Melanie signed to them that they wouldn't be sick. Everything would be fine. She scooted over beside Emily, who was tearfully examining a rip in her dress. "You and I'll go shopping next week," Melanie signed. "Buy you new one."
And that was when De l'Epée whispered in her useless ear. "The gas can," he said, and vanished immediately.
Melanie felt the chill run down her back. The gas can, yes. She turned her head. It sat beside her, red and yellow, a big two-gallon one. She eased toward it, snapped closed the cover and the pressure hole cap. Then looked around the killing room for the other thing she'd need.
There, yes.
Melanie slid around to the front of the room, examined the back of the slaughterhouse. There were two doors – she could just make them out in the dimness. Which one led to the river? she wondered. She happened to glance down at the floor, where she'd written the messages in the dust about the hand-shape game. Squinting, she looked at the floor in front of each door – there was much less dust in front of the left. That's it – the river breeze blows through that one and has swept away the dust. Enough wind for there to be, just possibly, a window or door open far enough for a little girl to scoot through.
Beverly choked and started a crying fit. She lay on her side, struggling for breath. The inhaler hadn't done her much good. Bear frowned and looked at her, called something.
Shit. Melanie signed 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 amp; 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 hoof-prints. 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 cold and 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 us into the back of the factory. Haven't you seen his eyes? Don't you know what he wants? No, you probably don't. You don't have a clue -
She risked a look toward the front of the room. The attention of the men was mostly turned toward the TV. Occasionally Bear glanced at the killing room but didn't seem to notice that two of the captives were missing.
Glancing again beneath the legs of the machinery, Melanie caught a glimpse of blond hair. There she was, Kielle, making her way inexorably toward the three men near the window. Crawling, a smile on her face. She probably did think she could kill all three.
Struggling to catch her breath from the blow of the pipe, Melanie scrabbled down a corridor, hid behind a rusted column. She turned the corner and saw the blond girl, only twenty or thirty feet from Brutus, whose back was to her as he continued to gaze out the window. His hand casually gripping Shannon's collar. If any one of the three men had stood and walked toward the girl, they'd only have to look down over one of the large vats, which lay on its side, to see her.
Kielle was tensing. About to leap over the vat and charge Brutus.
Melanie thought, Should I just let her do it? What is the worst that would happen? She'd get a few feet toward them, Bear would see her, take the knife away. They'd slap her once or twice, shove her back into the killing room.
Why should I risk my life? Risk Bear's hands on me? Risk Brutus's eyes?
But then Melanie saw Susan. Saw the dot appearing on her back and the puff of black hair, like smoke, rise up.
She saw Bear looking over Emily's boyish body, grinning.
Shit.
Melanie pulled her black shoes off, pushed them under a metal table. She started to sprint. Flat out, down the narrow corridor, dodging overhanging hunks of metal and rods and pipes, leaping over a piece of butcher block.
Just as Kielle stood and reached for the top of the vat Melanie tackled her. One hand around her stomach, the other around her mouth. They went down hard and knocked into the hinged lid of a vat, which slammed closed.
"No!" the little girl signed. "Let me -"
Melanie did something she'd never in her life done: drew back her open palm and aimed directly at the girl's cheek. Kielle's eyes went wide. The teacher lowered her hand and glanced through the crack between two overturned vats. Brutus had turned, looking in their direction. Stoat was shrugging. "Wind," she saw him say. Unsmiling Bear was on his feet, carrying the shotgun, walking toward them.