Dawn of Fear by Susan Cooper Read Free Book Online Page B

school as they always did: up Everett Avenue, across the main highway, and along the three side streets lined with gigantic metal objects like candlesticks that put up the smokescreen to protect the housing estate in a raid. As they turned the corner toward the school, they could see the crowd that told them something was wrong, and they broke into a run, with Peter in front as he always was sooner or later. Within moments they were in the thick of the crowd and gazing down at the huge gaping hole in the road outside the gates of the school.
    Derek stood staring, mesmerized. He had seen bomb craters before, but they had always been in fields. A hole in a field, even a huge hole, was not the same as a hole in a road; this was more violent, somehow, with yards and
yards of road and pavement simply gone, vanished, and the road surface and stones and gravel and clay and broken pipes left naked in layers, as if by a vast jagged slice taken from a gigantic cake. When he looked around again, he saw that there was another crater close by, where the garden of the house next door to the school had been, and that there was not much house left, either, but only a heap of rubble and one lonely wall.
    â€œThe old lady was in there.” Peter was back at his side, wide-eyed from gathering reports. “The bomb fell right on the house, and she got killed. There was a whole stack of bombs, bong, bong, bong. They say he must have been just getting rid of them, Jerry that is, to get away from the fighters quicker. Nobody else got killed. They say he wasn’t aiming at anything. I dunno though; I bet he was aiming at the school. I bet he was trying to hit us.”
    â€œBut it was the middle of the night,” Derek said.
    â€œWell maybe he thought it was a boarding school.” Peter was not to be put off. “Then he could have got hundreds of us with one bomb.”
    â€œAnd all he got was old Mrs. Jenkins.” Derek tried to think about old Mrs. Jenkins, who had been a familiar figure beaming out at all of them every morning and every afternoon, even though a few incorrigibles picked all her reachable roses and wrote rude words on her fence; and he found that he could not remember a line of her face, but only her cracked voice calling over the frosted path, one winter’s day, “Good morning, boys.”
    â€œI was looking for shrapnel,” Peter said. “But it’s all gone. And you can’t get down into the crater because they’ve got that rope around it. What a swizz.”
    â€œI found a bit in the garden this morning,” Derek said.
    â€œDid you really? Let’s have a look.”
    Derek reached carefully into his pocket and unwrapped the small jagged piece of metal from his handkerchief. He had found it quite by accident when kicking a pebble along the front garden path, and felt as though he had come across the Koh-i-noor diamond. Each of the boys had a handful of pieces of shrapnel recovered from bomb craters or exploded shells, but they were hard to come by; too many other people had generally gotten there first.
    â€œThat’s a smashing bit,” Peter said generously. “Must be from a shell. That raid went on for ages.”
    â€œUm,” Derek said. Usually they went over their memories of night raids in lurid and exaggerated detail, but he found himself curiously reluctant this time. He said offhandedly, “They were machine-gunning the road.”
    â€œYes,” Peter said. “I know.” And he, too, left it at that.
    â€œPeter Hutchins,” said a familiar, clear voice. “Derek Brand.”
    They turned and saw Mrs. Wilson stepping out of a knot of teachers close to the school gate. “Morning, ma’am,” they said.
    â€œThat
crater,
ma’am,” Peter said. “Did you know old Mrs. Jenkins got killed? Did they hit the school as well?”
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    â€œIt was very sudden, and we must be glad poor Mrs. Jenkins