God Save the Queen (26 page)

             
“All right,” LaGard said, moving his head forward. “Now back up.”

             
I sighed and hobbled back to the end of the room, ignoring LaGard’s demands to hurry up. Finally I got to the far wall and leaned against it, crossing my arms. LaGard cautiously opened the door, just enough to pull Lynette though it, then shut it quickly, as though I might make a run for it. I knew better than that. Although we were in the middle of nowhere, I was aware that LaGard had stocked weapons in the outer room. If I tried to make a break for it, he could easily pull a rifle from the wall and end my life right here. I would rather stay here.

             
Once Lynette was out of the room and the door was shut, I opened the door-slot a crack to see LaGard staring at the floor, probably at the spot where Lynette was lying.

             
“You will not get food tomorrow,” he said quietly, not looking up.

             
“Hey, she told me to hit her, told me to give it my best shot, and I was just following--”

             
“I said, no food for you tomorrow!”

             
“You can’t do that!”

             
LaGard snapped back, “Or what? You’ll call Amnesty International?” When I had no reply to that, he bellowed, “Would you like me to make for the next day as well?”

             
I shut my mouth, knowing how essential my pitiful food rations were. Then I limped painfully back to my bed as LaGard dragged his precious niece back to the outer room.

             
Not only was my leg throbbing more painfully than before, it was bleeding quite badly and I couldn’t stanch the flow. I quickly grabbed my thin blanket and with what little strength I had left, I tore a long strip and wrapped it around my wound. The blanket was filthy and I had no water to wash the wound, let alone any disinfectant. I could only pray it would heal, or that someone would find me in time before infection set in.

The bandage held tight and the bleeding seemed to stop, though it was hard to see in my darkened room.
It did help to keep the pain down. Well, that particular pain, anyway. My body was already wracked with five thousand other pains. I slowly leaned back and prepared to pass out in a state of exhaustion.

             
I was proud of myself for standing up to that psychopath and giving her a walloping she wouldn’t soon forget. Though I congratulated myself with a little smile, I had no way of knowing the physical toll my payback would cost me. For the next four days, Lynette didn’t bring me any food, and only half my water ration.

Chapter 35

Fading Hope

             
About six days later I was sitting in my room, looking out the almost opaque window, when the most miraculous event occurred. It began with an awful screeching noise of metal dragging on concrete, along with the delightful sounds of LaGard grunting and groaning. He banged on my door and I got into position for his door-slot inspection. Then the door opened and I blinked in disbelief as a large tub of water got pushed into the room. LaGard threw a black rag into the tub, followed by the distinctive splash of a bar of soap. As he left he spat, “Clean yourself up. You’re beginning to smell horrible.”

             
“You mean you’ve just noticed?”

             
Once he slammed the door shut, I crawled my way over to the basin and took the rag in my hands. The water was barely warm but still felt wonderful against my skin as I washed my arms, legs, and face. I went carefully over my cuts and bruises, especially over the newest of my collection. I winced as I cleaned my thigh wound, sending a sting up through my leg. Once I had cleaned my face off, I decided that I should just soak my hair in the water, no matter how gross the water was. It couldn’t be any more disgusting than my hair was at the moment. Washing myself energized me, and for the duration of the day and I almost felt almost human again. After I finished cleaning myself, I aligned my body with the hazy beam of light that barely shone into the room. I continued to stand there even when Lynette came in with my food.

             
She brought it on a tray this time. “Don’t eat it all at once,” she chuckled as she put it down on the floor. I smiled slightly to myself. The crash in the wall had broken her nose, and it was beginning to heal, as I could tell from the two black eyes.

             
My smile suddenly vanished as I looked at what was on the tray. Not a bowl of the hateful soup, but a cup. A
baby
cup. “Um, Lynette. This is half the rations that I got yesterday.”

             
Lynette smiled wickedly for the first time in the past six days. “I know. It’s because the process is now beginning.”

             
“Process?”

             
“Yes. You see, Anya, we’ve decided that since the authorities aren’t able to find you without finding us, then it’s sayonara. We’re bringing this saga to a close.”

I hesitated before asking, “Uh, would you kindly elaborate?”

“Yes, but not kindly,” she said with a chilling grin. “Uncle wanted to shoot you. I said, ‘What’s the rush?’”

             
“You’re going to
starve
me to death?” I yelled at her.

             
“Always complaining about something, aren’t you? Look, you’ve been a lucky little captive this whole time. We could have killed you in an instant at any point. Just be happy you’ll live to see another day.”

             
“How can I be happy? This is the cruelest torment you could have thought of.”

             
“Yes,” Lynette said, and then smiled almost angelically. “And let me assure you, I gave it a lot of thought.”

             
With that, she turned on her heel and walked out, whistling a happy tune.

*
              *              *

             
My next few days went by quickly, because I was continually passing out from lack of food. Each day my rations were cut lower and lower. They were even beginning to cut my water intake, which was the main cause of my fainting spells. I rarely made my way over to the door anymore to listen to the news. I simply didn’t have the strength.

             
One day I was awakened by a large bang on the other end of my thin wall. I was so startled by noise that I literally fell off the cot. Once I sat up, I knew I had to see where the sounds had come from, so I began the painstaking process of crawling my way over to door, pulled myself up on my knees, and looked out the keyhole to see the most startling event.

             
I saw LaGard sitting in his usual chair with his back facing me, but something else came into view: another, larger man, putting handcuffs on him. Then I heard screaming as Lynette was pulled into the room and slammed face-down on the little table as she, too, was handcuffed. I didn’t recognize the men and assumed they were Protectors, the old anti-monarchy group that LaGard belonged to. But my thoughts were squashed soon enough.

             
A large figure walked up to LaGard as soon as he was stood upright. He grabbed him by the shoulders and began to shake him. “Where is she? Where is she?” he yelled over and over again.

             
Then yet another man came into view and pulled his comrade off of LaGard. I recognized him almost immediately.

             
“Clam down,” Antonio said. “You won’t get any answers by yelling.”

             
I began to claw at the door as Antonio walked over to LaGard, but I knew my scratches went unheard.

             
“Where is the Tsarina?” Antonio asked in a softer tone than the other man did.

             
LaGard glared at him and spat, “She’s dead.”

             
I heard a loud bang as the hot-tempered man moved a chair in order to get to LaGard, but Antonio jumped in front of him.

             
“Stop it!” he yelled. He held his ground firm as the other man gave up. Then he turned back to LaGard. “What did you do to her?”

             
LaGard shrugged. “She passed out the other day. So Lynette and I took the opportunity and threw her body into the lake.”

             
Antonio pinched his nose with fingers--a strange gesture, I thought, until I realized it was to stop his tears. “Take him away.” he whispered. “We will search the lake in the morning.”

             
LaGard laughed as he was taken away. “Good luck. There are
seven
lakes in this area. You’ll never find her!”

             
“You sick bastard!” the other man shouted and then I heard the distinctive sound of a fist slamming into a face.

             
“Get all of them out of here!” Antonio roared. I heard shuffling as the procession began to trail out the room. Another man came up to Antonio and put his hand on his shoulder.

             
“I know it is difficult for you…”

             
“We’ll come back tomorrow. I want this place searched top to bottom,” Antonio whispered through gritted teeth.

             
“Antonio, come on, now. Government agents will want to come in here and they will not want us touching anything.”

             
“He was lying. She can’t be…”

             
“Antonio, please. You know he wasn’t. She’s gone.”

             
There was a long silence, then Antonio sighed and nodded.

             
It was only then that the full weight of their words hit me. They thought I was dead and they were going to leave me here, stranded on my own. I would have no food and no water until officials came, and how long that would be? Days? Weeks? I wouldn’t last for weeks, maybe not even a week. I began to scratch more violently, my fingernails breaking against the door.

             
“Come back!” I croaked in a voice no louder than a whisper. “I’m alive! Please!” They kept walking but I kept at it: “Antonio! I’m… I’m in here!” My fingers were beginning to bleed.

             
My would-be saviors walked out of the house. I kept scratching and yelling, but they couldn’t hear me. I kept going until I became too tired to do so. I collapsed onto the floor and lay there crying, curled up in a fetal position. This couldn’t be how it ended. This is not what my parents wanted for me, to die of starvation in a drafty old room in the middle of nowhere. They wanted me to life my life to the fullest. This is not why they had sacrificed themselves!

             
“No!” I was shaking with fright and fury.
“I will not die!”

But I could feel my body become weaker every moment. I knew that if I didn’t
move now, I would never be able to make it to the relative comfort of my bed. I slowly got on my knees and slowly began to make my way across the cold floor to the bed. But halfway there, my body rebelled and I began to cough uncontrollably. My arms weakened under the strain and I felt my torso hit the floor with a thud. I curled up again and felt my stomach heaving in and out, but I had nothing to vomit, only the bitter taste of bile in my throat. I knew this had to be the end.

Then the strangest thing happened: I felt an unexpected warmth envelop me for the first time since I had been a prisoner. Yet there was no blanket, no stranger comforting me. I barely had time to even wonder about it before
I passed out yet again.

Chapter 36

End of Misery

             
I heard voices as I slowly opened my eyes. I looked around and I was no longer in the dark despair of my cold cell, but in a warm comfortable space, somewhere I have never been before. It was about the size of a small office, but far different. It was bright, and there were three chairs arranged in a circle, two of which were already occupied. They were occupied by my parents. I walked over to them while realizing with a mixture of joy and despair what this must mean. Once I reached them, I took a seat facing them both and sat down. No one spoke, just stared at one another for a moment or two. I was looking at them in disappointment, but they didn’t look at all troubled. Finally it was my mother who said something.

             
“Darling, why are you so sad?”

             
I looked up at her, wondering if she knew what my being here meant. “Well, for starters, I’m dead, aren’t I?” I sighed. “I failed, Mom, but not for lack of trying. You wanted me to live the best life that I could and …” I looked down again, shaking my head. “Well, I guess it was nice while it lasted.”

             
I felt a hand on my chin as it was lifted up. My father was looking me in the eyes, a wide smile on his face. “You’re not a disappointment, Anya. And you haven’t failed us either.”

             
I looked at him in exasperation. “Yes, I have! Dad, I’m dead! Your sacrifice was for nothing. You died so that I would live and not become part of this whole Romanov curse thing, and
now
look. I’m sitting… well, I don’t really know where I am right now, but I’m pretty sure that it’s not Earth.”

             
My mother laughed as she grabbed my hands. “Honey, you’re not dead.”

             
I looked her in confusion. “What do you mean, I’m not dead?”

             
Then my father put his hand on my shoulder. “Anya, you’re not dead. You’re just in a state of oblivion.”

             
“I’m in a what?”

             
“An, you’re still in your cell, passed out on the floor. You’re unconscious,” my mother said. “We decided we had to intervene since you were giving up. So we just jumped in your subconscious.”

             
“Well, Mom, how could I
not
give up? They aren’t coming back! They said so as they were leaving.”

             
“Anya, you know you should never give up hope,” my father scolded me.

             
I rolled my eyes at the thought of my two ghostly parents scolding me on not giving up on a hopeless situation. It was almost comical. But they looked so concerned that I thought maybe I should humor them. ”All right, then, what do you want me to do?”

             
“Good. Okay, now listen carefully,” my father said. “You are going to wake up and you’ll see a white light. And you need to follow that light, do you understand?”

             
I looked at my father like he was crazy, but he was giving me his “I mean business” look whenever he wanted me to know he wasn’t kidding around. “Wait… wait… wait. You want me to
follow
the white light? The one that most parents would tell their kids to stay away from at all costs? You want me to just…
follow it?
”

             
My mother nodded. “We sure do, darling!”

             
“Okay, this family, it’s a little sick,” I said, throwing my hands into the air.

             
My father laughed good-naturedly. “But you wouldn’t trade us for anything in the world, am I right?” Then he stopped as a door appeared behind him. “Well, that’s for you, honey.”

             
I stood up, and my parents did as well. I quickly gave them both hugs which I might have enjoyed longer if they hadn’t pushed me toward the door. I stopped to give them one last glance as my mom blew me a kiss and my father said, “Remember what we told you!”

             
I nodded and turned to face the door. I opened it and took a step into the blinding light.

*
              *              *

             
I felt my eyes open as the bright light continued to shine in. I brought my hands up to my face and rubbed my eyes. I knew I was back on Earth, because in that instant I felt the cold floor beneath me. All the familiar hunger pangs and parched throat and bodily pains came back, just as before. Then from within the blinding white light I saw a figure emerge. I couldn’t see his face, or any other part of him for that matter, because the light was obscuring his features. I covered the glare with my hands.
So this is the light my parents were talking about,
I thought.

             
“Are you God?” I croaked, surprised that my voice sounded even weaker than it was before.

             
“Am I what? God?” the man said slowly as he took a step forward. “No…”

             
“Saint Peter?”

             
“No. I’m… I’m Doug.”

             
I sat up slowly and painfully, half-sitting on my elbows. “
Doug?
What kind of name is that for an angel?”

             
The man took a step out of the blinding light and into my dark room. I was now able to see that he wasn’t an angel at all, but a normal man. But his expression seemed distant and confused, as though it was he, not I, who was seeing a ghost.

             
“Are you… Good Lord, you’re the Tsarina!” He ran back to where he had come and yelled out the door:
“She’s here! I found her. She’s in this room!”

             
Then came shouts from afar as trampling feet thundered closer. Soon there were four other figures huddled around the doorway, blocking out the light. Their faces were an odd mix of fear, wonder, and excitement as they goggled at me through the doorway. I began to feel a wee bit uncomfortable as their eyes continued to stare at me. Finally they all swung into action. One man brought a blanket and draped it over my shoulders, then held me up, since I was too weak to do it on my own. Another man stood by my bed and began to say speak into what looked to be a communications device. Another man was walking around my room examining everything. One last man stuck his head out the doorway and yelled, “Get Alpha and Beta now! Tell them we’ve found her.”

             
I looked up in confusion. Was I supposed to know who these men were? It all seemed so urgent. I continue to watch them examine my quarters, when once again the light in the doorway was blocked out. I looked up to see two shadowy figures standing there, but once again, I couldn’t make out who they were. They paused for a moment as they looked at me through the doorway. The man who had been holding me upright suddenly let go of my shoulders as the other two walked in. Then suddenly I heard a familiar voice.

             
“Anya…” Antonio croaked as he took a step into the room. Barnes followed behind him, both looking pale and shocked, almost horrified.

             
“Antonio… Barnes….” I said as I looked at them both.

             
Then I felt a huge force against my body as both of them grabbed me in a tight embrace. I felt two pairs of arms wrap around my whole body, holding me as I shook in a fit of tears. I hugged them tighter just to make sure that they were real and not another moment of oblivion. But when my face hit their rough-textured layers of clothing, I knew that they were real.

             
“You… you found me,” I said through great gasps of air. “How?”

             
“We knew you had to be here,” Antonio said. “You couldn’t be at the bottom of a lake.”

             
“I… tried to… get out last… last night.” I said, my gasps getting faster.

             
“We know, Anya,” Antonio said. “We know.” He grabbed me by the shoulders, and I saw that his eyes were brimming with tears, tears of joy. “But you can never leave us again.”

             
I nodded and felt my shoulders get redirected as I looked at Barnes.

             
“You have no idea how crazy we were, looking for you, Anya,” he said in a deep, soothing voice. “Don’t ever, ever leave our sight again!”

             
I just stared at him for a moment before whispering. “Barnes, those are the first words you’ve ever spoken to me.”

             
Barnes smiled a pained, tearful smile before pulling me in again. We stayed like that for a moment more and then the dispatchers decided that it was time to leave. They tried to see if I could stand on my own and I could, though just barely. But I only made it to the doorway before the dehydration kicked in and my knees collapsed. Antonio caught me before I hit the floor and carried me out into the daylight. I felt an intense burning in my eyes as the sunlight hit them. It wasn’t even a sunny day--overcast, in fact, with threatening rain clouds. But none of that mattered as we ducked into the waiting helicopter and flew away from my hellhole.

             
Once inside, Barnes and Antonio began questioning me like crazy, while another man tried to get me to eat a bit of fruit and drink some water. I found drinking the water easy, but even a slice of apple was a little troublesome. Answering their questions on top of that was impossible. I would eat a little bite and then found my stomach rebelling. After about three rounds of this, my body was able to figure out the apple was in fact good for me. Then the questions began.

             
What happened the night I was kidnapped? Where was a taken beforehand? How was I treated and how did I manage to survive like I did, especially on a starvation diet?

             
I answered all questions as well as I could, but it was exhausting. My brain wasn’t functioning normally. It wasn’t just the fact that I had been starved and dehydrated; there was an air of unreality that seemed more dreamlike than real, and so many times I felt like I was just awakening from a nightmare. Still, I talked and found myself keeping Barnes and Antonio captivated as they took in every word. It wasn’t until I told them of my fight with Lynette that they spoke.

             
“So
that’s
where she got those black eyes,” Antonio said, looking up at me proudly. “You punched her in the face!”

             
“No, no, I didn’t have the strength to do that. I punched her in the gut and pulled her hair and kicked her into the wall, and that’s what broke her
nose.
The eyes blackened on their own after that.” I smiled at the memory of that triumph of mine.

             
“That’s brilliant!” Barnes said, leaning back in his seat.

             
I nodded and then looked up at them both. “All right, you two. Now it’s my turn for the questions.” Barnes and Antonio looked at one another and then nodded.

             
“Why did you decide to come back?”

             
Antonio took a deep breath before responding. “Well you see, when we left yesterday, Barnes and I knew that you were still there somewhere. We knew you couldn’t possibly be at the bottom of a lake. So we begged government officials to examine the premises to see if maybe LaGard had been lying. It took hours, but we finally got their approval. What can we say? We just knew you were a survivor, Anya.”

             
I smiled at his compliment. “Hey, Barnes, I’ve got a question for you…”

             
“How did it feel to punch LaGard in the face?” he asked with a smirk.

             
“That was you?” I almost shouted. Frankly, I was shocked that Barnes would do such a thing. For as long as I’d known him, he seemed the gentlest soul and wouldn’t hurt a fly. But then, he
was
a bodyguard.

             
“Do you know how long I’ve been waiting to do that?” he asked with a huge grin.

             
“You and me both,” Antonio said. “But I don’t think that was the question she was going to ask.”

             
“Actually it was more of a personal question,” I said.

             
“You want to know how Kevin is,” Barnes finished for me. I looked up at him and nodded. “He’s… he’s not been okay. He’s been moping around solemnly for the past four weeks. I don’t think he’s eaten a whole meal in that time. But he’s also been the brains behind the operation. He’s been determined to find you ever since he got out of the hospital.”

             
“And now that he knows I’m alive…” But their faces seemed to suggest otherwise. “What?”

             
“Anya, we don’t think that they know you’re alive.” Antonio said. I looked at him in confusion. “See, I radioed in telling them that we found you, but there was interference and we lost our satellite before I could confirm that you were alive. They think we’re bringing your body home. Not you.”