Bait Dog An Atlanta Burns Novel - By Chuck Wendig Page 0,94
him but it’s too late: the path is open, the way is clear.
Atlanta pats her leg and Whitey stands at attention. She moves briskly toward the gate, keeping the gun sights roving from target to target.
As she gets closer to the gate, Ellis yells: “Do not let her leave this ring!”
Ahead of her, the crowd fails to part. They instead tighten around the exit. The octagon ring wall is open, but the human wall remains closed.
I have the key, she thinks.
She raises the pistol at the crowd and fires off two shots.
At least, it looks like she’s firing at the crowd. She’s really firing just over their heads but in all the sound and clamor and panic, nobody’s really figured that out yet. And like Moses parting the Red Sea, Atlanta parts the ocean of bodies as they start to scream and yell and run the other way.
Chaos. She needs chaos.
Atlanta runs into the crowd, firing off another two shots, a cowboy moving his herd. She darts into the throng, moves through it, away from it, lost within it. And soon as she can’t see the octagon anymore, she bolts for the woods with Whitey swiftly in tow.
* * *
The wound looks worse than it is, she thinks—a few teeth marks, still bleeding but the punctures are shallow, so she and Whitey hunker down in the woods not far from Wayman’s farmhouse so she can get a good look at it. But all she does instead is sit behind a stack of firewood and hold the dog close.
He sniffs her ear and licks it.
She cries. First just a little. Then great big gulping sobs. She yells at herself inside her own mind to be quiet, but that only opens the floodgates wider.
It takes time to wind down. For the sobs to hitch and stumble and hiccup before eventually quitting. All the whole, she holds the bleeding dog close. The day is hot but she’s got the chills. Trauma. Shock.
Soon, she’s still. And the forest is still. Noises of the Farm are present, but distant, as if in another world. Once in a while she looks over the stack of wood corded between prongs of rusty rebar and she can see the Farm. Folks are milling about. Crowd looks a little thinner but not by much. She doesn’t see anybody looking for her, but then, why would they? She can’t go anywhere. Whole property is fenced in. One way out, and it’s the same way she came in.
They’re going to wait till the day is over. Then they’ll come find her.
But she knows the cavalry will arrive long before that.
Holger will bring her people and it’ll all be over.
Except…
Time seems to tumble forward like falling rocks and she can’t tell if it’s been ten minutes or two hours and still nobody’s coming. No Holger. No cruisers. It’s then the panic hits her guts like she just quaffed a shot of battery acid—they’re not coming. They’re not coming. The cops are crooked. Aren’t they? All of them. Petry was able to get ahead of it somehow. Here he was, walking around like he hasn’t a care in the world. Because he doesn’t. He knows he won’t get caught. Holger’s crooked. They’re all crooked.
All in Wayman’s pocket same way they’re in with Orly Erickson.
She suddenly feels very alone and very scared. With trembling hand she pops the Luger’s magazine, thumbs the bullets into her palm and counts—
Three bullets left. Little golden 9mm’s catching dappled sunlight from above.
Whitey stiffens. His head perks up and he starts to growl.
Behind her, a radio squelches at the same time as a branch snaps.
She wheels around—one of the three bullets rolls off her palm into the leaves. Panic makes her clumsy; she tries to press the remaining two 9mms into the magazine, but the first one she fumbles and it catches the spring mechanism and launches itself out of her grip like a jumping bean. She curses under her breath and presses her teeth together so hard she’s afraid they’ll snap—the final bullet slides into the magazine and she jacks it into the gun—
Just as Ellis Wayman steps into view.
His face is ashen and rage-struck, like he made a mean face and now it’s stuck that way. He steps forward. Whitey lowers his head but doesn’t growl—this is his old master.
Atlanta points the gun.
Ellis takes another step forward.
“Stop where you are,” she says.
“You called the cops,” he says, voice a haggard rasp.