amused.
“He hung up on me,” she fumed, tossing the phone down on the ground next to her.
“I think it might be more like the reception cut out Mack. I don’t think your husband has ever or would ever hang up on you,” I muttered dryly, again changing my position on the hard, cold ground.
“You’re right, cowboy would never do that. Especially after what I had to tell him,” she replied sheepishly.
“Just saying Mack, telling Noxx that we are trapped at the bottom of a dry bore shaft with a car on top of us wasn’t really the best way to explain what happened,” Blake said, laughing, I was unable to help myself from joining in. It had been a funny call to be a listener to, she started off with “hello honey” and rushed out that the car fell down an open bore shaft with us falling out of the front windscreen when it shattered and popped right out, then the phone went dead. God only knows how he reacted to hearing that version.
“You said your phone was low on battery, so I just told him the condensed version, lucky I did, otherwise they wouldn’t know where to start looking for us.”
If I was being honest, Mack was pretty spot on. We did fall down an empty bore shaft, the windscreen did, in fact, fall out on the downward impact, the only change I would make to the story was it was me who fell out through the broken screen. Only I had been the idiot to take off her seatbelt minutes before the crash to reach over the dash to grab the map. On the drive through the paddocks to find the spot on the map, Mack, Mallory and Blake let me in on the big family drama between the two fathers. The story was better than any reality show and more entertaining than a movie screenplay. Tales of revenge and hatred, money loaned, cattle promised and a pregnancy hidden. A marriage broken up because of … well, just a lot of drama. I was so focused on it, that when Mack asked for the map to see if we were in the right spot, I had no idea that the repercussions would be so severe.
Dangling in mid-air with just my hands death-gripping the front bumper bar was not something I thought I would ever find myself doing, yet there I had been, screaming myself hoarse until Blake scrambled out after me, a recovery snatch-strap tied around her middle. The rescue would have been epic had I not looked down and saw how far we were underground. The plan was for Blake to grab me, and the other two pull us back in, but it didn’t work out because … well because I panicked and lost my grip and plummeted to the bottom. In truth the car took most of the distance when it fell in, getting wedged over half way down the shaft so the fall was only about twenty metres or there abouts, didn’t mean it didn’t hurt any less, I just didn’t die doing it.
“How is your ankle, Farron?” Blake asked, shielding her eyes from the harsh lights of the car.
“Throbbing still. It might be broken and not sprained like I first thought,” I allowed.
“Ya think! I heard it snap sitting in the car over your hollering at her Blake,” Mallory inserted and not very helpfully. They had been at each other since Makena figured out to use the car’s winch to get down to me. That had been the second plan, winch themselves down one at a time, get me organised, then winch back up into the car. Of course, Blake’s idea that MacGyver did it on an episode didn’t mean it worked in the real world, which it didn’t. Blake and Mallory went first because they were both versed in first aid, then Mack was to follow, only she didn’t allow for the fact that no one was left in the car to operate the winch controls. Having the brilliant idea of wedging the button down under the front seat, Makena lowered herself down, leaving the control inside the car. No one can accuse the four of us of being savvy in the face of disaster, that was for sure.
Thankfully after long minutes of fighting, hysterical tears and cries of pain from me, Blake remembered her phone was in her back pocket but low on battery. Another fifteen minutes of arguing which brother would