Salticidae (17 page)

Then, from the depths of blackness out past the insect puppet show, out past the tire tracks the Jeep left coming up here, out past this inner ring of hell, there came a
pop from a gun and a muffled scream. Human. Cut short.

Banga emerged from the tent, gun ready.

Derek stood up, scaring the bugs off the lantern, giving more light to the scene. Jack felt the hairs on his neck rise.

“
Not good,” Derek said. “Someone is still out here. I told you.”

Jack thought of the hippos in the trees. “Or some
thing
,” he said, half joking. But then again maybe he wasn’t.

They waited for something more but the jungle resumed its night songs.

“I will watch,” Banga said, and sat cross legged on the ground. “For a while. You can sleep.”

Jack noted the way Banga was fingering the trigger of his gun. It was true
- the man was ready for a fight.

Derek headed for the tent
, stopped at the flap and looked out toward where the stifled yell had come from. “Yeah. Sleep. As if that’s gonna happen.”

***

Unlike the rest of the men who roamed the jungle at night, Shumba felt safest in the pitch black. His senses grew stronger, his instincts sharper. Sounds became codes, smells became clues, shadows became jungle spirits whispering secrets. He sat still on the ground inside the bivouac his father and the other men of his tribe had quickly erected out of fronds and branches. It wasn’t much for protection, but offered a means of disappearance from predators, both human and animal. If it rained, it might keep them dry for a while. But then Shumba was not put off by rain. Being born in the jungle was a baptism under a weeping sky.

“Shumba, you should rest.”
Musa stood outside the bivouac, weapons in hand, staring into the distance. He was clearly distraught over the death of his friends, and the appearance of the demons. The other two men were lying down, each with an eye open.

“I cannot sleep.”

“I do not expect anyone to sleep tonight. Not after what we have seen. But it will still do you well to let your body recuperate.”

“I want to go home. What if they make it to mother?
”

“The spiders or the men?”

He did not know which was worse. The giant bugs would eat his family, use them as nothing but meat, but the men in the berets would make them suffer. There were worse things than just dying.

“I do not want either of them to find our home. We should go back and
plan in case of an attack. We should warn others.”

“There are men back hom
e.”

“There are more boys then men. Younger than me by years.”

“They are men now, now that their fathers have been taken away. And they will protect your mother and the others.”

Shumba stepped out from under the biv
ouac, saw his father standing still in the darkness. He could barely discern the outline of Musa’s broad shoulders and wiry legs. His father was large for a Pygmy at almost five-feet-three, and that was one reason the other men of the tribe followed him. In the darkness Shumba watched his father stand rigid, disciplined, looking into oblivion.

“I am a man now,” Shumba said. “I want to stand guard with you.”

Musa kept his eyes on the jungle, silently watching the darkness. “It would be pointless for you to stand near me, boy. But, yes, you are a man, so if you want to watch with me, then find a point from which to see your surroundings.”

Silence followed for many seconds. Musa had given his son a command and it was Shumba’s duty now, as a man, to follow it.
He selected a nearby tree, wrapped his arms around its trunk and dug his leathery soles into the cracks of its flaky bark. He hauled himself up, the bark scraping against his hungry belly, until he was in reach of the lowest branch. Once he had that, he swung up into the leaves and maneuvered into the maze of twisting boughs. He moved hand over foot, swinging upwards and crawling sideways and it wasn’t long before he was at the top, where he sat and drew his legs up to his chest. The climb had suddenly made him sleepy, but if he was going to be a man he had to stay awake and keep watch.

To the edge of his vision, t
he black trees were infinite.

To the west lay his home, back
beyond the clearing that was now drenched in fresh blood. To the east lay the Old Man, the very tip of its peak jutting above the treetops. He could faintly hear it spilling its waterfall into the river many jungle levels below.

A half-mile
in front of him was the edge of the cliff that ran along this elevated plain. And behind him the trees stretched out into areas of the rainforest he never even knew existed. On and on and on.

He looked up, felt cold air on his face.
The moon was a jaundiced eye, half closed and ambivalent. Its sallow glow reached down and stroked the tips of the tallest emergents, reflecting dim halos that danced on the leaves like magic. Dark, purple bands of night sky swam above all this, pregnant with the threat of impending rain. Over the next few minutes, they grew thick and black in their centers, gray and thin at the edges.

As
Shumba watched, the clouds began to flash, red and yellow and blue. This was followed by a roar from an angry god somewhere higher than man was meant to look. A storm god who was feeling vindictive.

Before long, a
spark streaked from the sky as the storm grew closer.

The treetops swayed under the gust of a new wind.

Something detached itself from a far off treetop and sprang into the shadows. Shumba squinted his eyes, let the crude moonlight show him what was real and what was imagination.

He saw them.

They were everywhere.

The
spiders. Sitting on the tops of the trees. So still they just looked like branches and vines. But now he could discern them, make out their crooked shapes. Hundreds of them, prepared to pounce, watching the darkness with their cloisters of eyes, licking the air with their palps. Here and there one of them would twitch. Raise a leg. Shift position. Tiny quick spasms. Lording over the rainforest from their perches. But mostly they sat unmoving, waiting for something to move in front of them. Ultimate hunters poised for surprise attack.

There are more than I thought, Shumba realized. He would have counted them but it would have taken too long. He also realized now why the moonlight made the treetops shimmer. It was being reflected off the silk of their webs, which stretched from tree to tree.

I am not in a good spot, he realized.

Without a sound, he descended from his lookout
, back down through the branches without any noise, stepping so slowly he wasn’t sure he was even moving, hoping the limbs kept him camouflaged, and approached his father.

“They are watching us. We need to leave.
Now.”

“No, Shumba, we cannot leave. They can sense us better than we can sense them.
They would see us moving through the trees.”

“So
, you can see them?”

Musa continued his stare
, the same stare he’d been locked in for many minutes. “Yes. What do you think I’ve been doing? I have been watching one this whole time. See it? Right there.”

Musa pointed. Shumba saw it. Together they watched it, mesmerized.
Wondering who was hunting who.

PART II

Beaudette Mining Corporate Center, Capetown, South Africa.

Stephen Beaudette sipped his wine, tapping his finger on the keyboard of his laptop which sat on his wide cherrywood desk next to the Tiffany lamp he’d received as a gift from a business partner in Beijing. It was an unsightly bit of office flare, like a petrified turd from some sick, malnourished dinosaur, but it never failed to generate conversation, so he kept it displayed prominently.

He checked his cell phone again. No messages. He looked at his office phone
’s display, noted the number of saved calls on the screen. He knew what all fourteen calls were about, and he didn’t care. The last one had come in at seven o’clock, and that was from his holding company asking about a transfer of funds.

He s
wallowed more wine, studied the legs on the inside of the glass. He had no idea where he’d gotten the vintage, couldn’t remember who bought it. Not that it mattered. So much of the stuff in this office had been given to him; he wasn’t even sure where it had all come from anymore.

A lion head was mounted above the door, its mouth
frozen wide in a rictus roar, massive canines polished to reflect the light. What a giant beast it had been, chasing his Jeep with every intent of tearing the vehicle to scrap metal. Probably would have succeeded had it been given the chance.

Stephen had shot it himself ten years ago
, a precise bullet between the eyes. He kept the trophy above the door so he could see it from his desk, let it remind him that man was the rightful owner of the planet. And what man wanted man just took.

After all, this was Africa.

“One more minute,” he whispered to his wine. If Janet didn’t call in one more minute he’d start making the calls himself. This was not like her. She was supposed to have checked in at five, but so far there had been no word. He knew the mountains in the Congo offered little in the way of cell phone service, but the SATphone worked fine. There was always the chance she was just busy, dealing with all those dirty, dark skinned rodents that made it their life’s mission to steal anything and everything they could grab, killing each other in their useless civil wars. They were good labor if you could corral them, but you couldn’t trust them. He hated to think that Janet was out there with them right now. The number of rapes in this godforsaken country was already off the charts.

But there was Winston, who’d been working for Stephen
since before that lion lost its head. Winston was the best private security there was—-he took no shit and could shoot the legs off a stinkbug while doing a backflip out of an airplane.

Which begged the next question: Why hadn’t Win
ston checked in either? Stephen had purposefully staggered their call in times to ensure someone was always reporting back regardless of how busy things got. In over ten years Winston had never failed to call in at the required time.

It must be the SATphone, Stephen thought. Fucking things cost a pretty penny. We’ll have to buy more.

But what if it’s not the SATphone, he wondered. What if the damn government has come in and arrested them at the mine site. Jesus Christ, they could be in some hellhole of a jail getting raped by beasts from a nightmare.

No, he’d paid the government enough over the years and they wouldn’t upset the status quo now.
This was Africa, and money talked. His money talked all night long.

Chances were Janet and Winston were just busy, or this storm that was moving in over the Congo mountains was messing up the satellite link.

“Just don’t lose that deposit, girl. I’ll be damned if those psycho fucking militia nuts are going to wrest it from us. That’s my damn gold.”

The clock clicked over. Another minute gone.

He picked up the phone, dialed his secretary, who was still sitting out at her desk in the outer office. He’d told her to stay late tonight, and as usual she’d obeyed. She was good like that. Obedient. Obsequious. Hell, he paid her enough she’d probably jump off a bridge if he asked.

“Mr. Beaudette?” she said.

“Lauren, get me Dillan on the phone. Tell him I’m going to need his services.”

***

The rain had pounded the troop tent like fists beating a drum over Jack’s head. How he had ever fallen asleep was beyond him. On top of the rain, Derek had snored the whole night beside him and once even rolled over and put his arm around him. Jack had thrown it off, made a joke about it. Derek hadn’t even noticed. It hadn’t been sexual in any way, just a man dreaming about his wife, thinking he was safe home in America.

Now, t
o the playful sounds of African Greys, Jack rolled up the flap in front of the tent and let the blue morning light filter in. The air inside the tent was moist and hot and smelled of plastic, the air outside was cooler, but much wetter.  He stepped out into ground fog so dense he could barely see the trees around him. Birds squawked high overhead in the emergents, while the ground crackled with scuttling insects and rodents. Something that sounded like a boulder rolling on concrete grew loud and then disappeared.

Jesus, tell me that wasn’t some rogue
gorilla, he prayed.

“Banga. Banga, you here.”

There was no answer.

Jack waved his hands in front of his face in
an effort to dissipate the fog, but the gesture was useless. He looked up past the treetops and saw a circle of white through the mist, the sun climbing into the sky. He felt a light rain still falling on him, remnants of the night storm that was moving away.

“Banga. Speak up, mon frer
e. Let me know—”

Whoosh.

Jack spun around. Something had just run by him, behind the tent. Something large. He backpedaled toward the tree Banga had been sitting by last night. His foot stepped on the guide’s rifle, now abandoned in a swirl of leaves. He bent down and picked it up, slid his finger around the trigger, fighting the urge to yell for Derek for fear he’d call attention to himself. If it was a gorilla the last thing he wanted to do was startle it.

There was a small hill, an incline of moss,
beyond the tent where the mist looked thinner. It would give a better view over this whole dilapidated camp, and better yet put him in a beneficial position if something was walking around out there. Higher ground was always an advantage. He moved slowly, aware of his footsteps. When he was around the tent and up the hill, he held the gun in front of him and watched the mist.

Something large moved in it. A shadow that swam like smoke.

Then it was gone. He looked for it, watching as the mist grew even thinner under the morning sun. The trees began to take shape and color, and patches of blue sky were now appearing. He let the minutes pass, careful not to move, the gun still trained out in front.

Something new caught his eye,
at the bottom of the other side of the incline. It was another SATphone.

He scanned the trees again, looking for the
shadow, saw and heard nothing.

OK, grab the phone and get Derek and find Banga and get away from this place
, he thought.

He almost slid down the steep grade on this side, but kept his footing, bent down and picked up the SATphone.
He pressed the button. It was still working, by the grace of God, so he slung it over his shoulder, turned back and froze.

On top of the hill was a child’s nightmare come to life. It was not a
gorilla, or a hippo, or a cat.  It raised its two front legs, revealing wet fangs, flanked by palps the length of a man’s arm that pinched rapidly as if tasting the air. A collection of bulbous eyes stared back at him, emotionless and oppressive.

***

Derek sat up and wiped sleep from his eyes. The morning’s humidity was trapped in the tent and he was sweating. Outside Jack’s footsteps shuffled and dopplered away. Probably going to take a piss, he thought.

“I’ll join ya, buddy,” he muttered,
feeling the urgency in his own bladder. Outside he stretched, listened for a second to the alien birds screeching in the treetops, and headed up the small hill behind the tent. But there was something on top of the hill that turned him to stone.

It was immense
and black, covered in stripes of thick hair, its two front legs frantically beating the air in front of it. At first he thought it was a gorilla or some kind of unknown cat, but his brain finally processed the other six legs and the bulbous abdomen and his basic knowledge of nature filled in the rest.

“Holy fucking shit
.” His stomach dropped. This was a new kind of fear, rooted in the awareness of something purely evil. Something that should not be.

Hippos in webs. Now it made sense. In a
fucked up universe he was visiting against his will.

The spider
was facing the other way, looking down the backside of the hill. It didn’t turn toward his words. It kept raising those long segmented legs and waving them in the air. Don’t turn don’t turn don’t turn, Derek prayed, just keep looking that way. Keep looking down—

Now he remembered why he was going behind the hill.
Oh no. “Jack?” he whispered, inching around the base of the small incline. “Banga? Anyone?”

He kept his eye on the beast
as he rounded it, his muscles rope tight, his legs ready to snap into a sprint if the creature came at him. Its black eyes came into view, reflecting the clouds overhead, and Derek felt his blood go cold.

What a sight, he thought. What a hellish, awesome sight. W
here was his camera? This thing was like some kind of living dinosaur. This was the kind of photo you retired on. If the subject didn’t eat you first.

“Jack,” he whispered again, finally rounding the base of the small hill.

Jack was there, his wide eyes locked on the giant spider. He held Banga’s rifle in his hand but it was down at his side. He was standing as rigid as possible, either frozen in fear or trying not to give the spider a reason to chase.

Jack’s eyes flicked toward Derek. The
re was sheer panic in them screaming a thousand different pleas for help, but Derek had no idea what to do here. He’d been warned about hippos and gorillas and felines, and even though the tactics for avoiding them were pretty dumb–run in a zigzag, scream and make yourself look big, etcetera—at least they were plans he could comprehend and follow. Spiders you generally just stepped on. But this one was big enough to step on
him
.

He bent down and
picked up a rock, hurled it into the jungle away from himself and Jack. It was a game he used to play with his childhood dog. Throw the rock and let the mutt chase after the sound.
Please chase it, please chase it.
When it struck a distant tree with a
thunk
the beast whirled in a half circle to look, then spun back at Jack. The move was so fast anyone blinking would have missed it.

Jack
began slowly raising the gun, his fingers curling around the trigger. Either do it fast, or don’t do it at all, Derek thought.

The gun came up, midway to Jack’s shoulder.

The spider put its front legs down, motionless on all eight. Poised.

Both men
stood in terror, waiting to see what would happen.

Jack began to level the gun,
slowly slid back the rack to load the bullet, let it slide forward again using his finger to dampen the click. He curled his finger around the trigger.

That’
s when the creature shot forward at Jack, too fast to outrun, as if it had been pulled back on a giant invisible rubber band and released. Derek screamed and felt his heart pump furiously. Jack let instinct overtake him, threw his arms up over his head and fell backward to the ground as those hairy legs grasped him. The gun never fired.

Derek
screamed and spun around like a lunatic, looking for a weapon, a branch, a rock, anything to throw at the creature.

But then the spider
released Jack and scuttled backwards, leaving the journalist curled up on the ground, shaking but unharmed.

For a second Derek almost smiled
. Maybe Jack
had
fired the gun and hit the beast, killing it. But Derek’s smile turned into a silent scream as the reason for the spider’s mercy became apparent.

A seco
nd spider slinked out of the bushes behind Jack, palps twitching furiously, abdomen pulsing, trapping the journalist in the middle of an imminent tug-o-war.

When Derek
found his voice all he could yell was, “RUN!”

***

For what seemed an eternity, Jack felt the wiry hairs of the spider’s legs stabbing through his shirt, immobilizing him in a death grip. The beast’s massive weight crushed him like a giant boulder. A smell akin to bile emanated from the arachnid’s mouth. He heard the clicking of its fangs in his ears, and braced himself for those sharp, poisonous knives to stab into his flesh. And then it was off of him for some unknown reason.