Bait Dog An Atlanta Burns Novel - By Chuck Wendig Page 0,22
I get a clarification?”
“What?” She frowns.
“You’ll say fuck. But not damn. Correct?”
She thinks about it. “I guess. What of it?”
“It’s just weird, isn’t it?”
“Well… damn’s a bad word!” she barks. “That’s not the point. The point is, we got ‘em coming at us from both sides and it’s because I can’t leave well enough alone.”
Shane speaks up. “You saved my ass that day. I’m still thankful you were there.”
“And when I die,” Chris says, “I will die satisfied by the look on John Elvis’ face as you shot the… well, whatever that part of his guitar is called, off. The dick? The guitar dick? Let’s go with that.”
“If only we could get ‘em all to bully each other,” Shane says, “then they’d leave us alone.”
Atlanta stops. She’s tired. Bedraggled. All parts of her feel like a paper-cut with lemon juice squeezed over it. So maybe she’s just crazy, but something there sounds pretty good.
“Bully each other,” she says. Chewing on it. Noodling it.
The two of them watch her, obviously concerned. Finally, she says:
“I got an idea. C’mon.”
* * *
She thinks they’re going to have to coerce him—stick a shotgun under his chin or wave a hundred bucks in his face—but turns out, Chomp-Chomp is totally cool with this.
“Those guys are kind of assholes,” he says, looking sad. She guesses it’s because he knows the only friends he has are worthless bullies. “What are you going to do to them?”
Atlanta doesn’t tell him everything. The poor horse-toothed bastard may not like every little detail of the plan. All she says is, “We’re going to teach them a lesson.”
“Okay.”
“So you’ll tell them where we’ll be?”
“Uh-huh.”
“And when?”
“Yes. Yup.” He gives her a thumbs-up.
She kisses him on the cheek. “Thanks, Chhhh—“ She’s about to say Chomp-Chomp, but instead she manages to pull out of the nose-dive and end with, “—ssssSteven.”
* * *
“So,” Chris says, “what’s Mister Toothy going to tell those two thug-monkeys?”
“That we’ll be out behind the old church playing D&D in the graveyard.”
Chris laughs. “Dungeons and Dragons, wow.” He does a theatrical bow. “Well-played, milady. If ever there was a perfume that exuded the scent of weakness, it would be a fragrance that stank of multi-colored polyhedral dice and fermented gamer sweat.”
It looks like Shane wants to say something.
They wait for him to finally spit it out.
He clears his throat.
“We could actually play D&D sometime,” Shane says. Eyes hopeful. “What? Shut up! It’s fun.”
“Okay, I do that, I think I really will have to give up my seat in the La Cozy Nostra,” Chris says. He gives that idea a thumbs-down, then pulls on the thumb like a cow’s udder and makes a fart sound. “So sorry. Thanks for playing.”
Atlanta ignores all that waffle. “Time for phase two.” She looks to Chris. “You sure about this?”
“As sure as I am that Shane here will be a 40-year-old virgin.”
Shane tackles him. They wrestle on the ground like idiots. Atlanta just shakes her head.
* * *
She and Shane watch at a distance, hunkered down behind a banged-up Jeep Cherokee.
Mitchell Erickson drives a nice ride: a Lexus hardtop convertible in what is described as “Matador Red.” He’s got a baseball game that Saturday morning up at Werner’s Field. Thing is, Erickson parks his car away from all the others. Paranoid, probably, about getting any scratches or dings on that cherry paint.
The morning’s cool. Fog slides between needled pines.
The hardtop’s up. Windows all closed.
Nobody here in the parking lot. Everybody’s at the game. No cameras. No worries.
Chris whistles as he saunters up. He does these jaunty dance steps—what Atlanta would call “Fred Astaire moves,” if she had to name them—and he twirls the tire iron like it’s an umbrella.
He gets to the Lexus.
Batter up.
He brings the tire iron against the driver’s side window. It pops and crumples inward. Even from their view, Atlanta and Shane hear Chris squeal with what seems to be some combination of fear and delight as it shatters and the alarm goes off. He looks over to them. Giddy.
Chris holds up the origami boulder—a crumpled-up note he worked on all night by cutting out letters from an issue of Cosmo (“Okay, fine, I do read Cosmo, don’t judge me, you monsters”).
He thrusts his arm into the window. Drops the note boulder onto the front seat.
Then hurries to meet his cohorts.
It’s the second car Atlanta’s helped to wreck in so many days.
Phase two, complete.
* * *
Nestled in what Atlanta likes to think of the armpit of the southern side, just before you go