A Maidens Grave

sentence The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog, written about three hundred times. Shift-F3. He switched screens to the genericcop-on-a-stakeout story, which Silbert had filed about three years ago and had called up tonight as soon as they got the computer booted up. The story that prick Arthur Potter had admired.
    The two men slipped into the gully behind the command van and hurried through the night in the direction that Dan Tremain and his silent Hostage Rescue Unit had gone.
     
    The gas can.
    This was the first thing in her thoughts as she opened her eyes and looked around the killing room.
    Emily, on her knees, playing good Christian nurse, brushed the blood away from Melanie’s eye. It was swollen, though not closed. The girl ripped the hem of her precious Laura Ashley dress and wiped more of the blood away.
    Melanie lay still, as the terrible pain in her head lessened and her vision improved. One of the twins, Suzie (she thought it was Suzie), brushed her hair with her tiny, perfect fingers.
    The gas can. There it was.
    Finally Melanie sat up and crawled over to Beverly.
    “How are you?” she asked the girl.
    Sweat had plastered Beverly’s blond Dutch-boy hair to her face. She nodded, though her chest continued to rise and fall alarmingly. She used the inhaler again. Melanie had never seen her this sick. The device seemed to be having no effect.
    Mrs. Harstrawn still lay on the floor, on her back. She’d been crying again but was now calm. Melanie gently worked the woman’s colorful sweater over her shoulders. She muttered some words. Melanie thought she said, “Don’t. I’m cold.”
    “I have to,” Melanie signed. Her fingers danced in front of the woman’s face but she didn’t see the message.
    A minute later Mrs. Harstrawn’s sweater was off. Melanie looked around and pitched it casually against the wall of the killing room, near the place where the arched opening met the floor toward the rear of the slaughterhouse. Then she scooted forward until she could look intothe main room. Bear glanced toward them occasionally but the men were concentrating on the television. Melanie looked at the twins and in faint gestures signed to them, “Go over to gas can.”
    They looked uneasily at each other, their heads moving identically.
    “Do it. Now!” Her signs were urgent—sharp, compact stabs of her fingers.
    They rose and crawled slowly toward the red-and-yellow can.
    When Suzie looked at her she told the girl to pick up the sweater. Mrs. Harstrawn’s mother in Topeka had knitted it. The colors were red and white and blue, very visible—bad news for now; good news once the girls got outside. But Suzie wasn’t moving. Melanie repeated the command. There was no time for caution, she explained. “Move! Now!”
    Why is she hesitating? She’s just staring at me.
    No, not at me.  . . .
    Then the shadow fell over her.
    She gasped as Brutus took her by the shoulders and spun her around.
    “You think . . . a fucking hero, do you? Why, I’ve shot people for a lot less’n what you did.”
    She thought for a terrible moment that Brutus could actually read her mind, had an animal’s sixth sense, and knew what she was planning with the gas can. But then she understood he was talking about her pitching Kielle out the door. Maybe being pistol-whipped wasn’t enough punishment. He pulled his gun and rested it against her head.
    Filled with a burst of rage that shocked her, she pushed the gun aside, stood, and walked into the main room of the plant, feeling the vibrations of his shouts on her back. She ignored him and continued to the oil drum that served as a table. Bear rose and stepped toward her but she ignored him too. She picked up the pen and paper and returned to the killing room.
    She wrote: You work real hard to prove you’re a bad guy, don’t you? Thrust it in his face.
    Brutus laughed. He ripped the pad from her hands,tossed it on the floor. He studied her for a long, long moment, then, eerily calm, he said, “ . . . you and me chew the fat. I don’t talk much . . . not many people I can talk to. But you I can. Why’s that? . . . you can’t talk back, I guess. It’s good when a woman don’t talk back. Pris, she’s got a mind of her own . . . . I approve of that. But sometimes she’s off someplace else, you know? . . . I just don’t get what she’s saying. You, I look into your face and I can understand you. You seem like a little mouse, but maybe