Long Live the Queen Read online

  She always shaved her legs. Almost every day. Skiing and tennis were the main reasons. It would just figure that the one day she forgot, she would break her leg, and have to go to the hospital, and everyone would look at it in disgust. Hell, she was pretty god-damn disgusted.

  There could be people looking at her right now. Or animals, or—when it was dark, she saw eyes. Eyes, everywhere. Looking at her, laughing—no! If she didn’t look, she wouldn’t have to see them.

  Jesus, she really couldn’t take another night. Especially if it rained again. She’d spent last night pressed into a rock hollow, soaking wet from the storm, trembling with fear and cold, too afraid to close her eyes, but even more afraid to look out at the forest—and see things, so she spent hours staring down at her good hand, clenched weakly around a rock.

  People had gone through worse. Much worse. Somehow, she had to keep—it would be dark again soon. Christ. If she had to spend another endless—it was so much easier, when she passed out.

  Unfortunately, she couldn’t count on it.

  NOTHING MADE SENSE anymore. She was in the woods, and it was morning, or afternoon, or—her hand hurt. Her hand hurt a lot. And her knee. And her face—she stumbled against a tree, more pain jarring through her.

  “God-damn it,” she said weakly. “God-damn you.”

  She took one more step—and fell, landing heavily on the ground. She stayed there, groaning, the sound like a creaky door. An old creaky door.

  Finally—ten minutes? ten hours?—she rolled onto her back. It was getting dark. Again. How many nights had she been out here? Four? Five? More? It was too hard to keep track.

  She let her head fall to the right and looked around. Dirt. Rocks. Bushes. Brambly stuff with weird berries. Pine needles. Trees. Scary leaf growths, climbing up all over things, like philodendrons gone wild or something. Creepy-looking.

  Anything she tried to eat—like the berries—would probably poison her. Not that she was hungry. Exactly. But, she was so damned tired. Ten steps was a good hour’s work. Pretty soon, she was going to be too weak to move at all.

  She rolled her neck enough to look at the sky. Stupid, darkening sky. Stupid stars. Stupid everything.

  “Find me!” she yelled, hurting her throat. “Jerks!”

  Who did she want to find her? The guy? The god-damn incompetent FBI? Anyone. Just so she could see a person, hear a voice. Even a cruel voice. It didn’t matter what the person did to her—good or bad—just as long as it was a person.

  It was dark now, and the animal noises were starting. She felt something crawl over her and shuddered, knocking it off. A beetle or something. What if there were more? She moved, painfully, to a safer place, not seeing anything except trees, and rocks, and—lights. She saw lights. Oh, God, she was saved. Thank God.

  She limped towards them, barely using her stick, forgetting about the pain. Lights. She was actually safe. Actually, finally safe. She limped as fast as she could, branches slapping her across the face, stumbling over uneven ground. Then, suddenly, the lights disappeared. She stopped, horrified, trying to find them. Where the hell had they gone? She turned in all directions, squinting at black empty woods, not seeing anything.

  “Come back, damn you!” she shouted. “Come back!”

  But, it was dark—everywhere—and she fell down, bursting into weak tears.

  She was still crying when she heard running. Crashing, racing footsteps. People coming to save her, or hurt her, or—she sat up, trying to see who it was.

  “Hey, over here!” she said. “I’m over here!”

  But now, the footsteps seemed to be fading.

  “Don’t leave me!” she said. “I’m over here!”

  The woods were silent.

  “Oh, God.” She slumped down, holding her ribcage with her good hand. Yelling hurt.

  She was losing it. She was very definitely losing it. Sometimes, she was sure people were talking to her; other times, she heard music. Loud, pounding music. She hated to look up at all anymore, because she knew that she was going to see things. Flowers. Lots of flowers. People, or houses, or—mostly, it was people. Specific people. Him. Her family. Josh. Once, it was a bunch of doctors and nurses wearing scrubs, and she would have believed it, but they looked like people she had watched on television. And even if it was them, they wouldn’t be out in the woods; they lived in a city. Besides, she was pretty sure that they were actors, that they weren’t even real.

  Nothing seemed real.

  IN THE MORNING, she was too weak to stand up, so she just crawled. She would reach out with her left hand, pull, then push with her right leg. Rest. Cry. Then, reach, pull, push. Sometimes, she made it a couple of feet; more often, just inches. Christ, how long was she going to be able to go on?

  Reach, pull, push. Each time, it was harder—knowing how much it was going to hurt, and how tired it was going to make her. Exhaustion and pain. She couldn’t even remember the mine shaft anymore. Just these god-damn woods. Being covered with dirt and sticky perspiration, crying whether she wanted to or not. She felt so—confused. Like her mind was completely gone. Reach, pull, push, the trees above her swirling around. Swirling, and spinning, and—she came upon the backyard so suddenly that it was almost an anticlimax.

  There was a man, with his back to her, chopping wood. With an ax. Terrific. What if, after all this, she had found her way back to the kidnappers’ house, and—maybe she should—he must have sensed something, because he turned, and she saw that it was a boy, not a man, probably about fifteen.

  His eyes widened, and he took a step back, hanging onto the ax, looking as scared as she felt.

  Automatically, she lifted her hand to straighten her hair. Or, rather, the thick tangled clumps that had once been her hair. She did her best to smile at him, not sure if she remembered how.

  “I—” Her throat felt as if it were full of crushed glass. “Is that your house?” she asked, managing a feeble point from her position on the ground.

  He nodded, his eyes huge.

  “Are your parents home?” she asked.

  He shook his head.

  Naturally. “I, uh—” God, she was tired. So tired, she couldn’t think. “Do you have a telephone?”

  “Well—yeah,” he said, looking at her uneasily.

  “Good.” She rubbed her forehead, her brain feeling as heavy and exhausted as the rest of her. “That’s—good.”

  “W-were y’lost or something?” the boy asked, still keeping his distance. He had an accent. A Southern accent.

  Or something. She nodded. “Can you do me a favor and call the police? Tell them—” Tell them what? “I don’t know. Tell them someone got shot, and to send every car they can.”

  “Someone shot you?” the boy said.

  Okay, more like fourteen. “That’s to make them come fast,” she said, hearing the same patient tone she used when her brothers were being particularly dense. “Ask them to send an ambulance, too.”

  He nodded, not moving.

  “Go on now,” she said, “okay?”

  He hesitated. “Shouldn’t I help you—”

  “I’ll catch up,” she said.

  He turned to go to the house, his eyes still wide.

  “Don’t run with an ax in your hand,” she said automatically.

  He nodded, put the ax down, and ran to the house.

  Fifty or sixty feet. She could make it fifty or sixty feet, even if it was uphill. Stick or no stick, she could damn well hop it. Under the circumstances.

  Using a log, she pushed herself up onto her right foot, arms and legs shaking. Safe. She was actually—she wasn’t safe yet. Now, when she thought about it, was the exact kind of moment when he would step out of the woods, give her that scary half-grin, and—she limped over to the house, scrambling up the back steps, afraid to look behind her in case he and the others were there. Close to absolute panic, she banged on the screen door with her fist, tumbling inside as the boy opened it.

  “Please lock it,” she said
, out of breath. “Lock it!”

  He did so, looking scared.

  “Are the police coming?” she asked, her heart jumping around, closer to hysteria than she had been during this entire nightmare.

  He nodded, clutching a phone. “I-is someone after you?”

  Thirteen. “I think so, yeah.” She shivered, crouching down so no one would be able to see her from the yard. “I mean—I don’t know. I don’t—I mean, I think—” If they were that close, they would have gotten her already, not waited for her to go inside a house. Maybe she was safe. She might actually be—she had to call her parents. And Josh. And—but, she needed a couple of seconds to think, first. To remember what she—“Where are we?” she asked.

  “Well—” He looked at her uncertainly. “This, um, is the kitchen.”

  Maybe he was a very tall and well-built twelve year old. Who had an accent. “Are we someplace in the South?” she asked.

  He nodded, apparently too unnerved by all of this to speak.

  Jesus. She reached up to grab the edge of a marble counter, trying to pull herself to her feet. But, even her good leg didn’t want to work so she sank back down to the floor, very tempted to put her head on her arms, and either sob—or sleep. “Where in the South? What state?”

  “Uh, Georgia,” he said.

  Georgia. Okay. She had been to Georgia before, and—it was comforting to have been to Georgia. To know where it was. It also explained why she hadn’t frozen to death. And the reddish dirt. “What day is it?” she asked.

  “Tuesday,” he said, sounding very uneasy.

  Tuesday. That didn’t help much. Was it May? June? Did she even care? She leaned her head back against a wooden cupboard door and looked around, seeing that she was, indeed, in a kitchen. With a stove, and a refrigerator with children’s drawings stuck to it, and nice clean linoleum, and—a normal, everyday kitchen.

  Jesus. A kitchen. In someone’s honest-to-God house.

  “Is it okay if I use your phone?” she asked.

  He nodded, holding it out, and she reached up to take it from him, shocked to see how filthy her hand was, the skin covered with deep scratches and scrapes, a couple of the nails actually torn off. “I, um—” She stared at the grime, and blood, then shook her head and focused on the keypad, trying to remember her number—and how to dial. It took her several attempts—her fingers were clumsy, and then, she realized that she was trying to call the house in Massachusetts —which wasn’t going to help much.

  But, she finally managed to punch the right numbers in, and when the phone rang on the other end, and the switchboard answered, “White House,” she knew that everything really was going to be all right.

  15

  SHERIFFS, POLICE OFFICERS, National Guard soldiers. Cars and SUVs everywhere. The boy, standing awkwardly in the kitchen, giving her a glass of water, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. The boy’s mother—and a little sister—rushing into the house from the grocery store, alarmed by all of the cars, maybe even more startled by the reason that they were there. And Meg, feeling a strange combination of exhaustion and self-consciousness, was too shy to answer questions with more than small yes’s or no’s, just waiting for the ambulance and hanging on to the open line to the White House, as Preston—with God knew how many people listening in—said calming, comforting things to her—including telling her that her brothers and Josh were safe. Her parents had left immediately, on their way to meet her somewhere, Meg too tired to pursue the logistics.

  When the ambulance came, she was bundled onto a gurney and taken outside, surrounded by one of the tightest cordons of security she had ever seen. At least the press didn’t seem to have shown up yet, although she wasn’t completely sure, because it was so crowded. There seemed to be both doctors, and men with guns, inside the ambulance, and being surrounded by a group of strange men in a speeding vehicle was so much like actually being kidnapped, that she couldn’t help being afraid. They were all talking at once, and she knew one of them had told her where they were going, but she couldn’t remember what he had said. Either way, she kept a small, vague smile on, so she wouldn’t have to say anything.

  Someone put something into her arm—a needle?—which hurt, but she was too tired to protest, too tired to answer all the voices and questions, too tired to watch the IV being set up, or the lights flashing in her eyes. They were doing something to her leg, an air splint ballooning around it, and she woke herself up to watch.

  “Did they wreck it up for skiing?” she asked, her voice sounding pathetic even to her. Small, weak. Lethargic. “My knee, I mean.”

  “You’re going to be fine,” one of the men said, his voice a little bit too soothing.

  She nodded, too shy to ask where they were going again, letting her eyes close. Then, they did something to her hand which hurt so much that she had to cry, trying to turn her face away, so they wouldn’t see. Voices apologized, and she felt a hand on her forehead, brushing her hair back. She managed another little smile, acutely embarrassed by all of this.

  She happened to meet eyes with a soldier to her right—a young man, not much older than she was—and he smiled the same sort of scared smile at her. She smiled back, relieved to see that someone else was feeling almost as shaky and nervous as she was.

  “I—I look so terrible,” she said.

  “You look great,” he said, everyone else seeming to agree with him.

  Nice to be humored. She had a pretty good idea of how disgusting she looked. How filthy. “So, what do you think?” she said to the same man. “Am I going to get out of finals?”

  He nodded, very seriously, but she heard a couple of the other men laugh. Making a joke, however minor, was exhausting, and she blinked a few times, trying to stay awake. It would be too vulnerable to fall asleep in front of all of them. All these men. But, it would be nice to—she felt her sweatshirt being lifted, a hand touching her stomach, and had to fight off a scream, doing her best to sit up.

  The hand had already left her stomach. “I’m sorry,” one of the doctors said. “I was just—”

  “Well, you can’t!” She shoved the sweatshirt down, clamping her left forearm across it.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I just wanted to take a look at your ribs. I’m worried about the way you’re breathing.”

  She looked at him suspiciously, tightening her arm. “I’m fine.”

  He nodded, lifting his hands as though showing her that he wasn’t going to do anything, and she eased the pressure of her arm slightly—since it was killing her ribs, but still kept her eyes on him.

  “Do you think you can answer some questions?” he asked.

  She nodded—carefully, watching him.

  “Where are you having the most pain?” he asked.

  “I don’t know, I—” Her tongue felt thick, and she looked at the IV again, afraid. “Are you giving me drugs?”

  “That’s glucose,” he said. “And we’ve given you a mild tranquilizer.”

  She frowned, not sure if she should believe him. “I don’t want to fall asleep.”

  “It’s just to help you with the pain,” he said.

  She looked around at the other men, checking to see where they were. What they were doing. Theoretically, these were the good guys, and they weren’t going to hurt her—but, then again, how could she be sure? She looked back at the doctor. “I don’t mean to be rude to you,” she said. “I just—I don’t know you.”

  He nodded. “I’m Doctor Amesley. I live up here in Gilmer County.”

  Which meant absolutely nothing to her. She studied his face. He looked nice enough. Normal enough. Not that that meant anything. “I don’t remember where you’re taking me,” she said, very quietly, so that the others might not hear.

  “To a helicopter,” he said, without hesitating. “Which will transport you to an Army base, where you’ll meet your parents.”

  She tried, her mind sluggish, to think of military bases in this part of the country. “Bragg?” />
  He nodded.

  Since there wasn’t much she could do but trust him, she forced herself to relax. Somewhat.

  “Is your hand the worst?” he asked.

  Tough call, but—she nodded.

  “What about your head?” he asked.

  Her head? She looked at him blankly. “You mean, my nose?”

  He frowned. “Is that all that hurts?”

  “Well—where they got the teeth, too.” She shifted a little, not sure why he looked so worried. “Do you think it’s broken? My nose?”

  The men all seemed to exchange glances, which made her nervous.

  “Yes,” Dr. Amesley said. “I think it’s broken.” He started to raise his hands, then hesitated. “I’m just going to feel your skull for other injuries, okay?”

  She nodded.

  His hands went right to the side of her forehead where—Christ, it seemed like centuries ago—the man in the van had hit her with the gun. Then his hands, very gently, moved around to the back of her head.

  “Phrenology,” she said, and blinked. Where the hell had that come from?

  The doctor blinked, too. “I guess your memory isn’t impaired,” he said, sounding less worried.

  “I guess not.” But, there had been some word she’d been trying to think of recently. In the cave? Her shoelace. The stupid thing on the end of her shoelace. It was—zygote. Or, no—argot. Except—that wasn’t it, either. What the hell was it? “Aglet,” she said aloud, remembering suddenly.

  They were all looking at her.

  “On your shoelace,” she said, too tired to elaborate.

  The doctor kept examining her, asking permission before he did anything, Meg only scared when he felt her ribs, his hands up under her sweatshirt.

  “Do you think they’re broken?” she asked, struggling not to panic again.

  “It’s hard to say.” He took his hands and the stethoscope out. “From the way you’re breathing, I’d guess that a couple are at least cracked.”

  All of her bones felt cracked. She nodded, feeling a great wave of sleepiness, fighting it off.