Eleven, Twelve ... Dig and delve (Rebekka Franck Book 6) (11 page)

Another rumble woke us up. A loud thud reminded us where we were and that the earth was still collapsing around us.

It was truly terrifying. But there was something worse. Another sound. A scream that pierced through our bones.

33

“
D
ID YOU HEAR THAT?”

I looked at David. He nodded. “That didn’t sound good.”

“We have to get back to them,” I said, and got to my feet. “Something is wrong.”

More screams followed. Terrifying screams. My heart pounded. I wondered about the children…Afrim and Frederic. They were the ones I worried most about down here. They were so young and fragile. Both of them had their mothers who were badly hurt. A terrifying thought hit me.

What if one of the mothers had died?

“We have to find our way back somehow,” I repeated.

“All we can do is try one of the tunnels and see where it leads us,” David said, and got up as well. “I’ll mark the ones we’ve been through, and hopefully we’ll find the right one at some point.”

The prospect of running into these tunnels, not knowing where we would end up, terrified me, but not as much as the thought of what might have happened to one of the boys. The screams did sound an awful lot like they came from a child.

“Let’s do it,” I said.

“Okay,” David said, as he exhaled. “Guess we’ll take the one closest to the one we were supposed to go through before it crashed.”

“I’m right behind you.”

I grabbed my vagabond-bundle. The screams were still echoing through the mines, making me fear what we would find once we got back there,
if
we ever got back there.

I walked behind David for what felt like forever. It seemed to me that the screams were getting closer. At least that gave me some sense of security…that we were, in fact, going in the right direction.

And we were. The tunnel opened up, and suddenly we could walk upright. David started to run, and I followed as fast as I could, while still holding on tightly to the bundle of food. A thousand images ran through my mind. I was almost certain it had to be Afrim who was screaming. I prepared myself for it. I told myself that he probably lost his mother and needed to be comforted right now. I thought of the possibility that it might have been his dog, and at some point hoped that was it. It would be devastating for the boy to lose his friend, yes, but at least he would still have his mother. Afrim’s mother had been in terrible condition when we left. She had been very pale and hardly awake at all. I feared for her life most of all the people in the cave.

Please don’t let it be her, dear God. We’re so close with the water and food now. Just a few more minutes and we’ll have what she needs. It will help her, God. I know it will. Please don’t let her die a few minutes before we arrive.

“I think we’re getting closer,” David said. “I think we took the right way.”

We were running as fast as we could. The screams were more of a whimper or a loud cry now. It sounded more like someone scared than someone sad. It gave me hope that it might not be Afrim.

Maybe something happened to Frederic? Maybe his mom woke up and found him dead? Oh, God, did Frederic die? He was awfully weak!

The tunnel took a turn and we kept following it, when suddenly, David stopped. The tunnel had ended in a new cave. From there, there were two tunnels we could take besides than the one we came from. David lit his cell phone to see if there was a mark on any of them.

“There,” I yelled. “There’s a mark over there! We’ve been here before.”

David led the way through the next tunnel, and even though they all looked so alike, I was certain I remembered being in this one before. Halfway through it, the crying got louder, and we knew we were very close. David stopped suddenly and lit his cellphone. In the light, we saw Malene. She was standing in the tunnel, her back leaning up against the limestone wall with a terrified look on her blood-smeared face. Her eyes were fixated on something on the ground. In her hand, she was holding a cellphone.

David shone his light on the ground.

It was a body. Michael West’s dead body was lying in a pool of blood. His face and chest were full of holes.

34

M
ARTIN
B
USCK STOOD
next to Ole Sigumfeldt while they watched the giant crane set the car on the ground and let go of it. Ole whimpered when he saw small hands knocking on the windows.

“I’m going in,” he said, and jumped the police blockage.

Martin watched as some officer tried to stop Ole from getting closer, but then let him go, once he realized it was his family that was in the car.

Ole ran around the edges of the hole and Martin’s heart pounded hard while watching him slip and slide down at one point, then pull himself up by a tree and get back on the unstable ground and keep running.

Martin put an arm around Mathilde and the baby, knowing he would have done the same for them.

Ole gesticulated and yelled at the firefighters and officers once he reached the car, and they let him open the door. Martin heard the boys scream.

“Daaaad!”

He pulled them out and hugged them, while crying heavily. Then he stopped. “Where are the others?” he asked. He looked at Jacob, the oldest, for answers. Jacob shook his head and cried.

“Where is Frederic? Where is Mom?”

Ole looked at the officers for answers. “Where is my wife? Tine? Frederic? Where are they?”

The officer next to him shook his head with a shrug. “We don’t know.”

“They fell in the hole, Dad,” Christian said, crying. He hadn’t let go of his father since he opened the door.

Jacob was crying and holding onto his father’s arm, leaning into his chest. “They…they just disappeared. One minute they were in the street because there had been an accident…then the next, they were gone, Dad. They vanished into the ground. I screamed, then tried to get them, but the car started moving as well. Then we fell. The car slid and spun around. Everything went dark inside the car. I tried to start it once it was still again. I tried to start it, so we could honk the horn, but it only worked for a little while, and I don’t think anyone could hear us. We were buried in that dirt, Daddy. It was so scary. We were really afraid.”

Ole hugged his son and kissed him again and again, then kissed Christian before he kissed Jacob again. Ole was crying, his body shaking.

Then there was a loud rumble. The earth shook for a little while, some of the edges of the hole started sliding again, and Martin took a step backwards. There was someone behind him, but he moved fast as well. The children started screaming again. An officer approached Ole. “We need to get you to safety. The hole is still evolving. It’s not safe here.”

“But…But…my wife, my other kid?”

“We’re doing the best we can, sir. Please, just get behind the blockage again. We’ll let you all know when there is news to tell. But you must…you must prepare yourself. It’s not good. They’ve been down there for many hours now. It is safe to say that not many can have survived this, if any at all.”

A loud sob rang through the crowd of spectators. One woman bent over and started crying. Martin looked at Mathilde, and their eyes met. Boy, it had been close. They almost lost everything. He tried to do as the officer had told them to. He tried to prepare himself for the fact that he might never see his brother again. His baby brother that he had adored ever since the day their mom brought him back from the hospital. His baby brother, who had always gotten himself into trouble, and whom he had helped out so many times he would never be able to pay him back.

Martin tried hard to imagine him being dead down there underground, but somehow, it didn’t work. There was something inside of him that said it was impossible. With all he had gone through, it was almost like his brother was immortal. Like a cork in the water, he always had a way of floating to the top.

Martin hugged his wife and held her tight.

“He’s gone, Martin,” she said. “You have to let him go.”

Martin drew in a deep breath. He knew his wife was right. He just couldn’t. He wasn’t ready to give up on him. Not yet.

35

“
M
ALENE?
A
RE YOU ALRIGHT?” 

I walked around the corpse and grabbed her hand. She gasped and looked at me like she hadn’t noticed us until now.

“He…He was…he wanted to find a way out. I followed him. I heard noises in the tunnel in front of us and thought it was him, but when I got here, I found him like this. He was lying on the ground. I…there was no light. I stepped on him and fell. I…I fell right on top of him, on his bloody face.”

“That explains the blood,” David said. “Let’s get her back to the others. Did you walk far before you found him?”

She shook her head, whimpering. “A few minutes maybe.”

“Okay. We’re almost back then,” David said.

“What do you think happened to him?” I asked, looking at the many wounds in his face and chest. They seemed deep.

David kneeled next to the body and shone his light in the wounds. They were pretty nasty. “Looks like he was stabbed. It doesn’t look like a knife, though. The holes are more round, but deep.”

Malene shivered.

“Did you see anything before you stepped on the body?” I asked. “There had to have been someone else in the tunnel.”

“I…I didn’t,” she said. “I was trying to get to the other end of the tunnel. I was saving the battery of the cellphone to make it last longer in case I got lost down here, so I was walking in the dark, feeling my way through the tunnel. Then I stepped on him and fell. I didn’t see anyone or anything. But, like I said, I did hear strange noises.”

“What kind of noises?” David asked.

“I…I don’t know. Just noises. Maybe a thud and some splashing, feet running, I don’t know. But whomever did this had to have come through the other end where you guys came from. Didn’t you see anything?”

David and I looked at each other. I shook my head. “No. All we could hear was you screaming.”

“Let’s get back to the others,” David said. “Maybe they know something. I don’t feel like we’re safe in here.”

Malene sobbed. I put my arm around her and gave her a hug. She was shaking. Her hands were bloody. David started walking.

“What about the body?” I asked.

“Let’s bring it back to the other dead ones and keep them together,” David said. He picked up Michael West and carried him on his shoulder. “We need to tell everyone what happened anyway.”

We walked in silence through the tunnel and ended up in the large cave. The first to meet us was Sigurd Bjerrehus. “What happened?” he asked. “Who was screaming? Oh, my God, what happened to you?” he asked Malene.

“Michael West was killed inside the tunnel. Malene found the body,” I told him, and helped her sit down while David carried the body of Michael West into the smaller cave where we had left the others who were dead. I pulled out one bottle of water and gave it to Afrim to give some to his mother. “Small sips. Just a little bit at a time. Moisten her lips with it, try to make her drink. You share this bottle with your mother.”

Afrim gave me a beautiful smile. I heard grumbling and murmuring behind me.

“Why are they getting water and we aren’t?”

I turned and looked to see Lars Dalgas and Mrs. Sigumfeldt. They looked angry. “Anyone who has a problem, come to me,” I said. “The woman is hurt very badly. The boy needs hydration as well.”

Lars Dalgas growled something I didn’t hear. He looked at the bottle of water like he would pull it out of the boy’s hands. Afrim was holding it close to his body.

“Touch the boy, and I’ll make sure you never touch anything else again,” David said. He had taken out his knife and was showing it, so there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that he was serious.

“How?” Sigurd asked. “How was he killed? Did the tunnel crash on him or something? I heard a loud thud just before…”

I shook my head. I spoke with a low voice. I wasn’t sure we should scare everyone further. Especially not the children. “He was killed. Stabbed to death. Did anyone besides Malene and Michael West leave the place while we were gone?”

Sigurd Bjerrehus looked baffled. “I…I mean…several of us have been up to pee, finding some privacy in the tunnels.”

“Who?” I asked. “Who went out to pee?”

“You two were gone for quite a long time, so basically most of us. I know I did. Lars did. Even Mrs. Sigumfeldt. I helped her get to her feet. She held onto my shoulder as I helped her into the tunnel, then I left her till she called for me. Afrim was also out at one point. I helped him as well. Besides that, many of us have been walking around…walking inside the tunnels just to have a moment alone and to stretch our legs. The hours are long in here; the wait, a chilling affair, when you don’t know if you’ll get out of here ever again.”

“What about Thomas and Brian? Have you heard anything from them?” I asked. “Have they come back?”

Just as I spoke the words, I spotted Thomas Soe coming out of the same tunnel we had found the body in. He was smiling.

“Hi, everyone. So good to see you’re all still alive.”

I heard a small cry behind me and turned to look at Malene. She crouched and looked like she was trying to hide herself, while staring at the approaching Thomas.

36

H
E HAD FOUND
a new tunnel. While walking through the first tunnel, the only one he knew of, he had suddenly found another opening, leading to another tunnel. He figured it had opened up after the earth shook again, and more of the ground collapsed. Somehow, the wall had broken down and revealed another tunnel for him to take. His first thought was that it would lead out of here, so that he could find his way out and never have to deal with Brian or see the girl again.