30| Wrench in the Plan

                                    

                                          
The guys stared at me in silence for a second before anyone spoke. It was like they were afraid anything they would say could send me into another fit of sobs. 
"Cassie... are you sure? You just got over your shock," Cam finally said. 
I stood up so that I could walk over to the guys. My legs felt oddly shakey but I refused to let it show. "I'm sure. You guys need to know about what was down there. But first, lets go outside. I need some fresh air, and we can talk by the fire." 
The guys all stood up off the ground and started wandering out towards the fire. It appeared as though it was around dinner time, although I didn't have much of an appetite after the events of today. Jake hung back to walk out with me. "Are you okay? You really had me worried today."
"Yes... no... I will be. But after today, I have a lot of questions that we all are going to want to find the answers to," I said as I looked up at him. He took a deep breath and grabbed my hand in his as we walked together towards the fire. A few of the guys looked at our interlocked hands as we approached, but didn't say anything.
I took a seat between Cam and Derek, and Jake went to place a few more logs on the fire. 
I waited for everyone to sit down and took a deep breath to calm myself before I began speaking. "First of all, I just wanted to say thank you to Jake, Nathan, and Adam. Even though I couldn't say so at the time, having you guys there really did help to calm me down. I've never had a panic attack before, and it was a scary feeling, so thank you for comforting me and getting me back here safely when I couldn't on my own."
"Of course," Jake smiled at me from across the circle. 
I smiled back and raised my patched up arm to look at it, "and thank you Derek, I assume you are the one who cleaned up my wound."
"Yeah that was me," he smiled at me and placed a hand on my leg, "it wasn't deep enough for stitches but we need to keep it clean. It's going to be sore for a few days, there's quite a bit of bruising around the wound. Mind telling us how it happened?" 
"I guess I'll just start at the beginning..." I took in a shakey breath and Cam placed a supportive hand on my back as I began telling my story. "Once I got to the bottom, it was cold and dark, and there was this horrible smell that I couldn't explain. I reached around in the dark until I found our backpack, but when I was reaching for it, I felt something else down there. So when I found our backpack, I got out the flashlight to see if whatever I felt would be useful to us. When I turned the flashlight on, the first thing that I saw was the dead body of a woman right next to me," I paused and shuddered at the thought. 
"Oh my god..." Cam muttered next to me. I looked around at the guys to gauge their reactions but it appeared none of them knew what to say about this, so I just continued on. 
"It was horrifying... she was decomposing, but her mouth was wide open, and so were her eyes, and she was looking right at me." My eyes started to fill with tears as I thought of the vivid image of the woman, but I did my best to push them back. "I was so scared, so I backed up really fast and tripped over something that was behind me. I felt a stab in my arm and I grabbed the flashlight to see what I landed on. I then realized I landed hard onto the lap of another body, and my wound was because his broken femur was sticking out of his leg, and it punctured my arm. This body was a man and I noticed that his shirt was bloody, with a mark like he had been shot in the chest." 
I squeezed Derek's hand in mine. Recalling the event and picturing the images I wanted so desperately to erase from my mind was taking a toll and my body felt cold. Derek squeezed my hand back as I continued to speak. "That's when you guys heard me scream. I just wanted to get out of there so I shined the light on our backpack, and I noticed two more bags. I grabbed all of them and when I turned around to get back into the rope, there were two more bodies. I couldn't tell the gender of them because they were too decomposed, but they were piled on top of each other, twisted up like pretzels as if they had been thrown down together from the top." A tear escaped my eyes and I quickly wiped it away. "I took a step towards the rope to get out when I stepped on another body, snapping a bone in their arm and tripping into the two pretzel bodies."