A Maidens Grave

teacher.
    “Melanie.”
    Mel-a-nee. She was the one that really pissed him off. When he’d found her looking out the window just after the shooting he’d grabbed her arm and she’d gone apeshit, totally freaked. He’d let her wander around ’cause he knew she wouldn’t cause any trouble. At first he’d thought it was funny, her being such a little mouse. Then it made him mad—that skittish light in her eyes that made him want to stamp his foot just to see her jump. It always pissed him off, seeing no spirit in a woman.
    This little bitch was the opposite of Pris. Oh, he’d like to see the two of them tangle. Pris’d pull out that Buck knife she kept down her bra sometimes, hot against her left tit, open it up, and come after her. Little blondie here’d take a dump in her pants. She seemed a hell of a lot younger than that Susan.
    Now, she interested him, Suze did. Good old Donna had her muddy eyes that told him nothing, and the younger teacher had her scared eyes that hid everything. But Miss Teenager here . . . well, her eyes said a lot and she didn’t care if he read it. He figured that she was smarter than the other two put together.
    And ballsier.
    Like Pris, he thought, with approval. “Susan,” Handy said slowly. “I like you. You’ve got spunk. You don’tknow what the fuck I’m saying. But I like you.” To the older teacher he said, “Tell her that.”
    After a pause Donna gestured with her hands.
    Susan gave him a drop-dead look and responded.
    “What’d she say?” Handy barked.
    “She said to please let the little girls go.”
    Handy grabbed the woman’s hair and pulled hard. More little bird screeches. Melanie shook her head, tears streaming. “What the fuck did she say?”
    “She said, ‘Go to hell.’ ”
    He pulled her hair harder; tufts of the dyed strands popped from her skull. She whined in pain. “She said,” Donna gasped, “she said, ‘You’re an asshole.’ ”
    Handy laughed hard and shoved the teacher to the ground.
    “Please,” she called. “Let them go, the girls. Keep me. What does it matter if you have one hostage or six?”
    “Because, you stupid cunt, I can shoot a couple of ’em and still have some left over.”
    She gasped and turned away quickly, as if she’d just walked into a room and found a naked man leering at her.
    Handy walked to Melanie. “You think I’m an asshole too?”
    The other teacher started to move her hands but Melanie responded before she’d gotten the question out.
    “What’d she say?”
    “She said, ‘Why do you want to hurt us, Brutus? We didn’t hurt you.’ ”
    “Brutus?”
    “That’s what she calls you.”
    Brutus. Sounded familiar but he couldn’t remember where he’d heard it. He frowned slightly. “Tell her she knows the fucking answer to that question.” As he walked out the doorway Handy called, “Hey, Sonny, I’m learning sign language. Lemme show you.”
    Bonner looked up.
    Handy extended his middle finger. The three men laughed and Handy and Wilcox started down the corridor into the back of the slaughterhouse. When they were exploring the maze of hallways and butcher and processing rooms Handy asked Wilcox, “Think he’ll behave?”
    “Sonny? Fuck, I guess. Any other time he’d be on ’em like a rooster. But there ain’t nothing like having a hundred armed cops outside your door to keep a pecker limp. What the fuck d’they do here?” Wilcox was gazing at the machinery, the long tables, gears and governors and belts.
    “Whatta you think?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “It’s a fucking slaughterhouse.”
    “ ‘Processing,’ that’s what it means?”
    “Shoot ’em and gut ’em. Yeah. Processing.”
    Wilcox pointed to an old machine. “What’s that?”
    Handy walked over and looked at it. He grinned. “Shit. It’s a old steam engine. Hell, lookit.”
    “What’d they use that for here?”
    “See,” Handy explained, “this is why the world’s got itself into deep shit. Back then, see, that was a turbine.” He pointed to an old rusted spine covered with rotting fan blades. “That was how things worked. It went around and did things. That was the steam age and it was like the gas age too. Then we got into the electric age and you couldn’t see what things did too well. Like you can see steam and fire but you can’t see electricity doing anything. That’s what got us into World War Two. Now we’re in the electronic age. It’s computers and everything and it’s fucking