Bait Dog An Atlanta Burns Novel - By Chuck Wendig Page 0,103
he just saw something you’re never supposed to see, like a lion eating a baby.
“Oh my god,” is all Shane can say.
“I can’t believe that dog’s still alive,” Guy says. “Yo, that’s messed up. And you put away the Mountain Man? Damn. Damn. That’s some shit right there.”
“The cop killed Chris,” Shane says, staring at the floor. It’s like he wanted to know but now that he does…
“I want payback,” Atlanta says. “And I want it now.”
“Girl,” Guy says, “you gotta leave this one alone. Let the bird fly free.”
Shane shakes his head and finally looks up. “No, she’s right. He needs to pay. We let him keep going and he’ll mess with all of us. What do you think’s gonna happen when he finds out Whitey is alive? He’ll find a way to finish the job. Maybe he’ll just kill him. Or maybe he’ll have the dog put to sleep. That’s the law, right? Dog bite means euthanization.”
“The dude’s a cop,” Guy says, incredulous. “You saw what happened—he was able to shoot that dog inside the damn police station. He’s untouchable. And did I mention he’s a cop?”
“I’m the bait dog,” Atlanta says suddenly.
They both look at her like, whuh?
“I’m the cat on the cat-pole. The coon in the cage. Petry knows he’s already got a piece of me. He’s got blood in his nose. I dangle in front of him a little more he’ll come for me. He’ll come to make me hurt. Maybe he’ll hit me. Or try to do to me what my Mama’s boyfriend did. Or maybe he’ll just kill me. But I can make him come here. And when he does, I’m gonna kill him.”
“Whoa. That’s fuckin’ crazy,” Guy says.
Shane nods. “Yeah, actually, that is crazy.”
Her jaw sets, her mouth a hard line. “It’s the only way.”
Shane frowns. “There might be another way. Guy, can you drive us somewhere?”
* * *
Night comes. They drive.
“So, you okay?” Guy asks, looking over at Atlanta in the passenger seat. “Maybe you need time to cool down.”
“Don’t have time,” she says, gnawing a fingernail to the quick. She gets it to a hangnail and uses her teeth to wrench it free from its mooring. Blood wells and the wound stings. “This has to happen fast. He can’t know it’s coming.”
“Yeah, but are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” Chew, chew. The taste of licking an iron skillet in her mouth.
“Is your nose broken?”
She touches it. She’d forgotten about it, actually—the pain receding like low tide, but now that she’s thinking about it again her nose feels like a radio powered on, full volume, dialing up a loud frequency of pain. “No. Don’t think so.”
“This can’t go like this forever. At some point you gotta be a normal girl.”
“If you say so.”
Guy looks over at her, obviously worried. “I’m serious.”
“This part has to happen first. This man shot my dog and killed my friend—and I don’t buy that line of bull that Chris killed himself, that’s not what this was, not for one dang second. I let that slide and soon he’ll come for you. Or Shane. Or my mother. I’m tired of people taking power that’s not theirs to take. Evil keeps on keepin’ on. At some point you gotta stand in the headlights and take your shot.”
And that’s the end of that conversation. Guy nods. Says nothing else. Just drives.
She eventually points ahead: “Turn here.”
The night sky is a kind of green-dark, like the algae waters of the pond that is now the murky mud-bogged home to Orly Erickson’s heirloom ring. A pond they just passed, the waters merging with the sky: one big algal smear. As they get close, Atlanta tells him to cut the lights. He does, and slows the Scion so it’s quiet. And so they don’t go driving into a tree.
Up ahead—moonlight on windows, like ribbons of light caught in pools of oil.
The gun club. Where Orly Erickson and his cronies meet and talk about powder loads and the NRA and, oh, right, white power Heil Hitler let’s hurt anybody who doesn’t look or act like we do.
From behind Atlanta, a blue glow rises, fills the car. She looks back, sees Shane sitting there, nose practically pressed against the screen of a laptop. Well, he calls it a “netbook,” but to her it’s a to-may-to to-mah-to thing.
“You can do this?” she asks.
“I dunno. It depends.”
“Depends are what old people wear to hold in their pee,” she says. “I thought you said you could do this.”