Now, to 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 frere. 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. Where 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. There 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 second 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.
Fetal, Jack looked up, saw the beast backing away, stopping a
nd crouching low like it was preparing for a jump. Saw Derek with a look of horror on his face near the hill. The photographer was waving at him. No, waving for him to get up and run.
“RUN!”
Don’t need to tell me twice. Jack was up in a flash, gunning for Derek when something appeared at his side, cutting off the route. He slid to a complete stop, chest heaving.
You gotta be fucking kidding me, he thought. Another spider, this one larger than the first, dark brown with orange stripes ringing its legs. It sped forward and stopped right beside him, its eyes locked on the first spider.
Jack stood still, waiting to be ripped apart by these two monstrosities, his mind clear of everything except the anticipation of horrendous pain, but neither spider moved toward him. It was like some sort of arachnid standoff, each beast sizing the other up. Jack saw the rifle near his feet but hesitated to move for it. Maybe if he just stayed still these two things would kill each other. Unless of course this standoff was predicated on winning the spoils of war.
Him.
The new spider reared up, then brought its front legs down, Thump thump thump thump, on the ground. Left leg, right leg, left leg, right leg. Like it was drumming. The first spider didn’t move at all. The new spider beat the ground again, thumpa thumpa thumpa. This time it completed an entire drum solo that would make Keith Moon jealous were he alive. Thumpa thumpathumpa thump thump.
What in the holy hell is it doing, Jack wondered.
The spider’s front legs started beating faster and faster, becoming a blur, making the ground tremble under Jack’s legs. The sound of the tattoo echoed off the tress and drifted through the jungle.
Now the first spider was answering with its own drumming, forelegs hammering the ground in a rapid crush roll.
They’re communicating, Jack realized, but about what he had no idea. Not that it mattered in the current scheme of things. As long as they kept it up he might sneak away unnoticed.
He slowly took a step back, eyes watching the twitching spiders, moving as slow as he could.. Drifting backwards, shifting position, like a gas, trying to become invisible. The spiders continued their frantic drum communiqué without any other care.
Now Derek came up around the trees, his hand waving his friends forward. Jack knew it didn’t make any difference, but at least he didn’t feel alone.
“I’ve got my eye on them,” Derek said quietly. “Just turn and walk toward me. If they move you’ll know.”
“How so?”
“Because I’ll scream and run like a little girl. C’mon.”
Jack turned and strode nonchalantly into the tree line until he felt the jungle shadows engulf him, and leaned against the cold moss-covered bark of a towering emergent, his heart beating wildly, breath coming too fast.
“Be quiet,” Derek whispered, playing doctor as best he could, checking Jack’s face and limbs for wounds. “I don’t see any cuts. It didn’t bite you, did it?”
“Not that I know of.”
“You okay then?”
“Define okay. I’m alive, yes, but my brain is a little upset because stuff like that right there—” he pointed at the two beasts— “doesn’t exist. I might need therapy. Actually, yes I’ll need therapy. Does that make me okay?”
“You’re okay.”
Jack looked back at the scene near the small hill, the two giant spiders whacking the ground with their front legs, palps twitching in excitement. “What the hell are they doing?”
“Well, if I know women, and I think I do—”
“Objection, your honor. Speculation.”
“—I’d say they’re flirting.”
Jack put a hand to his chest in an attempt to slow down his heartbeat, which was measuring in somewhere around a million pumps per second. “What, like a mating dance?”
“I think this is what passes for a night club pick up line out here. God, I wish I had my camera. Actually…yeah…I’m gonna go get it. Keep an eye on these things. Make sure they don’t go anywhere.”
“What? Fuck no! Let’s get the hell outta here! I’m not staying around to watch giant spider porn. That thing was going to eat me! Which begs the question…where the hell is Banga?”
“Haven’t seen him.” Derek scanned the jungle around them to be sure. “Where was his gun?”
“It was just lying near the tree. You think these things ate him? Shit, I don’t even know where we are.”
“I dunno, Banga seems pretty smart. Maybe he saw them coming.”
“So then he left us.”
“I’d leave us too if I was outside and saw giant spiders approaching.”
Jack nodded. He couldn’t argue that point. “Fair enough. Okay, here’s my new plan. Get around the hill, get into the cave, find a way down the mountain and get out of here.”
“Sounds good. But not without my camera. When we run by the tent give me two seconds to grab it.”
“Derek, I like you, but if those things come after us and you hold us up—”
“Jack, you wanted a story, right? This is a fucking story. This is retirement and fame for both of us. If we don’t get the camera all you’ve got is mushrooms.”
Derek was right. This was a story that would stop the world, and the only way he could publish it was with photographic proof. “I hate you. Okay. On the count of three, we slink back to the tent, you grab the camera and we get into that cave.”
“Sounds good.”
Together, they eased around the trees, stepping over whatever branches and twigs looked like they might snap underfoot, not bothering to brush the bugs away from their face for fear of drawing attention. The spiders thumped the ground, fiercely attacking it with such force leaves began to shake free of the nearby trees. Jack’s vision wobbled with the vibrations of the jungle floor. They cut wide around the hill, inside the trees, finally seeing the tent draw close.
Jack breathed a small sigh of relief. They were going to make it after all.
And then there was the sound of something smashing through tree branches behind them. Jack and Derek turned, and Jack wasn’t sure who screamed first. Nor did it matter.
Rappelling to the ground all around them on thick white strands of silk, their legs wide like giant hands ready to snatch up anything in their way, were dozens of the hairy, striped giant nightmares. When they hit the ground they stampeded, rushing for the two men, black eyes fixed on their prey.
Now Jack felt his throat burn and was sure it was his voice screaming: “RUN!”
***
If a man were asked to define beauty, Kani the Skeleton Man would simply point to the Congo’s morning horizon. It wasn’t just the size and blessed heat of the sun that made his flesh ripple with awe, it was the way the light filtered through the trees, broke into thousands of beams of golden spears and lanced the jungle with energy. The morning sunrise was a trumpet of rebirth. Wherever those beams struck, the rainforest roared to life, rousting the treetop wildlife from darkness in bursts of song and screams of play, unfolding young flora in a violent palette of reds and blues, hooking rainbows over the mists of a thousand waterfalls.
“Good morning, my love.” The Skeleton Man sucked on a cheroot he’d stolen at gunpoint from a Toleka Trader. Snake Eater’s blood still streaked his face, and he touched it now, letting it flake off. Throughout the night he’d had visions delivered from his fallen aide’s soul. There were pygmies in these mountains trying to work without his consent, dog men trying to support the blasphemous regimes of his enemies. He couldn’t let this stand. He would avenge Snake Eater’s death, the destruction of his truck, and defend his nation’s honor in one deft swoop.
He would wipe them all out for good.
He knew where to find them. Had received reports of a flare from his men. As he’d smoked and stared into the fires last night, he had seen the flare a thousand times over in the fireworks display of embers rising on the heat wave.
He turned to his camp, eyed the collection of young boys smoking. They tapped thei
r Kalashnikovs on the wet grass and chewed on okapi meat, looking bored, wet from the night’s rain, eager for a fight. Two of them, mere preteens, swigged from a bottle of French wine and spit into the air. Their sunglasses and berets were too big for them, but they were conditioned. He was their father now, and they would do as he told them or they would die.
Elsewhere in the camp, his loyal captains and lieutenants smoked, sharpened machetes, and waited for instructions as the sun crept up their shoes, onto their laps, and eventually lit up their eyes.
The storm had passed. A new day was dawning.
The Skeleton Man strode into the middle of them all, raised his hands. “Into the trucks. We are off to war. Now!”
Not a single man or boy around him disobeyed. All were smiling.
***
They’d walked for over an hour in the tight crevice of the inner mountain, till their legs blazed and their lungs felt dry. Gellis had suggested they stop and sleep, take turns to avoid any surprise attacks, but Janet had vetoed this vehemently. She’d be damned if she were going to leave herself exposed to this man. Something about him still spooked her.
He’s done nothing but help you, she’d thought. Perhaps your fear is unfounded, girl. You can’t always be right. Even Dad gets things wrong from time to time.
Instead, she’d sat down and leaned her head against the wet rock. She was still sitting now, in the blackness, listening to Gellis breathe beside her. It had been many minutes since they’d spoken.
Gellis finally broke the silence: “Someone will have to tell Moyo’s family that he is gone.”
“Have fun with that.”
“He died in your employ, miss. It should be you. Or your father.”
“News flash: I don’t care. I just want to get out of here and get back to Cape Town. I’m done with the damn jungle. You people can have it.”
Salticidae Page 13
