Bait Dog An Atlanta Burns Novel - By Chuck Wendig Page 0,106
the gun.
Just kill him and be done with it.
But Shane has a plan. And despite her very worst and hungriest instinct, she holds still, standing there by the couch in the dark of her own home.
Petry continues to walk down those steps.
Feet. Legs. Torso.
And then his arm and hand and, in that hand—
His gun.
The same gun that shot Whitey in the head and came an angel’s whisper away from killing her dog.
The same gun that probably forced Chris out of his home and to a pear tree on a hill.
The gun that aims to kill me, too.
Soon as he reaches the bottom of the stairs, she speaks. She means for her words to sound confident and bad-ass but instead they come out a shaking, quaking croak—
“I knew you’d come—“
Muzzle flash, gunshot, the lamp on that rickety side pops and jumps to the floor with a crash—
Atlanta falls backwards, her buttbone nailing the wooden floor. She cries out and presses her back flat against the wood, sandwiched between the base of the couch and the legs of the coffee table.
This wasn’t supposed to happen. They were supposed to have a, a, a chat, a conversation—like they do in the movies where the good guy and the bad guy square off one last time and—
Petry fires again. A pillow ejects feathery guts into the air. Motes of white snow against the dark room. All Atlanta hears is the ringing in her ears. All she smells is that gun-stink, oil and powder and murderous intent.
“Wait!” she screams. “Stop! Stop!” Silence. No more shots. She cries, her words fast like machine gun chatter: “You-kill-me-you-don’t-get-the-files-please-stop.”
“You don’t have any files.” His voice slow and cold. No emotion. No anger.
“Do too!” It’s a childish response but all she can think to say. What’s next: You’re a nanny-doody-head?
“Those files don’t live at the gun club. Orly’s got ‘em elsewhere.”
She almost sobs but a hard surge of hot anger burns away the tears before they fall. “Wrong. I have proof you hurt Chris. Proof you and Orly been killing off Mexicans and gay kids and anybody else who gets in your way.” She’s stringing one lie after the other, now. “All your Neo-Nazi bully white-power bullshit. The money. The guns. Everything.”
Petry doesn’t say anything at first. She hears a faint scrape of a shoe—is he moving? Oh, Lord, where is he?
Then he says, “I don’t speak on most of those files. They can’t prove anything. Besides, I didn’t have anything to do with any of the other gay kids.”
“Just Chris.”
“You already know that.”
Keep talking keep talking keep talking.
“And Mexicans.”
“I do as I’m told. Mister Erickson has a very clear vision for the future of this town and any outsiders are not a part of that. That includes you, Atlanta.”
And suddenly there he is. Standing at her feet between the couch and the coffee table, gun up—
But she’s got a gun up, too. Shotgun up and out from under the couch. Shell loaded. Hammer back.
Boom.
The shotgun goes off and a framed photo—her seventh grade photo, gawky Atlants with big braces and tangle of red hair even meaner and wilder than it is now—drops off the wall as Petry darts left.
And then silence again. He’s somewhere on the other side of the couch. Single-barrel shotgun means she’s just used her one shot. Atlanta rests the iPod on her chest and breaks the barrel, fishing in her pocket for a shell—
All the shells leap free of their pocket prison and roll across the floor. Just out of reach. Her hand flails to find some, one, any.
“Just admit you don’t have the audio files,” Petry says from the far side of the room somewhere. The floor groans. He’s on the move again. Her hands feel for shells—but they’ve rolled past the coffee table and she can’t get any without moving and making herself vulnerable. “You can’t prove I killed any of them.”
“But you did.”
“Some of them. Others I just watched.”
“Fine. You’re right,” she says, voice so haggard and worn to the nub she barely recognizes it as her own. “I don’t have audio files, plural. I have one audio file. I thought this would go a little different but it doesn’t change the fact—I’ve been recording this, you stupid dick-fuck.” It feels good to say that. She imagines the look on his face—cracking that stony veneer, a kidney stone burned to dust by a surgical laser.
He says nothing in response.
She needs ammo.
She needs it now.
She stretches—muscles burning—fingers touching one of the green crimped