Bait Dog: An Atlanta Burns Novel

by Wendig, Chuck

  * * *

  Chris sits on her front stoop as peep frogs peep somewhere in the distance. He’s got a white terrier in his lap. Both of them have rope burns around their neck.

  It’s a dream, she knows. The house behind her is her house, but it isn’t. And the cornfield over there is too big, too green, too well-lit under the moon to be real. And Chris is dead. And the dog is dead.

  All Chris says is, “You’re barking up the wrong tree.”

  The dog laughs with her voice.

  * * *

  She doesn’t have any Adderall so instead she goes into her mother’s medicine cabinet, but she doesn’t find much in there, either. Mama’s not exactly a fan of most prescription drugs these days, claiming she used to be addicted to… it was either Xanax or Valium, she can’t seem to remember which (and that leads Atlanta to believe it was probably both at one time or another). Most of what’s in the cabinet is allergy meds and Motrin.

  Fine. She goes downstairs and nukes a cup of instant coffee. It tastes like dirt from the bottom of a workman’s boot but it’s hot and it’s caffeine and just to be sure she drinks three more cups before the sun comes up.

  Eventually the sun comes up and she’s not sure what to do with herself. She washes some of the dishes in the sink. Makes herself breakfast, which is really just ramen noodles—the ambiguously-named “Oriental” flavor, which she suspects tastes less like anything Oriental and more like soy sauce. Ramen noodles have been a breakfast staple of hers for years for those (many) days when her mother did not come down to make anything. Cheap. Easy. Oddly comforting to an anxious stomach before shipping out to another day at high school hell.

  As she’s slurping noodles she hears footsteps upstairs. Then a toilet flush. Then footsteps back to bed.

  Atlanta sits. Finishes her noodles. Putters around. Feels useless. Like a pair of fake nuts hanging from the back of a pickup truck—ornamental, stupid, a worthless decoration.

  It’s an hour later when the phone rings.

  “It’s on,” Guy says. “They got a fight next week. We’re in.”

  Atlanta’s heart drops through the floor like a plummeting elevator.

  * * *

  They call it a farmer’s market but it’s no such thing. It’s a dirt mall—a big concrete rectangle with stall after stall smashed together in a big U-shaped arrangement. They have farm stuff, sure. Amish sell jams, jellies, jars of Chow-Chow, red beet eggs, pickled everything. A few stalls compete for produce—curiously, little of it actually local. But then you have the homely old twins who sell old electronics and appliances—tape decks, decrepit vacuums and vacuum parts, old RC cars. Or the pet food store that has a live alligator in the back they like to show off (his name’s Arthur). Or the butcher counter whose meats smell a little too sweet, a little too sour, like they’re on the edge of going south if they haven’t already gone that way. Then there’s the food stalls. Everything from fried chicken to Cuban sandwiches to Kenyan food to sugar-crusted elephant ears big enough to use as a trash-can lid. Food smells mingle together with body odors to make a confusing olfactory experience.

  Shane travels behind Atlanta, ogling and ooh-ing.

  “You really never been here before?” she asks.

  “Huh?” Shaken from his reverie.

  “I said, you’ve never been here before?”

  “Nuh-uh. No. I just thought it was… I dunno, a farmer’s market.”

  “Name’s kinda misleading.”

  “Whoa!” Shane runs over to a table outside a dimly-lit stall, finds a true oddity—some taxidermist threw together a true chimera: a frog’s head on a bunny’s body with what looks to be a tabby cat’s tail. It sits beneath a cracked jewel lamp which is also for sale. “Look!”

  Atlanta makes a face. “I’d put that down. You’ll get fleas or something.” She snorts. “Maybe that’s why they call these things flea markets.”

  “It does smell.”

  “I bet.”

  Suddenly his eyes shift, catch light, see something else that fills his fool head with excitement. “Comic shop!” And he’s off like an Iditarod Husky with a stun gun stuck under its tail. She rolls her eyes and follows after, finds him rifling double-time through a long-box of dusty old comics. She sees titles she doesn’t recognize—Outsiders, Starman, New Mutants—alongside a few she does—Batman, Flash, Avengers.

  Shane looks like a miner who just found a rich vein of gold, but Atlanta has to hook him under the arm and drag him back out. “That’s not why we’re here, geek-boy. I need stuff.” Yesterday she nabbed an advance of cash from Jenny—soon as Jenny started writing a check, Atlanta said she needed the real deal instead, cold hard greenbacks, thanks—and now here she is, prepping for next week’s trip to the Farm.

  They muscle past a pair of super-fat middle-age hausfraus in too-tight sweat pants (on the one is emblazoned the words “juicy” in pink glitter type, calling to mind not unbridled sexiness but, rather, a canned ham) and Atlanta finds what she’s looking for: Keystone Mobile, a grungy overstuffed stall full of mobile accessories and headsets from the early 2000s, plus a ton of old phones crammed together in a glass case.

  Dude behind the counter is a lanky sort with crow-slick hair and a patchy beard poking up out of his face like a bed of bad weeds. She tells him she needs a burner—no plan, just a pay-as-you-go.

  “Kinda phone?” he asks.

  “Don’t care. Something that’s all phone, though. I don’t want to play fruity little games on it.”

  Shane chimes in: “Angry Birds is pretty cool.”

  “They don’t sound cool. They sound angry.”

  “What provider is this? AT&T? Sprint?”

  Atlanta doesn’t know, so she just shrugs. Shane asks the scraggly-beard, who says, “We’re an… independent provider.” He starts boxing up a basic gray candy bar phone: an austere little brick of forgotten technology. He goes into a spiel, sounds rehearsed and mechanical: “Keystone Mobile. You’ll hear about us in a few years when our patented 5G signal goes—“

  “That’s not a real service,” Shane whispers in her ear, but she shushes him and pays for the phone. Then she drags him on toward their next stop.

  And here, again, Shane’s eyes go big and bulgey.

  Atlanta taps the counter. “I need a box of shells.”

  Shane’s not paying attention. Instead he recites a litany of what he sees: “Tonfa. Sais. Manrikigusari. Wakizashi. Katanas! Oh, dude, whoa, katanas.” He scurries over to a wall clad in velvet drape with various implements of ninja destruction hanging there. Then he spies a wall of medieval weaponry—swords and maces and pieces of armor—and dashes over to that. The guys behind the counter who look like carnies, watch him and snicker.

  “Eyes up here,” Atlanta says. “I said, I need shells. Gimme the .410s.”

  One of the carnies, a scruffy ginger, reaches in past a display of Zippo lighters and butterfly knives, and plunks a box out on the glass. “Shooting squirrels?”

  “Rats,” she says.

  “Cool.”

  * * *

  The parking lot is about as apocalyptic as it was inside: beater cars and certified POSes left and right. Molester van sitting cock-eyed next to a pimped-up Cadillac. Lots of rust and second- or third-hand rides. Atlanta and Shane weave between crap-bucket cars. He finally gets the advantage and scoots in front of her.

  “You have to let me go with you,” he says. “I wanna go.”

  She slides past him, almost knocks the long velvet-wrapped package out from under his arm. “I can’t believe you bought that thing.”

  “It was only a hundred bucks.” He tucks the fabric-clad katana tighter. “It’s awesome.”

  “It’s a flea market katana. It’s pretty douchey.”

  “Is it?”

  “Kinda. Like, if you smelled of Drakkar Noir and wore gold chains and pretended to meditate and were in your mid-40s and stuff, I would totally expect to find a katana on your wall.”

  He chases after again. �
�Maybe it’s for home protection. You ever think of that?”

  “A shotgun is for home protection. A katana is for dudes who want to pretend to be a ninja. And by the way, a cheap-shit katana won’t cut through a bubble bath much less a burglar or serial killer.”

  “It seemed pretty sharp to—“ Shane growls in frustration. “You’re changing the subject.”

  “Correction: I already changed the subject.”

  “Well, I’m changing it back! You should take me to the fight.”

  They reach the edge of the parking lot. Shane’s bike—somewhat miraculously—remains locked up around a bent maple tree. Atlanta hoofed it from home. Another two-hour walk awaits her. “What? So you can protect me with your garage sale katana?”

  “C’mon. Atlanta. Please. I can be helpful. I can… carry ammo for you. I can watch your back.”

  She looks left, looks road, then crosses over the road after a pickup passes. “It’s a bad idea.”

  “I want to help and I can only help if I’m there. You want my big brain? Then the big brain goes with you. C’mon. Pleaaaaase.”

  “Fine,” she says. It’s still a bad idea and she stands there on the other side of the road pinching her nose and fighting a headache. “But you need to wait in the car.”

  “Okay.”

  “Let’s go, then. Unlock your bike. I’m gonna walk ahead.”

  * * *

  They’re bringing Donny out on a stretcher and he’s not screaming anymore because they must’ve given him something. His one hand dangles off the stretcher and it’s coated with blood. His. From where he cupped the wound. Atlanta’s not sure how bad it is or what kind of damage she did only that he bled like a throat-slit goat and screamed for a long, long time.

  Mama’s on the porch, crying.

  Everything is red and blue lights, strobing left to right. Across the house, the windows, the field.

  Crackle of radios. Wind across the grass and the corn. Atlanta shivers. Wants to cry but can’t, and is worried that not being about to cry is a real bad sign. Like now she’s broken or something, irrevocably, irretrievably, never the same girl hence.

  Detective Holger puts a blanket across her shoulders like they do on television and Holger hunkers down. She’s a bulldog of a woman, hair cut short and mouth in a permanent frown, but her words don’t match the frown and she says, “Honey, I know this is hard but you’re going to need to come with me, now.”

  “I know,” Atlanta says, shaking like a leaf in a hard wind. “I’m sorry for what I did.”

  Holger leans in. “Between you and me, I’m not. I’m not saying what you did was right, but I’m not saying it was wrong, either. And I’m damn sure not saying I would’ve done differently. You hear me?”

  Gamely, Atlanta nods.

  Then she’s up and ushered to the car and Holger opens the back of the car—not a cruiser but a dinged-up gray Ford Taurus many years out-of-date—and sitting there in the back is Chris Coyne holding the little terrier and he smiles that winning smile and says, “I hope you’re ready for all this.”

  And she says, “I’m not.” And then, “This is a dream, isn’t it?”

  He winks. The dog barks.

  She wakes up, soaked to the bone in sweat. Teeth chattering like they did on that day.

  * * *

  Week later, Guy’s outside in his boxy Scion, honking the horn. Atlanta reaches into her closet, plucks the .410 shotgun from inside. A Winchester model 20, break-barrel, single-shot. Smells of WD-40 and gunpowder. Her hands tremble as she picks it up. Finger alongside the outer edge of the trigger guard. Part of her thinks, just put it away. No good can come of this. Park it. Forget it. And that’s what she decides to do.

  But her body goes the other way. Even as her mind is telling her it belongs here at the house, she’s walking downstairs with the shotgun resting on the pillow of her forearm, a pocket full of green birdshot shells.

  * * *

  “Music’s too dang loud,” Atlanta says, spinning the volume knob the other way. Guy shoots her a look as the Scion zips through the asphalt ribbons of nowhere road. Trees and cows and silos. The smell of chickenshit. Sunlight through pollen.

  “You know not to mess with a dude’s stereo.”

  “It’s making me queasy. I can feel the bass inside my uterus. Like a… baby kicking or something.” It’s not the bass making her queasy, but it sure wasn’t helping. Again the feel of being strapped into a roller coaster hits her. Guy’s driving—fast, one-handed, taking curves wide with the tires scraping gravel—does little to dispel the feeling.

  A hand darts out from the cramped backseat. Shane holds out a bag of red licorice splayed out like octopus tentacles. “You guys want any?”

  Atlanta takes one. Sucks air through it without chewing. She’s not sure if it’s helping or hurting her nausea.

  “I can’t believe we had to bring him,” Guy says.

  “I have a name,” Shane says from the backseat.

  Guy sucks air through his teeth. “And I’ve already forgotten it, little dude.”

  “Shut up,” Atlanta barks.

  “Yeah,” Shane says, waggling accusatory licorice. “Shut up.”

  “I mean it for the both of you.” Her hands curl tighter around the stock and barrel of the squirrel gun. She’s got the barrel up by her ear. Atlanta leans her head against it. It feels cool.

  Guy gives her a sideways look. “And I can’t believe you brought that. Keeping it up by your ear like that—girl, you gonna blow the roof of your head off.”

  “It’s not loaded.” Yet.

  “Still shouldn’t have brung it.”

  “I need it.”

  “It’s trouble.”

  “You said all kinds of bad people are going to be there. I bet they’ll all be packing.”

  “Some will,” he says, taking a few hairpin switchback turns that starts to take them back down off of Grainger Hill on the other side. Down through the trees she sees the tops of trailers in a trailer park laying like white dominoes. “And that’s exactly why you don’t want to carrying around a goddamn gun like you’re—who was the female cowboy?”

  “I dunno. Calamity Jane? Annie Oakley?”

  “Whatever. You ain’t them, girl. The way some of these guys treat the dogs, that should tell you just what they think about the sanctity of life and shit. My momma always used to say, don’t throw rocks at the moon because one day you might knock it down.”

  “I think this whole trip pretty much defines ‘throwing rocks at the moon.’”

  As they round the last switchback, Guy punches the brakes. Everybody lurches forward—Atlanta has to brace herself so as not to smack her head on the dash. Guy whips the car into the middle of a three-point turn.

  “Hell with this,” he says. “This is a bad idea. I’m not doin’ it.”

  “Wait!” she yells. “Wait.” The car stops in the middle of the road, pointed perpendicular. “I’ll leave the gun in the car. I’ll hide it in the backseat. Happy?”

  “Yeah. Yeah. Okay.” He reverse again, points the car once more in the direction. “Turn-off is up ahead.”

  * * *

  The drive to the farm takes them down a bouncy track of limestone gravel, the Scion ill-made to handle the dips and bumps. Atlanta’s teeth rattle as they pass a tall-grass meadow to the left and, on the right, a boggy tract of trees—sunlight caught in the surface of murky vernal pools.

  Soon they start to see the NO TRESPASSING signs. All hand-painted on boards that are in turn nailed to the trees. TRESSPASSERS WILL BE SHOT. BEWARE OF DOG. TURN BACK. FUCK OFF.

  They pass a guy in a backward John Deere hat pissing up against a weeping willow.

  That’s when they get to the fence. Chain-link. Topped with coils of razor-wire. The gate’s locked by a loop of heavy gauge chain with a padlock dangling from it that’s so big you could use it to beat a horse to death.

  The car sits there, idling. “What do we do now?” Atlanta asks.

  They
don’t need to wait long for an answer. The willow-pisser comes back up from his bathroom break. He heads around the front of the car, comes up on Guy’s side and raps on the window with the back of his knuckles.

  Guy buzzes the window down. “Sup?”