Salticidae

by Ryan C. Thomas

  “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 with?” He took out his camera and snapped a couple photos. “These poisonous, Banga?”

  The guide finally looked away from the trees, 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 we’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. What 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 their 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,” she 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 ce
rtainly 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.”

  “They were the same spiders I saw jump from the Old Man. How can they be so large? Where do they come from?”

  Musa sat in the swale and rubbed some of the decomposed vegetation onto his body. “Come in here and dirty yourself up. It will help mask your smell. I do not know if those beasts can track by scent or not, but it is better to be safe.”

  “You’re not answering my questions, father.”

  “I realize that, Shumba. I do not really have an answer.”

  “But you spoke of demons from long ago come back to haunt us. Have you seen these demons before? Why have they never been spoken of to me?”

  Musa now ordered his two men to keep a watch in the trees while he spoke to his son. It did not go unrecognized that of the ten men who had started out on this journey, only four now remained, including himself and his son. “I have never seen them, Shumba, nor has anyone for a long time. There were stories when I was young, but they were told as warnings to the young children of our ancestors, and no one truly believed them. Except for the elders, who had sworn their own fathers had battled the beasts long ago, and rid the jungle of them.”

  “Then why did you say they have come back, if you thought they never existed. I don’t understand.”

  “When you told me what you saw, I remembered how the elders swore they were real, and how they described them in such detail. I always wondered if perhaps the stories were rooted in legend. Your own descriptions were too close to what I’d heard before. And yet, I never told you these stories, nor have any of the other men in the tribe. The stories haven’t been told in decades. We have had no need for them since I was a boy.” Musa chuckled as he patted his son’s head. “There have been too many real horrors to warn you of in recent times. I have seen too many boys and men whipped and beaten, shackled as slaves in the mines, even killed because of their lighter or darker skin. What would we be the point of frightening you with make believe monsters when we see the men with guns and Jeeps on the roads everywhere. Yet, your descriptions are exact, and I fear now the elders knew the truth of these stories.”

  Shumba, now covered in rotting vegetation like his father, picked up his spear again. “Is there a way to kill them?”

  “I know how to kill a little spider, of course, but the stories never spoke of how the big ones were defeated. The whole point of the stories was that they were unbeatable, to keep children from straying from the villages.”

  “Then how come we’re walking to the top of the Old Man to help the people there? You don’t have a plan?”

  Musa flicked his hand through the fallen fronds, came up with a clenched fist. He opened it and revealed a tiny beetle with a yellow and orange carapace, two long antennas that trailed down the length of its body. The insect remained frozen for a moment, then began to run toward his fingers. Musa closed his fist before the insect could escape. He clenched tightly, and when he opened his fist the beetle was smashed into a puddle of green and yellow goo.

  “If it is flesh and blood, it can be killed.” He wiped the dead insect on his knee. “This is what we do, Shumba. We are hunters, and we are good at it. But more importantly, you must remember we are not like the men who hunt us. We do not hurt maliciously.”

  Shumba looked up at the sky and noted the darkness beginning to wash over the sky. “I will fight, father, but I do not think we will be much good in the dark against these spiders.”

  “Yes. We are losing light, and must find some shelter.” He looked around, scratched the stubble on his chin. “I have a sense of where we are, and there should be old huts not far from here. Whether they still stand or have rotted away…who’s to say.”

  “And if they’re gone…then what? Sleep outside with these things?”

  “Son, even if we had shelter, these things would get us if they wanted.”

  One of the men came out of the trees, spear raised. “Musa, there is something coming!”

  Musa jolted upright, cocked his head. Yes, he could hear it, the stampeding crash of multiple legs tearing through branches. “Quickly, Shumba, up! Head to where the trees are the most dense. With hope we can lose them in the tangles where they cannot maneuver as well. Let’s go!”

  All four of the men ran, ducking into the shadowy undergrowth just as two striped spiders emerged from the trees, crawling down into the swale where they went still, watching the jungle around them.

  ***

  As the sun set, the jungle began to cool. Okapi, elephants, peafowl, duikers, clawless otters, parrots, toucans, and several species of ape and monkey made their way to their dens and nests. In their place emerged cats, wild boar, crocodiles, rodents, and of course millions upon millions of insects which busily consumed the jungle biomass.

  It won’t be long before the bats came out to play, thought Benon Kani, as he rode in the passenger seat of the small two-door sedan. Bats were good eating; he was itching to test his shooting skills and try to get some dinner. Beside him, his driver, a man who rarely spoke these days due to an incident where he’d had half of his tongue sliced off, steered the car through the trees as if he knew of some mystical path invisible to the naked eye. In the backseat sat two young boys smoking cigarettes. Each one carried a Kalashnikov.

  Kani fingered the rib bone he wore around his neck. He’d torn it from the insides of a diseased Pygmy many months ago. He could still hear the man screaming, but to him it was a peaceful lullaby. When he closed his eyes he could see the man on the ground beneath his mighty boot, pleading, begging Kani not to take his wife and son, himself ignoring the pleas as he ordered his men to rape the woman and behead the child. Kani held the man’s eyes open with a knife and forced him to watch it all. “Your kind is filth,” Kani told him. Then, with a smile, he drove his hunting knife into the man’s side and tore open a wide gash. He jammed his hand in, got hold of the man’s ribs, and with his foot still holding the dog down, yanked and yanked with all his might until he heard the man’s ribs crack. He twisted and snapped the bones until the man’s eyes rolled back in his head and the pain took his voice away. With a last mighty yank, he ripped the man’s rib bone from his body. It was many minutes before the man swam out of unconsciousness, at which point Kani had his men put torches to him, burning him alive.

  It was, he felt, a beautiful memory. Kani’s men now referred to him as Skeleton Man, a moniker that he was more than happy with. This also had to do with his past.

  Before Kani had come to lead the GRC, he had been raised in the farms of Uganda, where his father had been the village witch doctor. His father had shown him the way of black magic, how to use it to vanquish enemies just by staring at them. The magic gave one strength and knowledge beyond that of mere humans. Kani had stolen men’s souls and purified much of the land with this magic, but there was still much more to be done. The Almighty God had declared his people the rightful rulers of this land, and through his magic and his might, he would take it back.

  Skeleton Man. Yes. He relished the name.

  He let go of the rib bone and in
structed his driver to stop the car. “Wait here.”

  Kani stepped out into the darkening jungle. He could smell smoke nearby, but not from one of the many fires that dotted the jungle at night as various nomadic tribes cooked their dinners. No, this smelled of burning rubber and plastic.

  There, not too far away, was a decline, and around it the trees were knocked over. He walked toward it carefully, hand on the pistol in his waistband. He noticed now how the trees leading up the mountain behind him were also disturbed, the branches broken and the trunks marred by something large that had obviously crashed into them.

  He looked over the edge of the decline, further down toward the understory of the jungle, and saw one of his trucks flipped on its back, a cloud of dark smoke drifting up from the engine. A green beret lay just a foot away from it, against a tree.

  “Snake Eater,” he whispered. Just the man he’d come up here to see. Snake Eater was one of his better captains, but he was often easily distracted by the whores they captured on their raids. What they hell had caused him to drive into the tree? And where were the others?

  He looked behind him, back up the inclining jungle floor that lead to the upper montane. There was hardly a path to see. Navigating to the clearing above was almost impossible.

  He walked carefully down the grade and squatted next to the smoking vehicle, picked up Snake Eater’s beret. It was smeared with thick blood that had started to congeal. First he sniffed it, knowing that his magical powers often allowed him to see into the past and future. But the blood gave him no visions. Instead, he wiped his finger on it and painted ribbons of the blood across his cheeks. He would let Snake Eater’s soul tell him what happened when it was ready.

  In the distance a monkey screeched, breaking his concentration. No matter, he’d figure this all out soon enough. He got back in the car and instructed his mute driver to keep heading to their destination.