Salticidae (12 page)

He could see where the jungle sloped down now, heading to the lower montane level, and then out into the open fields where he’d be able to gun the motor and leave this thing in the dust.

Throwing caution to the wind, the man crashed through a series of vines, snapping them like brittle bones, and let the truck begin its nose dive through the trees, its tires barely touching the ground as it sped down the sharp grade. Tree trunks flashed by the windshield and he thought for sure he would hit one head on and go through the windshield like a rocket. But God was on his side, as He was for all of his people, the GRC, the rightful rulers of the Congo. God had chosen him to live.

The spider continued its chase, all eight legs stampeding with
such fury it spit up dirt in its wake like a motorbike. It climbed through the thickets, legs wrapping around limbs, jumping from tree trunk to tree trunk, then running on the ground again as it followed the truck down the steep hill.

Now, finally,
the inevitable: the truck hit a large root and slewed sideways, flipping over, throwing the man in the green beret into the air with a velocity that turned everything he saw into a blur. With a white flash behind his eyes, he hit an epiphyte-covered tree root and heard his own backbone snap, felt the vertebrae rip through the skin of his torso, felt his kneecap explode in tiny shards. The truck continued to crash into foliage, barrel-rolling farther into the deep blue hues of the Congo, but the man came to rest as a bloodied human pretzel up against a bush radiant with orange blossoms.

He looked up and waited for the giant spider to come and kill him, but it was nowhere to be seen. Had it gotten tangled in some vines? Had it lost sight of the truck as it spun out of control?

The man tried to move his legs, tried to stand, but it was no use. His back was nothing but a bag of gravel, and the pain nearly made him pass out. “At least, I beat you,” he said. “You cannot kill me, demon, for I am the Snake Eater, and I am fear and death incarnate.”

He
started to laugh, an action that sent waves of nausea and agony through his body. But he couldn’t help it; it was funny to have beaten such a beast.

He
stopped laughing a moment later when he looked into the tree limbs twenty feet above him, and saw, crouched on the lowest limb, black eyes watching him with intense indifference, the eight-legged beast.

Seconds later,
the Snake Eater’s screams echoed throughout the jungle.

***

A thousand feet below, Derek, Jack and Banga were working their way up the steep mountain side overlooking the river, using liana to haul themselves up, slipping every now and then on loose soil. The sunlight began to wane as the trees folded back in over them, shrouding them in the deep myrtle world of the rainforest’s midlevel canopy.

They all heard the gun shot at the same time and stood
still.

Jack knuckled sweat from his upper lip. “Should we be scared of that?”

Ahead of him, Banga scanned the darkness of the inner jungle around them. “No. Not yet. Too far away.”

“It’s not the distance that scares me but who’s doing the shooting. Maybe poachers or whoever killed the hippos.”

“Could be whoever shot the flare,” Derek suggested. “Maybe a distress shot, or a warning of sorts. You said the gorillas attack people, Banga.”

Ban
ga nodded. “Yes. But very rare.” He kept his eyes on the treetops, mulling something over.

Jack’s next thought was that it could be something more nefarious, perhaps one of the militant cadres that ran rampant in the Congo.
Why they’d be in the deep jungle, he didn’t know, but it wasn’t exactly uncommon to hear of them skulking around the lower levels weeding out the Pygmy tribes for slave labor. Even though he knew foreigners were fairly safe, that avoiding trouble usually just involved the nuisance of forking over some euros or dollars, it didn’t change the fact such men had a bloodlust not seen in other parts of the world. If they wanted to kill Jack, it would happen no matter how much money he offered.

“You don’t think it could be…” Jack was a little unsure how to approach this subject with Banga, knowing his past, but he had to ask anyway. “Could it be LRA, or one of the others?”

Banga said nothing. But now there was an intense focus to the man, as if he were trying to read the thoughts of the trees. “Could be,” the guide said. “If so, we should be more quiet.”

Derek looked back and forth between Jack and Banga. It was evident he was getting more and more nervous about this situation.
“This story better work out, Jack. I have a lot of hate fucking left to do with my lovely ex wife. I get shot in the dick it isn’t going to be worth it.”

“Tell you what, when we get back we’ll go on a double date. You and your ex, and me and
Koko…if we run into her.”

“Not funny.” Then: “Hey, look, big ass mushrooms. Is this what we were supposed to be messing w
ith?” He took out his camera and snapped a couple photos. “These poisonous, Banga?”

The guide finally looked away from the tree
s, studied the mushroom. “No. Good with mustard.”

“
Seriously?”

“
Yes, sir. Also good for making sex. Makes things harder.”

“Pardon me,” Jack said to the trees, “but do you have any Grey Poupon?”

Derek took a step back. “Don’t get excited around me, man.”

Finally, Banga eased up and let out a deep breath.
“The sun is going down. It would be unwise to continue on in the dark. We should set up a camp.”

“Right here.” Jack swept his arms out to indicate the poor conditions for a camp. “
Without mustard.”

“Not to mention w
e’ll roll down to the river in our sleep, man.”

“
Derek’s got a point, Banga. We should at least find some level ground. The sun’s going down but we still have light, maybe a couple of more hours till it’s dark.”

Banga pointed up the mountainside,
into the curtain of fronds and vines. “Yes. I think there will be flat land somewhere. If not, we tie the tents to the trees. We continue now. Be quiet.”

Jack and Derek hefted their backpacks and followed Banga higher. Soon, the jungle began to pop with
violet and crimson flower blossoms, and the cottony swatches of yellow mosses. The walls of myrtle greens gave over to richer gunbarrel blues that rolled over their heads like the pipeline in a surfer’s twisted dreams. Not long after, the first tiny breaths of mist curled around their shoes.

***

“I can’t see a damned thing,” Janet said. She took off the hardhat and flicked the headlamp. The bulb winked, went off, leaving her in blackness, then came back on dimmer than before. “I thought the batteries in this thing lasted for days.”

Behind her, Gellis huffed. Moyo was now walking beside him, using the large man’s shoulder as a support. “They should.
It probably broke in the fall. Probably one of the connectors came loose or a wire shifted out of its housing. There is a small flashlight in the backpack should we need it. I’ve left it alone so far. It should still be working.”

“What? Why’d you hide it from me? Give it to me. And here, take this piece of crap.” She handed him the dimming hardhat.

Gellis took the pack off his back, fished around in the contents, and handed her the small black flashlight. She turned it on to make sure it was indeed working, let the beam play over the jagged, rock walls.

“My leg is killing me,” she said. “At some point I’m gonna need to sit down.”

“I would offer to carry you but Moyo here is already causing me a strain on my back.”

“I don’t need your help. I can manage just fine.”

“Of course, ma’am. I was merely suggesting—”

“Suggest nothing
, Antoine. I’ll take care of myself. Let’s just keep trying to find a way out of this fucking hell hole. If we can get out and get to a phone I can call for a helicopter and get out of here.” She realized a second later she hadn’t specified whether Gellis or Moyo would be taken on the helicopter, but she was too tired to assuage their fears that, yes, she’d take them too. Much as she didn’t care for them, she wasn’t a murderer.

They resumed walking through this new tunnel
, scraping by a collection of rust-colored speleothems that rose from the ground like thick bamboo. They were forced to bend and flex at odd angles to traverse the obstacle course. At some point Janet took a good look at the formations, ran her ruined hands over them. “Decomposed dolomite,” she said, her geological studies coming back to her. “And a lot of it too. Jesus, this whole mountain in teeming with more resources than I can count.”

“It is Africa, ma’am, we have everything.”

I know, she thought, which is why the world wants it. My father wants it. I want it. And everyone is racing to get it. The only thing in our way is the damn jungle. “Tell me about it. This inner mountain is rich in magnesium,” she continued. “I can make a pretty good penny just on that as an export alone. Not as much as the gold though…but still, the right people will pay well for it.”

“I am not as familiar with this magnesium. W
hat do you use it for?”

“
Mostly, you blow shit up with it, or use it to melt things. It’s highly flammable. Lucky for us it doesn’t light well in bulk like this. Still, I wouldn’t light any matches around here.”

Once
past the ochre speleothems, they found themselves in a low, wide cavern. Stalactites gnawed down at them from the shoulder-high ceiling, prompting them to crouch as they moved. The cavern was large enough that Janet’s waning headlight beam could not find the other side. How nice it would be to suddenly have the night vision of a raccoon, she thought.

Thankfully, no dust fell on the
ir heads here. She shuddered when she thought of what had happened just moments earlier. After they’d started into the tunnel, the walls had shaken as the creatures came racing down the pit walls outside. Gellis quickly threw his hand up over Janet’s headlight, and pressed her hard against the wall, covering her body with his own. She almost thought he was trying to attack her, but looking over his shoulder realized she was wrong; giant spider after giant spider ran past the opening.

Except for the one that
had stopped. Right at the mouth of the tunnel. Waiting for some kind of movement from within. It probed its legs in, scooping them into the tunnel the way someone might part a beaded curtain, then began to compress and fold in its body, fitting tightly into the opening, knowing something was inside. Janet had whimpered into Gellis’ chest. She was sure the beast had heard her, but before it could run in and get them, another spider charged over its back on its way down the pit. Confused or angered by the sudden molestation, the encroaching beast squeezed back outside, following its compatriots downward.

“Careful where we step here,” s
he said, “the ground might have more pits like that big one out there.”

“Let us hope it does not have similar surprises.”

They eased their way farther into the open chamber, Janet rubbing her wounded leg absentmindedly. A new smell rose from the darkness, something metallic and rotten. It didn’t take a doctor to recognize what the smell meant, but before she could address it Moyo mumbled a confirmation in his native language.

“He say it smell like death,” Gellis translated. “Like bad meat.”

“I’d be lying if I said it didn’t concern me, but I’m sure as shit not going back out to the pit. At least the ceiling is low here, so nothing is gonna jump down on us, and those crawling bastards seem intent on heading to lower levels right now, so I’m game to move on. I don’t want to be in here anymore.” Briefly, she felt the beginning of tears well up, but she suppressed them. Father had taught her better than that. Strength was a byproduct of confidence, and she would be damned if she was going to lose it here in front of these two men, who were under her command.

“I agree. But I also must ask…if they are headed down, and we are as well, what happens when we both reach the bottom?”

Damn Gellis. That was something she really didn’t want to think about. With no weapons and no protective gear, they certainly couldn’t fist fight hordes of giant spiders. Which meant, unless they came up with a hell of a plan, there was really only one end game in sight.

***

Shumba and his father ran faster than they had ever run in their life. The young boy warrior was still shaking when they finally came to rest at a wide swale lined with rotting brown and purple fronds fallen from the canopy. Both he and his father raised their spears and watched the jungle behind them, waiting for any monstrous pursuers. After a minute, two of the other tribesmen emerged, each bug-eyed and winded.

“Did the demons follow?” Musa asked.

The two men shook their heads, then each took a knee to catch their breath. With his own long exhalation, Musa ran his hands over Shumba’s shoulder, checking the boy for wounds. He didn’t find anything beyond superficial scratches from racing through the trees. “You did well, Shumba. It would have been bad had you succumbed to fear and given up. The demons will not yield for anything.”