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

  “What was that?” the boy asked.

  “What?”

  “I saw something move over there,” he said and pointed. “Now it’s up there above us. Look!”

  Thomas lifted his lighter closer to the ceiling, till it lit up the entire area around them. Human arms and legs stuck out from the dirt everywhere. From both above them and from the sides. The body parts were moving, and when standing still, he could hear muffled screams coming from inside the dirt walls.

  Thomas breathed, relieved. Now he knew it was just one of his dreams.

  13

  MARTIN BUSCK HAD grabbed his wife and child in his arms and run for his life just in time, before the house had disappeared into the ground and buried his beloved brother. Once he felt safe enough further down the street of Blegevej, on the other side of the half-crashed school, he put his loved ones down and stared at the scenery while catching his breath.

  It was a true nightmare. No, it was worse. It was horrifying. The entire neighborhood seemed to have fallen into the ground. Martin had a hard time comprehending exactly what had happened. Was this for real? Had entire houses simply vanished?

  But that’s impossible. Houses don’t simply fall into the ground. The ground doesn’t just disappear underneath you!

  A huge part of the road was gone. Debris was everywhere. In the middle, there was a large hole in the ground the size of three soccer fields. At least. It was huge.

  “You think it stopped?” Mathilde asked with a small whimper. “You think we’re safe here?”

  “I…I,” Martin paused. He had no idea what to say to all this. It was so surreal. He had lost his brother, who had been sucked into this enormous thing just a few minutes ago. Mr. Bjerrehus, the man living across the street from him had pulled Martin out just in time, so he wouldn’t get swallowed himself, then rushed back to his own house to help his wife. Through the opening that had appeared in Martin’s house when David’s room disappeared with David in it, Martin had watched Mr. Bjerrehus run across the street. He had watched his every step closely with a wildly beating heart as the man ran, until suddenly the ground caved underneath him when his front foot landed on the asphalt and in the blink of an eye, Mr. Bjerrehus was gone.

  That was when Martin decided to run. Run as far away as possible. It had felt like they were running on eggshells, that the ground simply couldn’t sustain their weight anymore.

  “I’m not sure we’re safe anywhere,” he 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

  THE 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 dirt surrounding my hand started crumbling and falling to the ground. Air hit my face and my nostrils. Oxygen. David removed the rest of the dirt, while I found my phone and used some of the battery to shine light so we could see.

  “It looks like a tunnel,” I said.

  “It is a tunnel,” David said. “It’s small, but must lead somewhere.”

  I took in a couple of deep breaths. It had been hard to breathe properly in the cave with three people sharing the air. It felt so liberating to be able to breathe properly again. The tunnel ahead of us was low and we would have to walk with our heads ducked, but at least we could move. We could go somewhere. At least there was a little ray of hope. The boy in my arms started to breathe more regularly. I felt a deep relief in my heart.

  David kicked the last of the dirt wall to make the hole bigger. He felt the ground and the ceiling with his hands.

  “Limestone,” he said.

  “Limestone? We must be really far down then,” I said.

  “I’m not a geologist, but I know that usually the limestone layers are about four to five hundred meters underneath the surface.”

  “Five hundred meters underground?” I gulped.

  “We’re probably not that deep down. In these areas of Jutland, the limestone is closer to the surface. That’s why these areas used to be mined. But it is good news.”

  “Why is it good news?”

  “Because it means we’ve hit the mines. I’m guessing this tunnel is part of what used to be the mines. The world’s largest limestone mine, Monsted kalkgruber, is very close. It’s actually our neighbor. It covers sixty kilometers underground, what they know of, but many tun
nels have been naturally shaped leading further away. Caves are shaped naturally by the erosion of the limestone and by water. This area is known for its many underground caves. They probably just didn’t know they were building an entire neighborhood on top of them.”

  “Sixty kilometers. But that’s such a huge area. How is that good news? If this is one of the tunnels, then we risk getting lost down here,” I lit his face with my phone.

  “Because that means there has to be a way out somewhere. We just need to find it. Now, shut off that phone and save the battery for later. We’ll feel our way through the tunnel. Follow me.”

  15

  “IT’S JUST A DREAM. We’ll wake up in a few minutes and everything will be back to normal, don’t worry.”

  Afrim stared at Thomas like he was mad. Thomas didn’t care. He knew a daydream when he saw it. It was just like the time he imagined going into the school with a knife and killing children and teachers. It had been a very vivid dream, but it had been nothing but a dream. Once he snapped out of it, he found himself sitting at his house, staring at the school from his window. There was no blood. No screams. No terror in their eyes.

  “It’s not a dream,” Afrim said. He was still whimpering. Thomas wished he would stop doing that. It was so annoying. He was ruining a perfectly good daydream. Thomas looked at the hands and feet sticking out of the walls and ceiling. Then he laughed. It was one of the better ones. One of the more horrifying ones. But he was getting tired of it now. He blinked his eyes a couple of times to get back to reality. But nothing happened. He was still with the whining boy underground.

  Thomas sighed. So, this one insisted on going on, huh?

  “Please Mr., we need to help these people. They’re stuck,” the boy said.

  Might as well play along. One of those in there might be your girl.

  Thomas Soe used his fingers to dig. Frantically, he dug his fingers into the dirt where the arms and legs were sticking out. Afrim was lying on the ground, holding on to his leg, and crying. Thomas had no idea what he was doing. All he could do was hope that he would find the girl. She had to be in there somewhere…if this was real, and if she was real. He had put the lighter down and managed to dig an entire arm and a leg out, and soon, a face emerged. He pulled the shoulders and got the entire body free from the dirt. It plunged to the ground; a set of eyes behind the dirt looked at him. They belonged to a man. He coughed and threw up dirt. Thomas felt disgusted.

  “Damn dirt,” the man managed to growl between coughs. “It’s freaking everywhere.”

  Thomas wondered if he should ask him if he had seen the girl, but hesitated. More hands and feet were moving inside the wall, and he started to dig again. A woman emerged from the dirt. Her leg was bent the wrong way. Once she was able to breathe properly, Thomas placed her next to the boy.

  Thomas pulled a set of legs, and the body of a man emerged. He was pale and stared at Thomas with empty eyes. Thomas knew that look. He had seen it on Rikke’s face when he killed her. He was dead.

  “Mr.Thomsen!” the boy yelled when he saw his face. “That’s Mr. Thomsen.”

  It was Mr. Thomsen from number one, Thomas’ neighbor who lost his wife to brain cancer last year. Thomas had often imagined killing him. He didn’t quite look the way he did in Thomas’ other dreams.

  Thomas placed the dead body on the ground, and then returned to the digging. He was hoping the next dead body would be that of the girl. He would like to see what she looked like dead. He continued to dig. It all felt very real. The cold muddy dirt, the people. Thomas was starting to doubt if this was really one of his daydreams. Someone next to him started to help digging. It was the guy that he had pulled out first. He was a big guy. Kind of brusque. The type Thomas got beat up by in high school. His face was bleeding, so was his arm, but he didn’t seem to notice. Thomas liked looking at the blood.

  He nodded. “Thanks, man.” Then he coughed again and spat on the ground. “Name’s Brian. Brian Jansen. I believe we’re neighbors.”

  Thomas nodded. He knew who he was. Thomas would lie still at night while listening to the man beat up his wife next door. He would hear her scream for him to please stop and please don’t hit me again. Thomas loved listening to the sound of the man’s fist slamming into his wife and her following screams.

  “Buster!”

  The boy tried to get up to his feet behind them, but couldn’t. “I think I see Buster,” he yelled” “Over there!”

  Thomas turned his head to look. The boy was right. Something was sticking out from the dirt. It looked like a paw. Brian saw it too. “Let’s help the kid,” he said, and walked to it. He grabbed the paw and pulled it forcefully. Then he stood with the dog dangling upside down.

  “Is he…? Is he…?” the boy whimpered.

  Brian Jansen shook the dog and made dirt fall off it, then threw it at the boy. “It’s dead.”

  “No!” Afrim screamed. He leaned over the dog and put his ear to his chest. “Please, Buster. Please, be alive.”

  Afrim went quiet. The woman next to him seemed to be drifting in and out of consciousness. Her leg was bad. The pain had to be excruciating. Thomas couldn’t take his eyes off of her. He liked to see people in pain. He didn’t know why. It was sick. That much he knew, but he couldn’t fight it. Just from watching her, he felt so inspired to write. What great poems he could write about this woman and her pain.

  “I can hear his heart,” the boy suddenly screamed. “It’s beating. His heart is beating. He’s not dead! Buster, Buster. You’re not dead!”

  Thomas and Brian exchanged a look. Thomas found a foot sticking out and grabbed it. “You dig, I pull,” Thomas said.

  But Brian didn’t come to help. Instead, he pulled Thomas’ arm. “You know what? Maybe we should rethink this,” he said.

  16

  FOR THE FIRST time in weeks, David hadn’t thought about killing himself for even a second. Not since he had looked into his brother’s eyes while sliding down, and thought this was it. This was how he would die. It was in those seconds faced with death that he realized he really didn’t want to die. He regretted ever having picked up the gun. It was in those seconds after he had woken up inside that strange pocket in the ground surrounded by nothing but dirt and darkness that he had realized he had so much to live for. There was still so much he wanted to do. So many places he wanted to see.

  Now he was determined, more than ever, to get out of this place, whatever it was. He was walking through a tunnel of some sort, feeling his way with his hands on the limestone, the woman following him closely with the kid in her arms. He wanted to save them. He wanted to help them and do something good for someone else, for once in his life.

  “Do you see anything?” the woman asked, panting behind him. He had asked if he should carry the kid, but she had refused. Something about a promise she had made to herself.

  She had told him her name was Rebekka Franck. Once he heard her name, he realized he knew who she was. She was widely known in his journalist circles. Hell of a reporter who had given up a promising career as a war correspondent to go work for a small newspaper in her hometown. Her decision sent waves of shock through the industry. It was something people talked about. She had chosen it for personal reasons, he remembered people saying. Some people said she was scared. That a bad experience in Iraq had made her quit her job at the prestigious paper. Somehow, David never believed that. There had to be more to her story.

  “No. It’s all darkness. You sure you can carry the kid? I’ll be more than happy to take him for a little while.”

  “I got it,” she said.

  “As you will.”

  David crept further up. He bumped his head on the ceiling. “Ouch.” He felt it with his fingers. He was bleeding. He could feel the blood on his fingers.

  “You okay?” Rebekka asked.

  “Yeah, yeah. Just keep walking and mind your head.”

  “Luckily, I’m not as tall as you,” she said.

  David stopped. Hi
s hands had bumped into something in front of him. His heart started pounding while he felt it. Panic spread quickly through his body. Whatever it was, it seemed solid.

  “What’s going on?” Rebekka asked. “Why have we stopped?”

  “I…I bumped into something.”

  “Well, what is it?” she asked.

  “It…it seems to be a wall of some sort.”

  Rebekka became quiet. David kept feeling the wall in front of him. “It’s not limestone. It’s dirt. I think the tunnel crashed. Maybe when the ground opened.”

  Rebekka sighed. Her voice was shaking slightly when she spoke. “So, it’s a dead end?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Try digging into it with your knife. See how deep it is.”

  David found his pocketknife and dug it into the wall. “It’s deep, Rebekka. It’s a wall.”

  “Walls can be broken. Try some more. There has to be a way to get through. We have to keep trying. It’s the only way we have. There has to be a way out. There simply has to be.”

  17

  BUSTER WAS GETTING BETTER. Afrim was so happy to have his friend next to him again, even though he was hurt. A few minutes after being pulled out of the ground, he started moving his legs and ears. It made Afrim’s heart jump with joy. Buster had been his best friend for as long as he could remember. Afrim had only been a baby when they got him, his mother used to say. And as soon as he had learned how to walk, Afrim would grab onto Buster’s tail and follow him everywhere in the house. Now he touched Buster’s broken tail and heard the dog whimper slightly.

  “You’ll be fine, Buster,” he said, and put his head next to the dog’s. “Now that we’re together, I know we’ll be fine.”

  The woman lying next to Afrim seemed to be more dead than alive. Every now and then she would moan in pain and scare Afrim half to death. It was cold in the small cave, and Afrim missed his parents terribly. Especially his mom. The two men in the cave had started to dig out another arm, but then they had stopped and now they were discussing something. Afrim was wondering if they had realized it belonged to yet another dead body. He pretended not to be, but he was listening in on their conversation.