“So, she was running multiple errands on the night of her disappearance?”
Benton shrugged. “Possibly, but it's not like her to go out that late. Is there someone that can help me look for them?”
“Well, we're really backed up here. All of our computers are down, and none of are police cars are working. I'll put your report on file, and I'll notify the department of your missing family.”
“Is there anything they can do right now?” Benton asked. “If they've been abducted, there might not be much time.”
“I don't know what to tell you. We're spread really thin. We've got a lot of our officers patrolling the areas that have broken out into riots.”
Benton knew what that meant. It meant they weren't going to spend their time searching for three people who were probably already dead, especially when they had much larger groups of people to tend to.
The officer slid a note card across the counter towards Benton. “Fill out the physical description of all three of them, and we'll see what we can do,” he said, putting a pen next to the note card. He glanced past Benton at the dozens of people who were waiting in line behind him.
More concerned residents were pouring through the door, and the line of people was starting to reach outside of the building.
Benton's eyes moved restlessly back and forth as he jotted down the information as fast and accurately as he could, including their eye color, hair color, height, weight, and age. Then he looked over what he had written, tracing his fingers under the words and moving his lips.
Writing down the wrong eye color in the description could be costly, and he was struggling to remember if Katie had green or brown eyes.
His mind was clouded, and he often found himself pausing to think, rubbing his forehead and massaging his temples in distress. He had also been walking all morning, and he had not brought a water bottle with him to keep dehydration at bay.
He continued to massage his temples. Then he remembered that Katie actually had hazel eyes.
After he finished writing, he handed over the note card to the officer. Then he turned around to walk out, not realizing he was still holding the pen in his hand.
“Sir, I'm going to need that pen back,” the officer said.
Benton apologized and placed the pen back down on the counter. Then he squeezed past the array of people that stood in four separate lines, and left the building, not feeling any better than when he came in.
* * * * *
Based on where the sun currently was, Benton estimated it was mid afternoon by the time he got back home.
Experienced in sitting outside in the backyard in June, he remembered the sun was always above Donald's house at around eleven o' clock in the morning. It would shift to his own house at around noon. Then it would appear to be directly above Dinah's house by three o' clock, where it was at now.
Of course, that viewpoint of the sun only applied when he was in the backyard of his house, and a month or so later, when the days grew shorter and the sun shifted positions earlier, he would need to recalculate. But for now, it was a great way for him to tell time without a clock.
While he was out there, he looked at the tomato plants he had planted a month earlier. They still had plenty of growing to do, and with the water supply cut off, he hoped there would be enough rain that season to sustain them.
He had also planted strawberry plants, and he had packets of seeds in his storage area for further planting. But what bothered him was the lack of calories they contained. Although his garden would provide enough vitamins and minerals to survive, a diet of tomatoes and strawberries would not be filling. He needed to stock up on groceries.
He went back inside the house, drank two glasses of water, and left again to go to his local grocery store.
* * * * *
After manually pulling open the glass doors that were no longer automatic due to the power outage, he briefly looked at the handwritten sign that said: NO CREDIT CARDS ACCEPTED DUE TO THE POWER OUTAGE. THANK YOU FOR UNDERSTANDING.
The shelves at the store weren't as depleted as he expected them to be, but that would likely change by the end of the next day, when people realized the power wouldn't be coming back on anytime soon.
He scanned the aisles, searching for food items that would be the most filling. He also threw boxes of bandages, rolls of paper towels, and containers of soap into the shopping cart. He had the cash to spend, but he didn't have a functioning car, so he would have to carry everything home with him, which put a limit on how much he could buy.
Oh well, I can make another trip to the store this evening or tomorrow. Maybe. So he shopped lightly, keeping only the biggest essentials in mind.
Chapter Seven
Benton woke up the next morning with a dull ache in his neck. No power meant no air conditioning, and since it was too hot in the upstairs bedroom, he had slumbered on the narrow living room couch.
He rotated his head from side to side, trying to loosen his stiff neck.
Before he had drifted off to sleep, he had hoped to see Amanda walking through the door with the kids. He had even dreamed about it overnight. But upon awakening, devastating reality crashed down upon him in a thunderous manner. They were still out there somewhere, missing.
He was planning on going shopping again that morning before all the items in the grocery stores became entirely depleted. He opened his wallet and saw a ten dollar bill and four singles. But what was he supposed to buy with only fourteen dollars?
The ATM machines were out of order, and the banks were closed. The fourteen dollars was all the money he had available to him. He would have to spend it wisely. He thought hard about anything else he might need besides food.
But his mind was too heavily occupied by the extended absence of his family. He had an overwhelming urge to go out and look for them, like he had the day before. But what if a police officer stopped by his house to tell him the whereabouts of his family? The phone lines were down, so the officers would not be able to leave a voicemail.
Then it occurred to him.
They can leave me a note, and drop it in my mailbox, he thought. I don't need to stay in the house to wait for the police to deliver any news they might have.
This time he drank plenty of water before heading out of the house. Then he left.
* * * * *
As he had predicted the day before, the shelves at the grocery store were nearly empty, and at this rate, the store would likely be out of stock on almost everything by the end of the day.
The only things left in the store at this point were high-priced items that most people didn't need and low-priced items that most people didn't want. He didn't have much use for a children's-sized eight-pack of water bottles with extra fluoride for seven dollars, or a box of generic dryer sheets that was on sale for ten cents off of the original price.
Then he saw something on the bottom shelf, pushed all the way back. It was a container of peanut butter.
Katie and Stephanie eat a lot of this, he thought, picking up the container cheerfully. He was hopeful they would come home, somehow, someway.
* * * * *
Jackson and Bray were in a heated dispute in the basement of the house.
Nicole was upstairs in the kitchen, pretending not to hear the loud arguing coming from below.
“What do you want from me!” Bray shouted. “How am I supposed to arrange a ransom drop and pickup when there is no power?!”
“The whole reason I let you in on this is because you always had brains,” Jackson said. “I expected you to figure something out by now.”
“But I can't do the impossible,” Bray protested. “We were supposed to call her husband on the phone, so we could arrange the switch. He pays us the money, we give him his family back, and then it's done. We had the three of them in our car, and then, all of a sudden, the power goes out all across the nation, and probably throughout the world.”
“Well, our old pickup truck still works,” Jackson
said. “Maybe we can drive over to his house. What did she say her husband's name was again?”
“Benton.”
“Yeah, Benton. We can drive over to Benton's house, and we can leave him a note on his property, telling him to come and meet us somewhere, so he can give us the money.”
“Don't you get it?” Bray asked. “That will never work. If he is going to meet us somewhere, we will need to establish a time for him to do so. But how will we know he is going to get the note before the established time elapses? He's not going to be checking his mailbox too often now that the post office has stopped delivering.”
“We can knock on his door, and then go back to the truck and wait there to make sure he sees the note. If he doesn't answer the door, we can try again another time.”
Bray shook his head in disbelief. “We can't do this when there's a power outage in place. There are too many issues. How is he going to pay us a hefty ransom when the ATM machines are down and the banks are closed? Unless he has tens of thousands of dollars stashed away in his house, I don't think he is going to have much money to offer us.”
“I guess we'll have to wait a few more days,” Jackson said ominously. “Hopefully the power will be back on by then, and we can do business.”
“We've never had a power outage last this long,” Bray said. “I don't think it's coming back on anytime soon. I was watching the news the day before the power went out, and if it's like they predicted—an EMP caused by a coronal mass ejection, the power will be out for years. We should just cut these people loose and move on. I'm tired of thinking about it. I want them out of here.”
“We can't let them go,” Jackson sneered. “They've seen Nicole's face. They can id her to the police.”
“You knew they were going to see Nicole's face all along, but you were still planning on letting them go, anyway.”
“I was?” Jackson sneered.
“I thought we mutually agreed that we would let them go.”
“I never agreed to anything like that,” Jackson said. “Why would I allow my wife's face to be seen by the abductees if I wasn't planning on killing them?”
Footsteps descended the steps, and a moment later, Nicole was standing at the bottom of the staircase, looking at both of them.
There was a pause.
Bray sighed. “Well, then I suggest we wait two more days,” he said with a sense of urgency in his voice. “If the power does not come back on by then, we'll kill them and cut our losses.”
“Fine.”
* * * * *
“Mom, when can we go home?” Stephanie asked.
“It's okay, Stephanie,” Amanda said. “Everything's going to be okay.”
The three of them were blindfolded and tied to the chairs with duct tape.
“Mom, I'm thirsty,” Katie said.
“I know. I'm sure they'll bring us some more water soon.”
They didn't know where they were, but it must have been isolated from the rest of the building, because they could never hear the voices of their abductors.
It was daytime, but the three hostages could not see the sunlight through their blindfolds, nor could they hear the outside world.
They remained in darkness and silence.
Chapter Eight
Another day had gone by.
Amanda, Katie, and Stephanie were still tied to the chairs, but the adhesive from the duct tape was beginning to lose its strength.
Amanda rotated her left wrist back and forth several times until she managed to loosen the restraint. She did the same with her other wrist, rotating it back and forth until she heard the sound of the tape separating from the arm of the chair.
Katie and Stephanie had been quiet for a while now, and had probably fallen asleep.
Amanda lifted the duct tape from her eyes and squinted. It was dim, but not dark. She appeared to be in a garage.
There was a window several meters away from her. The glass was covered with a thin curtain that allowed some of the daylight to pour through.
She stood up and attended to Katie and Stephanie, gently shaking them to a state of wakefulness.
“Katie? Stephanie? Are you okay?”
“Mom?” Katie asked.
“Yes. It's me.”
“Are we going home now?” Stephanie asked.
“Not yet. I'm going to try to find a way out of here. Try to stay quiet.”
“Where are you going?” Stephanie asked.
“Just stay there,” Amanda said. “I'm not leaving you.” She approached the window and drew back the curtain.
Outside the garage was grass for as far as she could see. They were in a rural environment. In the driveway was a parked pickup truck that looked like it was from the 1950's—the same red pickup truck that was used in the abduction. Looking at it sent an unsettling chill down the back of her neck.
She turned around and looked at the small door on the far side of the garage, but she was too timid to open it. From what she had seen through the window, the garage appeared to be attached to the house, and she didn't know who was on the other side of the door.
There was also a large garage door that was built to allow cars to pass through. But with the power off, she knew she wouldn't be able activate it, unless she tried opening it manually.
Fortunately, she knew how to open the door by hand.
Years back, Benton had showed her the pull-chain fixture that opened the door in their own garage during those cold winters when the metal components would freeze. For whatever reason, the door would not respond well to the remote control when it was freezing out, so Benton would pull the fixture downward with one hand, then use his other hand to push the door upward.
Amanda had observed him do it plenty of times, but she had never tried it for herself.
She was about to give it a shot, when suddenly, she heard a door slam. Not wanting to take any chances at the moment, she hurried back to her chair and placed the duct tape back on, loosely tying her wrists and covering her eyes.
Less than a minute later, the door that separated the garage from the kitchen opened.
Chapter Nine
Nicole entered the garage and gave Amanda, Katie, and Stephanie some food and water. When she saw Jackson standing in the doorway, she approached him precariously. She knew that look in his eyes. It was the look that told her he was on the edge of having a breakdown.
They both stepped into the kitchen and closed the door.
“I'm going to have to make a trip into town to stock up on whatever food items they have left,” Jackson said.
“Okay.”
“I need you to stay here and keep an eye on the hostages. Bray is asleep in the living room. He was up all night checking up on the them.”
“What if the power doesn't come back on by the end of today?” Nicole asked. “We aren't going to kill them tonight already, are we?”
Jackson looked at her and said nothing.
“I think we should give it more time,” Nicole said.
“We can't afford to keep feeding them and giving them water that we desperately need for ourselves. If this power outage is what Bray says it is, we will need all the food and water we can get. We can't afford to spare any for a group of hostages that we're eventually going to kill, anyway.” He turned around, grabbed his keys from the counter, and left.
* * * * *
When Amanda heard the door to the truck in the driveway slamming shut, she hurriedly untied herself and rushed to the window. Peering through the glass, she saw the old truck backing out of the driveway and disappearing down the gravelly road.
She hurried toward Katie and Stephanie, who were sitting still and waiting patiently. She leaned forward and began unfastening the duct tape that restrained Katie.
Once Katie was free, she stood up on her wobbly legs and hugged her mom.
Amanda looked at her closely, trying to see if there were any major signs of trauma in Katie's eyes. But aside from looking a little pale and weary, she appe
ared to be fine.
“Mom?”
“I know, Stephanie,” Amanda said, removing the duct tape from her daughter's eyes.
“Are we going home now?” Stephanie asked.
“Yes.”
Stephanie squinted as she peered at her mother.
“Katie, help your sister,” Amanda said in a whisper. “Untie her left wrist, and I'll untie her right wrist.”
“Okay,” Katie said. But she wasn't able to do it as fast as her mother, and Amanda ended up untying both of Stephanie's wrists, herself.
She hugged Stephanie and looked at her face closely, just as she had done with Katie. They seemed to share the same symptoms—paleness and weariness—but no serious damage appeared to have been done.
Amanda moved toward the door that separated the kitchen from the garage, and held her ear up to it. She could hear the sound of someone shuffling through the cabinets and drawers. They couldn't go out that way.
She hurried over to the large garage door and looked up at the pull-chain fixture. A piece of metal ran along the interior of the door. The piece of metal looked similar to a railing, except it was hollower and thinner.
Katie and Stephanie were standing close behind Amanda, growing restless.
“When I count to three, I need each of you to grab that piece of metal and push up, okay?”
Katie and Stephanie looked at the piece of metal that jutted out from the door, and grabbed a hold of it.
“Ready? One . . . two . . . three.” Amanda pulled the chain, and then the door made a snapping sound as it lifted several inches off the ground. She let go of the pull-chain fixture and stooped down to lift the door the rest of the way up.
Stephanie and Katie passed through the open doorway, while Amanda held the door open for them. She was on the verge of passing through the doorway, herself, when suddenly, the door that separated the garage from the kitchen swung open.
In the doorway stood Nicole. Her eyes widened as they met Amanda's gaze. “Bray!” she shouted.
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