by Chuck Wendig
“Mama—”
“That’s the last I’ll hear it of, Atlanta.”
Whoa. Arlene laying down her parenting voice. She’s been getting some practice with that one as of late.
It makes Atlanta mad.
But it makes her a little proud, too.
Ah, to hell with it. She storms upstairs, slams a door. A classic move.
A few more texts with Shane before bed:
Her: sorry bout earlier
Shane: It’s cool, don’t worry about it.
(He always texts grammatically correct with full punctuation.)
Her: stupid ty carrizzo carizzo carrizo however you spellit
Shane: You still going to let it go?
Her: i guess dont wanna go kicking over anthills
Her: this was prolly a threat and maybe i should learn to listen
Shane: That’s not like you.
Her: turning over a new leaf
Shane: Good luck with that.
(She sends him a string of poop emojis in response.)
Shane: You’re gross.
Her: you’re gross
Her: hey didyou check out Mahoney
Shane: I did. Didn’t take much to find it. News blotter item said he was arrested with an unlicensed weapon. He’s back in prison.
Her: whew good
Shane: You sure you’re letting it go?
Her: TOTALLY
Shane: If you say so.
Shane: Goodnight, Atlanta.
Her: gnite short stuff
(He sends her a selfie of him frowning at her.)
(She laughs via laugh emoji and an added LOL.)
An Ambien sits in the palm of her hand.
It’s getting colder in the house as the wind bangs the shutters, but Whitey lies across her feet. Her own personal canine heater.
“Do I take this?” she asks him.
He makes a sound like murrowwwwph.
“That’s not helpful.”
Already he’s snoring.
Good times.
Taking the Ambien has been okay the last couple days. And she’s not real keen on the idea of having yet another sleepless night, going into the weekend—and here she reminds herself that tomorrow is her last class for the hunter safety course, and Paul won’t be there, which means she doesn’t have an adult to go with her and well, shit. With all that’s been going on, that didn’t even occur to her. Dangit, dangit, dangit.
“I don’t want to stay awake all night,” she says to the dog, or maybe to nobody, or maybe to the whole universe and whatever god does or does not exist to govern over it. “I’m tired of being tired, Whitey.”
The dog rolls over, still snoozing.
She decides to take a lesson from Whitey.
She dry-swallows the pill and heads to bed.
Everything’s going to be okay, she tells herself.
She’s wrong.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Everything is warped and greasy. Like being drawn up out of a swimming pool filled with motor oil. Something shakes her. A sound, distant but close. Loud but quiet. Every fiber of her being wants to stay down there in the dark, sinking into the oil—
Her arm whips back and forth.
Whitey is growling.
Chris Coyne whispers in her ear: Atlanta! Get up, girl!
She draws a deep breath and comes out of her Ambien sleep-coma.
Whitey has her arm in his mouth. A soft bite. He’s snarling, shaking her like a doggy toy. She tries to say something, tries to protest—but it comes out mucky and slurry, all wuzza you dooza, like her tongue and her brain aren’t yet in sync. And now that she’s awake, Whitey steps back, ass up, head down, barking at her—deep, panicked, fast barks.
She smells something, then. Something smoky. Like someone’s lit the fireplace downstairs, but nobody’s ever lit that fireplace long as she’s lived here.
Underneath her door, she sees a line of glowing light.
Whitey noses her hard in the side.
It hits her.
The house is on fire.
Whitey tugs on her. The message is clear: let’s go let’s go let’s go.
Atlanta’s up. She searches around for socks, shoes, but again Whitey is insistent—he’s behind her, taking that big shovelhead of his and pushing her toward the door, barking all the while.
She flings open her bedroom door. The fire hasn’t reached the upstairs—but downstairs, everything is bright, the color of a volcano’s innards, and plumes of black smoke choke the stairway and are already filling the upstairs.
Atlanta coughs, eyes watering. Breathing in the stuff feels like she’s breathing in a forest fire, her lungs seared like an overcooked steak.
Mama.
She goes down the hallway. Whitey’s trying to pull her the other way, but she tells him: “Gotta find Mama!” and then he ruffs and hurries behind her.
Atlanta ducks low, trying to stay away from the smoke, her eyes watering so much now that it’s hard to see, her nose burning, her mouth tasting like a campfire. She throws open Arlene’s door and—
There. Through the black haze, she sees Mama lying there, still as a mummy in its tomb and Oh god, smoke inhalation, she thinks, you can die from that, and she hurries in and reaches for her mother and—
Pillows. Just a few pillows lying scattered. Arlene Burns isn’t here.
She calls for her mother. Nothing. She hurries, checks the bathroom. Not there, either. She doubles over, hacking.
Atlanta turns, back to the hall. Whitey at her side, his hackles up.
At the top of the steps, it’s too much. The smoke is a dragon shoving its head up the hallway: dark, serpentine, malevolent. And by now she can hear the fire, too, the beastly rumble, the devilish roar.
Can’t get out that way.
The roof. She can get out from her window.
Once Whitey is back in the bedroom with her, she slams the door and shoves a blanket against the bottom crack of it. Suddenly all the obsessive fire training they do at school—elementary and up—makes scary sense. She’s going through all the thoughts, doorknobs get hot, smoke can kill you, stop-drop-roll.
But then the room is filled with a red light, and she thinks, The fire is here. It’s come up through the vents, maybe, or it’s already at her door. The light is like Satan’s own: crimson and sinister, the color of Hell’s furnace, but then the red becomes white and then back to red.
It’s coming from the window.
Strobe light.
She tries to open the window, but it won’t budge—dummy, it’s locked. So she unlocks it and it still won’t budge. Because of humidity or crappy paint or some other scientific principle she should’ve studied in class, and right now she thinks her best bet is to kick it out—she braces herself, gets low, pushes hard—
It unsticks with a pop and opens.
She pushes out the screen. It clatters across the shingles.
To Whitey, she opens her arms. “C’mon. C’mon!”
He whines.
“Don’t make me bark at you,” she says, and now she can hear a fire siren—the warped banshee wail. Whitey readies himself, then jumps into her arms and god-dang he’s heavy but she oofs and helps him get out the window. His claws scrabble on the roof, but he doesn’t go tumbling off the edge at least.
She clambers out after him.
And now what?
She can jump. Ten feet down. Might twist her ankle, but probably won’t be any worse than that. Whitey, though. Can he make that jump?
Will he?
And then, from the far side of the roof, looking toward the Cat Lady’s house and way across the now-dead, now-brittle corn:
The lights from a fire truck get brighter.
A ladder truck pulls up, siren still blaring.
She hears yelling. The ladder extends.
Whitey growls, his fur bristling so much you could use him to clean your boots. She puts a steadying hand on his haunches.
“It’s okay,” she
says. “It’s okay.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
This is a first, she thinks. After all the things that have happened in her life, sitting in the back of an ambulance is a new experience. And not one she had on her bucket list (not that Atlanta has much of a bucket list). The ambulance hasn’t gone anywhere, and the doors are open and Atlanta’s legs dangle out (the rest of her is swaddled in a green blanket), and it gives her a good view of the house.
The bottom floor is blackened. Some of the windows are blown out. Char marks like demon fingers run along the back door, like the fire was trapped inside and its whole plan was to burn its way out.
Smoke still drifts. Everything stinks of it.
It’s midnight now. Atlanta’s been out here for an hour or so. Mama’s here—showed up just after the fire trucks, as EMTs were ushering Atlanta toward the ambulance. Mama said she was working a later shift at Karlton, though a little voice in Atlanta’s mind tells her the Karlton isn’t open that late, not even on a Friday night like this one.
The EMTs were wishy-washy about sending Atlanta to the hospital. Said they could do more tests there, though her lack of proximity to the source of the fire itself probably left her with no “thermal damage,” which she figures means burns, which is of course her last name, and then she repeats her whole name to herself again and again: Atlanta Burns, Atlanta burns, Atlanta Burns, Atlanta Burns burns. An absurd mental exercise. Maybe the universe’s idea of a joke.
Or maybe not the universe.
Maybe someone else.
Maybe someone did this.
Either way, Atlanta told the EMTs she was fine. They even checked out Whitey for her, but he seems okay, too—all the while he sits as close to Atlanta as he can, head up, one good ear cocked. Vigilant as a statue.
She leans over the edge of the ambulance to scratch his ears. “You saved my ass,” she says.
He licks her hand.
And here comes Paul, pulling away from a few other guys—they still have the hose trained on the side of the house. No more fire but still some smoke. Given the way the wind keeps kicking up, she guesses they’re just trying to be sure.
“Hey, Atlanta,” he says.
“Hey, Paul.”
“Your house . . .”
“One of your fire friends, Bill somebody—”
“Schuster, Bill Schuster.”
“He said the house is in rough shape, but it didn’t burn all the way down.”
Paul pulls out a cigarette, lights it. “Yeah. First floor’s in rough shape. But it’s a farmhouse so the bones are still there. And the second floor—there it’s mostly smoke and soot. They don’t know what caused it. Could’ve been squirrels chewing wires or faulty knob-and-tube or . . . you know, who knows.” He offers a wan grin. “I’m sorry about your house.”
“You should be sorry about my money.”
He hesitates. “I am. I really am. I, uhhh.” He laughs, but it’s a nervous sound. “I’m in deep with some people.”
“You’re a gambling addict.”
“Yeah.” He looks surprised. “How’d you know?”
“I didn’t. But you kinda put out signals. Figured it was that or drugs, and you didn’t seem . . . druggy.”
“I thought I would be able to take the money under your bed and . . . it wasn’t enough to pay back the people I owe but—”
“Lemme guess: you gambled the money in the hopes of getting more money, but instead you lost it because that’s how gambling works. I bet this is something that’s going on at VLS? Where you work?” Her brain recalls Guy telling her there was a poker game there.
He gives a shameful nod.
She asks him, “How’d you even know that money was under my bed?”
“Your mother found it cleaning up one day.”
“You mean snooping. Mama doesn’t clean much of anything.”
He shrugs. “Maybe.”
“Well. Great.”
“I’m gonna pay you back.”
“Sure you are. Moon’s also made of cheese, I hear.”
“Atlanta—”
“We’re good here. Thanks for what you did tonight. I’ll see you.”
He nods, gives another anxious smile, then heads back to be with the other fire guys, or maybe to talk to Mama, she doesn’t know. Atlanta tries not to cough, but that just makes her cough all the harder. She feels like getting up, walking around, so she does. Takes a look at the charred husk of the house. A house set ablaze. Could’ve been squirrels chewing wires or faulty knob-and-tube. Uh-uh.
Someone did this to her.
Same someone who ran Bee off the road.
This has Ty Carrizo’s soot-black fingerprints all over it.
She sniffs. So, that’s that, then.
Atlanta wanders over to her mother, waits for Arlene to stop talking to one of the fire guys—a chubby fella with a mustache like a horseshoe. (Paul’s over by one of the trucks—he’s keeping his distance, still. But he’s watching like a hawk. Question is: a protective one, or one that’s a predator?)
Once she’s done she turns to Atlanta, gives her daughter a big hug. “Baby, I am so sorry I wasn’t here.”
“It’s fine. I get it.” She doesn’t get it, not yet, but right now it’s not high on the list. “Glad you’re okay.”
“I’m glad you’re okay, too.” Arlene pulls away, gives her daughter the once-over. “You sure you don’t need to go to the hospital?”
“I’m sure. I’m sticking around.”
Mama gives a sly grin. “Could be that we’ll get an insurance check out of all this. That’s something, at least. For once the system might work for us.”
“That’ll be real nice.” If it actually happens. “I need you tomorrow.”
“Why, baby?”
“I have my last hunter safety course.”
“Honey, sweetie, just let that go, they’ll understand—”
“I need this. I want this. And that means you gotta be my adult.”
Mama pauses. Then finally, she smiles and nods. “Sure, you got it, baby.”
“Thanks.”
She’ll finish her class. Then she’ll get her gun back.
Because it’s time to break that pinky swear.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
They don’t want her to take the last class. Not with her mother. Wayne Sleznik stands there, frittering about, wearing a disappointed mask as he says, “Atlanta, I am sorry, but we prefer to maintain continuity in your teaching. And your mother, Elaine—”
“Arlene,” Mama corrects with a rubber-band snap.
“Arlene doesn’t have a hunting license. The goal is that you leave the class with your sponsor and get to talk about what you learned here—”
“It’s because she’s a woman,” Atlanta says. “Isn’t it?”
Arlene steps up. “Is it because I’m a woman?”
“No, no, no,” he says, waving his hands about and offering an uncomfortable heh-heh-heh laugh. “My other teacher as you’ll see is Joanne Kinro—” Here he points to the park ranger across the room who’s pouring coffee into a paper cup from a thermos. The ranger looks up with a grumpy glare.
“Let’s go, Mama,” Atlanta says.
But Mama, she’s not done. She starts to cry.
It’s subtle at first. Just a high-pitched sound coming from the back of her throat. Then a little shake to her shoulders. She starts to crumple up like the snot-slick tissue she’ll inevitably end up with, and then she starts blubbering about how their house just burned down and her husband is dead and their dog got shot in the head and all her little girl wants to do is learn how to hunt—her father’s dying wish, I’ll tell you what.
Thing is, Mama doesn’t cry like that. Atlanta knows what it’s like. This crying jag is fake as a three-dollar bill, and she’s sure that Sleznik here will see right through it like it’s a squeaky-clean window—
But he waves his hands again. “Okay, okay, okay. You can stay.”
Mama whimpers: “We can s
tay?”
“You can stay,” he repeats again.
She throws her arms around him. Blubbers gratitude.
Then, as she pulls Atlanta over to take their seats, she sniffles one last time and whispers: “Babydoll, if there’s one thing that ruins a man’s composure, it’s seeing a lady lose hers.”
Atlanta wears a grin like a boomerang.
The class today is about the strategies of hunting, about setting traps. Tracking your prey. Capturing your prey. Taking the shot at your prey. Scents and lures and blood trails.
Needless to say, Atlanta pays real good attention.
On the way home, Atlanta pulls a little of her hair over to her nose. Still smells like smoke. In her lap sits the certificate of completion for her hunter safety course. That and a little paperwork signed by Sleznik and Kinro. All she has to do is mail this in to get her first hunting license.
She figures she won’t need it. Animals have enough problems without her chasing them around the woods with a gun.
People, though. People can be a real problem.
And now she can get her gun.
Mama yawns. “Baby, I’m tired. I got us a motel room for the night and it’s gettin’ to be check-in time, but that’s gonna kill our bank account lickety-quick. We’ll need to figure out where we’re staying tomorrow night. And fast.”
“I’ll call around.” Atlanta rubs her eyes. She’s tired, too. No, that’s not it. Not just tired—but weary. She’s a scarecrow with a broken pole holding her up, the weight of wind and weather pushing her closer and closer to the ground. “Hey, thanks for taking me today. I know you probably had things to do.”
“I had a shift. At the Karlton. But this seemed more important.” Arlene offers a small smile. “We don’t spend much time together anymore.”
“No, I reckon we don’t.”
“After . . . after everything, I know we don’t always get along so hot.”
“No kid my age gets along with her parents, it’s fine.” Except Damon and Ty Carrizo, she reminds herself. “We’ll . . . get through it. Fences mended, bridges put back up over the rushing river, all that.”
