It’s Monday. Dawn. The adults of Westbrook suburb head off to work. Their routine and routes are gears in a soulless machine. It’s been two weeks since children started disappearing. Instead of tears, smiles envelop the adults’ faces.
In coffee shops, hardware stores, strip malls – no children. Only vapid adults acting unaware, gleefully humming the latest pop tunes to distract them from the horror happening under their post-pubescent noses.
I wait outside McCellan’s warehouse. The parking lot is filled with yellow buses. I got this lead from one Charlie Pickens, a lousy kid I found riding his bike this morning with a nondescript sack of newspapers.
I knew not to ask about it. I had bigger fish to fry and the world isn’t as black and white as printed news. He didn’t know much, but he’d recently seen yellow buses around picking up kids.
Charlie stays at home on weekdays with his mom. Lucky son of a bitch.
It’s 7:00 am, I down another cup of coffee and Jack.
The buses spill out and split from one another onto different streets. I follow one. Its movements are erratic, pivoting from one side street to the next. I don’t think he notices me – no, it’s on a route. To where? God only knows. But I’ll make it my duty to find out.
It careens out a sign telling me to “STOP.”
Like hell I won’t.
I park the car and get out to get a closer look. I peer in the tinted windows. Dear God, there must be ten to fifteen kids in there! All with their own nondescript sacks.
I hear the doors snap close and engines bellow. I ran back to the car. I can’t lose this lead, not now. I’m too close.
The same adults I saw in the banks, the drug stores, and the eccentric micro brew houses – they’re all here. Wearing their snarly smiles and “William McKinley Elementary” lanyards. They weaponize the children’s naivety and funnel them into the brick building.
The radius is fenced. No easy way in. There’s also a military-grade training field with climbing walls, gravel, and four segmented jujitsu squares.
A siren rings and the doors lock behind the last kidnapper. Only one way in and zero chance of me getting out alive. I finish off another coffee and jack.
I have to disguise myself to find a way in. I open my trunk and push away the leftover Chinese takeout. I remove my trench and 5 o’clock shadow, throw on a polo and khakis.
I stare at my reflection in the rearview mirror. Clean face, fitted clothing and holding a box of Panera cinnamon crunch bagels. It’s grotesque.
One of the lanyard lackeys stops me. “Hey, you must be the new sub? Nice to meet you.”
Sub? Submissive? Wouldn’t be my first time.
“You brought Panera bagels? Nice! Follow me in.” We each grab a Panera cinnamon crunch bagel and take a bite. It’s sweet, the only sweet part of this life I live. I stare into his lifeless, exhausted eyes.
“Follow me, you’re gonna love the kids.”
Sick fuck.
