The Release

“Ethan. Ethan. There’s no time. They took us. Dear God, they took us. Some guys, from an agency…I’m calling you from a car…a transport…I tried to get them to wait. But…” the voice was indecipherable for a moment. And then there was a click.

Lucy kept watching.

From the videotape, a woman’s voice a

It was their mom’s voice. Again.

“Ethan. Listen to me. Get to the airport. Get to the airport now. Get to the airport. That’s where we’re going…but I don’t know yet…”

Another click.

Another a

“No time. I’m sorry. You need this message.” In the background, there was a rumble. It was the distinct and unmistakable rumbling of an airplane fu

The automated woman a

Then Ethan turned the camera on himself.

“Lucy…I’m in a rush…I’ve got to get to the airport. But in case you get back…I need you to see this.” He jostled the camera back toward the house and out of the kitchen and through the dining room to the entryway. At the time of the video, it was only a half hour or hour after Lucy had left that area. Ethan zoomed in on Lucy and Ethan’s monogramed bags. The only bags left at the foot of the stairs. A lump formed in Lucy’s throat when she saw those—their things had been left behind.

They had been totally and completely left behind.

Then the camera pa

Lucy hadn’t gone through the front door when she came home, she had gone through the side door through the carport. Was this chaos still there?

Would it be a permanent reminder that something bad had happened at their house?

Not taking her eyes off of the camera, she spoke—shocked by the waver in it. “What was Mom saying?” she asked as video-Ethan opened the front door and pa

If what Lucy was seeing was true, then people got out and grabbed her family. In the midst of nuclear war, a deathly virus, and the end of the world and life on the planet, her family had also been kidnapped. It was mind-boggling.

“What was she saying?” Lucy asked again. The video had ended. She slammed the monitor shut and held the camera against her chest. “Do you know? Did you figure it out?”

Ethan nodded and glanced to Darla and Grant.

“Ethan?” Lucy asked again.

“Yeah,” he finally answered, his voice small. He sniffed and looked at his sister and then tilted his head. “She was saying fruit cellar.”

“Fruit cellar?” Lucy couldn’t hide her incredulity. “Fruit cellar.”

Their mom ca

In her final message to her lost children, Maxine King had been shouting for them to go to the one place they dreaded more than anything.

“The dungeon.” Lucy reworded. And then she shook her head. “Mom was sending us to the dungeon? No, I don’t get it.”

Ethan and Darla exchanged another look.

“Grab a flashlight,” Ethan instructed. Then he turned to his sister, as the color drained from her face. “Lucy…Grant…there’s something in the fruit cellar that you two need to see.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The fruit cellar. It sat in the pitch blackness with the wooden door slightly ajar. It was cool and quiet and isolated. Every horror movie had a scene like this: Three shuffling people moving forward in a dank basement toward an eerie looking door—their flashlights only creating a small circle of concentrated light and leaving the rest of the space full of dreaded mysteries.

If Lucy had been afraid of her mother’s dungeon before, she was petrified now. Without power, they had no secondary light to illuminate the way, and every box or broom or any other basement belonging seemed particularly foreboding and potentially murderous in the dark. Ethan had demanded Lucy just go explore for herself, like he had, without any warnings or hints about what she would find. Darla, who clearly already knew about the fruit cellar’s contents, tagged along, but even she seemed turned off by the darkness of the basement combined with the growing momentum of fear and worry.

Unable to travel to the basement, Ethan stayed upstairs with Teddy and waited for their return. Teddy seemed to adore Ethan; he was conscious of Ethan’s pain and before they had opened the door to the basement, Teddy had climbed into Ethan’s lap with a collection of books.

They approached the door to the fruit cellar and everyone slowed to a halt.

“You open it,” Lucy said to Grant and gave him a small push toward the door. “This is massively frightening to me.” Grant responded with a resounding no and, as the holder of the flashlight, turned the object onto Lucy and Darla, blinding them—their hands flew to their faces in protest. “Stop. Get that out of my eyes,” Lucy complained.

“Make Darla open it,” Grant said and when Darla sighed and consented, he lowered the light and lit her path to the door. Darla peeled back the door and it squawked at them.

“There,” Darla a

“It’s a normal, boring fruit cellar,” Grant called back to them, a

All three of them shoved together in the confined space was suffocating—Lucy could move, but every time she did, she ran into another person. There were arms and legs and hands touching. Darla tried to scuttle away to the corner to give them space, but she stepped on Lucy’s toe in the process. Grant tried to control the light, but viewing the fruit cellar through the lens of what Grant deemed important was making Lucy nauseous. She reached over and took the flashlight gently and then began to illuminate each area of the small space in turn.