Bait Dog An Atlanta Burns Novel - By Chuck Wendig Page 0,78
bleats. “Okay, okay, just kidding. For a man-eater you’re awful dang sensitive. You got a head like a cement block so we could go with Blockhead. A little nicer, at least, won’t get me too many looks out in public. But I figure since you’re Velcroed to me every doggone step I take, let’s just go with White Shadow. Whitey, for short.”
The dog starts to snore.
“Yeah, no, it’s not like I was talking or anything.” She rolls her eyes. “Have a nice nap, Whitey.”
Whitey. What a blockhead.
* * *
Turns out, she has a nice nap, too. Falls asleep in the chair on the porch. Eventually Whitey slides off her and lays on the floor splayed right at her feet. Occasionally letting loose these noxious puffs of fly-killing dog-fart that wake her from her slumber long enough to make a sour face and curse him and the rest of his litter. Then, back to sleep.
At around 9PM, she wakes up again.
This time to the crackle of gravel under approaching tires. Headlights slice the darkness as a car eases slow down the driveway toward the house.
No, not a car. An SUV. A big one, too. Chevy Tahoe. White.
Atlanta’s not sure what to do, here. She thinks to go hide. Lots of places to do that—into the corn, out back of the house, in the cellar with the doors all locked.
The dog—or, rather, White Shadow—starts to growl in the back of his throat. He stands. Stiffens. She sees the hairs on the back of his neck go sharp like the bristles of a boot brush.
Hell with it. Dog’s ready to meet this head on. So’s she.
Atlanta feels around the side of the wicker chair in which she sits, finds the squirrel gun leaning there. On the other side, a box of shells. She dips her hand in way you’d reach into a bowl to grab some cheese doodles, then pockets a bunch, and saves one.
That one goes into the broken barrel. Then she snaps the gun closed, the vibration running along her hand.
By the time she nudges open the screen-door with her shoe, the Tahoe’s here. Sliding to a stop. Her heart’s stuck up in her throat. What happens now? Men come tumbling out of the car? Guns at the ready? Winky and Bodie and Ellis Wayman? A hail of gunfire? The other day at the Farm was her first real shoot-out—something no teen girl should ever think, much less say—and she’s not eager to repeat the experience.
And yet, here she stands. Gun up. Hammer cocked.
Door opens and a big man gets out of the front.
But it’s a different big man that she expects.
It’s Orly Erickson.
He’s still got that sculpted beard. That big logjam chest beneath a too-tight powder-blue polo. He’s not big like Wayman is big—Wayman is a feature of the landscape given flesh and bone and life, like he’s something that woke up in the forest one day under a big carpet of twig-tangled moss and left his Sasquatch brethren to come live amongst the villages of man. Orly’s like a big-game hunter on safari. Wayman’s fatter, sure, but he looks to have earned his body. Orly Erickson forged his—an act of artifice, like something you build.
Orly holds up both hands. Smiles teeth that are like his son’s: broad, too white, too even.
“Atlanta Burns,” he says. “You ought to put that thing away before someone gets hurt.”
“Seems this is the second time we’re in this situation,” she says, trying to keep her voice from trembling. “You want me to steal another piece of jewelry from you? Maybe take your shoes, your watch?”
Last time they saw one another, Atlanta had a revolver pointed at him. Stole the ring off his finger—an heirloom passed down from his own father. She chucked it in a pond later that night. Because fuck him, that’s why.
Orly’s smile disappears for a moment, surely thinking about that ring. But then it comes back, like a flash of lightning in an otherwise dark sky. “Heard you were up at the fights the other day.”
“Must’ve been someone else.”
Whitey sidles up next to her. Coiled like a spring. Orly’s about twenty feet away, and she wonders suddenly if the dog’s going to make a move. She puts a hand on his haunches, and he relaxes. A little.
“You keeping tabs on us?” he asks.
“Now why would I do that?” She knows she’s entering the rattlesnake’s den on this one, but she can’t help herself: “Not like you killed one of my friends