Bait Dog An Atlanta Burns Novel - By Chuck Wendig Page 0,92
Atlanta over. “You.”
“Me,” she says. Then spits a little blood into the grass.
“You don’t know when to leave well enough alone.”
“What can I say? I like to pick scabs.”
He nods. “And you like to bleed.”
She shrugs.
He says to Skank, “Panzer’s going to fight soon. Karl and Hiram are heading over there now. You head over there. I’ll handle this problem.”
“I want in on this,” Skank says. “You can’t take this from me.”
They start arguing but Atlanta’s head reels. Panzer. Jew-Biter.
Whitey. That means her dog will fight. Wayman will want that fight whether she’s there or not. Won’t he? Whitey isn’t ready. Isn’t trained for this.
Gotta get up, gotta move, gotta do something.
“—can just shoot her in the woods nobody would know—“
“—don’t need you for this, Melanie—“
“—they’ll think I’m just shooting a dog—“
Melanie gesticulates with the pistol. Petry tries to calm her.
Atlanta reels. Her face pounds. Her nose bleeds.
There.
That’s it.
What did she learn back in the hospital? Back at Emerald Lakes? Blood is power, just not in the way Skank thinks it is.
They took her weapon and gave her a weapon.
She holds her face to her hand. Bleeds into her mouth. Tastes the greasy salty red. Over her tongue. Under. Holds it there. Then she stands up.
Skank sees, says, “Oh, hell, no, bitch, sit your ass down—“ And comes at her with the pistol.
Atlanta spits a mouthful of blood into Skank’s face. Into the eyes. Into the mouth. It’s enough.
I’m not gonna be surprised by you again.
Oh, yes, you are.
Skank staggers, wiping at her face, shrieking like she just caught AIDS—and it’s all Atlanta needs. She grabs the hand with the gun and twists the wrist and—
She has the Luger. She hits Skank across the nose with it and the psycho goes down, rolling around on her side, moaning and sobbing and clawing at her face.
Petry is already dropping to one knee and ripping the Velcro flap off his ankle holster—but before he can grab the stubby revolver tucked there, Atlanta has the gun leveled at his head.
“Don’t,” she says, voice shaking. But her hand, steady.
“You don’t want to do this.”
“I am doing this. Take the gun out. Throw it into the woods.”
He stares with dark pinprick eyes. Like holes cut in a blanket. “I’m not going to do that.”
“Then I’ll give you the worst haircut of your life.”
“You shoot, they’ll hear.”
“They’ll think I’m offing a dog.”
“I’m a cop.”
“You’re not a cop. You’re a killer in a cop suit. A monster in man-skin. Now throw that gun away or I swear—“
He gently pulls the gun out by the holster. Lets it dangle. She gestures to the forest with her head and he tosses it into the brush. She hears it crash through and thump.
Atlanta stoops.
Grabs her phone off Skank’s belt loop.
“Come after me,” she says, “and I’ll kill both of you.”
She runs.
* * *
The first impulse is a fist reaching into her heart and pulling its strings—go get Whitey, stop the fight, do whatever you have to do—and it takes everything she has to do differently. She tucks the gun in her waistband and skirts the woods with the burner phone in her hand—no bars, no signal, no bars, no signal, c’mon c’mon c’mon.
She’s ready to take the phone and pitch it into the woods, throw it to the ground, bite into it like the candy bar they say it is—but then she thinks, the barn, the barn, go back behind the barn. That’s where she had her limp-noodle signal, and that’s where’s she heads, tearing ass and watching over her shoulder to make sure nobody’s following her.
Atlanta holds the phone up. Her arm, an antenna.
Still nothing.
She tries dialing Holger’s office.
NO SIGNAL.
“Shit!” she says, trying not to cry, keep it together, keep it together and she starts waving the phone around like she’s trying to catch butterflies in a net.
She hears a twig snap—she spins, gun out and up and ready to shoot.
A chipmunk darts into the treeline.
She almost laughs.
When she next looks at the phone: one meager bar.
She has no interest in squandering whatever chipmunk magic that woodland varmint conjured up, and she quick fumbles with the phone, redialing Holger’s number.
Ring, ring, ring.
Ring, ring, ring.
Please answer please answer please—
“Holger here.”
Atlanta laughs. Weeps. Utters a vanquished, strangled cry.
And then she tells Holger all the details: dog fight, Farm, Ellis Wayman, guns, Nazis, drugs, prostitution, the whole nine yards, every bad thing under the sun. Come, she tells her. Come now. Hurry up.