A Maidens Grave

to Beverly, “It’s hard, honey, but please be quiet.”
    “Scared, scared.”
    “I know. But it’ll be all—”
    Oh, my God. Melanie’s eyes went wide and her signing hands stopped in midword as she looked across the room.
    Kielle was holding the knife in front of her, an old hook-bladed knife. That’s what she’d seen underneath a pile of trash; that’s what she’d been digging out.
    Melanie shuddered. “No!” she signed. “Put it back.”
    Kielle had murder in her gray eyes. She slipped the weapon into her pocket. “I’m going to kill Mr. Sinister. You can’t stop me!” Her hands slashed the air in front of her as if she were already stabbing him.
    “No! Can’t do it that way!”
    “I’m Jubilee! He can’t stop me!”
    “That’s character in comic book,” Melanie’s staccato hands shot out. “Not real!”
    Kielle ignored her. “Jubilation Lee! I’m going to blow him apart with plasmoids! He’s going to die. No one can stop me!” She crawled through the door and disappeared through the shower of water tumbling from the ceiling.
     
    The huge main room of the Webber & Stoltz slaughterhouse, in the front portion of which were clustered the three convicts, had been a series of holding pens and walkways for the beasts that had died here. The space was now used for storing slaughterhouse equipment—butcher blocks, one- and three-bay decapitation guillotines, gutting machines, grinders, huge rendering vats.
    It was into this gruesome warehouse that Kielle disappeared, intending, it seemed, to circle around to the front wall, where the men lounged in front of the TV.
    No . . . .
    Melanie half-rose, looked at Bear—the only one of the three with a clear view of the killing room—and froze. He wasn’t looking their way but he had only to turn his greasy head inches to see them. In a panic she looked over the main room. Caught a glimpse of Kielle’s blond hair vanishing behind a column.
    Melanie eased closer to the doorway, still crouching. Brutus was at the window, beside Shannon, looking out. Bear started to glance toward the room but turned back to Stoat, who was laughing at something. Bear, stroking the shotgun he held, reared back and laughed, closing his eyes.
    Now. Do it.
    I can’t.
    Do it, while he can’t see you.
    A deep breath. Now. Melanie slipped out of the room and crawled under a rotting walkway, indented and bowed from a million hoofprints. She paused, looking through the cascade of tumbling water. Kielle . . . Where are you? You think you can stab him and just vanish? You and your damn comic books!
    She slipped through the water—it was freezing coldand slimy. Shivering in disgust, she made her way into the cavernous room.
    What would the girl do? Circle around, she supposed, come up behind him, stab him in the back. Past the machinery, rusting scraps of metal and rotting wood. Piles of chains and meat hooks, stained with blood and barbed with sharp bits of dried flesh. The vats were disgusting. From them emanated a sickening smell and Melanie couldn’t rid her mind of the image of animals sinking down into simmering fat and fluid. She felt her gorge rising, started to retch.
    No! Be quiet! The least sound’ll tell them you’re here.
    She struggled to control herself, dropping to her knees to breathe the cool moist air from the floor.
    Glancing under the legs of a large guillotine, its angular blade rusty and pitted, Melanie saw the little girl’s shadow across the room as she scrambled from one column to another.
    Melanie started forward quickly. And got only two feet before she felt the numbing thud of her shoulder running into a piece of steel pipe, six feet long, resting against a column. It began a slow fall to the floor.
    No!
    Melanie flung her arms around the pipe. It must have weighed a hundred pounds.
    I can’t hold it, can’t stop it!
    The pipe fell faster, pulling her after it. Just as her grip was about to go she dropped to the floor, rolled under the rusty metal, and took the impact of it on her tensed stomach muscles. She gasped at the pain that surged through her body, praying that the wind and the cascade of water made enough noise to cover the grunting from her throat. She lay stunned for a long moment.
    Finally she managed to ease out from underneath the pipe and roll it to the floor—silently, she hoped.
    Oh, Kielle, where are you? Don’t you understand? You can’t kill them all. They’ll find us, they’ll kill us. Or Bear’ll take