Bait Dog An Atlanta Burns Novel - By Chuck Wendig Page 0,73

runs. Time to find Guy and get the hell out of here.

* * *

Into the crowd. Another fight must be on—everybody is fixated once more on the ring, and she hears snarls and whimpers from within the octagon. She searches the throng, body by body, face by face, looking for Guy but not seeing him. Someone bumps into her leg—

And it’s not a someone but a something. The dog. The white hellhound with the cement block for a head. The dog looks up at her. The face of innocence, except for that bloody muzzle. She doesn’t even bother saying anything; he’ll figure it out sooner or later that she doesn’t want him around.

Movement. From toward the barn. Bodie—his face twisted by pain, his hand under the crook of his opposing arm. Next to him, Tressa. The tranquilizer pistol in her hand. Both of their eyes searching the crowd.

Shit! Where’s Guy?

She moves away from the barn, around the far side of the ring, the dog still plodding after her—his snow-white coat sure to give her up. “Shoo,” she says. “Shoo.”

Everything feels like a nightmare. She’s still moving slow from the drugs. Can’t find Guy. Her enemies are here and looking for her. Pursued—dogged, literally dogged—by a red-mouthed hell-creature.

It’s then the nightmare really opens its mouth and shows its teeth.

Ahead, toward the parking lot, she sees John Elvis Baumgartner talking to somebody.

It’s the cop. It’s the goddamn dark-eyed unibrowed cop. Plainclothes, no uniform. He’s easy to spot—he’s like a crow on a power-line, a shadow on an X-Ray, a blotch of skin cancer right there on the back of your hand.

Why is he here?

A voice answers: Maybe he’s here for you.

Gotta get out of here.

Gotta get out of here.

She doesn’t know where to go. Danger in each direction. She feels caught, a rat in a trap. The dog nuzzles her wrist and she almost thinks to swat the animal away but she’s too afraid to touch him. It’s then a voice reaches her ears and that voice is like a song sung by all the angels in one big chorus:

“Atlanta?” Guy asks. He’s shoving a baggy—now half-empty of its pharmaceutical booty—back into a back pocket. “Hey, what’s up with the—“

But she doesn’t have time. “We gotta go,” she hisses.

“Aw, shit. What did you do?”

“No time. Talk later.”

She starts dragging him toward the parking lot. He protests—“I’ve only sold half of what’s here”—but she shushes him and gestures toward the cop.

“That’s a cop,” she says, quiet as she can manage over the whoops and boos of the crowd.

“What? You kidding me?” He suddenly gets it. “We gotta go.”

“This way,” she says, taking the long route through the parking lot, ducking behind as many cars as she can. Gravel crunches under feet.

As they duck behind a powder-blue Chevy pickup, Guy says, “There’s a dog following us.”

“I know, shut up.”

“Where’d he come from?”

“I said shut up, dang.”

Ahead sits the boxy Scion.

And Shane’s not in it.

Atlanta stands, slaps her hands against the back window and peers in, thinking that maybe he’s laying down or hiding in the backseat somewhere like a scared mouse. But he’s nowhere to be found.

“Bitch!” comes a voice across the parking lot.

Tressa Kucharski. Bodie next to her, his forearm dripping. The two of them start winding their way through the lot. Atlanta looks the other way and, sure enough, there’s John Elvis Baumgartner, squinting in her direction, the flat of his hand forming a visor to block out the sun.

“Let’s go!” Guy barks, skidding around the front of the car while hitting the keychain button to unlock the doors.

Atlanta yells, “We can’t leave without Shane!”

“Maybe you can’t,” he says, then hops in the car.

Now, John Elvis is really leaning in—“Hey!” he yells, like he’s still not sure it’s her. Of course, he’s dumber than a stack of firewood. But the cop sees her.

He stares right at her.

From the other direction, Tressa and Bodie are hurrying around cars—fifty yards and closing.

Tressa raises the pistol again.

Where the hell is Shane? Atlanta calls out: “Shane! Shaaaaane!”

And then, as if she possesses some kind of person-summoning magic, boom. There he is. Walking up from behind the car, hands in his pockets like it’s no big thing. “What? I had to take a leak.”

She grabs him. Pulls him close.

Just as a little tranquilizer dart thwips into the fat of Shane’s bicep.

“Ow!” he says, and swats at it like it’s a bee.

Atlanta shoves him in the car. Before she can close the door, the big white hell-beast hops