Read Eleven, Twelve ... Dig and delve (Rebekka Franck Book 6) for Free Online Page A

moaned.
    “I’m scared,” Mathilde said.
    “Me too.”
    The ground creaked again, and a blue station wagon that had been dangling on the edge of the hole in the school’s parking lot tipped over and fell into the hole with a loud crash. Martin watched it go down. He knew it belonged to Mrs. Krogh, who was a third grade teacher at the school, and who was always first to arrive at the school in the morning and sit in her classroom and wait for the students. She had done that ever since Martin went to the school as a child, and probably still did it. Only, that part of the school where her classroom was, next to the library, wasn’t there anymore.
    Martin could see his own car on the other side. It had slid down into the side of the hole. Only the back end was sticking out of the dirt. The lights were on and the alarm had set off. Mathilde took a couple of steps further back. In the distance, he could now hear sirens wailing.
    He felt his wife’s gentle hand on his shoulder. “There wasn’t anything you could have done,” she whispered.
    Martin wasn’t so sure. He could think of a lot of things he could have done differently. For once, he could have gone into his brother’s room earlier and kicked him out of bed, told him to get up and get some breakfast, go look for a job, go make himself useful. But he hadn’t. He had let him sleep in. Given him the time he needed to get back on top. What if he hadn’t been such a softy on him? What if he had told him to go take a shower because he was starting to smell in there? Then what would have happened? Would he have been saved? What if he had told Mr. Bjerrehus to stay with them and not go back to look for his wife? He knew. Martin knew he wouldn’t make it across the street. Somehow, he had known, but still not told Mr. Bjerrehus. Why? Why was he such a coward?
    He stared, paralyzed, at the school building that luckily only had lost the wing with the library and one classroom. All the children had been evacuated to the other end of the school area behind the soccer field. Martin could hear the children whimpering and crying. Or was the crying coming from underneath the ground? Martin was suddenly certain he could hear screams coming from inside the hole. He felt a biting chill run down his spine. Where were all the people? Where had they gone? Where was his brother? Where was Mr. Bjerrehus? The entire neighborhood had vanished into this hole. Houses, fences, entire front yards, cars, people. Were they still alive down there? If they were, how on earth were they supposed to get them out of there again? Digging would take hours, maybe even days.
    What the hell were they supposed to do? Just stand there and listen as the screams faded?
     

14
    T HE BOY IN my arms was hardly breathing. His pulse was very weak. I felt the desperation as I clawed my fingers into the dirt and desperately tried to dig us out.
    I knew it would lead us nowhere. I knew it was impossible, but still I couldn’t stop. I had to do something. The intervals between the boy’s breaths became longer and longer, and I couldn’t stand just sitting there listening to the silence, wondering if each one would be his last breath.
    David had a pocketknife that he pulled out and used for digging. He was grunting and groaning next to me, and I got the feeling he was getting all his frustration out by attacking the dirt wall.
    Suddenly, as we were digging, the dirt became looser, and I could remove more than before by using my hand. I reached up to scrape off another lump, when suddenly my hand went straight through.
    I gasped.
    “What?” David asked.
    “I think I made a hole in the wall.”
    I reached my hand inside the hole and waved it. There was definitely air on the other side.
    “Really?” David asked.
    “Yes! Yes! There is definitely a hole. I’ve put my arm though it.”
    “Let’s remove some more,” David said, and started digging intensively with his small pocketknife.
    Minutes later, the