Bait Dog: An Atlanta Burns Novel

by Wendig, Chuck

  Atlanta ignores them. Chooses instead to focus on the dog-napper.

  The broad-shouldered interloper ahead of her on the lawn is already doing a dance with the dog—coming at the animal with the sack—a feed sack by the looks of it—held out like a weapon, swooping low and trying to bag the beagle (to no avail). The killer has on a black face mask, black shirt, black jeans, black boots, and, in contrast, a pair of yellow latex gloves. Like the kind you’d use to wash dishes.

  The attacker goes for the dog again.

  But Atlanta doesn’t care to let this charade go on any further.

  She bolts across the lawn. Careful not to slip on the dewy grass. With a flick of her wrist and a button press, a telescoping baton snaps from its mooring, extends from eight inches to two feet. Last time she tangoed with the Skinny Bitch Nazi, the psycho came at her with a baton. So Atlanta bought her own. Ballistic nylon sheath, whatever that means. German steel. Fifteen bucks on eBay.

  More voices from the truck: “Watch out! Fuckin’ watch out!”

  But Atlanta’s target is focused on the dog.

  Atlanta whips the baton against the stranger’s back. Right between the shoulder blades.

  The kidnapper goes down, howling along with the dog. But something doesn’t sound right.

  The beagle, finally realizing that shit is going pear-shaped, takes off in the other direction toward the house. Behind Atlanta, tires squealing, peeling out as the truck belches a dragon’s breath of exhaust then barrels forward like a growling locomotive—then it’s all taillights and plumes of gray.

  “Stealing dogs, huh?” Atlanta asks, and whips the attacker in the side again.

  The bastard rolls over, face mask half pulled up from when he fell against the grass.

  And Atlanta catches a glimpse of dark red lipstick. The whimpering dog-napper can no longer see and paws at his face and pulls the mask up to his forehead and, sure enough, it’s not a “his” anything but a “her.”

  Atlanta recognizes the girl from high school. Same year as her. Tattooed chick. Kinda Gothy, but kinda rednecky, too. Husky. Like a linebacker. Vanessa. Tessa. Something-essa.

  “You,” the girl squeaks.

  “Me,” Atlanta says, standing over her.

  The girl kicks Atlanta in the crotch with a boot.

  Anatomy lesson: girls don’t have the low-hanging fruit of testicles, but getting kicked in the crotch is no picnic. Pain still shoots up into Atlanta’s gut and she staggers left, doubling over.

  Something-essa gets on her hands and knees, scrabbling to find purchase on the wet lawn, and manages to move her dumptruck body up and forward—she runs the way a drunken moose runs, one leg almost caught by the other, boots clompily stomping, braying as she goes.

  Floodlights suddenly bathe the lawn in lights.

  Inside the house, lights flick on.

  Go go go go.

  Atlanta pushes past the pain, raises her baton high like an angry monkey, and chases after.

  She catches sight of Something-essa darting between a pair of boxy McMansions, heading east out of Clover Knoll, running like an out of control boulder as it chases Indiana Jones—way the girl moves isn’t about grace or skill so much as it is about gathering momentum and then wildly tumbling forward until something stands in your way. Atlanta intends to be the thing that stands in her way.

  Clover Knoll’s streets are a bunch of horseshoes smashed together with a main avenue connecting them all at the far side—and that’s where Something-essa’s going to have to come out. Atlanta bolts right, heads that direction. Knuckles white around the baton’s nylon grip. Glimpses of white fur and red meat. The imagined sound of that baying beagle amplified times ten as someone cuts off its ears, pops out its teeth.

  I’m going to fuck you up, girl.

  Atlanta, ribs stitched with pain, lungs burning, heads past countless pre-fab mini-mansions all smashed together on half-acre lots, finally comes out on the main road—California Street—and feels less like a gazelle and more like the rampaging elephant of Something-essa. She hits the sidewalk, is barely able to stop herself. Almost skids on some stone scree and slips, but catches her balance.

  Just in time to see Something-essa stumble forth from someone’s lawn about fifty feet away.

  Between them, at a t-bone intersection, is the way out—the development entrance that leads to Gallows Hill road. Atlanta grins. Because Something-essa will have to come this way to get out, because the only other option is to run to the hill and dart through the trees and that’s one steep-ass hill that really will turn her into the boulder chasing after Indiana Jones.

  Atlanta’s about to yell something to her, some kind of cocky bullshit taunt. But then—sirens. Lights. Red and blue chase each other like Tom the cat chases Jerry the mouse. A cop cruiser—not just a sedan but a goddamn Dodge Charger because apparently the cops here have anxiety over their tiny units—comes whipping up the drive into Clover Knoll. Headed straight for the both of them.

  Atlanta and Something-essa share a look.

  Something-essa gives Atlanta the finger.

  Then she heads toward the hill.

  Atlanta thinks to go after her but that’ll force her to cross the path of the cops. No time for that. No time to think at all—her only mode is escape because getting busted by the cops right now is not going to be good for her or for Sailor or for her mother. She already went away once; she doesn’t want to do it again.

  She turns and runs the opposite way. Back toward the McMansions.

  * * *

  Atlanta hides.

  Again behind a blue mailbox.

  Palms sweaty, mouth dry.

  Making herself as small as she can. Appropriate, given how small she feels. Small and angry. Like a gallstone.

  The cops sweep back and forth. Time and again. Spotlight sliding over houses and lawns and sidewalks. Part of her thinks, just go out there. Tell them what happened. Say, I’m trying to find out who’s taking these dogs and hurting them, and then give them the details about the truck and Something-essa and then be done with it. But then the money’s not hers anymore, is it? The cops will be in her way.

  And she can’t trust the cops. If one cop is sitting on Orly Erickson’s shoulder like a dark-eyed hawk, then he may have others, too. While none of this ties to Orly—or Mitchell, or Chris’ death, or the gun club—Atlanta’s still got a big blood-red bullseye on her back. The foreclosure notice made that dreadfully clear.

  So, no. No trusting the cops.

  Atlanta hides.

  * * *

  Every minute is an agony that gnaws at Atlanta like a rat chewing through drywall, because every minute where she’s stuck behind a mailbox is a minute where the truck is getting away and that dog-napping bitch is running further and further.

  By the time the cops stop sweeping and go home Atlanta’s been there for another hour.

  It’s damn near 2AM when she hoofs it out of Clover Knoll and back down the road toward the valley, toward the town of Maker’s Bell proper. The walk is only fifteen minutes but it feels like forever—a long dark journey past crickets chirping and the black shapes of oak trees and evergreens.

  Eventually through the trees, a fuzzy glow of the U.S. Gas at the bottom of the hill just before you turn onto Main Street. Also the only place in town that has a pay phone. Atlanta thinks, I have to get a cell phone. Not that she has the money for that.

  The U.S. Gas isn’t much to look at. Four pumps under a cock-eyed red, white and blue roof. Dingy convenience store surrounded by a parking lot cracked and cratered as if struck by a bunch of tiny meteorites. Above, tinny speakers play some dogshit country music—not old-school country music but rather the kind that’s basically just earworm pop crap sung by some strapping lad or too-skinny blonde with a Southern twang. Little Johnny Cash, maybe. Or Hank Williams Jr. They’d go nice about now. But all she has is this and it sours the spit in her mouth.

  Atlanta slides into the phone booth. Finds the phonebook dangling t
here by a red lacquered chain. What was Chomp-Chomp’s last name again? Burkholder. Right. Only one set of Burkholders in the book, blessedly—unusual for a town where families breed like lusty rabbits (everywhere you go you meet a Troxell; those thick-witted bastards are like dandelions sprouting up and blowing their seed). She dials the number.

  A man answers. Gurgles. Snorts. “…the hell is this?”

  “Steven, please.” She tries to be polite about it.

  “It’s 2:30 in the morning.” Another gurgle-snort.

  More politeness made all the easier by her own Southern accent. “I understand and apologize, sir, but I’m a classmate of his and I really need to talk to him.”

  The phone clunks and thumps as the person on the other line sets it down.

  Atlanta tries not to listen to the awful pop-country instead focusing on the crickets beyond and the buzz of the lights overhead, lights surrounded by little clouds of gnats and skeeters. Eventually someone picks up.

  “Got it,” comes Cho… er, Steven’s voice.

  Someone—the father—grunts and hangs up the phone.

  “Hello?” Steven asks. Not groggy. Not gurgle-snorty. In the background: a TV with the volume turned down.

  “Doesn’t sound like I woke you,” she says.

  “I wasn’t sleeping. I, uh, don’t sleep much.” Pause. “This Atlanta?”

  “Yeah. It’s me.”

  “Hi. Wh… uhh. What’s up?”

  “Think I found the dog-killers. Had one of ‘em on the ropes and…” She neglects to mention the crotch-kick because it seems unladylike, even for her. “She got the better of me. We went to school with her. Got a name like Vanessa or Tessa or something. She’s dumpy, listens to that dopey clown-rapper-duo—“

  “ICP. I like ICP.”

  “Ick, whatever. She’s covered in tattoos like, I think her shoulder is covered in a, a… a fishing net or something.”

  “A spider web?”

  “Oh.” Blink. Blink. “Yeah, I guess that makes more sense. A spider web, then.”

  “That’s Tressa Kucharski.”

  Oh, snap. She has to laugh. She didn’t make the connection. “Tressa ‘The Cooch’ Kucharski?”

  “Yeah, I guess they call her that sometimes.”

  “They also say that having sex with her is like throwing a hot dog down a hallway.” Or for the regional variation, tossing a kielbasa in a trashcan. “You know her?”

  “She was doing Jonesy last year but then they broke up and she threw a rock through his window and he took a dump in her mailbox and then they dated again and then more stuff got broken and I think she hit him? And I think he hit her back and then she started hanging out less with us and more with the rednecks from Grainger—“

  A shape moves past the phone booth. Like a polar bear swimming past the glass at a zoo enclosure.

  “Good story,” Atlanta mumbles. “I’ll call you back.”

  “Wait, where are you—“

  She hangs up the phone and watches Tressa ‘The Cooch’ Kucharski go into the U.S. Gas.

  * * *

  First she thinks, I’ll go in after her. Baton-whip the candy bar or whatever she’s buying out of her hand, knock her teeth down her throat, make a real scene. But there might be cameras in there. She can’t see any out here, and so instead she decides to wait. Standing next to the phone booth, extending and collapsing her baton anxiously.

  Tressa’s in there for five minutes, but it feels like five hours.

  When she comes out, girl’s got a pack of American Spirit cigarettes in one hand and a Monster energy drink in the other, with a bag of what looks like beef jerky under her one arm. The Cooch checks her cell phone, pops it in her back pocket, then begins tapping the cigarette pack before sliding one out and screwing it between her dark sluggy lips. Thumb on lighter. Flick. Flick. Flick.

  Atlanta steps up. Pokes her in the back with the baton.

  Tressa wheels, dropping her Bic in the process. The unlit cigarette hangs from her lip, stuck to the inside of her lip way a kid’s tongue might get stuck to a frozen goalpost.

  They stand that way for a while. In silence. Atlanta pointing the baton at her like it’s a gun.

  Tressa speaks first, and when she does, the cigarette falls and handsprings into a puddle. “Atlanta.”

  “That’s my name, don’t wear it out.”

  “What’s your deal?” Tressa swallows hard. Looks left, looks right. Nervous. Finger tapping and scratching the top of the energy drink can. “I don’t mess with your shit.”

  “No, but I’m about to mess with yours. Lemme ask you—you like torturing animals? You one of those fucked-up people likes to burn ants with match-tips or stick firecrackers up a cat’s ass? Make you feel all big and powerful when in reality you’re just small and sad?”

  “It’s not like that.”

  “So tell me what it is like.”

  “I don’t torture the dogs. It’s not a… torture thing.”

  “Sure it ain’t.” She thrusts the baton forward, gets it under Tressa’s chin. Gives it a lift.

  “Before tonight, I, I, I didn’t even touch the dogs. It’s not my thing, I’m just there with—“

  “With who?”

  “Bodie and Bird.”

  “Who the hell are they?”

  “The Haycock boys? Brothers. Irish twins.”

  “They’re Irish.”

  Tressa shakes her head. She’s getting more nervous, now. “No. Kids born so close together they might as well be twins. Born nine months apart. They call them Irish twins.”

  “Whatever. They go to school with us?”

  “No, they’re uhh, they’re ‘home-schooled,’” When she says it she makes little air quotes, and in doing so, the bag of jerky drops from under her arm and plops onto the asphalt.

  “So they’re the ones like to hurt the animals.”

  “It’s not like that, I told you—“

  Atlanta scowls. “You banging one of them?”

  Tressa tightens. Doesn’t say anything. Atlanta almost laughs.

  The girl tries to change the subject—“So it’s true, right, you shot the junk off your—“ but Atlanta has little interest in letting the girl finish her statement.

  “You’re banging both of ‘em?” Atlanta asks.

  “I… I was with Bird but then Bodie wanted me and…” She suddenly looks confused. Maybe even a little sad. “I still sometimes get time with Bird. But mostly it’s Bodie.”

  Atlanta’s about to ask another question when Tressa’s gaze jumps like a leafhopper from her to behind her. Next comes the dingling bell tied to the top of the convenience store door.

  “Hey!” barks a man in a strong… well, Atlanta wants to call it an Indian accent but for all she knows he’s Pakistani or Arab or—are Iranians Arab or something else? No time to worry about that. She turns, sees the little man with the dark caterpillar eyebrows brandishing a broom like he’s an American Gladiator. “You stop messing around outside my store or I call the police! I call them!”

  Atlanta scrunches up her face, gives him an incredulous look. “You just sold this underage girl cigarettes. So go on, now. Give ‘em a ringy-dingy. I’ll wait.”

  The man fake-laughs (“heh-heh-heh”), eases the broom by his side. “Oh! Oh, I think I, ah, hear a customer.”

  Then he ducks his head back inside. Ding-a-ling.

  “That was cool,” Tressa says. Kneeling down and feeling for her lighter. Atlanta jabs her hard in the chest with the baton, bowling her over into a jagged wet pothole. “Hey!”

  “You don’t get to tell me what’s cool. I don’t care to be admired in the eyes of a dog-killer.”

  “I told you, we don’t kill the—“

  “You stole a white dog recently. Couple weeks back. Little. A… a terrier.”

  Tressa just sits in the pothole like someone who sat on the toilet while the seat was still up and got stuck. “Yeah. Well, I wasn’t there. But we stole a couple little white ones recently.”


  “And where do they end up? Where do Bodie and Bird—“ those scum-sucking sumbitches “—take the dogs?”

  “The Farm.” Tressa clears her throat, says it again louder. “They take them to the Farm.”

  “The heck happens at the Farm?”

  “The fights.”

  “What fights?”