Salticidae (2 page)

Then all was calm
again. The dust settled, the last leaf whirlygigged to the floor.

“What
the bloody fuck was that?” Janet asked, tentatively stepping out of the Jeep. She fingered a new cut on her temple. “Felt like an earthquake.” She yelled to whoever would listen. “Check everything! Make sure it didn’t ruin the equipment!” Then, back to Winston: “That’s all we need, to wait for a new shipment of gear.”

Winston shouldered his weapon and ordered his men to keep watch of the perimeter.
They brushed fresh dirt off their clothes as they scanned the woods, as if they might see any forthcoming aftershocks.

Gellis
, who’d clung to a tree for stability, ran to the cave mouth and yelled into the darkness. He spoke a combination of Pygmy and French but Janet couldn’t make any sense of it. Whatever he yelled got no reply from within. Frustrated, he turned from the cave and came running up to her. “Ma’am, I fear the inside of the mountain has collapsed.”

“Is that bad? We’re not gonna fall into the ground are we?”

“Doubtful. But my men might be hurt. They don’t respond. I need to go in and see.”

“Fine by me.
But if that vein is closed we’re going to need to open it again.”

“If my friends are hurt I need to get them back down the mountain to a doctor. I told you w
e don’t care about your gold.”

“
Well
I
care about the gold. My priority is not your friends but what’s inside those veins. We have medical supplies here.”

“And if they are dead?” His lips were tight. He was angry.

Winston raised his gun, fingered the trigger. “Back up, pal. If they’re dead we’ll deal with it. Listen to your boss and get in there with more men to see if the vein collapsed. If it did, you open it first and then we’ll figure out what to do with any corpses.”

Gellis
stared at the gun, then finally walked away and gathered more workers, all of whom were still a bit dazed from the earth’s shock.

Janet watched
as meager clouds of dust rose up from small cracks in the moss-covered mountaintop some thirty feet above her. Gellis was doing his best to convince one of the smaller Pygmies to enter the cave but the man was shaking his head no. All the men looked scared now. The trees on top of the rock wall were still shaking. That was weird. Possibly an aftershock coming from the cave, she thought. The shaking grew wilder now. It almost looked like someone was trying to drive a vehicle around up there and was slamming into things.

Gellis continued to urge the man but t
he worker was refusing to move. Lazy bastards, Janet thought.

So now what, she wondered. Was the vein closed off? Was all this work for naught?
She supposed it was better that it had shifted and settled now rather than later, when she herself might have been inside. And, if there was a silver lining, it might have even opened up more tunnels and—

She heard a
sudden rush of air.

Something large and black shot out from the cave entrance
and grabbed the small, obstinate worker, speeding like a bullet into the nearby jungle growth, not far from the Jeeps. It happened so fast Janet couldn’t see what it was.

Everyone stood still, stunned. Confused. Gellis
was alone now, eyes wide.

“What the hell was that!” Winston shouted
. He shouldered his gun and cocked it.

Where
had it gone? Janet spun around, looking for it. The fronds and bushes to her right suddenly shook with a fierceness that sent chills up her spine. A torrent of blood arced up from the bushes and hit the treetop. The worker’s horrifying screams rose into the air before cutting off with chokes and gurgles.

“The fuck is going on
!” This from one of Winston’s men.

“Get in there and get it!” Winston yelled,
finally flicking the safety off his gun.

Janet pulled her own pistol, imagining a large black Jaguar emerging any second now with a small pygmy worker’s head in its jaws.
She
should
have been concerned about that cat after all.

As the security guard
s inched toward the bushes, which were now eerily still, another Pygmy worker near the cave entrance screamed. Janet and all five security men swung their guns toward the blood-curdling cry.

They all
froze in shock.

Sitting on top of the mountain
, just above the new cave entrance, were several black animals that defied all rational explanation.

One of the
m shifted forward a few feet with such speed it looked like it simply skipped ahead in time. It reared back, lifting two long, hairy, segmented front legs into the air as if it were praying.

And now, wit
hout a doubt, Janet knew what they were.

Spiders.

The size of cars.

Impossible.

Their shiny, bowling ball black eyes were void of emotion, betraying nothing but a primal need to kill. Janet could see the panicked men reflected in those dark orbs.

A
member of the security team screamed, fired his weapon, catching the rearing spider in its flat face, exploding dark green ooze from its eyes.

But a
ll that did was make things worse. The jarred spiders leapt from the top of the rock wall, sailing high and fast and with such precision that the men they’d chosen as prey could not even turn to run before giant hairy legs were engulfing them in hugs of death.

Venomous fangs tore into dark sweat
y flesh as the spiders yanked their food into the trees and disappeared back into the shadows.

Janet was only now aware of the cacophony of sub
machine guns firing past her head, dampening the horrid screams of men being eaten alive by monsters that were too large to be real.

Someone grabbed her shoulder.
It was Gellis. “This way! Run!”

Without thought she grabbed her
backpack from the Jeep. She stooped to grab the SATphone from the ground but Gellis shoved her forward.

“Into the cave! Hurry!”

“The phone!”

“Forget it! Go!”

“No!”

She broke free from Gellis, reach
ed for the phone but jumped back in shock. A sailing spider appeared out of her periphery and landed on it, right in front of her. Its legs went up above its head in a war dance, palps twitching rapidly, ready to strike. Its fangs opened like giant wire cutters.

Instead
of lunging it flipped backwards as bullets tore into its thorax. Winston kept firing, racing toward it, gunstock secured against his shoulder, sending another volley into its belly, making sure it was dead.

She looked back down.
The phone was gone. Kicked away when the spider had jumped on it.

Then she was up again, being dragged by Gellis. “Hurry!”

A pygmy worker was tackled beside her, hairy legs wrapping tightly around him as he screamed into the black bulbous eyes sealing his fate. The man reached up and got a fistful of Janet’s shirt, trying to save himself but instead pulling her toward the monstrosity that held him.

“Let go!”
She slapped at his hands, fighting to free herself from his gripping fingers. One of the mighty arachnid’s legs stepped on her thigh. It weighed as much as a man and the hairs on the tip stabbed through her safari shorts and pierced her skin. The worker thrashed to get free, but the fangs came down and stabbed home through his neck and his blood shot out in spurts, coating Janet’s face.

The man’s
death grip on her shirt went slack and she rolled free.

She
found her legs now, started to run, had only a second to see Winston following her and Gellis toward the cave entrance, firing his weapon as dozens more of the giant spiders scurried over the rock face and leapt at the myriad workers running in panic. She turned back as the coolness of the cave swept over her, looking again for the SATphone. Winston crouched in front of her, just inside the cave entrance, his gun rocking him back and forth as he fired into the madness unfolding outside.

With a rush,
one of the giant spiders flew out of the melee and fired itself at the cave entrance, legs splayed out. Winston unloaded his weapon, caught the monster in mid leap with a volley of rounds that sent it crashing into the rock outside the cave, its legs falling over the entrance like prison bars.

Through
those legs Janet watched as the giant black and brown spiders leapt from worker to worker, jumping with such lightning speed they were nothing but massive dark blurs. As they leapt they left cables of silk web in their wake. It covered most of the ground and vehicles, as well as a couple of tents that remained half completed.

“What the fuck are these things?” Winston yelled, checking his magazine and finding that he was out of bullets. “Where did they come from?”

Janet searched her pockets for her cell phone. “Call Dad. Gotta get help.”

“Give me this.” Winston grabbed her pistol from its holster. He checked the rounds. Six shots. He looked at Gellis, whose ebony face was all but lost in the darkness of the cave. Outside, men continued to scream as the
giant black spiders tackled them and dragged them into the trees. “What did you do?”

“I did nothing, sir. I have never seen such monsters.”

“Shit. My cellphone’s not here,” Janet said. “I think it’s in the Jeep.”

“
Forget it. There’s no service here.” Winston began scooting them farther into the cave. “Move back. Go. You’re not going out there. C’mon. Move. We need to find a place to hide.”

Janet opened her
hip pack to search for her phone, in hopes she had absentmindedly put it inside. In the darkness she couldn’t see the little bits of useless materials the pack held, but it was pointless; she didn’t feel her phone anywhere amongst its contents.

“Hold up.” Gellis was behind her, deepest in the
tunnel of the mountain entrance now. He was the only one wearing a hardhat and he switched on the light affixed to the front of it. “There is a slope here. It looks steep. We must be careful.”

Janet turned and saw the dropoff.  She could hear the water running down its sides, down toward the gold.
They would need ropes to get down it without breaking their legs.

Gellis
suddenly looked up past her, shocked, thrusting his hand out toward Winston. “No!”

Janet turned back in time to see Winston get ripped from the cave by a collection of hairy legs wrapped around his head.
The security chief fired the pistol aimlessly in panic, the bullets zipping around Janet and Gellis, as he was drawn out into the open afternoon jungle heat and engulfed in a furry spider embrace, fangs already coming down on his shoulders.

With a
n immediate long jump, another black spider was outside the fissure’s entrance, spinning, seeing them inside, scrambling forward in a mad dash to eat.

“Go away!” Janet cried. “Just go away!”

The spider raced forward, getting its two forelegs in first, then folding the others in near its body to fit through the crack.

“Just leave me alone!”
Janet’s fist closed around something in her pack. It felt like a long tube. She drew it out to throw it at the creature but Gellis grabbed it from her hand.

“No. Do
n’t throw it. Shoot it.”

The
spider lurched forward, its head inside the cave, struggling to get further in. Janet pushed back into Gellis’ chest, trying to hide inside his frame.

“Look out.”
Gellis pulled the string on the distress flare. A sudden flash of red blinded Janet as the fiery projectile shot out at the enormous spider. The beast jumped back out into the open as the flare hummed by its huge black body.

The next thing Janet knew she was sliding backwards down a long slope, wrapped tightly in Gellis’ arms.

***

The ground shook. More miners, Shumba thought. More men destroying his land. All he could do was ignore it and focus on his task. He knew the giant nest of wild bees was nearby. He’d seen his father collect honey from this particular nest on numerous occasions, mixing the honey with fermented grains for a sweet alcoholic drink the men enjoyed around the fire as they ate their nightly ration of peacock and porcupine.

The other hunters of his tribe were not far away, but were sil
ent and invisible as they stalked game for dinner. It was only recently that Shumba had been allowed to hunt and forage alone, and he didn’t want to disappoint his family by coming back empty handed. Not only was the honey good for drinking, it was good trade as well, and could yield anything from a new shirt to a day with the tribal educator.

He step
ped over the curled roots of the jungle floor and found his bearings. There was the tree with the face of a monkey in its bark. There was the bush where the caterpillars mated. Yes, the nest should be just up the small hill in front of him, near the overlook.