Bait Dog An Atlanta Burns Novel - By Chuck Wendig Page 0,48
that someone’s been taking dogs. Maybe they’re keeping them in. And, of course, these are rich people. Their dogs are well-fed and kept inside. These aren’t barn dogs. These aren’t dogs on chains made to sleep under the double-wide. These are… show dogs and Hungarian hunting dogs and the beloved well-fed puppies of little well-fed girls.
She’s in her third development—from Fox Run to Palomino Farms to Clover Knoll—when she gives up. Decides, fuck it, not finding anything, best to go home. And then she gives up all the way, at least mentally—she realizes that she’s not cut out for this. Atlanta has no idea what she’s doing. She’s never going to find Sailor’s torturers. She’ll never be able to give Jenny Whitsett once ounce of solace.
It’s then that she hears a distant barking. Not frightened. No panic there . Just a dog barking in the night. Maybe barking to be let back in after a dump. Maybe barking at a cat or a rat or an imagined interloper.
Atlanta takes a deep breath and figures, I’ll just check this out, and then I’ll go home.
It pays off.
* * *
Takes her a while to zero in on the pooch, but zero in she does—and out front of a real tacky Garage Mahal with jagged rooflines and a salmon stone walkway she sees a fat-bellied beagle with his butt planted on a lush, trim lawn. Barking at nothing. The moon, maybe.
She’s across the street and about three houses down when headlights come from the other direction. The one headlight blinks, winking like a lecherous old man. An engine growls.
Atlanta ducks behind a blue mailbox and crouches there, darting a hand into her messenger bag.
Impossible to tell make or model, but the coming vehicle is a white pickup pitted with rust and dented everywhere, giving it the texture of crinkled aluminum foil. The truck screeches to a halt in front of the beagle house, and the beagle goes from just barking to doing this… other thing. Something between howling and wailing, some mad banshee yowl that’s probably meant to indicate alarm but sounds more like the dog fell in a well and can’t get out. Someone hops out of the back of the truck.
And runs toward the dog with a bag.
Atlanta feels the hoofbeats of horses in her heart—her skin prickles and everything seems suddenly hyper-real, like she just went from looking through a pair of greasy eyeglasses to using a pair of brand new binoculars.
This is it.
She pulls the weapon from her bag, and bolts across the street, ducking low as she darts in front of the headlights, her long shadow stretched and bloated on the street for a hair’s breadth of a moment.
Voices. Someone from inside the truck whoops. Male voice. “Get that dog you fat clown!”
Another voice. Also from inside the truck: “Who the fuck is that?” Someone yells: “Hey! Hey!”
Atlanta ignores them. Chooses instead to focus on the dog-napper.
The broad-shouldered interloper ahead of her on the lawn is already doing a dance with the dog—coming at the animal with the sack—a feed sack by the looks of it—held out like a weapon, swooping low and trying to bag the beagle (to no avail). The killer has on a black face mask, black shirt, black jeans, black boots, and, in contrast, a pair of yellow latex gloves. Like the kind you’d use to wash dishes.
The attacker goes for the dog again.
But Atlanta doesn’t care to let this charade go on any further.
She bolts across the lawn. Careful not to slip on the dewy grass. With a flick of her wrist and a button press, a telescoping baton snaps from its mooring, extends from eight inches to two feet. Last time she tangoed with the Skinny Bitch Nazi, the psycho came at her with a baton. So Atlanta bought her own. Ballistic nylon sheath, whatever that means. German steel. Fifteen bucks on eBay.
More voices from the truck: “Watch out! Fuckin’ watch out!”
But Atlanta’s target is focused on the dog.
Atlanta whips the baton against the stranger’s back. Right between the shoulder blades.
The kidnapper goes down, howling along with the dog. But something doesn’t sound right.
The beagle, finally realizing that shit is going pear-shaped, takes off in the other direction toward the house. Behind Atlanta, tires squealing, peeling out as the truck belches a dragon’s breath of exhaust then barrels forward like a growling locomotive—then it’s all taillights and plumes of gray.
“Stealing dogs, huh?” Atlanta asks, and whips the attacker in the side again.