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Back Atlanta Burns Save as PDF
Chapters (50)
  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright Page
  3. Dedication Page
  4. CONTENTS
  5. PART ONE: SHOTGUN GRAVY
  6. Sometimes she wakes…
  7. CHAPTER ONE
  8. CHAPTER TWO
  9. CHAPTER THREE
  10. CHAPTER FOUR
  11. CHAPTER FIVE
  12. CHAPTER SIX
  13. CHAPTER SEVEN
  14. CHAPTER EIGHT
  15. CHAPTER NINE
  16. CHAPTER TEN
  17. CHAPTER ELEVEN
  18. PART TWO: BAIT DOG
  19. CHAPTER TWELVE
  20. CHAPTER THIRTEEN
  21. CHAPTER FOURTEEN
  22. CHAPTER FIFTEEN
  23. CHAPTER SIXTEEN
  24. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
  25. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
  26. CHAPTER NINETEEN
  27. CHAPTER TWENTY
  28. PART THREE: THE FARM
  29. CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
  30. CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
  31. CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
  32. CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
  33. CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
  34. CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
  35. CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
  36. CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
  37. PART FOUR: KISSING FIRE
  38. CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
  39. CHAPTER THIRTY
  40. CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
  41. CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
  42. CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
  43. PART FIVE: BAIT GIRL
  44. CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
  45. CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
  46. CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
  47. CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
  48. EPILOGUE: THE MESSAGE
  49. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  50. ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Gun’s loaded with half-ounce birdshot. Six BBs in each crimped shell. The .410 is a squirrel gun. Doesn’t blow a squirrel apart, and it doesn’t blow apart Petry’s hand, either. That’s not to say it’s pretty, though the range is close and the birdshot stays in a tight pattern. The back of his hand blooms red; the skin flays, opens up like a torn bag of chips. His hands curl inward. Blood spatters the earth, gleaming in the light from the moon and stars.

Petry screams. Rolls onto his side. Fetal position. The hand may not be ruined. But it’ll never again work the way a hand is supposed to.

Like Bodie’s hand, she thinks.

Hammer back.

“Now you run,” she says. “You run or the next shot opens your neck.”

Petry tries to stand—foolishly plants his hand, his shot hand, on the ground in a panic and wails again as he falls over. But somehow he manages to get his legs up under him and spring forward.

Sure enough, he runs. Down the driveway. Toward the road. There’s no car here—must be parked somewhere else, somewhere on the road. Or maybe he walked. It doesn’t matter.

Atlanta breathes in the warm air. Fireflies orbit one another.

She collapses, crying. Shane wraps his arms around her, and he cries, too.

EPILOGUE: THE MESSAGE

EPILOGUE: THE MESSAGE

“Is this how I do this?” she asks. “I just point the—”

Shane comes over, tilts the little laptop up. With his finger he taps a tiny pinhole over the screen. “Look here when you talk.”

“That’s a camera?”

“That’s a camera.”

“Ain’t technology grand?”

He smiles. “Yep.”

Sun comes in through the window, illuminating a plate of cookies on the bed. Cookies Mama made—meaning, cookies you don’t want to eat ’less you plan on chipping a tooth. Mama’s been baking a lot recently. Nervous habit. It’s late summer and they’re going to lose the house, or so she thinks. A house that now has a few bullet holes hanging, plus two broken picture frames. That was a tough one to explain. Atlanta admitted they were bullet holes, but lied about how they got there. Said they were from when a coon got into the house. Arlene was either too dumb to figure differently or too smart to look any deeper than that.

She said it didn’t matter anyway, what with the foreclosure coming. The little money she has left from Jenny that didn’t go to the vet bill won’t be but a Band-Aid on a bullet wound.

But Atlanta has a recording from a couple months back that suggests the foreclosure might not come after all. Soon as Orly Erickson has a listen.