A Maidens Grave

chance to communicate with their captors and improve the Stockholming between them. But sometimes small deviations from what they expected set off HTs. The inhaler was one deviation. How would Handy feel about a second? He asked Angie’s opinion.
    “He may be a sociopath,” she said after a moment. “But he hasn’t had any temper tantrums or emotional outbursts, has he?”
    “No. He’s been pretty cool.”
    In fact he’d been frighteningly calm.
    “Sure,” Angie said, “add them.”
    “Dean, Charlie,” Potter said, “come here a minute.” The sheriff and the captain huddled. “Who’re the best rifle shots you’ve got?”
    “That’d be Sammy Bullock and—what do you think? Chris Felling? That’s Christine. I’d say she’s better’n Sammy. Dean?”
    “If I was a squirrel sitting four hundred yards away from Chrissy and I saw her shoulder her piece, I wouldn’t even bother to run. I’d just kiss my be-hind goodbye.”
    Potter wiped his glasses. “Have her load and lock and get a spotter with glasses to keep a watch on the door and windows. If it looks like Handy or one of the others is about to shoot, she’s green-lighted to fire. But she’s to aim for the doorjamb or windowsill.”
    “I thought you said there’d be no warning shots,” Budd said.
    “That’s the rule,” Potter said sagely. “And it’s absolutely true—unless there’s an exception to it.”
    “Oh.”
    “Go on and take care of that, Dean.”
    “Yessir.” The sheriff hurried away, crouching.
    Potter returned to Oates. “Okay, Trooper. Ready?”
    Frances said to the young man, “Can I say ‘Good luck’?”
    “Please do,” Oates said earnestly. Budd patted him on his Kevlared shoulder.
     
    Melanie Charrol knew many Bible-school stories.
    The lives of the Deaf used to be tied closely with religion, and many of them still were. The poor lambs of God . . . pat them on the head and force them to learn enough speech to struggle through catechism and Eucharist and confession (always among themselves of course so they didn’t embarrass the hearing congregation). Abbé de l’Epée, goodhearted and brilliant though he was, created French Sign Language primarily to make sure his charges’ souls could enter heaven.
    And of course vows of silence by monks and nuns, adopting the “affliction” of the unfortunate as penance. (Maybe thinking that they could hear God’s voice all the better though Melanie could have told them it didn’t work worth squat.)
    She leaned against the tile walls of the killing room, as horrible a part of the Outside as ever existed. Mrs. Harstrawn lay on her side, ten feet away, staring at the wall. No tears any longer—she was cried out, dry, empty. The woman blinked, she breathed but she might as well have been in a coma. Melanie rose and lifted her leg away from a pool of black water encrusted with green scum and the splintered bodies of a thousand insects.
    Religion.
    Melanie hugged the twins, feeling their delicate spines through identical powder-blue cowgirl blouses. She sat down beside them, thinking of some story she’d heard in Sunday school. It was about early Christians in ancient Rome, awaiting martyrdom in the Colosseum. They had, of course, refused to deny their faith. Men and women, children, happily praying on their knees while the centurions came for them. The story was ridiculous, the product of a simple-minded textbook writer, and it seemed inexcusable to adult Melanie Charrol that anyone would include it in a children’s book. Yet like the cheapestmelodrama the story had wrenched her heart then, at age eight or nine. And it wrenched her heart still.
    Staring at the distant light, losing herself in the pulsing meditation of the yellow bulb, growing, shrinking, growing, shrinking, seeing the light turn into Susan’s face, then into a beautiful young woman’s body torn apart by lions’ yellow claws.
    Eight gray birds, sitting in dark  . . .
    But no, it’s just seven birds now.
    Was Jocylyn about to die too? Melanie peeked around the corner, seeing the girl standing at a window. She was sobbing, shaking her head. Stoat had her by the arm. They stood near the partially open door.
    Motion nearby. She turned her head—the automatic reaction of a deaf person to the movement of gesturing hands. Kielle had closed her eyes. Melanie watched her hands move in a repetitive pattern, confused about the girl’s message until she realized that she was summoning Wolverine,