Adrian had once again lost track of ti. Being in the dark – in more ways than one – will do that to you, he mused. He lanted the loss of his phone and the ability to look at a clock. It was sothing he’d taken for granted without question until now.
Silence reigned, punctured by quiet sobs several feet away. There were no conversations taking place, all the occupants either too scared or drained to make noise. Though that made it difficult to determine the exact amount of people with him in the truck, Adrian figured that around twenty others had t the sa fate as him before he had gotten on the truck.
After his eyes had adjusted to the darkness, Adrian noticed the small holes punctured in the top of the truck. The ceiling reminded him of a starry night sky. A perverse sky, with rays of despair rather than hope.
Noticing that he was looking up, the woman with blonde hair quietly comnted “Holes for air. We need so way to breath, and with all these bodies in here, it wouldn’t be surprising if we kicked the bucket from carbon dioxide.”
Tearing his gaze away, he focused on her. They had both chosen a spot along the wall of the truck, towards the door. While he had no desire to turn into the unfortunate soul he had seen murdered earlier, the pri real estate furthest away from the doors was already occupied.
“I was wondering why they bothered putting holes in the ceiling.”
“For all we know, the bastards did it just to mock us with the taste of freedom.”
Adrian chuckled dryly at that. “Yeah, I could see that. This whole situation is fucked up.”
“Tell about it,” the woman spat. “So how did they get you? I’m Lily, by the way. Nice to et you…”
“Adrian,” he offered, keeping his voice down to match her volu. “I was taking a walk one evening, a few days ago, when a van showed up out of nowhere. Then they tased and nabbed . Brought to a field in the middle of nowhere and boom, one car ride later and the rest is history. They locked up the mont I arrived at the building.”
He didn’t know why he was so forthcoming with the woman, but he found that she put him at ease. Maybe it was because it was the first human contact he had had in days that didn’t involve him getting kidnapped. Regardless of why, the truth had spilled out of his mouth before he could take it back.
“So what, they just nabbed you off the street?”
“Yep. I wasn’t even that far from ho either. I don’t know how they found or why they chose . But here I am.”
“You didn’t even have a choice,” she said softly.
Sensing that there was sothing more behind that comnt, Adrian asked “Did you have one? A choice, I an.” He was genuinely curious as to why sobody would choose to end up in this situation.
“Yes. It was either or my granddaughter,” Lily replied, her voice turning hard. The comnt caught Adrian off-guard. “I live out in the countryside, and I returned ho one day after babysitting my granddaughter in the next town over. When I opened my door, I was t with two n in my living room, waiting for . They held at gunpoint and told to follow them, or else it would be my granddaughter.”
Adrian frowned. “But how would they know where your granddaughter was when they threatened you?”
“That’s what I thought. I thought I was going to die. That it was my ti to join my husband. I called them on their bluff, not believing them. They took out a laptop out of a briefcase and showed my live footage of her. She was wearing the sa clothes when I left.”
“Couldn’t they have taken that footage on another day, when she was wearing the sa clothes?”
“The stain was there”
“The what?”
“She stained her clothes with ketchup at lunch. I wasn’t able to get it out. The sa stain was right there on her shirt when she turned to face the cara. They threatened with my own granddaughter. Damn sociopaths,” Lily swore.
“So what happened next?” Adrian asked.
“I went with them, of course. They made give up my phone, which they stored in the briefcase with the laptop. They walked to their car, which was hidden behind the house. Put a bag on my head and off we went. This happened about a week ago.”
Adrian was surprised that she had been held for a whole week, compared to his two days.
“A week? Try two,” a new voice chid in from the opposite wall. It was a low voice, pleasing to the ear. Adrian recognized it as the fit man’s voice from when he had spoken earlier.
Adrian and Lily paused their conversation and looked towards the man.
“Na’s John, by the way,” the man added, after an awkward mont.
“So how’d they get you, John?” Lily asked, including him in their conversation.
“I own a gym. One night, I was locking up after a late workout. I don’t know how they got in, I thought the doors were locked. They ca up from behind and put a rag to my mouth. Held down as I struggled. Then everything went black. I woke up in that damn place, already inside my room. They fed once a day. Hard bread and that god-awful watered-down soup. It’s how I kept track of the days. Today was day sixteen.”
Adrian couldn’t fathom what it must have been like, waiting for all that ti in those tiny rooms, not knowing what was going to happen. The two days he had been there had felt like torture to him. But two weeks? Adrian shuddered.
“They fed you?,” Adrian said, frowning. “I haven’t eaten since they brought in. Just so water.”
“They stopped giving food around the ti you ca in,” John replied. “I wonder if they ran out, or if they didn’t see a point since we were going to be leaving soon.”
“We’ll never know,” Lily said. “Just like we’ll never know why we were the random unlucky ones to get caught.”
They lapsed into silence, each lost in their own thoughts. Adrian listened to the thrum of the truck, until a thought struck him. “It wasn’t random,” he said, breaking the silence.
“What do you an?” John asked.
“The way we were caught. We were all kidnapped when we were alone,” Adrian began.
“Well of course it happened when we were alone,” John said, looking at Adrian as if he was an idiot. “They would have had a hell of a ti getting us when we were in a room full people.”
“No, that’s not what I ant. They knew we were going to be alone ahead of ti,” Adrian continued. “They were filming Lily’s granddaughter and using it to threaten you,” he said, turning to face Lily. “That ans it must have been planned, if they went through the trouble of preparing that.” Adrian thought for a mont, before he asked “John, how often do you lock up late at night alone?”
“On Mondays.”
“Only Mondays? Every Monday?”
“Yeah, I like starting off the week with a late-night workout.”
“So then anybody who knew your schedule would know that you would be alone in the gym on Mondays.”
“So what, they’ve been spying on us? For how long were we being watched for them to know what we were going to do the day they grabbed us?”
“I don’t know,” Adrian admitted. “The only thing that doesn’t make sense is . How could they have known I would leave my apartnt that night? I went out for a walk at random.”
Lily snapped her fingers. “Because you probably weren’t planned, not to the extent that we were. Rember? That creepy boss guy said that they had extras when they killed that guy. Maybe you were the extra he was talking about.”
“Maybe they happened to pass you by and saw an opportunity?” John offered.
“But still, why ? Plenty of people go for late night walks.”
“No Adrian, they don’t. Most people stay inside late at night.”
“So what, they just saw and thought to themselves, ‘Hey, why don’t we grab that guy too?’,” Adrian said, flustered.
“Well, maybe?” Lily shrugged.
The group lapsed back into silence, contemplating the situation. Adrian brought his knees to his chest, mulling on the unfairness of it all. He started to grow uncomfortable and stretched his legs back out, lost in thought. Lily called out to him after so ti, and he lifted his head in her direction. “What?” he asked.
“Are you seeing sobody?”
Once again, she managed to catch him off-guard. “No, I’m not,” he stamred out.
“Really? Why not? Surely a handso young man such as yourself would have no trouble finding soone.”
“Rub it in, why don’t you,” Adrian grumbled. “What was the point of this question again?”
Lily ignored the jab and turned towards John. “How about you?
“I’ve got no one in my life either,” John replied, sowhat defensively.
“Do you live close to family?”
“No, I moved out of state for college and settled down there. My family lives halfway across the country.”
“Right, and my daughter lives over half an hour away from ,” Lily added. A bigger picture was being ford, one painstaking question and answer at a ti. It was still murky, but it was becoming clearer with each passing mont.
“We’re all alone,” Adrian said, finally putting the pieces together.
“We were all alone when we got nabbed. We’ve been over this,” John said, obviously not coming to the sa conclusion as Adrian.
“Not the brightest tool in the shed, is he?” Lily muttered under her breath. It was just loud enough for Adrian to catch it. A small smile flickered across his face, unseen in the low light.
“You and I don’t have girlfriends,” Adrian listed. “Lily has no husband and lives alone. You live across the country from your family, and mine, well, my family is gone.” He choked out that last part. What he wouldn’t give for Annie to tell him everything was going to be ok, like she used to do.
“None of us have anybody who would notice we were gone. Not right away,” Lily finished.
“But I’ve got friends,” John countered. “They would know if I’m missing.”
“How often do you get in contact with them?”
“Every couple of days,” John stated matter-of-factly.
This ti it was Adrian’s turn to look at John as if he was an idiot. “So you’re telling us that you can go days without contacting sobody,” he stated.
“And if they don’t hear from you right away, they might just think you’re busy,” Lily added. “That’s plenty of ti for you to go missing without anybody noticing.”
“My friends would notice if I went missing,” John asserted.
“Not before you’re long gone, though,” Lily said, shutting down his retort. “Would they know right away, or the day after? Or the day after that?” Lily asked, picking apart his answer.
John furrowed his brows, hesitating before answering her question. “I guess not,” he said. “But they would eventually co looking for us, right? That’s what the police are for.”
“John, this isn’t a tv show or a book. The cops wouldn’t magically just find us, assuming they even took the report seriously to begin with. Look at us now. I’m sure there’s so kind of paperwork that would make them take even longer to start looking for us.”
“Couldn’t they track us using our phones or sothing?”
“They took all of our phones. At least, I’m assuming they did. That’s what they did to and Lily,” Adrian looked at the John expectantly.
“They took mine as well,” John said, realising that Adrian was waiting for him to answer the unsaid question. “Even if they took them from us, it doesn’t change the fact that they would had still had the phones with them in those briefcases of theirs. They could’ve tracked those to find us”
“Clearly that didn’t happen,” Lily deadpanned, rolling her eyes. She began picking at the dirt under her nails. The truck was far from squeaky clean and stank of unwashed bodies and fear. Adrian had long gotten used to the sll, although every now and then he got a whiff of body odour he wished wouldn’t waft his way. He wasn’t a big fan of the filth either and subconsciously began imitating Lily.
“Nobody cares about us, so what? Am I supposed to celebrate? Throw a pity party?” John said self-depreciatively.
“I didn’t an it like that,”
“It’s fine, I get it,” John said bitterly. “We’re all just loners with no one who cares about us enough to notice that we’d go missing.”
Lily shook her head and chose not to answer. Best to just keep quiet and change subjects. She looked for sothing to say.
“But still, how did they find ?” Adrian asked, doing it for her. “My entire family just died in a car crash. There’s no way they could have known that I had nobody left in my family that would notice my disappearance.”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Lily said empathetically, reaching over and putting a hand on his leg for support. “How long?”
“It’s only been a few days,” Adrian said, his shoulders sagging. Alone, exhausted and surrounded by strangers, he suddenly felt very small. He wasn’t prepared for sothing like this. He took his outstretched legs and brought them to his chest. He once again wished Annie was there with him. On second thought, he thought to himself, I wouldn’t want her stuck in this situation at all.
Being the only real conversation happening in the truck, the trio didn’t realize that others were listening intently on their discussion, filing away the information for later. As Lily, Adrian and John continued talking, getting to know each other, a man shrouded in shadows lay against the wall on the other end of the truck. His eyes were closed, feigning sleep.
He was anything but asleep though, quietly learning all that he could from the conversations around him. Encouraged by Adrian’s conversation, so people now talked quietly to themselves, others rocked back and forth or tapped their fingers nervously. More than one person whispered underneath their breath.
So people he couldn’t hear properly, but others he could. Adrian’s conversation had beco more interesting to him however, so he tuned in and paid less attention to the others. The woman across from him berating and blaming her ex-boyfriend during a ten-minute rant, swearing up a storm in the process, was far lower on his priority list.
Quietly, he began tapping his finger against the side of his leg in contemplation. Should he go introduce himself or stay where he was? The man didn’t know which would be the better course of action. Much like the others, he was clueless and helpless. The man was determined to gain every edge he could before they arrived. Arrived where? He didn’t know. But he wanted to be prepared.
Clicking his tongue, the man stood up in one fluid motion. He startled the woman ranting about her old lover, but it wasn’t long before she was back at it.
Gingerly, the man stepped over the outstretched legs that were sprawled about and began making his way over towards Adrian. It was dark however, with what little lighting filtering in through the holes in the roof of the truck doing little to help him make out the finer details of what lay in his path. More than once, he stepped on a leg, earning himself startled yelps and less than kind words.
“–ing. Her favourite song was Over the Rainbow. We used to sing it almost every ti we saw each other,” Adrian recounted. The conversation had turned towards his deceased family. Once he started talking about them, he couldn’t bring himself to stop. Talking to Lily was soothing and telling her about them made him focus on the good tis from when they were alive. A little bit of positivity went a long way in the situation he had found himself in.
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