Bait Dog An Atlanta Burns Novel - By Chuck Wendig Page 0,67
edge of a dark pit—is she really thinking about betting on these fights? Putting money on this brutality? Watching the fight had her invested. Got her blood churning. Rooting for Omar. And now she’s thinking of buying in all the way? No. Hell with that. A black hole of shame blooms in her middle and draws all the rest of her toward it.
“This here is my farm, so I’m glad you found our humble operation,” the man says, clapping her on the shoulder with a hand so big he could probably crush a cantaloupe with it. His touch his gentle, however. Then the mountain moves past her, into the crowd.
She suddenly finds Guy at her side.
“Yo, you met the big man,” he says, as they both start to walk away from the ring. He sounds in awe.
“He was… big, all right.”
“Yeah, and he’s also the guy who runs this whole place. Ellis Wayman. The Mountain Man.”
“The man who is a mountain.”
“Word. All right. Listen. I gotta go sell some shit. Might as well make some bucks. You good?”
“I’m good.” She’s not, not at all, not even a little. But so it goes.
“Cool-cool.” And then Guy is gone, leaving her to wonder why she’s here in the first place.
* * *
She wanders. Feeing lost and angry. The rage burning hot—an iron skillet of hot coals searing heart-meat. She knows she has to find Bodie and Bird. Has to finish what she started here. But where to begin? What to do? Who to ask?
The sun reaches its noontime apex. Starts to slide back down the other side of the sky.
Current fight’s over, so the crowd’s starting to mill about. Over by the parking lot, a couple kids are buying a baggy of something from a dealer who’s younger than they are. She passes a pair of rich white guys in polos—one of them has his phone out, is showing off some video on the screen. She hears porny noises. They laugh. She keeps walking.
Atlanta finds herself nearing the Morton Building—a big metal building under a corrugated roof. As she gets closer to it she passes a little shed—a pump house, by the looks of it—and through the cracked door she sees a girl on her knees, head bobbing in and out of a man’s crotch. She catches a look at the girl’s face.
It’s Maisey Bott.
She starts to wonder—maybe she was coerced into it, maybe she doesn’t want to be in there, maybe Atlanta should go get her shotgun and teach that sick bastard in there a—
But then Maisey moans and laughs and again the hungry sounds of lips on flesh and Atlanta keeps moving.
As she turns back toward the Morton building, she sees Karl carrying Orion toward it. Face a twisted rictus of grief and anger. Forearms wet with the dog’s blood.
Two familiar faces come out of the Morton building, heading toward Karl.
John Elvis Baumgartner and his Skanky Bitch psycho-girlfriend, Melanie.
Horror seizes every muscle in Atlanta’s body. And rage. Always more rage.
Last Atlanta saw the two of them together, she was at the gun club waving around her mother’s little revolver, making threats and stealing Orly Erickson’s family ring. After that, she caught a few glimpses of Baumgartner at school, but he didn’t pay her a lick of attention.
But now—he flicks her gaze in her direction.
No no no shit shit shit.
Atlanta ducks behind a donut stack of tractor tires, hunkering down in the weeds. A tick crawls on her leg. She flicks it away and bites her lip.
Don’t see me don’t come over here don’t see me shit shit shit.
She waits. And waits.
Hears footsteps approaching.
Her hand moves toward her pants. Toward the baton stashed there.
Maisey Bott pokes her head around. “Atlanta?”
Wince.
“Hey, Maisey.”
Maisey shows herself fully, stands there, bright-eyed and beaming. “Hey! What are you doing here?”
“Same thing you are,” Atlanta says, instantly regretting that. The words just came out—she didn’t think before she said ‘em and now there they are.
Maisey laughs—guffaws, really, she’s got a goofy kind of gulp-snort donkey laugh—and starts to unwrap the foil around a stick of spearmint gum. Before she pops it in she wipes the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand, her braying laughter dying down. “There’s good money here. This is fun. Isn’t it?”
Oh, Maisey, what the hell are you doing?
But all Atlanta says is, “Yeah. Yep. Great money.”
“You want a piece?” Maisey asks around the wad of gum. Oo wanna piesch? She waggles the Doublemint pack.