The Hunt

  Praise for Atlanta Burns:

  “[Atlanta Burns] is like Veronica Mars on Adderall. Chuck Wendig knocks this one out of the park as he so often does.” —Stephen Blackmoore, author of City of the Lost, Dead Things, and Broken Souls

  “Give Nancy Drew a shotgun and a kick-ass attitude and you get Atlanta Burns. Packed with action and fascinating characters, [Atlanta Burns] is a story that will captivate both teens and adults and have them clamoring for the next installment.” —Joelle Charbonneau, author of The Testing Trilogy and NEED

  Praise for Under the Empyrean Sky,

  Book One in the Heartland Trilogy:

  “This strong first installment rises above the usual dystopian fare thanks to Wendig’s knack for disturbing imagery and scorching prose.” —Publishers Weekly

  “Wendig brilliantly tackles the big stuff—class, economics, identity, love, and social change—in a fast-paced tale that never once loses its grip on pure storytelling excitement. Well-played, Wendig. Well-played.” —Libba Bray, author of The Gemma Doyle Trilogy, Going Bovine, Beauty Queens, and The Diviners Series

  “A tense dystopian tale made more strange and terrifying by its present-day implications.” —Booklist

  “Under the Empyrean Sky is like a super-charged, genetically modified hybrid of The Grapes of Wrath and Star Wars. Wendig delivers a thrilling, fast-paced adventure set in a future agri-dystopia. Fascinating world building, engaging and deep characters, smooth, electric prose.” —John Hornor Jacobs, author of the Twelve-Fingered Boy Trilogy and The Incorruptibles

  “A thoroughly imagined environmental nightmare with taut pacing and compelling characters that will leave readers eager for more.” —Kirkus Reviews

  “A lunatic, gene-spliced, biofueled thriller. Fear the corn.” —Tom Pollock, author of The Skyscraper Throne series

  “An imaginative, page-turning adventure that will delight science fiction fans and have them impatiently waiting for the next installment.” —Joelle Charbonneau, author of The Testing Trilogy and NEED

  Other Skyscape titles by Chuck Wendig:

  The Heartland Trilogy:

  Book 1, Under the Empyrean Sky

  Book 2, Blightborn

  Book 3, The Harvest

  Short story based on the world of the Heartland:

  The Wind Has Teeth Tonight: A Gwennie Story

  The Atlanta Burns Series:

  Book 1, Atlanta Burns

  Book 2, The Hunt

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2016 Chuck Wendig

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Skyscape, New York

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Skyscape are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781503953390

  ISBN-10: 1503953394

  Cover design by Cyanotype Book Architects

  To everyone who helps make it better for everybody else

  CONTENTS

  PART ONE: TRIGGER WARNING

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  PART TWO: LICENSE TO HUNT

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  PART THREE: LIKE A HOUSE ON FIRE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  PART FOUR: FRACK YOU

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  PART FIVE: FUTURE PROOF

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PART ONE:

  TRIGGER WARNING

  “They say it gets better,” Atlanta says into the camera. “That bullies come and bullies go and eventually everything sorts itself out. It doesn’t. That’s not how the world works, and it won’t ever work that way. Somebody’s always going to be there to hold you down against the ground and kick you while you’re there. I’m saying it doesn’t get better on its own. But I am saying you can make it better. You can fight back.”

  CHAPTER ONE

  Way the crying comes through the woods, Atlanta thinks, I’m too late. The sound of Ecky sobbing slides around the trees like a snake looking to eat, and Atlanta puts some pep in her step. Twigs snapping under her feet, and under Whitey’s feet, too—the big dunderheaded dog trots alongside her, with his one ear and one eye gone, his skull underneath his soft white skin dented in like a run-over soup can. He usually has a look on his face that’s just dumb as bricks: empty eye, mouth gaping wide, tongue out, love coming off him in waves. Now, though, he’s on the hunt. He knows something’s wrong.

  Atlanta’s got the squirrel gun cradled to her chest, barrel to the sky.

  She hears a voice, mean as a wasp. “Take a bite, Icky.”

  “I don’t wanna,” Ecky—Joey Eckhart—blubbers.

  Dangit. Late, late, too late. She had her phone on mute, missed the text because of the stupid vice principal. Ecky hired her, and heck if she’s not messing this up. Atlanta hurries through the brush—past trees twisted up with poison ivy, through spiderwebs and the spiders that sit in their centers—nearly tripping over a shattered boulder spongy with moss.

  “Bite it, or I stick you the way I stuck that frog.” The mean voice again. She knows it. Hank Crayley—known by most folks only as Crayley. A nobody. Just another bully. World’s full of the likes of him. Only three weeks into the school year, and already he’s been suspended for throwing a chair through a window. Probably his plan all along. He’s what Atlanta’s daddy would’ve called smart-stupid. Too stupid to do much good, but smart enough to do a world of bad.

  Ahead: colors. People colors. Shirt, shorts, skin.

  She raises the gun and steps into the clearing.

  Ecky stands there against the pale trunk of a paper birch. The makeup he wears is running, black, bleak streaks through muddy blush. His hair is usually a thing of controlled chaos—shaved on the sides with the top looking like a wave about to break on a beach. Now, though, it’s mashed flat. Sweat-slick.

  He’s got a lump of something dark skewered on the shaft of an arrow.

  A frog. A dead frog.

  Across from him, two assholes.

  Jed Carver: a short, stumpy little thumb of a guy. Big, puffy baby cheeks and a military buzz-cut so sharp and so precise it looks like someone used a ruler to get it that way.

  Hank Crayley: the opposite. Handsome in a way that Jed isn’t. Tall where Jed is short, lean where Jed is thick. Everything in Crayley’s face comes to a point: sharp nose, chin like a chisel, a stare on him like a pair of bull’s-eyes on a dartboard.

  Crayley has a compound bow nocked with an arrow. The bow is camouflage, but wrapped up in swatches of blaze orange tape.

  The bowstring is taut. The broadhead arrow points right at Ecky.

  Whitey’s shoulders go up. His head drops. A low growl comes fr
om his throat like the idling rumble of a truck engine.

  “Jesus shit,” Crayley says, seeing her.

  She brings up the gun. “Hey, Crayley. You ought to put that down.”

  “You,” he says.

  “Yup.”

  “Atlanta, you seem to be in everybody’s business these days.” He still keeps the bow drawn, the arrow ready to slip. “Don’t you take a break? Go do something else. We got this covered.”

  Atlanta gives a side-eye toward Ecky. “You good, Ecky?”

  Ecky takes a second, but nods slowly. Tears on pause. “I’m fine. Now.”

  “What’s that you’re holding?” she asks.

  “Frog.”

  “Frog?” she asks Crayley.

  “Lot of ’em in the swamp across the road,” Crayley answers with a half shrug. “I shoot frogs, turtles, sometimes a possum or a cat. I freeze ’em because they keep better.” He laughs like this is a joke, a funny joke, but then the laugh turns black and dies, because nobody’s laughing with him. Even Jed looks scared. “Icky here said he was hungry. Didn’t you, Ick?”

  “Sh . . . shut up.”

  “Let’s just get this done,” Atlanta says. “Put the bow and arrow down, Katniss Everdeen, else I pull this trigger.”

  Crayley hesitates. Jed says nothing, just reaches out and gives the other boy’s shoulder a gentle touch, as if to say, C’mon, let’s go.

  Thing is, Crayley’s got a whole lotta not much going on in his present or his future. His daddy owns a junkyard. His mama ran off with a propane salesman, or so the story goes. He’s in and out of suspensions, probably because he wants to be. Best you can say about Crayley is he’s got a fairly good-looking girlfriend, another go-nowhere type by the name of Patricia Mebs. Patty.

  So maybe it shouldn’t surprise that he’s not so keen to ease off on the bow and arrow. But what does surprise is when he pivots—

  —and points it at Atlanta.

  Whitey tenses. His growl deepens.

  “Easy,” she says to Whitey. To Crayley, “You sure you wanna do this?”

  “You think you’re a real bad-ass bitch. Some tough hick twat who shows up and starts pushing people around. Protecting a bunch of nerds and homos and freak-shows. You know that people are scared of you?” He thrusts out that sharp chin of his. “Not me. I hunt. My father hunts. That gun you got there, it’s worthless. A one-shot .410 is good for killing a squirrel, one squirrel, and not much else. But this?” He pinches one eye shut, and with the other one open, he stares down the long, lean shaft of the arrow, the point never wavering. “I’ll spear you right through the heart.” He lets the tip drift higher. “Or maybe your eye.” Then, he tilts it downward and to the side—right toward Whitey. “Or maybe I’ll stick one through that fugly-ass dog of yours. Whaddya say?”

  She sniffs. Her blood, hot as a coal furnace. Sweat drips along her brow—summer still has its teeth out, and she’s really feeling it now, like it’s biting down, chewing her up. Part of her thinks, Just put the gun down and go. He’s crazier than you. You have to stop messing around with people who are way more cuckoo-canary than you could ever be.

  But she keeps that gun pointed.

  Flies buzz. Mosquitoes take their taste.

  Atlanta sets her jaw, tries not to let her voice shake when she says, “Here’s what I say: I say you kill my dog, I shoot you, then maybe beat you to death with the gun. I say you shoot me, you probably kill me. But I’ll still get off a shot, and worse, Whitey will have your crotch for an early dinner. And my .410 is pointed right at that smirking mug of yours. Birdshot will make an awful mess of your face. Blind you in one eye. Blow off your lips. Maybe part of your nose. You got a pretty girlfriend. Patty, right? You think she’s gonna want to stick her tongue in that ruined mouth of yours? She’ll probably jump Jed’s bones instead.”

  Jed flinches when she says his name. He says to Crayley: “Hey, c’mon, man. We don’t have to do this. Let’s get outta here.”

  “Shut up, Jed.” Crayley’s got the doubt. She can see it creeping in like mold on bread. The arrow point trembles, dips. “Why you gotta be such a bitch, Atlanta Burns?”

  “Because bitches get shit done.”

  He lowers the arrow. Then there’s a moment when it’s like . . . he doesn’t seem to know what to do. A few seconds of embarrassment, maybe confusion, before he suddenly turns and bolts through the woods like a spooked whitetail. Jed, caught off guard, follows after—though not before tripping and almost breaking his ankle on a fallen branch. Jed yells, “Sorry!” and then he’s gone.

  Atlanta lets out the breath she didn’t realize she was holding. She yells after: “You mess with my friends again, I promise to end you, Hank Crayley!”

  Whitey goes over to Ecky, nuzzles the boy’s hip.

  “C’mon, you two,” Atlanta says, popping the shell out of the gun and pocketing it. “I’m getting bit up.”

  They come out by Bauman Road, and to get there they have to pull through some gnarly briars—Atlanta hops the ditch, then holds out her hand for Ecky. Ecky takes it, jumps, almost falls. Whitey sniffs around the ditch like a pig looking for a half-buried apple core.

  Just down the way is a four-door sedan the color of a pine tree: a Saturn, which apparently they don’t make anymore. Shane is down there, leaning against the hood, using his phone to—well, with Shane, who knows what. He might be playing Minecraft, but he’s just as likely to be looking up birdcalls or Mesopotamian history. She whistles, gives him a wave, then starts walking over.

  “Everything okay?” Shane says, looking up.

  “It’s cool,” she says. Then sighs and adds, “We were late. Almost too late.”

  Ecky shrugs, his makeup still in streaks. “It’s fine. Thanks.”

  “Here,” she says, pulling out some money. In her head she counts out a handful of twenties. “There’s three hundred back. I’ll keep two.”

  “You don’t have to—”

  “No, no, hey, that’s on me. You hired me. I wanted the money up front. I kinda messed up.” She rolls her eyes. “I had to stay after school to see Planet Wilson.” Wilson, the vice principal. “Planet” Wilson, not just because he’s fat but because he’s almost perfectly round, like a beach ball, or like a well-fed tick.

  Which reminds her—

  “Tick check,” she says, and starts patting herself down. Hands under her shirt, along her belt line, up the back of her neck, and through her hair. There—the feeling of a teeny-tiny-something crawling. Sure enough, one such bloodsucker. She drops it on the asphalt and grinds it with a boot until it’s just a smear. “I hate ticks. Sometimes I pee on ’em before flushing. Sometimes I burn ’em with fire, or cut ’em with a knife.”

  Ecky says, “How’s that different from what Crayley does to frogs?”

  “Last I checked, frogs don’t latch on and try to drink my blood like vampires. If they did, well.”

  “They’re just creatures. Doing what they have to.”

  “Are you trying to make me feel bad about killing a tick? You ever meet somebody with Lyme disease?” She shakes her head. “You know, never mind. You want ticks on you, that’s your business. You need a ride home?”

  “I’m good,” he says. A small shrug.

  He seems sad. Not just now sad, not just shook up, but something fundamental—it’s crept into him like a long damp.

  “Hey, sorry that punk wanted to kick your ass.” Or make you eat a frog or straight-up kill you. Though she’s not sure it ever would’ve gone that far—she doesn’t think Crayley’s an actual sociopath. “Just because you’re gay doesn’t mean—”

  “I’m not gay,” Ecky says.

  “Oh.” Atlanta blinks. “Sorry, I kinda thought—with the makeup and, y’know.” She twists her face like she’s trying to solve a math problem. “Hold up, are you one of those boys who wants to be a girl?”

  “Not really.”

  “A girl who wants to be a guy?”

  A shrug. “Not that, either.”

>   “So are you a boy or a girl or what?”

  Ecky looks irritated now. “File under or what.”

  “I don’t—” Atlanta feels like she’s got her feet caught in a boggy mire and she’s sinking fast, and she knows that struggling is how you sink deeper and yet here she is, struggling. Words line up and push one another out of her mouth like buffalo pushed over the edge of a cliff. “So you have both sets of parts?” Ecky’s face becomes grimmer. “No parts at all?”

  “It doesn’t matter what parts I have.”

  “It kinda matters. Like, when you wanna pee.”

  Shane, for his part, observes this back-and-forth with some combination of fascination and disgust. Like he’s watching a train hit a deer in slow motion.

  And Ecky, well, he’s got a fire stoked now—gone is the sadness, and in his (or, uh, her?) eyes, there’s a flash like light on coins at the bottom of a fountain. “It doesn’t matter when it comes to how I see myself. Or how I identify myself. But other people don’t like it. They like putting things in neat little drawers. It’s why they call me Icky. Because it’s gross to them. I’m gross to them. Does that bother you, Atlanta? Is it gross to you?”

  She takes a deep breath and chews on it for a second. “It confuses me, but that’s not your fault, it’s mine. Lots of things confuse me. Calculus. Manga. Snapchat. I mean, with Snapchat, you take a picture and then it’s gone? Like, it self-destructs? I don’t get it. But that makes me weird, not anyone else. Way I figure it, you have the right to be called whatever you want: boy, girl, something in between. You wanna be called a cat on a washing machine, then it’s my job to respect that and call you what you wanna be called.”

  Ecky seems suddenly unsettled. As if that wasn’t what he or she expected to hear. “Oh. Okay.” Then he says, again like he’s on the offensive, “You’re supposed to ask me about my pronoun.”

  “Which one’s a pronoun again? That the thing you’re supposed to not end a sentence with?”

  “That’s a preposition, and you just ended a sentence with a preposition.”

  “Oh.”