Read Online The Hole by William Meikle - Free Book Online Page B

against him. That gave the man a fresh jolt of energy, and he was able to free himself and another child from the thick clay. Between them, Janet and the man started to make faster headway, and Bill’s appearance at the top of the slope soon meant they were all able to pull everyone out of the hole and roll aside, tired, panting, but alive.
    * * *
    It took her several seconds to catch her breath. Bill helped her to her feet, looked her up and down and smiled grimly.
    “Looking good on date night,” he said.
    Janet looked down. She was caked, from neck to toe, in clinging gray mud.
    “You can help me wash it off later,” she said, and turned away as Bill’s mouth fell open in astonishment.
    She spent the next ten minutes tending to the family. Apart from superficial cuts and bruises the kids were little the worse for wear, but the mother had a bruise the size of an egg above her left eye, and seemed confused, possibly concussed. The husband had deep lacerations along the back of both hands that she was able to bandage using the first-aid kit in the squad car, and she was just getting round to a nasty gash at his thigh when the first ambulance turned up.
    Getting the man into it turned into somewhat of a pantomime as first he refused to leave his family, then the family refused to let him go without them, and the whole thing turned into a shouting and screaming match until Bill finally lost it.
    “Just bloody go. All of you,” he shouted, the force of his personality so strong it shocked everybody into obedient silence.
    “Nice job, Mr. Shouty,” Janet said as the ambulance, with the whole family crammed inside, headed out.
    “Ain’t gonna be a lot of quiet around here tonight,” Bill replied grimly. “Best get used to it.”
    * * *
    Over the next half an hour they started to get some idea of the scale of the disaster. Janet spent most of the time tending to a steady trail of walking wounded. They arrived in dribs and drabs, picking their way through wreckage and around collapsed ground. Bill was somewhere out in the night with his deputies and three paramedics, assessing the damage and looking for more survivors. Janet felt more tense and nervous with every minute that passed. She tried to keep her mind on her job, to focus on the patients, but the thought of Bill out in the dark, with the chance of a fresh collapse at any time, had her nerves frayed to breaking point. She almost sobbed when the big man walked out of the ruins.
    He had three kids with him, all of them in shock. He sat on the squad car hood, more tired than she’d ever seen him, caked head to toe in grime, soot and blood while Janet assessed the kids.
    They’ll live. But they might never be the same.
    She packed them off in another ambulance before turning to Bill.
    “How bad is it?” she asked.
    She thought he wasn’t going to answer at first, and when he did, it was in a small, almost childlike voice far removed from his usual confident tone.
    “A full third of the town’s gone. Just gone…fallen into new holes. The worst of the damage is over at the trailer park. We’ve got over two hundred folks missing, and that’s over and above the thirty bodies we’ve recovered from what little wreckage was left.”
    Two hundred?
    Janet’s mind could scarcely take it in. The big man looked ready to burst into tears, and she feared that if he did, she might join him.
    We’re not equipped for this.
    “We need to get the authorities here in force. And we need them now.”
    Bill wiped a hand across his brow, smearing a scar of mud across his forehead.
    “I’ve made the call. They say they’re on their way. God knows when they’ll get here though.”
    Janet looked around her. The area where they’d stopped the squad car was now a makeshift recovery center, a hubbub of medics, cops and volunteer townsfolk. And patients…an ever-growing body of wounded and shocked.
    “I need to get these folks inside,” Janet said. “And if there’s going