Chapter 20
TWENTY
CASEY
“Ungh.” Casey’s groan echoed wildly, bouncing back and forth off the walls of the cave until the sound finally petered out. “What the hell?”
When he had at first come to, he had been confused as to how he’d ended up on a pile of rocks in the dark. It hadn’t taken long for his memory to come back online. He’d taken one last step and fallen into empty space, into the heart of a cave up The Valley that even he hadn’t known about.
How the hell was he going to get himself out of this mess? How long had he been out? The small, dim glow of sunlight above him showed that the entrance was a long way from where he had landed. A very long way. And the sunlight wasn’t going to last.
He replayed the fall in his head, testing himself and his recollection of what had happened.
Like an idiot, he’d moved without checking first, and that last damn step had been a doozy.
His entire body throbbed, undoubtedly due to it bouncing off multiple rock walls and then tumbling, head over heels, the rest of the way to the bottom of a pit.
He was lucky his head hadn’t slammed against the rock harder than it had.
Just how badly he had hurt himself, he wasn’t sure, but there was no doubt he’d sustained an injury aside from the expected bumps and bruises.
“Fuck it.” First Casey rolled one shoulder and then the other. They seemed okay, not dislocated. Then he moved on: fingers, hands, wrists. All seemed to work the way they were supposed to. He lifted his right leg, twirled his right foot, moved his toes. No significant pain.
He looked at his left leg. Knowing beforehand that it was going to hurt, he had saved it for last.
“Fuck!” Just trying to lift his ankle up off the ground was agony.
He wasn’t taking his boot off to test his toes, but he tried moving them and yelped in pain. He couldn’t tell if it was badly sprained or broken. Until he knew better, he was going to assume it was a sprain, because he wasn’t getting out of here on his own power with a fracture.
Next Casey patted around himself, searching for his cell phone.
Nothing. If it had survived, the chances of finding it were somewhere around that of a snowball in hell.
There was no reception inside solid rock anyway, but the flashlight feature would have been nice.
Once more, he regretted not bringing along his heavy-duty flashlight from the Jeep.
“Motherfucker,” he said, taking a line from Gabriel’s book. “I am so fucked.”
If he got out of this alive, Casey would never hear the end of it. Cosmic payback for giving Lane Boyd a hard time about getting lost on a hike a couple of months ago. At least Boyd hadn’t fallen into a cave. Casey knew better and he’d done it anyway.
“I’m sorry, Boyd. I will never say anything again.”
Greta and Gabriel were going to fight over who got to be first to rip him a new one for being a fucking idiot, and he would deserve it all.
Who was he kidding—there’d be no contest. Greta would win.
And, frankly, he hoped he’d get to be on the receiving end of one of her basic safety lectures soon, even the long one with slides.
And Gabriel’s shorter but no less effective one too.
To think, Casey habitually snarked at Gabe to stay out of trouble, then had gone and fallen down—here.
A hysterical whimper escaped him. He had to get out, preferably alive, and no one knew where he was.
That was what Lane Boyd had done too, gone off without telling anyone where he was headed. Boyd was lucky to be alive.
Casey was on his own and he had no one to blame but himself. Idiot.
“I promise I won’t even complain about Greta repeating herself if I get out of here. But also, I need to stop talking to myself because that echo is creepy.”
Silence was too quiet though because then he could hear the rustling. The chitters. His panting. His heart beating probably way too fast.
“Heart beating is good. Deep breaths. Feel around more, Casey. What can you learn from right here?” Now he was carrying on an actual conversation with himself; maybe the head injury was worse than he thought.
Gingerly, Casey felt around the rocky surface again, checking if he was in danger of falling further. He didn’t think so.
He’d whacked his head, he knew, but his knit cap had stayed on and must have provided some protection between his skull and the rock. Small favors and all that.
Lifting a hand, he ran his fingers across his face and under the cap’s rim. The bump on his forehead hurt when he pressed on it, but it was nothing compared to the fire and pain in his ankle.
“Fuck,” he said again for good measure. He was beginning to understand why Gabe used the word so much.
The distilled sunlight coming from the entrance was waning too quickly for Casey. Whether he liked it or not, the sun was setting and what little light he had was going to go away.
“Shit. Shit. Shit.”
Casey tried to roll onto his knees, but the movement caused searing white-hot agony to take his breath away.
The urge to vomit was strong, and it was all he could do to not empty his stomach.
Dammit. All signs were pointing to a broken ankle.
On the other hand, if he didn’t move, didn’t try to climb out, he was fucked.
“Fucking fuck!”
Sucking in a deep breath, he tried again.
It took what felt like forever, but Casey finally managed to turn over and sit up. Sweat rolled down his face from the effort, and he couldn’t stop shivering, but he was up. He gently pressed against his ankle; broken was one thing, but an open compound fracture was another.
“Who am I kidding?” he whispered. “Either one will eventually kill me if I can’t get out of here.
” A chill was starting to set in too; bone cold came to mind.
The sweat he’d worked up was drying on his skin, and he had to admit that the cool of the cave was starting to get to him.
He zipped his Carhartt jacket fully up and added hypothermia to the mental list of things that could kill him sooner rather than later.
“Casey, you have had search and rescue training. You know how to keep yourself alive until rescuers arrive.”
Feeling around again and not finding a ledge to fall off of, Casey carefully and painfully scooted backward until he felt something immovable at his back. Just that small amount of movement had him exhausted and sweating again.
He needed a plan. In just a second.
Casey’s eyes opened, startling him. Why was he in the dark? The confusion lasted until he involuntarily moved his left foot and whimpered. A cave, right. He was fucked.
The pain in his ankle seemed to be less than it had been. Maybe. Either that or he was in shock.
“Yes, idiot, you are in shock. Not much you can do about it.”
He didn’t think he’d been out long, but now the light coming through the cave entrance was significantly less, as in not quite full dark but almost, so what did he know.
He looked down at his wrist. His watch face glittered in the remaining light, smashed, useless.
Judging by what light there was, he guessed that it was late evening.
“Dying in a cave that isn’t even on a map is far worse than fucking yourself up.”
Casey struggled out of his jacket and managed to get his Forest Service t-shirt off, although the fucking thing put up a fight and the long sleeves clung to his arms. Donning his jacket again—hypothermia really would be the cherry on this shit show—he sucked in a deep breath, blinked his eyes against the pain he knew was coming, and rolled his pant leg up.
Once that was done, he wrapped the cotton shirt around his ankle as tightly as he could manage to immobilize it and used the long sleeves to tie the makeshift bandage off.
Just that sent sparks of pain up his leg, and he could tell by the feel that there was swelling.
He sat back against the wall again and gathered the strength to start climbing. It was going to be a long, cold night. Moving would help him stay warm.
“Keep telling yourself that, Casey.”
Cold he could deal with. He hoped. He shoved his hands into his coat pockets and discovered the granola bar he’d slipped into one of them.
“Fucking hallelujah.”
It wasn’t so much a bar as a bag of crumbles, but it was something.
“Half now, half later.” Talking to himself was still weird, but it was better than the not-quite-silence of the mine. “How the hell did I, Gabriel’s Mr. Safety, end up falling ass over teakettle into a cave without making sure anyone knew where the hell I was going to be?”
Yeah, he deserved whatever Lane Boyd had to say when he got himself out of this mess.
And fucking hell, he wanted to hear all it from Gabe, Greta, Elton, Mickie—everyone.
Casey wanted to skip the lectures and go straight to the yelling that he deserved.
He would be happy to be on the receiving end of all the shouting they wanted to point at him.
Greta could make him take survival 101 three more times and twice on a Saturday.
Hell, he’d own the new-hire calendar for the next three years.
He wanted Bowie to snuggle next to his side and forgive his stupidity the way only a dog could do.
He just needed to figure out a way to get out of this mess.