Cal was in the dark. Something was trapping his body. Encasing him in the blackness. Restricting his every movement. He opened his mouth to shout for help but mud poured into his mouth. He felt the worms wriggle over his tongue, through his teeth, down his throat. Now he was rocking from side to side. He felt sick. The rocking motion and the combination of the mud and the worms made him want to vomit.
'Caleb.' The rocking was increasing in it's speed. His name was echoing through his mind.
'Caleb!' The lights were burning his eyes, he scrunched them closed again but something, someone, was shouting his name. Then it hit him like a tonne of bricks and it all came flooding back. Ethan. Lofty. Ian. The cave. The mess. The heartache. The disaster unfolding around him.
It was Robyn. Robyn was shaking him and calling his name. She had a beam plastered across her face.
'It's stopped raining!'
'So?' It all seemed like an anti-climax. He would rather be asleep than looking at Robyn's ecstatic face over the fact that it wasn't raining anymore.
'They couldn't start rescuing them until it stopped raining and now it has. The rescue can begin.'
Robyn was partially correct. It had stopped raining but the rescue hadn't started yet, much to the annoyance of everyone waiting for news on the boys. Apparently the rescue was complicated. They already knew that. The simple rescue was supposed to be getting out the dummy. The more challenging rescue was rescuing Ian. The near impossible challenge was rescuing Ethan, Lofty and Ian. Or recovering their bodies. It was a thought that was at the back of the mind of virtually everyone involved. There was a chance that they wouldn't survive it. Ian fell three hours ago. Ethan and Lofty became trapped with Ian two hours ago. The water level had been rising and there hadn't been any contact with them at any point since the cave collapsed. All everyone wanted was the have the boys back safe and sound, uninjured, unharmed but they all knew that wasn't what was going to happen. The reason this had all started was because Ian was injured. There was no way that anyone could survive a cave collapse with no injuries at all. Maybe there was no way that anyone could survive this cave collapse at all...
'Right this is a rescue mission, not a recovery mission. We have three men trapped. One who is already attached to a spinal board and should be ready for extraction. The other two could be in any state at all so keep your eyes open and for God's sake be careful!'
New ropes were attached to new anchors and a new team belayed themselves down the cave mouth onto a pile of mud and rocks. The water just tickling their ankles. The order was given and five men started to dig. Big bags were sent down to be filled and hoisted back up to the surface to avoid the hole filling with dirt. Slowly they cleared the obstructions from their path. Gradually the light beamed into the air pocket that the three men were trapped in. Three figures were outlined. Two with large boulders crushing them, the other strapped to a spinal board. Silence. No talking. No moving. No pleas for help.