Salticidae

by Ryan C. Thomas

  Should have done that story on Egypt, Jack thought. At least you can see the moon in the desert.

  He shifted positions where he sat on a dented supply locker, a fallen soldier in whatever battle had transpired here. The flipped Jeep was a few feet in front of him, an overturned turtle no one had come to save. Derek’s lantern threw mustard stains on everything. Something was crawling up Jack’s shin, underneath his cargo pants. He smacked his leg, felt it stop, felt the warm goo on his skin. With a little kick he was able to dislodge the dead bug. Now, he looked down, his eyes adjusting to the yellow ring of ground near his feet as Derek pulled up next to him. The bugs scurried, crawled, flittered, slithered, and in the case of a centipede large enough to double as a scarf, rippled.

  “I liked the darkness better. At least then I couldn’t see what was around me.”

  Derek handed him a granola bar. “Here eat. I’d set up the stove but I think the food would get devoured by all these bugs before we could touch it. I do have a couple MREs left though, if you want one. Just open it in the tent.”

  The tent was behind them, fully erected now. It had taken almost an hour and a half to get it set up. Banga was inside, enjoying a small bottle of water they’d filched from the mining faction’s supplies. They’d found other foodstuffs as well, including canned goods and powdery mixes of what looked like oatmeal or gruel.

  “Thanks.” Jack wolfed down the granola bar in four bites.

  “This is kind of scary. Out here alone. You should come back in the tent. Be safe.”

  “You heard Banga, no one’s coming up here at night. I’m not that worried.”

  “Yeah, but at least the tent keeps the bugs away. And I still say that’s bullshit about nobody coming. You don’t know that a gorilla won’t sleepwalk in here, wake up confused and throw some softball-sized hunk of shit at you.” Derek used his foot to push the lantern a little farther away. The insects engulfing it took flight, did a lap, came back and swarmed it again. The light went from yellow to brown, lost under a coating of wings and antennae.

  Jack watched the shadow puppets on the trees now. Giant insects, like bad art house animation, writhed across them, bloomed like ink blots under a kaleidoscope. “Isn’t that chimps that fling poo?”

  “Nah, they all do. I was at the D.C. zoo once and saw a gorilla reach up its own ass, yank out some of its previous meal and chuck it up against the glass. You never saw so many little kids laugh.”

  “Adorable.”

  Derek motioned to the cave, his movement all but lost in the dark. “We go in there in the morning…we don’t find anything…then what?”

  “I dunno. Keep looking. Search the area some more and look for clues.”

  “Look, Jack, don’t get lost in this mess.”

  “You want to back out? You were all about this earlier.”

  “No, I’m still intrigued, I admit that. But…it’s just so damn…this is getting dangerous and I don’t want to push it.”

  “We won’t. We’ll go in and look around, maybe search this area some more. Worse comes to worst we’ll document this camp, the bullets and blood and whatnot, and I’ll do something on the mining here later on. Just keep those pictures on file.”

  “Trust me, they’re not going anywhere. I’ve got a fucking picture of a hippo in a tree. DO you know who else has that photo? Lemme think…yeah, no one. That alone is going to get me the cover of Nat Geo or Discovery. And that’ll get me some sweet poon at least.”

  “Ah, your one track mind. I love it. But what about the wife?”

  “You think she wants poon, too?”

  “That’s not what I mean. I mean, I thought you were still into her, despite her being a whore.”

  “I honestly don’t know where that all stands. Sometimes I think it’s just for the kid.”

  Jack broke his concentration, turned from the puppet show. “You have a kid? Oh, so that’s what you meant about another reason.”

  “Yeah, a girl. She’s ten. Lives with her mom. The whore. Kinda why I still see her, her mom I mean. I get Billie on weekends, when I’m not in the middle of The Lost World.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “I don’t bring it up much. Makes me worry. Never thought I’d care about having a kid, you know. Whole thing was a fucking accident. Don’t buy condoms from those machines in bar bathrooms. They break. But she’s a good kid, gets okay grades, reads a lot of books about wizards and dragons. God I hope she doesn’t grow up to be a nerd, but at the same time I kinda do. Keep the boys away from her for a while, you know.

  “So what about you, Jackie Boy, you haven’t let on about your life a lot here. Wife? Kids? Divorced? Gay? Serial Killer? What do you do in your off time?”

  “I’m a gay divorced serial killer, actually.”

  “I knew it. I had a bet with Banga. He thought you were just a lonely journalist.”

  Jack smiled. Maybe the bugs saw it, at least. “I almost got married once. Didn’t work out. She married someone else. Truth is it was me. I was a bad boyfriend, didn’t pay attention to her, lost my temper a few times. Never hit her, but said a lot of shit I shouldn’t have. I try to make up for it these days but I haven’t had a lot of time to date. And now I’m forty-one, and dating is much harder at this age. The women are…I dunno…more desperate I guess. Or they’re divorcees and carry more baggage than a transcontinental flight.”

  “You want kids?”

  “Don’t know. Got some nephews, they’re good kids. But they tire me out after an hour.”

  Derek burped. Some kind of processed meat stink hung in the air. “You know I didn’t bring up my kid earlier because of Banga. I couldn’t for one fucking moment imagine someone kidnapping my little girl and raping her. These fucking whackos out here in the jungle, killing kids, forcing them into slavery and war, it’s incomprehensible to me. And I’m worried that Banga says it’s safe here because he’s looking for a fight. I think he wants whoever shot these miners to come back. I mean, he said it’s been…what…five years since they took his kid. Five years of not knowing where your son is, whether he’s alive or dead. Five years of planning revenge. Banga is starting to scare me.”

  There wasn’t much Jack could say to that. He couldn’t empathize with Banga the way Derek could, but he could certainly understand the torture a parent must go through when their child is stolen. Out here in the jungles of the Congo, life was disposable, even a child’s. It was disgusting. And it was why he needed this story, to show people what was going on. Mushrooms were a fucking joke. Even if he still had to write the mushroom story he’d sell the other one somewhere else, use a pen name, put it on a blog if he had to.

  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 something,” 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 bivou
ac 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 home.”

  “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 bivouac, 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, the 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 swallowed 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. T
he 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 Winston 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.