Bait Dog An Atlanta Burns Novel - By Chuck Wendig Page 0,61
you. I can watch your back.”
She looks left, looks road, then crosses over the road after a pickup passes. “It’s a bad idea.”
“I want to help and I can only help if I’m there. You want my big brain? Then the big brain goes with you. C’mon. Pleaaaaase.”
“Fine,” she says. It’s still a bad idea and she stands there on the other side of the road pinching her nose and fighting a headache. “But you need to wait in the car.”
“Okay.”
“Let’s go, then. Unlock your bike. I’m gonna walk ahead.”
* * *
They’re bringing Donny out on a stretcher and he’s not screaming anymore because they must’ve given him something. His one hand dangles off the stretcher and it’s coated with blood. His. From where he cupped the wound. Atlanta’s not sure how bad it is or what kind of damage she did only that he bled like a throat-slit goat and screamed for a long, long time.
Mama’s on the porch, crying.
Everything is red and blue lights, strobing left to right. Across the house, the windows, the field.
Crackle of radios. Wind across the grass and the corn. Atlanta shivers. Wants to cry but can’t, and is worried that not being about to cry is a real bad sign. Like now she’s broken or something, irrevocably, irretrievably, never the same girl hence.
Detective Holger puts a blanket across her shoulders like they do on television and Holger hunkers down. She’s a bulldog of a woman, hair cut short and mouth in a permanent frown, but her words don’t match the frown and she says, “Honey, I know this is hard but you’re going to need to come with me, now.”
“I know,” Atlanta says, shaking like a leaf in a hard wind. “I’m sorry for what I did.”
Holger leans in. “Between you and me, I’m not. I’m not saying what you did was right, but I’m not saying it was wrong, either. And I’m damn sure not saying I would’ve done differently. You hear me?”
Gamely, Atlanta nods.
Then she’s up and ushered to the car and Holger opens the back of the car—not a cruiser but a dinged-up gray Ford Taurus many years out-of-date—and sitting there in the back is Chris Coyne holding the little terrier and he smiles that winning smile and says, “I hope you’re ready for all this.”
And she says, “I’m not.” And then, “This is a dream, isn’t it?”
He winks. The dog barks.
She wakes up, soaked to the bone in sweat. Teeth chattering like they did on that day.
* * *
Week later, Guy’s outside in his boxy Scion, honking the horn. Atlanta reaches into her closet, plucks the .410 shotgun from inside. A Winchester model 20, break-barrel, single-shot. Smells of WD-40 and gunpowder. Her hands tremble as she picks it up. Finger alongside the outer edge of the trigger guard. Part of her thinks, just put it away. No good can come of this. Park it. Forget it. And that’s what she decides to do.
But her body goes the other way. Even as her mind is telling her it belongs here at the house, she’s walking downstairs with the shotgun resting on the pillow of her forearm, a pocket full of green birdshot shells.
* * *
“Music’s too dang loud,” Atlanta says, spinning the volume knob the other way. Guy shoots her a look as the Scion zips through the asphalt ribbons of nowhere road. Trees and cows and silos. The smell of chickenshit. Sunlight through pollen.
“You know not to mess with a dude’s stereo.”
“It’s making me queasy. I can feel the bass inside my uterus. Like a… baby kicking or something.” It’s not the bass making her queasy, but it sure wasn’t helping. Again the feel of being strapped into a roller coaster hits her. Guy’s driving—fast, one-handed, taking curves wide with the tires scraping gravel—does little to dispel the feeling.
A hand darts out from the cramped backseat. Shane holds out a bag of red licorice splayed out like octopus tentacles. “You guys want any?”
Atlanta takes one. Sucks air through it without chewing. She’s not sure if it’s helping or hurting her nausea.
“I can’t believe we had to bring him,” Guy says.
“I have a name,” Shane says from the backseat.
Guy sucks air through his teeth. “And I’ve already forgotten it, little dude.”