“I’m kinda freaked out by all this.” He flops his head back on the couch. “I’m scared.”
She lies and tells him, “Me too.” She’s not scared. Not right now, at least. The Adderall smoothes over all the sharp edges. It wears the mountain of fear down to a smooth, comfortable hill.
“I don’t want to die,” he says.
“We’re not gonna die.” Another lie. She doesn’t know.
“I got to touch a girl’s boob.”
“At least you got to do that before you died.”
“At least.”
He stares up at the ceiling for a while, and eventually falls asleep.
For Atlanta, sleep is just a dream.
* * *
Four o’clock in the morning, Atlanta hears it. She’s not asleep. She’s been in the dark, sitting across from Shane the whole time, staring at him but not really at him so much as through him. Her mind wandered onto the subject of Steven and of their kiss and if she could ever really see him as more than a friend, more than just a sad boy with big teeth and here her thoughts hovered like a mosquito over a barrel of brackish water.
But she’s ripped free from those thoughts as she hears the creak of a board upstairs.
He’s here.
He’s in her room.
* * *
The message they wrote and then printed on the gun club printer was this:
ALL YOUR AUDIO FILES ARE BELONG TO US.
YOU’VE GOT ONE WEEK.
MEET ME AT THE WATER TOWER, SATURDAY, MIDNIGHT.
BRING TEN GRAND OR I SEND THE FILES TO EVERYBODY.
--AB
Shane assured her that there was a joke in there somewhere and that it was a good one. She didn’t get it and didn’t much care to and let him have his way.
That was the message. An upgraded version of when they lured the Nazis to the graveyard by throwing a note in through the broken car window. That worked. Sort of.
This message, like that one, is a lie, of course. They don’t have the audio files. And they never intended to meet him at the water tower. They knew he’d come before then. To get the files back on his own. To “handle” the problem.
And now here he was.
Upstairs.
* * *
She’s surprised that he’s here already. They only set the letter to print six hours before. Somebody must’ve gone to the gun club and seen it. Orly, probably. Late night meeting.
Doesn’t matter now.
Atlanta hurries to Shane, shakes him awake and at the same time clamps a hand over his mouth so he doesn’t cry out. She hiss-whispers: “He’s here. Closet. Go.”
He whimpers, then rolls off the couch—and bangs his knee on the coffee table.
Upstairs, the creaking stops suddenly.
Atlanta shoots Shane a real lightning bolt of a look and jerks her head toward the closet. Shane darts toward it like a soldier in a warzone—head down so it doesn’t get shot off.
Her bare toe feels under the couch. Finds the cold metal of the shotgun barrel. Small comfort, but comfort just the same. Then she reaches for the iPod on the rickety old side table her mother bought at a flea market a year back. The iPod isn’t hers. It’s Shane’s. She flicks it on, does what needs doing, and then waits.
Again the creaking. Toward the steps.
And down. One by one. The house is old, and every floorboard is a complainer.
From here she can see the staircase through the wooden railing.
Can see the first shadow—deeper black then the rest of the dark—step at that top step.
She thinks suddenly: Screw this.
Drop the iPod.
Pick up the gun.
Just kill him and be done with it.
But Shane has a plan. And despite her very worst and hungriest instinct, she holds still, standing there by the couch in the dark of her own home.
Petry continues to walk down those steps.
Feet. Legs. Torso.
And then his arm and hand and, in that hand—
His gun.
The same gun that shot Whitey in the head and came an angel’s whisper away from killing her dog.
The same gun that probably forced Chris out of his home and to a pear tree on a hill.
The gun that aims to kill me, too.
Soon as he reaches the bottom of the stairs, she speaks. She means for her words to sound confident and bad-ass but instead they come out a shaking, quaking croak—
“I knew you’d come—“
Muzzle flash, gunshot, the lamp on that rickety side pops and jumps to the floor with a crash—
Atlanta falls backwards, her buttbone nailing the wooden floor. She cries out and presses her back flat against the wood, sandwiched between the base of the couch and the legs of the coffee table.
This wasn’t supposed to happen. They were supposed to have a, a, a chat, a conversation—like they do in the movies where the good guy and the bad guy square off one last time and—
Petry fires again. A pillow ejects feathery guts into the air. Motes of white snow against the dark room. All Atlanta hears is the ringing in her ears. All she smells is that gun-stink, oil and powder and murderous intent.
“Wait!” she screams. “Stop! Stop!” Silence. No more shots. She cries, her words fast like machine gun chatter: “You-kill-me-you-don’t-get-the-files-please-stop.”
“You don’t have any files.” His voice slow and cold. No emotion. No anger.
“Do too!” It’s a childish response but all she can think to say. What’s next: You’re a nanny-doody-head?
“Those files don’t live at the gun club. Orly’s got ‘em elsewhere.”
She almost sobs but a hard surge of hot anger burns away the tears before they fall. “Wrong. I have proof you hurt Chris. Proof you and Orly been killing off Mexicans and gay kids and anybody else who gets in your way.” She’s stringing one lie after the other, now. “All your Neo-Nazi bully white-power bullshit. The money. The guns. Everything.”
Petry doesn’t say anything at first. She hears a faint scrape of a shoe—is he moving? Oh, Lord, where is he?
Then he says, “I don’t speak on most of those files. They can’t prove anything. Besides, I didn’t have anything to do with any of the other gay kids.”
“Just Chris.”
“You already know that.”
Keep talking keep talking keep talking.
“And Mexicans.”
“I do as I’m told. Mister Erickson has a very clear vision for the future of this town and any outsiders are not a part of that. That includes you, Atlanta.”
And suddenly there he is. Standing at her feet between the couch and the coffee table, gun up—
But she’s got a gun up, too. Shotgun up and out from under the couch. Shell loaded. Hammer back.
Boom.
The shotgun goes off and a framed photo—her seventh grade photo, gawky Atlants with big braces and tangle of red hair even meaner and wilder than it is now—drops off the wall as Petry darts left.
And then silence again. He’s somewhere on the other side of the couch. Single-barrel shotgun means she’s just used her one shot. Atlanta rests the iPod on her chest and breaks the barrel, fishing in her pocket for a shell—
All the shells leap free of their pocket prison and roll across the floor. Just out of reach. Her hand flails to find some, one, any.
“Just admit you don’t have the audio files,” Petry says from the far side of the room somewhere. The floor groans. He’s on the move again. Her hands feel for shells—but they’ve rolled past the coffee table and she can’t get any without moving and making herself vulnerable. “You can’t prove I killed any of them.”
“But you did.”
“Some of them. Others I just watched.”
“Fine. You’re right,” she says, voice so haggard and worn to the nub she barely recognizes it as her own. “I don’t have audio files, plural. I have one audio file. I thought this would go a little different but it does
n’t change the fact—I’ve been recording this, you stupid dick-fuck.” It feels good to say that. She imagines the look on his face—cracking that stony veneer, a kidney stone burned to dust by a surgical laser.
He says nothing in response.
She needs ammo.
She needs it now.
She stretches—muscles burning—fingers touching one of the green crimped shells—
Another gunshot. The floor shudders near her hand and she feels a cough of stinging splinters—she jerks her hand back like it got bit by a snake. Feels blood from the wood. And still she has no shell.
Petry’s up. No longer making a secret of his movements. Footsteps—thump thump thump. She shouldn’t have given away the plan, shouldn’t have gotten cocky—
Atlanta cries out, scrambles to stand, the iPod clattering to the floor—
There he is. In the dark. Flash of teeth. Gun up.
She swings the shotgun like a bat. Barrel in her hand, stock slamming against his shoulder. The Winchester stock breaks in half with a bony snap—suddenly Petry is lunging for her, no gun in his hand—did he drop it? No time to worry about that now—his hands close around her throat and drop her back to the floor between the couch and table, thumbs pressing tight against her windpipe, fingers crushing the blood-flow to her brain—
She’s been here before. A man on top of her. These hands are tighter, much tighter, but the feeling is still the same—heavier than the compressed density of a black hole, his knee between her knee, his breath hot in her nose and her mouth. This an act of anger, not of lust, but to her it matters little. (To-may-to, to-mah-to.) The shotgun is out of reach. Everything is out of reach. She’s alone. No dog. No mother. Chris is dead.
A deeper darkness bleeds in from the edges, a puddle of tar threatening to smother—
Atlanta starts to shut down. Stops struggling. Just let it go. It’s all her fault. She opened the door and the demon came in. What did she think would happen? Is this what she wanted all along? Does she deserve this?
Maybe she does.
But then Petry’s eyes flash, a shimmer of sudden hunger. Not at her. At something else.
He lets go of her neck. Reaches to her side, pulls up the iPod.
She has no idea if it’s still recording. Atlanta sees fireworks behind her eyes.
Oxygen rushes to her brain. Her skull a pulsing blood bag.
It brings renewed vigor. It carries fresh anger.
She gets her arm, loops it around the leg of the coffee table, and pulls it hard right toward her. The side of the table jams into his temple, and she thinks, Here’s my chance—
But it’s not enough. He takes the iPod in his hand and smashes it against the top of her head. Again she sees stars spinning dizzily in the dark of her eye as plastic sticks in her skin and pain kicks her like a horse. Everything collapses inward—moments shuddering, shuttered—
The iPod’s broken—
Her thoughts, broken
No longer recording—
His weight is off of her
Tries to stand
Can’t
Hand out, steadies her against the couch
It’s too late should’ve killed him when I had the chance
Her plans all broken
Here he comes
Footsteps
There—
Dark shadow dark eyes mean man in monster-skin
He’s got the gun
Fine kill me end it get it over with
She kneels
I’m all alone
Gun up, black eye staring her down, open mouth
Pointed at her
Shape, movement, shadow
Petry doesn’t see
Shane.
Shane.
Shane is there—mouth in a silent o, cheap-shit flea-market katana raised up over his head like an executioner’s axe—and he brings the weapon down on Petry’s wrist.
The blade breaks in half like a dry spaghetti noodle.
Petry howls—
The gun goes off.
Another photo—this one of Atlanta as a little girl standing knee-deep in a muddy hole with a doofy smile on her face—leaps from the wall.
The gun hangs limp in Petry’s hand. Atlanta rushes. Drives a knee into his balls. Gets her arm under his arm and twists—the gun drops to the floor and she hurried to pick it up.
The sound that comes out of her is like a rabid animal. Crazed and wild.
She staggers backward. Petry advanced—
She points the gun at him.
She sees in the dark his pale face. Shane, too, who backs away, hands out like he’s trying to futilely fend off a lion. Both have a similar look—hair normally out of place is askew, plastered to forehead and thrust up like the feathers of a car-struck crow.
Moments pass. Big moments, full of expectation. Could shoot him now. Could just end it. He broke in here. Nobody would know the wiser. A justified act.
And yet.
“Outside,” Atlanta says, panting.
Petry sneers but doesn’t move.
She shoots at his feet.
“I said, outside.”
She gestures with the gun.
Petry marches. Atlanta sniffs, blows a shock of red hair out of her eye. Tells Shane, “Get my shotgun. And a couple shells. Then follow me.”
* * *
Moon’s up. Big and bright over the corn. Petry creeps forward slow, and she tells him to keep his hands up and when he does she sees his wrist is wet with blood. A real sword might’ve done a lot worse, but blood is blood and right now that blood makes her happy.
He gets to the edge of the corn and she sees movement off to the right—one of the cat lady’s cats out hunting for mice or chipmunks. The cat mrows and darts between the stalks.
“Your turn to kneel,” she says. “But you gotta face me, first.”
Shane catches up, her gun with the busted stock in one hand, a pair of green .410 shells in the palm of his other.
Petry turns and kneels. He stares up at her with eyes that might as well be carpenter nails. Cold and dark and sharp.
Atlanta points the gun at his head.
“Whoa,” Shane says, the word as much a gasp as it is any other utterance. “Atlanta, what are you doing?”
“Finishing what he started.”
“You don’t have to do this.”
She swallows a hard knot. “I reckon I do.”
“Atlanta—“
“The recording is gone. He broke the iPod. We don’t have a dang thing.”
“The cloud,” Shane says. And she’s not sure what he means so she darts her gaze up—no clouds tonight, the sky is dappled with stars. But then he says it again: “The cloud! It’s saved on the cloud. I set that app to back up all recordings—off the device.”
Petry’s eyes narrow.
“So we have it?” she asks. A flutter of something eager and insane inside her gut.
Shane nods. “Yeah.”
“Oh. Good.” She eyes up Petry. Small dark man in dark clothes. A human stain. A hunk of coal ruining a puddle of ink. “You. Lay down. Chin against the dirt.”
The wind kicks up. The corn hisses and murmurs.
“Atlanta,” Shane says. Not understanding. That’s okay. He will.
She tells Shane, “The shotgun. Load it.”
“It’s broken.”
“Just the stock. The important part still works.”
He fumbles with the action—eventually breaking the barrel and clumsily thumbing a shell into the chamber.
“Close it,” she says.
“Atlanta—“
Bait Dog: An Atlanta Burns Novel Page 31