Cave Dwellers (22 page)

  
“The same.” Zaac, in fact, was a little overwhelmed with all of the fuss. “I had to repeat parts of the story over and over. We just got everyone out of the house a few minutes ago.”

   “I know. I thought their questions were never going to end.” Ramira told him about her discussions with her friends. “By the way, all of my friends want to meet you.”

   “What did you say about me?”

   “I told them you were conceited, arrogant and that I could not imagine having to spend another day down there with you.” Pausing a moment to tease him, she added, “No, I told them you were the most wonderful person in the world. The whole ordeal was worth it just to meet you.”

   “Really? You told them I was wonderful?” Realizing all she said, he added, “I feel the same.”

   That comment brought a smile to her face and a warm feeling rushing through her body.

   They talked for another hour, not wanting to end the conversation. Zaac assured her that he would see her first thing in the morning.

   They said their goodbyes and settled in for the night, looking forward to the next day.

24

   News spread quickly about the reappearances of the pair who had disappeared off the face of the earth.

   The phone rang early the next morning at both residences from local newspapers and the television network wanting to do interviews. As soon as one call ended, the phone rang again.

   Ramira was startled when the doorbell rang instead of the phone. When she opened the door, there stood Zaac with a smile on his face.

   “Good morning. Has your phone been ringing off the hook? Ours sure has,” he said as she let him inside.

   “Yes, ours has too. The first call came around six this morning. Don’t those news people ever sleep?”

   “The early bird gets the worm.
In this case, the story.” He grinned. “I know it’s still early, but if your family don’t have any plans for dinner, the place where I worked wants to give both of our families a free meal for dinner. It’s probably a publicity stunt, but who wants to turn down a free pizza buffet?”

   “Not me, that’s for sure. I’ll let them know. I’m sure that my brothers will be all for it.”

   Frank and Laura came into the living room from the kitchen. Ramira introduced Zaac to her mother, “Mom, this is Zaac, the guy I was telling you about.”

   “Hi Zaac, it’s nice to meet you.” Laura shook his hand.

   “Hi Mrs. Stevens. It’s nice to finally meet you too. I’ve heard a lot about your family for the last several months.”

   Looking at her dad, he said, “Mr. Stevens, I noticed your car’s in the driveway. Are you off today?”

   Frank replied, “Laura and I both took the rest of the week off. What did you have in mind?”

   “I was hoping that you would go by the bank with us and help us to get a vault to store what we
found. After we do that, I thought you might know of a gold dealer in the city who we could contact to see if we could cash in on it. Would you mind helping us with this?” He had already discussed this plan with Ramira the night before.

   Frank looked at him for a moment with his eyebrows raised. This was a pretty bold young guy asking him these favors having only met the day before. He knew from the way his daughter talked about Zaac yesterday that they shared a unique relationship and that she cared for him much more than she admitted. He liked this guy, the way he was open and sincere in his approach.

   “Sure. I’ll be glad to help. Let me finish my coffee and I’ll be ready to go.” He added, “From the looks of it, you two will be busy this afternoon with the news media.”

   The four of them left to take care of business after the boys went off to school. Laura decided to go with them to make up for lost time with Ramira. They acquired the vault without any problems and got the gold safely stored away.

   The gold dealer was another matter entirely. He was more than happy to buy their gold. He had to first contact his business partners to access the funds to purchase it. Their location was not accustomed to dealing with gold in the amount that the bars were worth.

   He was very acquisitive about their finding of the gold. It got to the point that it became annoying. Frank cut him off by suggesting that if he were swallowed up by an earthquake, maybe he would get lucky and find a bar of gold. With a shudder of dread, he stopped the questioning.

   With the approval of his partners, the dealer agreed to buy the gold for the going rate of $1900 a troy ounce. The offer was more than acceptable for Zaac and Ramira. When the bars were weighed, they came out to be thirty pounds instead of twenty-seven and a half. They were a little heavier than the standard bars. Each bar was 480 ounces. That made them worth $912,000 each.

   On their way home, Ramira asked her dad, “Dad, will you take us by the place that you picked us up yesterday?”

   “Sure,” he answered glancing up in the rear-view mirror at her, “Any special reason?”

   “I’ll tell you when we get there.”

   When they reached the elderly woman’s house, Ramira directed him past it to the dirt road on the left that led to the old farm house.

   Ramira leaned over the seat looking up the dirt road. “Can you turn up here? The only tracks we saw were from ATVs but it looks like a vehicle can drive on it. There’s an old farmhouse up ahead.”

   Frank turned onto the old dirt road and drove up it very slowly, taking the car in and out of deep ruts. When he spotted the driveway that led to the old farmhouse, he could tell that it had not been used for many years. Turning in, he parked the vehicle.

   After getting out, Ramira pointed up to the mountainside. “We came out around there. Mom, do you think you could find out who owns all of this property? We would like your employer, Jonathan, to represent us and make a purchase. We want to buy this whole mountain including the old farmhouse and the land around it.”

   Laura looked at her in surprise. “Isn’t that a pretty big step for someone your age?”

   “Zaac and I have our reasons. We’re going to buy it together. The ordeal we went through made us grow up pretty quick.” Looking over at Zaac, she could not resist a little jab. “At least it did for me.” Zaac was caught off guard. “Now what is that supposed to mean?”

   She winked.

   “I’m starting to see what you mean,” Ramira’s mother said. “I’ll check into it and let you know.”

   The afternoon was spent with reporters and cameramen recording videos for their broadcasts. There seemed to be an endless supply of questions about what they had to endure, how they felt going through it, how did it feel to finally be out, and on and on.

   Zaac and Ramira were glad to see them leave. He wanted to spend a few minutes with his family before meeting everyone at Aemilio’s.

   They were in the middle of dinner when the media showed up there. Zaac knew that it was probably a publicity stunt. What better way for Aemilio’s to get free advertising? They tried to ignore the cameras and video equipment but didn’t quite succeed.

   A comment from Ramira—“This is the best pizza in the world”—was a perfect advertisement for Carlo, and more than he could have dreamed possible. Of course, what pizza wouldn’t taste like the best if it was your first piece after being trapped underground for several months?

   The next week they went to school to see whether they could take their final exams. The teachers were more than willing to accommodate them under the circumstances.

   Zaac was able to finish his eleventh grade and start into his twelfth. Ramira finished her twelfth year and got her diploma. She would have loved to graduate with her friends and the other students in her grade, but that, she guessed, was life.

   A few days later, when the real estate agent got back to them, Laura learned that the land was separated into four different deeds. The owners had died and left it to their children. Two of the children had died. These two were never married and had no heirs. The other two lived with their children in other parts of the country.

   The land was indeed for sale but the paperwork had been languishing on some lawyer’s desk while he dealt with things he considered more important. It turned out the descendents owned all of the land Zaac and Ramira had targeted and the two mountains behind the farmhouse. The tract was a little more than 500 acres. The lawyer told them the sellers were hoping to get $1.1 million for the whole parcel of land.

   Zaac and Ramira agreed to the price and they were soon the owners of two mountains and the 500 acres, including the old farmhouse.

   Zaac bought an axe and a machete. They spent the next week clearing a path through the rhododendron thickets up to the cave. He got the measurements for the cave opening and had special steel doors made two inches thick with a combination locking mechanism to seal off the opening to the cave. While they were being made, he got the chisels and sledge hammers he needed and made holes in the rock opening to fit the new doors. Once the doors were ready, he carried them up the mountain.

   They needed another man to help him with the task and chose Ramira’s dad to be the one. But first he might need to know a detail or two. They took him out to the farmhouse one evening and walked up the mountain to show him the cave where they came out of the tunnels. While they were walking, they approached the subject that needed to be discussed.

   When they were a third of the way up the mountain, Ramira said, “Dad, while we were in the caves, a couple of things happened to us that gave us some unusual capabilities.”

   Frank paused a moment while they were climbing looking at her with a strange expression on his face. “What sort of things are we talking about?”

   “Nothing to really concern you,” Ramira said as she stepped around the top of a dead tree that had fallen. “But one of the abilities is that Zaac now has a very unusual strength. He can lift and carry some very heavy things.”

   “How heavy?” he asked, giving Zaac a side glance.

   “We don’t know for sure.” Ramira knew that this answer would totally blow his mind. “But we’re guessing a couple of tons.”

   This comment brought Frank to a dead stop in his tracks. “He can what?”

   Ramira stopped and faced her dad. “He can carry some very heavy things, like boulders and heavy steel doors.”

   Frank raised his eyebrows at her. “And you are telling me these things because?”

   “Because you’ll see an example shortly of what he can carry and we could use some help to put them in place.”

   “So this little trip is not just to show me where you two emerged from the tunnels?” He suddenly understood.

   “Well, we did want to show you where we got out and all, but we had an ulterior motive too.” She smiled at him.

   Frank looked at her with a big grin. “You’re becoming more like your mother every day. And to answer your unspoken question, yes I’ll be glad to help you.”

   Zaac and Frank got the steel doors installed. Frank was able to see Zaac’s unusual strength firsthand. He watched in fascination as Zaac lifted the heavy doors and put them in place. When they were finished, they stood back to admire their handiwork. The tunnel was now sealed off.

   The next thing they wanted to do was have a small lake built about three to five acres in size at the base of the mountain. They planned to divert the stream through it for a water supply with a dam allowing the water to flow back into the stream. Getting the state’s natural resources permission was easier than they had expected and they hired a construction team to dig it out and install the overflow dam. When it was finished, the water was diverted and the lake started to fill.

   Zaac and Ramira discussed what would be the best possible thing to do about the gold. Get it all out at once and cash it in or get small portions at a time. They finally decided to get it all out. They would cash it in and invest the money.

   When it was done, news spread rapidly of the find. It was the largest gold discovery on record. All of the bars came to $43,376,000. The coins were cashed in at a value of $22,800,000. The total of both came to $66,576,000.

   Again they were flooded with inquiries from the news media wanting to know the story behind the gold. Everyone wanted to get a piece of the pie but no one could provide any proof that they had any claim to it.

   The coins were traced back to the army mule train. How it ever got back to North Carolina was yet to be discovered. The gold that made the bars was still a mystery.

   Zaac and Ramira wanted to build something that would allow them to bring Rogue and Siri out of the cavern but also keep them safe. The
megapetomeinon were the reason the lake had been built. It was going to be stocked with fish to provide a nice food supply for them. They finally agreed to build a chalet on the top of the mountain with a large garage that had an apartment over it. Rogue and Siri could stay in the garage while Zaac and Ramira stayed in the apartment or the cabin.