Bait Dog An Atlanta Burns Novel - By Chuck Wendig Page 0,26
finger.
And of course, in the corner, a jackalope head. Always a jackalope head.
Skank stands in front of her. Arms crossed. Smoking a cigarette. Smiling like she just took a real satisfying dump sometime in the last 15 minutes.
John Elvis paces. Itchy. Twitchy. Like he’s either on fresh meth or needs to be soon.
And Chris sits next to her. The capillaries have burst around his left eye, and when he turns toward Atlanta she sees the white of that eye is pink and veiny, too. John Elvis must’ve popped him one.
No sign of Mitchell.
“We’re gonna fuck you up,” Skank says.
“Mel—” John Elvis says, speaking what’s apparently the Skank’s name.
Skank ignores him. “That’s a promise. Faggot and the fag-hag. Sharing a single grave.”
“Mel.”
“Or maybe your bodies in a ditch somewhere.”
“Melanie, shit!”
She wheels on him and screeches: “What? What, you fucking asshole, what? Can’t you see I’m having a conversation here?”
It’s then that everybody gets quiet, hearing raised voices coming from behind the one door. Male voices. Atlanta can’t quite make out what they’re saying, but the one voice sure as shit-fire sounds like Mitchell Erickson. The other voice is a booming rumble of thunder. And the thunder god sounds pissed.
Then the voices stop and Atlanta hears a sound like a dog yelping behind that door.
The door flings open.
The man that stands there is too big for the doorway. Got a chest like two beer-kegs lashed together with fat and muscle. Square jaw. Beard not so much trimmed as it is sculpted onto his face.
Blue polo. Dark jeans. The signs of wealth: a ruby ring, a gold watch, a hand-cannon revolver hanging at his hip in an oiled brown leather holster.
With thick fingers the man turns the ruby ring from palm back to knuckle.
He scowls. “Melanie. Show the girl into my office, please. And cut her damn hands free.”
“Sir—“ Melanie the Skank protests.
“Just do it, girl. She’s smart enough not to cause any more trouble.”
Skank hisses something under her breath, then turns her mean cur’s smile to a sweetness both saccharine and syrupy. The girl comes up behind Atlanta, flicks out her switchblade, and cuts through the band of duct tape—
Soon as Atlanta feels her hands free, she leaps up out of the chair and throws a wild, clumsy roundhouse punch—she doesn’t know how to fight, doesn’t know that this is one of the worst ways to hit someone, but frankly, it doesn’t matter. Because Skanky Mel isn’t expecting it. Skank’s eyes are still cast floorward, and just as she’s looking up this long-traveled around-the-world fist connects with her mouth.
Splits her lip. Rocks her head back. The knife clatters against the ground.
Atlanta goes for it but she hears yelling behind her and the scuff of boot on the concrete floor and before she knows it, John Elvis has wrapped his gangly arms around her and is pulling her back.
He’s strong.
She snaps her head backward.
Feels it connect with his nose. Feels the nose give way, like squishing a coffee creamer.
His arms open. She steps out, reaches again for the knife on the floor—
And again she’s stopped. The big man’s hand grabs her around the scruff of her neck the way you might carry a puppy or a kitten and it’s like being thrown around inside a tornado. He heaves Atlanta hard toward the door, never letting go—it doesn’t hurt, but he’s strong and she can’t do anything about the momentum and her mind races what’s he going to do to me once he gets me in that room he’s big and he’s strong and he’ll be able to take what he wants from me, scream, scream you stupid girl, scream—
But then she’s through the door and she sees she’s not alone. Sitting in front of a desk is a chastened Mitchell Erickson, licking at a drying line of blood creeping from a small cut on his cheek. Leaning up against the corner in a folding chair is a smaller man, dark eyes sitting like hot coals beneath a unibrow that looks like the bristles on a shop broom.
“Get out,” the big man says to Mitchell.
“Dad, listen, this girl—“
“You disrespect me by opening your mouth one more time and you and I will have another talk, Mitch.” Atlanta doesn’t miss the not-so-subtle cue: the man, Mitchell’s father, taps the ruby ring with the side of his thumb. Explains the cut on the boy’s cheek. So that’s how father-and-son “talk.” Same way that Virgil talked to Shane behind that garage.