Salticidae (27 page)

“Look, just help me flip the Jeep over and let’s hope it still runs.
Tie the sticks together and give me a single fuse.”

“No no no,” Derek said. “
Don’t do it, honcho.”

“I’m gonna drive that Jeep toward the river. With
all
the dynamite. I’m gonna light it and put my head back and stare at the sun, and when those things jump on the Jeep, which we know they’ll do, it’ll go kablooey and give you guys a chance to head to the trail and get the fuck outta Dodge.”

“Why do
you get to be the hero?”

“Fine, then we’re switching. You do it.
”

“Ho there! I never said that. I just
…” Derek looked at everyone around him. “Please someone say they have a better idea.”

Janet started taking the dynamite out of her pack and tying it together. “There isn’t one. He’s right.
Let’s hurry and get the Jeep flipped over.”

***

It took every man to flip the Jeep over. Shumba pushed with all his might, his muscles flaring and his back protesting with deep, low aches. Beside him, his father’s gnarled teeth looked angry and primitive as he too put his all into getting the vehicle upright. Once it landed and bounced on its tires, the one called Jack got in the driver’s seat. “Um…key?”

“You’ve got to be kidding me
.” This from the one called Derek.

Shumba understood very little of what was being said, relying on the occasional translation from the guide named Banga. They needed to find the mechanism that started the vehicle.

“Spread out and look,” the driver, Jack, was saying.

Shumba backed off the vehicle and scanned the ground. A
ll he saw were streaks of blood, empty bullet casings, and dead bodies—both spiders and rebels.

“Shumba, prepare yourself,” his father was saying, pointing toward the river with his machete.

Shumba’s eyes left the ground and watched the spiders advancing in a line of jumping black bodies taking out the last Lost Boy. He raised his machete and awaited his father’s orders, strangely eager to fight the beasts after now feeling the thrill of the kill. The spider he’d sliced from underneath had had such a soft belly, it would not be hard to destroy them if he could stay out of the way of their legs and fangs. Of course, that was easier said than done.

“They’re coming!” the woman screamed.

Musa motioned his men to gather round, then spoke to them as their leader. “The white men here have a plan and we must make sure it happens. This is why we have come, and this is our time in the battle to shine. Keep the spiders away until this vehicle comes to life. You all saw how Shumba killed that demon just minutes ago. He has found where it is best to strike. Under the belly where it is softer. Aim for that spot and may we all live to laugh about this later. Let’s go!”

The men took off running, leaving Shumba stunned. But in a heartbeat his new found warrior instinct took hold and he raced behind them, caught up to the line, and swung his machete high.

The first spider came from his right. It was still wet from the river. The hairs on its bulbous body twinkled with droplets. It raced closer, legs pumping like a machine, running faster than a wild cat, tearing through the razor grass so fast it kicked up a wake of greenery.

I must fight the fear to run, Shumba told himself. I must wait patiently, like I am foraging honey from the wasps’ nests. If I run, or make sudden movements, I am going to be a meal for this thing.

The spider was twenty yards away, now ten, now five, now so close Shumba saw the forest reflected in it front four eyes, the other four eyes glistening like jewels atop its head.

This is the new king of the jungle, he thought.

The beast leapt so fast, Shumba’s brain took a second to catch up to the fact the spider was no longer on the ground. He aimed up with his machete. The spider came flying downwards, legs already curling in to grasp him. He thrust his machete up.

The
monster legs engulfed him, the abdomen slamming into him with such force he was driven backwards through the grass. The machete sank into the beast’s underside as the massive arachnid’s grip drew him in closer.

The fangs came d
own at his face for the kill. He grabbed one, and with all his might used it to jerk himself to the side while simultaneously forcing the spider’s jaws to shift the opposite direction. He fought to keep it this way but the demon was powerful. The fangs were slick with venom and other juices. He looked right into the beast’s mouth, saw things in the orifice that defied his knowledge of animal biology, moving parts that he had never seen on a spider before. But he had never seen one this big and so close up. The creature was truly a perfectly formed killing machine.

With the blade still lodged in the beast’s abdomen, he twisted his arm, tearin
g open wide the slit he’d made there. He felt warm fluid run down his arm, onto his waist. The beast smelled bad enough to warrant Shumba holding his breath, but the weight of the creature, and its attempt to gets its mouth on him had him sweating and gasping for air.

The legs crushed in tighter, threatening to crush his ribs. Again he twisted
the blade, used the slippery fang to push the spider’s face away from his own. The legs curled around him, then slowly began to let up their force. He yanked his blade out from the abdomen and slid up, dragging himself out from under it. When he was able to sit up, he used his legs to push the beast over, and then stood up.

He
looked down at the ghastly thing, and with one mighty heave hacked the head off the giant spider.

In some deeper part
of his heart he felt bad for it. The jungle was a place he respected, as his father had taught him, but it was a place that belonged to everybody.
You can’t fault an animal for doing what an animal does.
His father’s words, told to him his whole twelve years.

But this is no animal, he thought. This is a demon. I will respect it, but I will not let it hurt my people.

In front of him he watched the rest of the tribe battle the advancing spiders. Musa was already in battle, with two dead demons by his side. Ota, who’d protested this battle on the cliff, was currently being shared by two spiders at once. His dead body hung limp between them, fangs piercing both the head and thighs.

Good, thought Shumba. While they eat the
y do not fight. These will be easy to kill.

***

Why the hell had he never learned to hot wire a car? Wasn’t that what writers were supposed to do, Jack thought, to learn how to do everything, experience everything. He’d read up on the Congo for months before coming, every travel book, website, blog, gardening brochure, political pamphlet, cereal box, whatever. At no time had he felt the need to learn the electrical system of a Jeep’s engine. He slammed his fist on the steering wheel and cursed.

“Found ’
em!” Derek waved the keys in the air. He raced through the tall grass, tossed them to Jack. “You don’t have to do this. We can just run to the trail. It’s right over…oh shit.”

Jack saw surprise in Derek’s eyes. He turned, saw the reason why.

From the trail, three spiders launched themselves out of the trees and landed with bloated bodies, sentries blocking the path. They jabbed at each other for room, like siblings fighting for space in the backseat of a car. They hopped left and right, came back together, flexed on their legs.

“Jack?”

Jack looked back at Derek. “You get back, you maybe tell them about this, okay? So I don’t die for nothing.”

Derek gripped Jack’s forearm
. Men did not normally touch like this, with a sense of emotion, unless it was a final farewell. Jack had held his father’s hand like this years ago, while the cancer ate away the old man’s last few brain cells. He’d squeezed hard, like Derek was doing now, in hopes his father could feel him through the morphine-induced coma.

“You absolutel
y sure about this?”

“There’s no getting to the path now
,” Jack said. “Not with those big fuckers in the way. And our local boys there are getting pretty much surrounded. If I do this right, they’ll all follow, I’m sure of it. Let me go.”

“Would have been one hell of a story about mushrooms, dude.
Would have been Pulitzer-winning shit, man. I’ll make sure the world knows.”

“Thanks. Gotta go. When they start following, you all
head—”

“Yeah, I know. We’re ready to book it. Godspeed, man.
Say hi to the big man in the sky for me. And if you meet Elvis, tell him I wanna jam with him when my time comes.”

“You play an instrument?”

“No. But I’m gonna learn if I get out of this. Learn a little ‘Jailhouse Rock’ or something.”

“
Elvis lives in Ohio. Runs a fruit stand. Everybody knows this. It was in the
Enquirer.”

“Here. You’ll need this.” Janet dropped the bundle of dynamite in the passenger seat.
The fuses were wound together. “Sorry, I have no matches. Gellis…” her voice broke for a moment. Jack remembered the man she was with, who had disappeared after putting himself between her and a rampaging spider. No doubt he’d been eaten trying to save her. They must have been close friends judging by the way her eyes studied the ground, perhaps fighting off tears. She collected herself, nodded with renewed authority. “You’re going to have to use the Jeep’s cigarette lighter there. Pray that it works. The way this thing looks right now I’d be surprised if it can hit second gear.”

“
Look alive! They’re coming!” Derek backed away from the Jeep, began running into the grass. “It’s now or never!”

Jack saw the beasts advancing
in the rearview mirror. Hopping twenty feet at a time, headed right for them. White trails of sticky webbing falling to the grass behind.

“Go!” Janet
yelled. She slapped the Jeep, turned, added a final sentiment, “And thank you!” then caught up with Derek.  Together they ducked down in the swaying razor grass and disappeared from sight.

With a sudden urge to yell and curse the w
orld, Jack slammed his foot down on the gas, pressing it to the floor before he could rethink his decision. The Jeep spun out, found traction in the soil and launched forward, pinning him to the seat. Mud spit into the air like a geyser as he drove toward the river. The bundle of dynamite lay on the seat next to him. He pushed the cigarette lighter in. Prayed.

***

This spider was larger than the others, its legs twice as long as the previous one he’d fought. That gives me the advantage
of avoiding its fangs, Shumba thought, and slashed at the arachnid’s forelegs. The machete sliced through at the joint and the spider fell forward for a second before balancing itself on its other seven legs. The wounded appendage waved high in the air like a detached piece of roof thatch in a storm.

The spider angled down to bite him.

Shumba rolled underneath the beast, narrowly missing the lunging fangs and came up under its belly. He pushed the machete into its soft abdomen and cut a wide tear into its guts. Liquid poured out in thick streams. He rolled again, came up behind the spinnerets and sliced them clean off. The monster jumped sideways, landed a good ten feet away, clearly in pain but intent on getting its kill. Inching forward again, more circumspect but no less hungry.

A second spider app
eared beside it. And a third. Shumba heard his father’s voice from somewhere close by but his periphery showed nothing but more demons landing around him. Yellow ones, black ones, orange ones, grey ones. He was surrounded, the spiders all waving their palps in a frantic dance of hunger.

He did n
ot want to die. Not like this. But he’d known the risk coming into this battle. It was a warrior’s creed and he aimed to see it through to its end despite his fear. His only consoling thought now was that if he was going to die he was going to take as many of these beasts with him as he could. With an angry roar he raised his machete, waved it above his head.

Something sped by him, kicking up mud, the sound of an engine
being taxed in this unforgiving terrain. It passed by, heading toward the river at a high speed. As one synchronized unit, the spiders leapt over him and tore after the Jeep. They want bigger prey, he realized. They are not as stupid as their smaller kin. Evolution had given these creatures a bigger brain.

He turned and watched them leaping after the vehicle. From the trees other spiders launched themselves into the chase.
Coming out of the jungle alongside the river and from the tall grasses, where they’d been crouched down stalking their prey.

In seconds, a line of jumping spiders followed the Jeep, ready to devour whoever was inside it.

***

The Jeep hit a rise in the grass, bounced high, threatened to throw Jack out of the seat. He grabbed the dynamite to make sure it didn’t jettison away. The river approached with lightning speed, and all along the edge, up in the trees, spiders sat flexing on their legs.