Salticidae (16 page)

Or, maybe the truth was he was just a ponce, a wimp.

Fuck it. Doesn’t matter.

Trace the gun again. They’re out there, watching, waiting, preparing to strike. He just knew it.

He stretched his leg over a crooked branch and took a piss, let the warm waste leak out through his pants and drip down onto the grounds below. He hadn’t pissed his pants since his time in Iraq, when one of his squad mates had brewed up the most potent hard cider he’d ever imbibed, so strong he’d passed out in an hour and woken up only when he’d felt his bladder let loose all over his bed.

It was an unc
omfortable feeling now, to be pissing his pants, but it was better than unzipping and holding his dick out and trying to spray it away from him. He needed to be prepared in case something came at him. Last thing he wanted was to suddenly have to fuss with a zipper when he should be firing his weapon.

“Come on. I know you’re out there, you bastards. Quit fucking with me.”

There! Something moved in the bushes about two hundred yards away. He pointed his gun at it. Waited. Steadied his breathing. Waited some more.

Nothing happened. Maybe it was just a breeze. But could he take that chance? Could he afford to ignore it?

“Alright, bloke, let’s get a better looksie.”

Slowly, he stood up on the tree limb, the last of his urine running down his leg, and grabbed the branches above him. He climbed slowly, keeping his eyes on that one spot. The other trees grew up around him, so many of them he felt like a bug himself, like some kind of aphid in a garden. The trees we
re huge in this damn rainforest, tall and thin and a covered in goopy moss that stained his hands.

But they were sturdy, and this particular tree held his
weight. He pushed into the top, positioned himself against the trunk in such a way to watch the spot in question.

He had a much better view now, could actually see over
the canopy around him. A dark blue was spreading over everything, a preamble to night’s pitch black. Christ, he was going to have to spend the night in this tree. He sure as hell didn’t plan to venture out into this jungle alone in the dark, gun or no gun. Even if the damn spiders didn’t get him, he’d probably fall into a pit or sit on a poisonous snake or run into a gorilla or God knows what.

W
ait, he wondered, were spiders nocturnal as well? “Fuck if I know.”

Oh man, he was talking to himself. He was going stir crazy.

Finally, he lowered the gun, relaxed. The spot hadn’t moved in several minutes. Could have just been a small boar or something.

He looked out over the treetops, saw a few mountain peaks not far away. Was one of them where he’d run from? If so he would just head in the opposite direction in the morning. Yes, that was a plan at least.

He rubbed his neck, let the gun rest on his leg, wondered if he could sleep here without falling off and breaking his bones on the ground below.

Fuck it, he had no choice.

The treetop directly behind him swayed. He watched it, mesmerized, actually getting tired now. A mosquito bit him but he didn’t care. He’d taken his pills, applied repellent, knew that a few would get him. If you worried about it you’d go nuts.

The treetop swayed back, the susurration of it
s leaves like ghosts whispering. Now, some type of black shadow swam up out of that treetop, sat with eight giant legs on the very top, looking out over the land.

No, Mathew realized, looking at me.

It inched closer, then went still again. Watching.

Mathew couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t fathom it. It was just
so damn big, like a Volkswagen Bug. He almost wanted to laugh at that comparison, but instead bit his lip, an attempt to stay sane.

Slowly, he lifted his gun, thread
ed his finger into the trigger guard, continued bringing it up as slowly as he could muster, past his stomach, then his chest.

Let
’s finish our game. Who Moves First.

I do.

Now!

Mathew
yanked the gun up and jammed the scope to his eye, saw nothing but magnified hair, legs, eyes and fangs racing toward him like a train.

The spider
’s leap was precise, calculated, mathematical. Its legs opened to engulf him like a giant claw. It tore into the tree, exploding through the branches, smothering Matthew just as he fired the first round. Its legs snapped closed, catching him, immobilizing him. The beast drove him from the boughs, out into the open air, falling into the jungle, its legs squeezing his breath out of him. It seemed an eternity before man and beast hit the ground. When they did, Matthew felt his back and ribs shatter, turn to piecemeal. His vision streaked like bad television reception. His gun flew away. His femur burst through his thigh like a spring-loaded switchblade.

Should have stayed with my mates, he thought. At least I wouldn’t’ have died alone with piss-stained pants.

The beast’s wiry hairs stabbed through his clothing and pricked his skin as if he were being shut in an Iron Maiden. A fiery itching overtook his whole body and he began to convulse.

He braced himself for the fangs and the poison. When they came just a second later, he wailed, for no amount of training could have ever prepa
red him for how intense this pain was. The last image he saw was two mucus-covered, clicking mandibles, coming for his face.

***

Night in the jungle. The darkness forced your pupils open so wide that the shadows fell in, got into your brain, made you see things
in your mind’s eye. Ghosts, wraiths, things that grew out of a void, undulated at arm’s length, swaying to the creaking of branches, moving to the laughter of a mild breeze. You reached out to touch them, passed your hand through them and lost it in the nothingness. If you concentrated on your periphery you could make out jet black spires and the bars of a universal cage, or maybe they were just trees, outcroppings, ferns. There was something spiritual in it. Ultimate insignificance in a world that could swallow you whole.

We are all just single raindrops in a planetary tempest lasting
for all eternity. We fall, our beads of water catch the moonlight for a mere second, and we sparkle for all we’re worth before disappearing forever in an ocean of cold nothingness.

And then, thank God, the
re is light.

Jack shook his head, let the nonsense thoughts snap away, looked toward the new glow.

Derek was emerging from the tent with his lantern, a yellow beacon for an armada of insects lost in time. Big ones. Black ones. Yellow ones. Their legs long enough reach up your nostrils and pull your brains out before they wrapped you in webbing and laid you to rest in some eternal tomb, awaiting Anubis.

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 like
d 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 er
ected 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 th
e 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 a
nd 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.