Stung. Part 1

Stung.

Bethany Wiggins.

For Suzette Saxton and Lance Corporal Erin Owings, because love is the power of a true warrior, and those who are deemed weak, by its divine nature are made strong.

Chapter 1.

I don't remember going to sleep. All I remember is waking up herea"a place as familiar as my own face.

At least, it should be.

But there's a problem. The once-green carpet is gray. The cla.s.sical-music posters lining the walls are bleached, their brittle corners curling where the tacks are missing. My first-place ribbons are pale blue instead of royal. My sundresses are drained of color. And my bed. I sit on the edge of a bare, sun-bleached mattress, a mattress covered with dirt and twigs and mouse droppings.

I turn my head and the room swims, faded posters wavering and swirling against grimy walls. My head fills with fuzz, and I try to remember when my room got so filthy, since I vacuum and dust it once a week. And why is the mattress bare, when I change the sheets every Sat.u.r.day? And where did my pillows go?

My stomach growls, and I push on the concave s.p.a.ce beneath my ribs, against the s.h.i.+rt sweat-plastered to my skin, and try to remember the last time I ate.

Easing off the bed, I stand on rubbery legs. The carpet crunches beneath my feet, and I look down. I am wearing shoes. I have been sleeping in shoesa"old-lady white nurse shoes. Shoes that I have never seen before. That I have no memory of pulling onto my feet and tying. And I am standing in a sea of broken gla.s.s. It glitters against the filthy, faded carpet, and I can't remember what broke.

A breeze stirs the stifling air, cooling my sweaty face, and the gauzy curtains that hide my bedroom window lift like tattered ghosts. Jagged remnants of gla.s.s cling to the window frame, and a certainty creeps into my brain, seeps into my bones. Something is wronga"really wrong. I need to find my mom. On legs barely able to hold my weight, I stumble across the room and to the doorway.

Sunlight streams through the bedroom windows on the west side of the house, lighting the dust in the hallway. I peer into my brother's room and gasp. His dinosaur models are broken to bits and strewn across the faded carpet, along with the Star Wars action figures he's collected since he was four years old. I leave his doorway and walk to the next door, to my older sister's room. College textbooks are on the floor, their pages torn and scattered over the filthy carpet. The bed is gone and the mirror above the bureau is shattered.

Dazed, I walk through sunlight and dust, down the hall, trailing my fingers along the paint-peeling wall to Mom's room.

Her room is just like the other rooms. Faded. Filthy. Broken windows. Bare mattress. And a word I don't want to think about but force myself to admit.

Abandoned.

No one lives here. No one has lived here for a long while. But I remember Dad tucking me in a few nights agoa"into a clean bed with crisp sheets and a pink comforter. In a room with a brand-new London Symphony Orchestra poster tacked to the wall. I remember Mom checking to see that I dusted the top of my dresser. I remember Lissa leaving before sunrise for school. And Jonah's Star Wars music blaring through the house.

But somehow I am alone now, in a house where my family hasn't been in a really long time.

I run to the bathroom and slam the door behind me, hoping that a splash of icy water will clear my head and wake me to a different reality. A normal reality. I turn on the water and back away from the sink. It has dead bugs and a rotting mouse in it, and nothing comes out of the rust-speckled faucet. Not a single drop of water. I brace my hands on the counter and try to remember when the water stopped working. "Think, think, think," I whisper, straining for the answers. Sweat trickles down my temple and I come up blank.

In the cracked, dust-coated mirror, I see a reflection, and the thought of being abandoned slips away. I am not alone, after all. She is tall, with long, stringy hair, and gangly, like she's just had a growth spurt. She looks like my older sister, Lissa. She is Lissa. And maybe she knows what's going on.

"Lis?" I ask, my voice scratchy-dry. I turn around, but I'm alone. Turning back to the mirror I carefully wipe away the dust with my hand. So does the reflection. My muddy eyes stare back from a hollow face, but it's not my face. I take a step away from the mirror and stare at the reflection, mesmerized and confused. I slide my hands over the contours of my lanky body. So does the reflection. The reflection is mine.

I stare at myself, at my small b.r.e.a.s.t.s. And curved hips. The last time I looked at myself in the mirror a I didn't have them. I touch my cheek, and my heart starts hammering again. Something mars the back of my hand. Black, spiderish, wrong. I take a closer look. It's a tattoo, an oval with ten legs. A mark. "Conceal the mark," I whisper. The words leave my mouth without me even meaning to speak them, as if someone else put them on my tongue. Yet I know in my gut that I must obey them.

I pull open the bathroom drawer and sigh with relief. Some of Lis's makeup is in it. I take a tube of flesh-colored stuff and open it. Concealer. What Lis used to use to cover zits. I remember her putting it on in the mornings before she went to nursing cla.s.ses at the University of Colorado, when I was twelve and wis.h.i.+ng I were as old as my big sister. I remember everything from back then. My sister. My parents. My twin brother, Jonah. But I can't remember why I have a tattoo on my hand, or why I have to hide it. I can't remember when my body stopped looking thirteen and started looking like a a woman's.

Outside the bathroom door, the stairs groana"a sound I remember well. It means someone is coming upstairs. For a moment, I'm giddy with hope. Hope that my mom has come home. But then dread makes my heart speed up, because what if it isn't my mom? I take a wide step around the spot where the floor squeaks and tiptoe to the door. Opening it a crack, I peer through.

A man is creeping up the stairs. He's wearing a tattered pair of cutoff shorts but no s.h.i.+rt, and his hair is long and stringy around his face. Muscles bulge in his arms, flex on his bare chest, and swell in his long legs, and thick veins pulse under his tight, suntanned skin.

Like an animal tracking prey, he leans down and puts his nose to the carpet. The muscles in his shoulders ripple and tense, his lips pull back from his teeth, and a guttural sound rumbles in his throat. In one swift movement, he leaps to his feet and sprints down the hall toward my bedroom, his bare feet thudding on the carpet.

I have to get away, out of the house, before he finds me. I should run. Now. This very second!

Instead I freeze, press my back to the bathroom wall and hold my breath, listening. The house grows quiet, and slowly, I reach for the doork.n.o.b. My fingers touch the cool metal and ease it open a hair wider. I peer out with one eye. The floor in the hall groans, and my knees threaten to buckle. I am now trapped in the bathroom.

I grip the doork.n.o.b, slam the bathroom door, and lock it, then yank the vanity drawer open so hard it breaks away from the cabinet. I need a weapon. My hand comes down on a metal nail file, and, gripping it in my damp palm, I toss the drawer to the floor.

The bathroom door shudders and I stare at it, wondering how long before the man breaks it down. Something crashes into the door a second time. I jump as the wood splinters, and scramble backward, never taking my eyes from the door. Something hits the door a third time, shaking the entire house, and I turn to the windowa"my only hope of escape. Because there's no way a nail file is going to stop the man who is beating down the door.

The window groans and fights me, the catch slipping in my sweaty grasp. As the window grates upward, the bathroom door implodes, a spray of splinters shooting against my back.

I grip the narrow window frame, just like I did as a kid, and swing my feet through. My hips follow, and then my shoulders.

A hand thrusts through the open window, attached to a sc.r.a.ped, straining forearm. On the back of the hand is the twin of the symbol that marks mea"an oval with five lines on each side.

As I jump out the window, fingers slip over my neck, gouge into my cheek, and clamp down on my long, tangled hair. Fire lines my scalp as the skin pulls taut against my skull. I hang with my feet just above the balcony and flail, dangling by my hair. Somehow, the man's grip slips on my hair and my shoes touch the balcony. And then, with an unexpected release on my scalp, I'm free.

I glance over my shoulder. The window frames a face with smooth skin and hollow cheeksa"a boy on the brink of manhood. He peels his lips back from his teeth and growls, and I stare into his brown eyes. For a moment it is like looking into a mirror, and I almost say his name. Until I realize his eyes are wild and feral, like an animal's. When he grips the outside of the window and swings his feet through, I scramble up onto the ledge of the balcony. And jump.

My spine contracts and my hips pop as I land on the trampoline my mother bought when I was eleven years old. The blue safety pads are long gone. I'm surprised the weathered black mat doesn't split beneath my feet as I bounce and come down a second time, stabbing the black mat with the nail file and dragging it as far and hard as I can. I jump over the exposed springs as my brother sails through the air behind me. The mat tears noisily beneath him and he falls through it, like jumping into a shallow pond. And when he hits the ground, I hear a snap and a grunt.

I run to the fence that separates my house from the elementary school and dig my feet into the chain-link diamonds. Just like when I was a kid, racing the tardy bell, I clamber up and over the fence in a heartbeat.

As I sprint across the empty schoolyard, past the silent, rusted playground, I dare a look over my shoulder. My brother is hobbling toward the fence, his ankle hanging at an odd angle to his leg. His eyes meet mine and he holds a hand up to me, a plea to come back. A sob tears at my chest, but I look away and keep running.

Chapter 2.

A scorching sun beats down from the turquoise sky, gleaming off the distant buildings of downtown Denver. Yet no leaves grow on the skeletal trees, no flowers bloom in pots on front porches, no gra.s.s grows in dead front yards. Even the Rocky Mountains looming on the western horizon look brown and brittle. The only green in this world comes from brown-tinted pine treesa"those that aren't as dead as everything else. I am in a world of winter being burned beneath a summer sun.

I stumble through a silent neighborhood. The houses' windows are shattered. Rusted cars sit atop flat tires in driveways. My shadow stretches long over the cracked, litter-strewn pavement. I skirt around a faded, tipped garbage can and walk faster, because deep down I can sense that this is a bad place to be when the sun sets.

My feet slow as I walk toward a telephone pole. The wires lie spaghetti-twisted on the ground below it, and tacked to the front is a piece of paper at odds with this trashed, forgotten neighborhood. The paper is daffodil yellowa"not sun bleached or water warped or wind frayed. I take a closer look.

REWARD.

1a"4 marks = 1 oz honey 5a"7 marks = 2 oz honey 8a"9 marks = 3 oz honey 10 marks = 8 oz honey To claim reward, marked one must be alive.

Payments made Sundays @ Southgate or Northgate.

No payment for dead body.

Sincerely, Governor Jacoby Soneschen

I walk past the daffodil-yellow paper and round a corner in the deserted street, and a dog barksa"the first sound that I haven't made myself since leaving my house. More dogs join in, and my heart speeds up, a weak, dehydrated fluttering against my ribs. Four houses ahead, a window reflects evening sunlight a and the window is whole. Several dogs stand in the front yard below that window, teeth bared, saliva strings dangling from their barking mouths, yanking against the chains that keep them from charging me. My steps slow and I glance at my right hand. The flesh-colored makeup still hides the tattoo. When I look back up, four men stand in the yard with the dogs, and each man holds a gun pointed at me.

M16 a.s.sault rifle. The name flitters into my confused brain. And I can remember the day my dad taught me to shoot.

The guys at the Buckley Air Force Base always saluted Dad, even though he wheeled himself up to the platform in a wheelchaira"his final badge of military duty, one he could never leave home without.

"This your kid?" one guy asked, looking at me where I cowered behind the wheelchair. I stared up at his camouflage clothes, his broad shoulders, and tried to imagine my dad dressed like that and standing tall.

"Yeah. She's eleven," Dad said. "Figured it was time to teach her to shoot."

The guy nodded approval but looked skeptical. "Never too young to start 'em out. Just warn her about the recoil. We wouldn't want her leaving with a black eye."

The rest of the time at the shooting range was a blur of guns, noise-m.u.f.fling ear covers, and recoils that flung me backward, but I remember the look in my dad's eyes at the end of the lesson. And the other men's eyes. Surprise.

"With the finger control you're learning in piano, you'll be a sharpshooter in no time," Dad said, his hazel eyes glowing with pride.

One by one, the M16s are lowered as the men study me. I take a tentative step forward, and all four guns point at me before I can flinch. I don't move.

"Ellen, come here!" one of the men calls, staring at me through the scope on his gun. He seems to be the oldest of the four. His hair is white, at least.

The front door opens, and a thin, hard woman steps onto a front porch edged with shrub skeletons. The white-haired man nods toward me. The woman puts her hands on her bony hips and squints. I have seen her before. She is the mother of one of my schoolmates. I used to play at this house, and this woman was always baking. She used to be as soft and round as her cookies.

She presses a hand to her heart. "Dear Lord Almighty, that's Fiona Tarsis. If she doesn't have the mark of the beast, let her pa.s.s."

Three of the four guns lower.

"Hold up your hand," the white-haired man calls. I lift both my hands over my head, palms facing thema"a sign of surrender. "No. Your right hand," he says, voice hard and mistrusting. "Show me the back of your right hand."

Of course. He wants to see my tattoo. I turn my right hand, palm facing me, tattoo facing him.

Ellen sighs, the sound carrying down the quiet street. "She's clean."

The fourth gun is lowered, but none of the men relax.

"Get on past here, Fiona," the white-haired man calls. I nod and start jogging. As I pa.s.s the house, the dogs go ballistic, jerking against the chains anchoring them in place. I stare into the front yard and study the men. But I was wrong about something. Only three are men. The fourth, the one who kept the M16 trained on me the longest, is Jacqui, my old schoolmate.

But there's something really wrong with her. She's on the verge of being an adult. And her thick brown hair is cut like a boy'sa"short as a soldier's.

"Get on by," the white-haired man warns. I stare straight ahead and jog as fast as my weary legs will carry me, which is not very fast.

Just as I pa.s.s the edge of their property, a shadow appears beside me. I gasp and cover my head with my arms.

"Foa"Fiona!" It's Jacquia"the older, womanly version of her in spite of her boy hair. Her hands are in my hair, twisting it, shoving it down the back of my s.h.i.+rt. "Cut your hair off," she says, eyes scared. She presses something into my hand and retreats to her front yard. I look at what she's given me and frown. A half-eaten snack pack of crackers. The sight of them makes my parched throat clamp shut, so I stuff them into my pocket.

Movement catches my eye. In the last rays of the setting sun, a child perches on the roof of Jacqui's house, a gun in his small hands, his eyes darting all about. Behind a fence in Jacqui's backyard, I can see the tops of cornstalks. Green cornstalks. In the midst of the corn stands Ellen, trailing a fine-bristled brush over the feathery wisps that shoot out at the top of the corn, moving from plant to plant in a methodical, deliberate manner. Painting the corn.

I look back up at the boy. He can't be more than eight years old, but the way he holds the gun, he might as well have held it in the womb. He glares at me and aims in my direction. I turn and continue down the littered, deserted road.

When I get far enough from Jacqui's house that I can no longer see the boy, I stop. With the sun gone, the air fuses with twilight and darkness creeps in, unsettling my nerves, giving me the impression that something hides in the shadows. Something teases my ears. I pause and survey the decrepit houses haunting the street. I peer into the black, gla.s.sless windows and feel as if someone is watching me. I pray I'm imagining it.

Shelter. I need to find shelter. I step over trash, over bleached human bones, over tree branches and tumbleweeds and empty plastic bottles strewn across the road. With every step the approaching night grows darker, making it harder to see, harder to tell the difference between trash and road. Harder to tell the difference between real and imagined.

A dog barks behind me, and the desire to find shelter makes me frantic.

I run, dodging trash, and jump over a mangled car door. When I land, my knees buckle beneath my weight. I squat on my heels and rest my hands on my knees. Panting, I lick my peeling lips, but my tongue holds no moisture. I need water almost as much as I need air. More than I need shelter.

Another dog joins the first, a distant barking that echoes down the road, driving me to action. I stand unsteadily and face the silent houses. There has to be water in one of them. Maybe left in a toilet tank. Or forgotten in a teakettle. Or caught in the coils of a garden hose. Ignoring the instincts that warn me to stay out of the houses, I walk toward the closest one, staring at the gaping windows.

I step up onto the sidewalk and pause. My skin tightens as if something is watching me, like the darkness will devour me if I take another step.

More dogs start barking. A gun explodes, echoing like thunder. I turn and look down the dark road toward Jacqui's house, and the gun explodes again. Raised voices fill the night, mixed with the frantic barking. Someone screamsa"a deep, male screama"and a gun goes off again. And then there is nothing but the ringing in my ears.

Something grabs my arm and I am yanked backward, tripping over trash and the curb and my own feet. I scream, but my throat is too dry to muster up anything more than a croak.

"Shut up!" someone snaps, the person dragging me to the middle of the street, to the black ring of an old tire. The person, a short wisp of a humana"a childa"releases my arm and shoves the tire away. Beneath it sits a barely visible manhole. Metal echoes hollowly as the lid is slid aside, and then the shadow launches itself into the hole in the road and disappears. I peer down into the blackness and cringe at the dead-animal-and-raw-sewage smell wafting up.

A pale hand darts out of the opening and grabs my ankle.

"Hurry up and jump, or you'll be worse than dead!" the child hisses, digging ragged nails into my skin. And then I hear a new sound. Footsteps. Lots. Pounding against pavement faster than my frantic heart pounds against my chest. Getting closer.

"Fine! Stay up there. Freaking idiot!"

The manhole starts sc.r.a.ping back into place as the footsteps thump closer. I peer down the dark road toward the sound of the footsteps and see a h.o.a.rd of shadows approachinga"big, broad-shouldered shapes silhouetted by starlight.

I swallow, step, and plummet into darkness.