Cave Dwellers (7 page)

   Finishing another bottle of water, they watched more of the trig pages catch fire, blaze up and then die down. 

   It didn’t take long for their eyelids to grow heavy.

   Zaac laid back and closed his eyes. “I don’t know about you but I’m exhausted.”

   “Me too. I’m having a hard time keeping my eyes open.” She laid down next to him.

   Soon they were fast asleep. The fire went out and darkness surrounded them. Sometime during the night, Ramira snuggled up closer to Zaac, and with a smile he wrapped his arm around her.

6

   Zaac woke first. He reached over, located his flashlight and turned it on. It gave off a dim glow. Using it for their main light source had taken a heavy toll on the batteries.

   Using some pages from the Trig book he got a fire going. He walked over to the edge of the water and splashed some on his face, then came back to sit beside Ramira. Their situation was not looking good.

   They had to find a way out. His flashlight batteries were dying and if they had to use his headlamp as their main source of light, it wouldn’t be long before the batteries in that went as well. They had his cellphone but it cast only minimal light. And light was just one of their problems.

   The other was food. They had only one Snickers bar and some crackers. They could go a day or two without food but it would take a toll on their energy.

   He could build fires. That would help with the light when they were camped, but they would still need some sort of a torch. Their predicament was getting precarious.

   His mind strayed back a couple of days, when his worst problem had been boredom. He had been sitting in Mrs. Macguire’s English class watching the clock slowly tick by. It was the last class of the day and they had been answering questions about their required reading,To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee.

   He remembered the teacher asking, “What is the theme of the book?”

   Laura raised her hand and responded, “Human morality regarding the inherent goodness or evilness of people.”

   As the teacher had looked around the classroom to see if anyone had anything else to add, Zaac had
followed her line of sight. Most of the other students seemed to be as bored as he was. Some were stifling yawns, others were texting inconspicuously on their cellphones. Students weren’t supposed to use cellphones in classrooms, but that didn’t hinder them from doing it anyway. Something had to break the monotony.

   English wasn’t exactly Zaac’s forte, but what he wouldn’t give to be back in the classroom now, about to be liberated and looking forward to the weekend.

   At that moment, Ramira woke up. As she opened her eyes, Zaac asked her, “How did you sleep?”

   “I was dead to the world.” Looking at him she could see he was worried. “What’s up?”

   “I was just thinking about our situation. The batteries in the flashlight are just about dead. We’ll probably finish our food supply this morning. We need to find a way out of here.”

   “Wow. That isn’t the best news to hear first thing. I guess we should go ahead and eat. Then see if we can find a way out today.”

   They split the Snickers bar and finished off the Goldfish crackers. Emptying another bottle of water, they were preparing to leave when Zaac had a thought.

   “We might be able to go a few days without food but we do need water. Do you think that water is drinkable?” He pointed to the river.

   Ramira thought about it. “It should be. It’s definitely deep enough underground to be purified.”

   “Let’s fill our empty bottles. We can always save them for last, but at least we’ll have them then if we need them.” Zaac extracted the empty bottles from his pack.

   “Good idea.” Ramira held out her hand. “Pass me a couple.”

   They filled their bottles and stowed them in the packs.

   Putting on the headlamp, Zaac led the way up the cave passage. They searched for three hours, passing up one cave that didn’t look negotiable, before they reached a cavern filled with a gypsum mineral. The soft white stone it created took on shapes, many similar to petals, so that the stone looked almost like roses.

   “This is truly beautiful,” Ramira said. “I wish I had a camera.”

   “I know what you mean. It’s amazing.”

   They forgot their predicament, at least for the moment. They strolled among the stone shapes, rubbing their hands over the delicate sculptures formed completely by nature.

   “I’d like to build a fire so we can see but I don’t want to alter them. I think the smoke might have that affect. What do you think?” Zaac asked.

   “Let’s not take the chance. Let’s just sit over by one of them while we rest. We can turn off the light until we get ready to leave.”

   Zaac got a bottle of water out of his pack and handed it to Ramira. They sat down and he turned off the light. Taking a few swallows, she passed it to him. He drank and they sat in silence for a few minutes.

   Wanting distraction from their increasingly bleak situation, Zaac asked Ramira about her, family and her plans. They chatted back and forth, hoping to forget the tension they both felt.

   “Do you have any brothers or sisters?” Zaac asked

   “I have two brothers named James and Nathaniel. They’re great, and I give my mom a hand with them, you know, trying to keep them out of trouble. They can be real brats sometimes. They are actually the reason I’m down here now. I needed to get away from them to prepare for exams. I was planning to spend a good portion of the day at my favourite spot and get some studying done. I had just arrived when the earthquake hit. I hadn’t even had time to crack open a book.”

   “I have a sister, Rachel. She’s pretty sweet, actually. But since she’s become a teenager, she seems to be in her own little world. I love her just the same, but I have to admit, my fingers are crossed, hoping she’ll grow out of this phase, whatever it is. What do your parents do for a living?”

   “My dad, Frank, is a policeman in the city. My mother, Laura, is a legal assistant for Jonathan Branch’s law firm. What about your parents?” Ramira asked.

   “Both of them work at the hospital. My mother works in the Emergency room as a cashier. My dad is the department head over the Respiratory Care Department. He doesn’t do patient care anymore but we often kid him about being over all passing of gas and sucking of snot in the hospital.”

   Ramira had to laugh. “That is gross.”

   “I know it is. The people who work in that department have a very weird sense of humor. We made popsicles for one of their department parties. They were the color of sputum when it is infected, yellow-green.”

   “Yuck!”

   “Every time one of us gets a rattle in our chest, my mom gets him to come and beat on us. Chest percussion, it is called. I’m not sure it does any good and dad seems to have way too much fun doing it. For the most part, my parents are pretty cool.

   “We’re lucky, having families we like to be part of.”

   “No kidding,” Zaac said. He took another swig of water and passed the bottle to Ramira. “Are you about ready to see if we can find a way out now?” he asked.

   “I’m about ready as I will ever be.”

   Zaac turned the headlamp back on and they continued through the cave passage until they came to another cavern, a little smaller than the last.

   This cavern was unique in that it contained flowstone, which looked like a frozen waterfall. Along one side of the flowstone fungus was growing, and mushrooms.

   “Do you think this might be a good sign?” Ramira asked.

   “I think it might be. This is the first organic life we’ve seen.”

   They walked another couple of hours before the headlamp finally dimmed. Zaac got the flashlight and handed it to Ramira. Both lights together produced barely enough illumination to see.

   “Let’s use these as long as we can,” Zaac said. “The only other light source we have is my cellphone.”

   He opened it up to make sure that it still worked. It didn’t give off much light but he had used it in the past to see in the dark. They kept on but the progress was slow and tedious. The headlamp went out first and the flashlight soon followed.

   With the dim glow of the cellphone to guide him, Zaac started a fire.

   “I think we should get some rest, try to sleep.” Zaac made an effort to stay calm. “The cellphone looks like it has a two thirds charge on it. I am hoping that might last six to seven hours.”

   Ramira looked scared. “What’s going to happen if that runs out and we still haven’t found a way out?”

   “I am sure we’ll figure out something.” Zaac could only hope a solution would present itself. He was too exhausted to think of one. “Let’s get some sleep and maybe something will come to us.”

   The mental and physical fatigue was taking its toll. Sleep quickly enveloped them.

   Zaac awoke after six hours. He lay for several minutes lost in thought before getting up and starting a fire. When he reached for his cellphone to turn it on, something landed on his hand and bit him. He used the phone to try to see what it was. There were definitely shapes out there, but he couldn’t tell what they were.

   Wasting no time, he soon had the fire blazing. He heard a shriek from Ramira as she jumped up.

   “What was that? Something bit me.”

   Zaac located one of the moving creatures and collected it with a light pinch on either side of its
body. Holding it up to the light, he said, “I think it was this little creature. I don’t know what it is but one of them bit me too.”

   Ramira tried to see it in the dim light.

   Zaac turned it around. “I’ve never seen one before.”

   Another jumped off of the wall, getting ready to land on Ramira. She didn’t see it in the darkness yet she knew it was coming and swatted it away before it could land.

   Zaac could see only that she swung through the empty air. “I don’t think it will do any good to just swat at the air. The likelihood of you hitting one is pretty small.”

   “I did hit one,” Ramira said. “It jumped off the wall at me. I couldn’t see it with my eyes yet somehow I saw it in my mind.”

   Zaac looked puzzled. “You what? Say that again.”

   “It’s true.” Ramira wasn’t sure how to explain what had happened. “I didn’t see it with my eyes. It’s too dark. But somehow my mind saw it and I swatted it before it could land on me.”

   “That’s impossible.” Zaac was incredulous. “How could your mind see something that is happening to you that your eyes can’t see?”

   “I don’t know.” A strange look came over Ramira’s face. “It does seem weird yet that is the only way I can describe it.”

   Another of the bugs landed on Zaac’s neck and bit him. He knocked it off. “I think we need to get out of here. I don’t care to be on the food chain for these little creatures, whatever they are.”

   Using his cellphone, they headed on up the cave passage. After twenty feet, the bugs disappeared. At places, they had to scramble over rocks, other spots required turning and twisting to get around. With Zaac holding the cellphone so as to illuminate the floor, they continued on for another couple of hours without interruption.

   “Watch your head,” Ramira said as he bumped his head on the cave roof.

   “Ouch.” He rubbed his head. “How did you know I was about to hit my head? I can barely see.”

   “I don’t know.” Ramira realized this was the same way she saw the bug earlier. “I could somehow see it in my mind and knew that you were about to hit your head.”

   He glanced over. Something strange was going on and he wasn’t sure what it was. “Are you telling me you saw this in your head even though you didn’t see it with your eyes? Like the bug back there that you swatted?”

   “Yes. I don’t know whether it’s intuition or what. It’s like some strange sense that I saw both of them but not by sight.”

   Zaac was not convinced. “Well I don’t know how you did it or if you can do it again, but next time I’m about to hit my head, let me know before I actually connect.”

   “I’ll try but I don’t see how I can tell anything without seeing it.” Ramira pointed to his cellphone. “You have the only light source.”

   The terrain in the cave began to change, becoming steadily more rugged and more difficult. They couldn’t take three steps without turning sideways to squeeze through a tight spot, scramble over a boulder or stoop to avoid hitting their heads. Once they had to remove their packs. Zaac crawled through and Ramira followed after passing the knapsacks to him.