Bait Dog An Atlanta Burns Novel - By Chuck Wendig Page 0,62
leans her head against it. It feels cool.
Guy gives her a sideways look. “And I can’t believe you brought that. Keeping it up by your ear like that—girl, you gonna blow the roof of your head off.”
“It’s not loaded.” Yet.
“Still shouldn’t have brung it.”
“I need it.”
“It’s trouble.”
“You said all kinds of bad people are going to be there. I bet they’ll all be packing.”
“Some will,” he says, taking a few hairpin switchback turns that starts to take them back down off of Grainger Hill on the other side. Down through the trees she sees the tops of trailers in a trailer park laying like white dominoes. “And that’s exactly why you don’t want to carrying around a goddamn gun like you’re—who was the female cowboy?”
“I dunno. Calamity Jane? Annie Oakley?”
“Whatever. You ain’t them, girl. The way some of these guys treat the dogs, that should tell you just what they think about the sanctity of life and shit. My momma always used to say, don’t throw rocks at the moon because one day you might knock it down.”
“I think this whole trip pretty much defines ‘throwing rocks at the moon.’”
As they round the last switchback, Guy punches the brakes. Everybody lurches forward—Atlanta has to brace herself so as not to smack her head on the dash. Guy whips the car into the middle of a three-point turn.
“Hell with this,” he says. “This is a bad idea. I’m not doin’ it.”
“Wait!” she yells. “Wait.” The car stops in the middle of the road, pointed perpendicular. “I’ll leave the gun in the car. I’ll hide it in the backseat. Happy?”
“Yeah. Yeah. Okay.” He reverse again, points the car once more in the direction. “Turn-off is up ahead.”
* * *
The drive to the farm takes them down a bouncy track of limestone gravel, the Scion ill-made to handle the dips and bumps. Atlanta’s teeth rattle as they pass a tall-grass meadow to the left and, on the right, a boggy tract of trees—sunlight caught in the surface of murky vernal pools.
Soon they start to see the NO TRESPASSING signs. All hand-painted on boards that are in turn nailed to the trees. TRESSPASSERS WILL BE SHOT. BEWARE OF DOG. TURN BACK. FUCK OFF.
They pass a guy in a backward John Deere hat pissing up against a weeping willow.
That’s when they get to the fence. Chain-link. Topped with coils of razor-wire. The gate’s locked by a loop of heavy gauge chain with a padlock dangling from it that’s so big you could use it to beat a horse to death.
The car sits there, idling. “What do we do now?” Atlanta asks.
They don’t need to wait long for an answer. The willow-pisser comes back up from his bathroom break. He heads around the front of the car, comes up on Guy’s side and raps on the window with the back of his knuckles.
Guy buzzes the window down. “Sup?”
The guy peers in the window. Mid-40s, maybe. Pitted cheeks like he once had real bad acne. His left eye is tight behind puckered, puffy skin—scar tissue not suffered by the other eye. He takes off his tractor cup, runs his fingers through a length of greasy brown hair. “Fuck you want?”
“Here for the show,” Guy says.
“Uh-huh.” But Winky doesn’t budge. Just keeps staring in the car. Both eyes lingering on Atlanta.
Guy reaches gingerly into the console compartment, pulls out a big freezer baggy which is in turn filled with a bunch of smaller Ziplocs, all of them filled with a variety of pills. Little blue ones. Little pink ones. Capsules the color of chocolate milk. He shakes it. “I’m here to make a deal. Guillermo Lopez.”
“You’re cool,” Winky says. But then he snorts and starts chewing on something. Phlegm, maybe. “But these two, I don’t think they’re on the list.”
“That little shithead in the back is my brother—“
“Hey!” Shane protests.
“And her, she’s an associate looking to buy a dog.”
“This ain’t fuckin’ PetSmart.”
Guy nods to her. “Show him.”
She reaches in her pocket, pulls out a baggy all her own—as planned, it’s full of twenties. Part of her advance from Jenny. All part of the ruse. She won’t be spending it, but they don’t know that.
Winky rubs his scalp again, then screws the cap back on his head. He once more moves back around the front of the car and comes up on Atlanta’s side. He waits as she hits the button to lower the window.
“The boys can go in,” Winky says. “You can stay out here with me for