, head extended over the back of a chair, hair touching the floor like the fronds of a dry mop. Anxiety gnaws at her like a dog chewing a pig’s ear.

This is, once again, all her fault.

She just keeps pushing. And pushing. And pushing—and in her head it’s because she tells herself this is the right thing to do when really it’s because you’re angry and you want everyone to pay for what was done to you. She’s making all the bad people pay for the crimes of one. One voice inside her justifies it—after all, that’s probably what drives most cops or soldiers or abuse counselors, right? Some specter haunting them from their past, a single hinge on which the whole dang door swings. But then she’s reminded of the cost: Chris dead, Whitey almost dead, their house soon gone. Is the result worth it?

Thing is, no matter how much she recognizes her part in all of this, she keeps thinking back to Petry. And she thinks about how he needs to pay. Not a little bit. But a lot. He needs to bear all the costs. All the burden. He needs to hurt like he makes others hurt. Because now he knows he can get what he wants from her. He can keep coming back and hurting all those around her—Shane, Guy, her mother. She’s got Whitey, but Orly Erickson has Petry—Petry is a rabid dog on a long leash, and the only thing to do with a dog like that is put him down.

That way lies madness. A road lined with the trees of bad ideas. And yet she keeps walking it.

This is a warning. It may not be my last…

A shadow falls over her. Atlanta, jolted from her reverie, sits up straight.

It’s Miss Cheekbones. The girl from behind the vet counter. She has a bottle of water and a plate of cookies—store-bought, not homemade, but Atlanta’s stomach suddenly tightens and gurgles. Hunger hits her like a wave, like until now she forgot that she ever needed food. But the hangover from earlier and the insanity of the day have scraped her clean from the inside out and now she’s staring at those cookies like a wolf staring at a baby deer fumbling through the forest.

“Hungry?” Cheekbones asks, but by the time she adds the question mark to that one word Atlanta’s already got a cookie shoved in her mouth. “Oh. Okay.” Cheekbones sits while Atlanta eats. She’s three cookies deep by the time they form a wad of masticated dough in her throat, so she quickly uncaps the water and chugs it.

“Thank you,” Atlanta gasps, wiping her mouth. “I don’t know your name.”

“Betsy.”

“Hi, Betsy. Sorry for… camping out here. I just don’t want to go home.”

“It’s no big thing. It’s a slow day.” Earlier a woman with a twitchy dust-mop—a Shit Zoo is the only way that Atlanta can spell the breed’s name in her head—came in, but Betsy turned her away, said the vet would be in surgery all day. Beyond that, in the place was dead. (So to speak.) “Your dog is pretty amazing.”

Another gulp of water and mouthful of cookie. Atlanta nods. “Yeah. He is.” She sighs. “Dogs aren’t supposed to survive a shot to the head, right?”

“No, not really. It happens more than you’d think, I guess, but it’s still a one in a million.” Betsy shakes her head. “We had a cat with an arrow through its head come in last year. Some kids were shooting animals at the park—ducks, geese, squirrels. They saw the cat and,