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A note to our listeners. This episode contains adult language.

I want my mom.

Mom?

Head Ray shines a flashlight on the ceiling of his prison. He's trapped inside the trailer of a moving truck that's buried underground.

And he's desperate to find a way out. As he scans the surface above, he can hear soft whimpers emanating from the darkness around him.

There are 26 children imprisoned with him and all of them are terrified.

Ed's a school bus driver by trade. Yesterday afternoon, he drove a bus load of kids home from summer school in the small farming town of Chauchilla, California.

The dusty roads that run between the mass of farms were empty and quiet, just like any other day.

But then, out of nowhere, three armed men hijacked the bus. They packed Ed and the students into two vans and drove them around for hours.

When the kidnappers finally pulled Ed out of the van, it was the middle of the night. He could see that he was in a desolate industrial area surrounded by piles of dirt and gravel.

One by one, the hostages were forced to climb down a ladder through a hole in the ceiling of the underground truck. Then, the kidnappers removed the ladder and sealed the exit.

Shut.

Ed reaches above his head. He can barely touch the steel plate that's been laid over the hole in the ceiling.

Ed strains the push against the plate with his fingertips. Something very heavy has been placed on top of it.

It won't budge, not without more leverage. He swings his flashlight around to check on the kids. They look completely spent, lying on filthy mattresses or slumping against the walls of the moving van.

Catatonic.

Besides the mattresses, the kidnappers left several large jugs of water and a pitiful amount of food. Cheerios, peanut butter, wonder bread, crackers.

Most of it is gone already. Two holes cut into the wheel wells were evidently meant as toilets. Some of the kids have been using them already and the stench is overpowering.

The only air blows in softly from two small holes in the ceiling. Ed figures there must be fans connected to them somehow, but it doesn't matter much.

It feels like they're slowly suffocating and with every hour the heat inside this steel compartment is rising.

Ed slowly crutches down and takes a seat on the floor of the truck. Some of the kids slide closer to him and cling to his arms. He hugs them.

...