Salticidae (28 page)

He cut the Jeep to the left, circled around a copse of rubber trees, spun back toward the water. In the rearview mirror he watched the horror now forming behind him. The spiders had taken the bait, had let their instincts to chase overcome them. They jumped
with zeal, gaining on him, hunters conditioned to catch their prey no matter the means of the chase. Two hairy legs caught the back of the Jeep, sent it spinning sideways. Jack gripped the wheel and steadied it.

Just need to get it a bit farther away from the trail, he thought. Just need to
give Derek and the others a viable means of escape.

A spider landed in the back of the Jeep, its massive abdomen blocking out the sun. The head cam
e down and Jack laid himself into the passenger seat. Two wet fangs pierced the dashboard, tearing the plastic away in chunks. Still gripping the steering wheel, Jack spun the Jeep fast to the right, skidding out in a wide arc. The spider rolled off the Jeep and landed on its back, quickly righted itself and leapt after the vehicle again.

Finally, Jack grabbed the dynamite, popped the lighter from the socket. It was glowing orange,
and the reality of imminent death finally sank in.

I do no
t want to die, Jack realized. In the span of a second, he grasped the unbelievable sacrifice so many humans had made in the name of saving others. Every solider who’d ever gone to war. Every police officer who’d ever been shot at by a criminal. Every fireman who’d ever braved an inferno to save a citizen. Every man and woman who’d ever died for their family and friends. Yes, the romanticized idea of sacrifice made for good stories, but at the end of the day, good people died, never to return, so others could go on. How many names of heroes did he actually even remember? None. He’d written his piece on the September 11
th
attacks. He’d interviewed missionaries in Burma who’d survived tortures, whose coworkers had been killed or were permanently jailed in death camps simply for bringing medicine to refugees. He remembered his grandfather’s stories about fighting the Nazis in Bastonge, remembered the old man’s choked voice when he mentioned friends who’d not been lucky enough to return from the front.

But he did not remember any of their names.

I am either a coward, or experiencing the same final thoughts they did, he realized. I do not want to die. This was a stupid idea.

A spider landed on the hood,
pressing the front wheels into the ground. As the Jeep slowed the spider climbed up over the front window, legs coming down into the front seat with Jack. He saw the Jeep completely surrounded now, saw the trees empty, the spiders having jumped down to join in the hunt.

He lit the fuse. Dropped it in his lap. Looked up into the
set of onyx eyes glaring down at him. Just be quick, he thought.

And
then he was being yanked from the front seat and someone was yelling in his ears: “Run! This way!”

It was Ge
llis.

***

It took a second for this man Jack to realize what was happening. His eyes spoke of a resolve all too common in Africa, the look of a man who’d given up, who expected his life to be meaningless
, who’d accepted an unnecessary fate. Gellis hated that look, especially how it characterized his wife these days. She’d never fully recovered from her trauma, and despite his words of love and his assurances he would protect her with his life from here on out, she never relinquished that look of lost hope.

He was not going to let this American suffer the same fate when it was worth the risk of trying to get away alive.

They were running now, weaving between a forest of hairy spider legs. Gellis hefted a broken tree branch, swung it like a bat at the approaching spiders. He heard the joints crack on the foreleg of one, the eye pop on another. Behind them he heard the sounds of clicking fangs on the Jeep’s metal frame. The engine coughed and sputtered, spiders tipping the vehicle over onto its back now.

“
The dynamite,” Jack said. “The radius. It’ll kill us.”

“Then run faster, friend.” He shoved Jack sideways as a spider cam
e crashing to the ground in between them. It was up and jumping again toward the Jeep. In the rush of so many beasts, Jack and Gellis were hidden amongst the sea of legs. But dodging them was not easy. Gellis ran smack into one, the hairs jabbing his skin, the impact knocking him back as if he’d run into a wall. This time Jack was lifting him up, repaying the favor, and once again they ran for all they were worth, Gellis swinging his makeshift club to clear a way.

“We’re not gonna make it,” the American said. “There’re too many. They’ll get us. And the dynamite-“

Gellis grabbed him, shoved him forward as a dozen spiders catapulted over them.

Through the creatures bod
ies he could see Janet and the other American, running with that local guide, all headed toward the ranger trail. They disappeared into the tall grass for a moment, then reemerged, running for safety. If nothing else, Gellis thought, at least
they
would get away, perhaps make it to an outpost and radio for help. Whether he and Jack would get that far was anyone’s guess. But he wasn’t going to give up. Not now, not after making it this far.

“Hey, Gellis?
Gellis!”

“What?” His breath was ragged. He could barely speak. What did this American want?
They needed to shut up and run, conserve energy.

“Duck!”

Gellis felt Jack’s arms around him, driving him to the ground. They landed with a forceful impact that made his insides feel like they were shattering. The tall grass folded in over them, and as Gellis rolled onto his back and looked up past Jack’s bruised face, he saw a perfect star of legs pass over him, leaping so gracefully he was almost reverent enough to acknowledge that perhaps these creatures were gods of some sort.

And then the Jeep exploded.

The fireball lit up the trees and water, turned the grass bright orange, whipping out lashes of flame as engine oil and gasoline arced through the air. Even in the daylight, the flash was blinding, the sound deafening. The concussion wave slammed into Gellis and Jack and drove them through the weeds like they were work plows. Jagged spears of Jeep metal shot into the ground around them, hot glass fell like embers on their legs. A tire shot by Jack’s head so fast if it had been an inch to the left he would be nothing but a bloody neck.

Then the spider parts began to rain down. Legs and bits of abdomen fell out of the sky and landed in wet splats all around them. Half of a spi
der’s head hit Gellis in the arm, the brains charred black, and he shoved it aside before the fangs could accidentally pierce him. A yellow and gray striped thorax hit Jack square in the back and pinned him to the ground. Gellis pulled it off, keeping his head shielded from the falling debris.

“Are you okay?”
He shook Jack to make sure the man was conscious.

Jack rubbed his back, winced. “
You get the number of that truck?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Bad American joke. Yeah, I’m peachy.”

“Stay low. I think we can make it to the trail now, friend. It’s time to get out of here.”

“I’m right there with you. And hey, thanks for pulling me out. I would have never made it by myself. And truthfully, I didn’t want to stay there. The radio didn’t even work.”

“You are brave.
You hide it in your humor because you do not like compliments.”

“You double as a therapist or something?”

“I think you deserve to stay around to prove your bravery some more.”

“You’re a good guy, Gellis. You’re gonna make some lady very luck
y.”

If only this American knew how hard it was to make his wife happy these days. He said nothing and began crawling toward the trail.

***

Derek stopped running when he heard the sound of the explosion, felt his stomach ache. Vomit bubbled a
t the base of his throat but he swallowed it back down. That was that, Jack was dead.

He watched as debris floated to the ground near the river. Spider parts flip flopping through
the air. A column of swirling black smoke and fire carved upwards towards the clouds.

“We have to keep moving.” Janet gave him a gentle shove. “Don’t th
ink about it right now, just keep moving.”

“I can’t believe he actually did it. It doesn’t make me feel like a very good person.”

“He did it so we’d get out so let’s not bloody well screw that up. C’mon.”

Banga was suddenly beside him, head hung low, a frown of sadness curled tight. “I am sorry for your friend. I like him a lot. I will pray for him always.”

“We all will,” Janet said. “But later. Right now we have to move. Quickly, into the path.”

He let her shove him forward and found his stride again, doing his best to shut out the sudden sense of
loss welling inside. Jack hadn’t deserved to die over this. But they’d all be dead if he hadn’t sacrificed himself. What was worse, Derek wondered, sacrificing yourself for someone, or living with the guilt of knowing you let someone else die for you?

He would make sure the whole world knew of Jack’s heroism, even if he had to write the damn story himself.

They emerged from the tall grass and stood at the edge of the ranger trail.

“What’s that?” Derek
huffed, exasperated, his finger extended toward the bush. “I mean…seriously? I thought this was the way out of here?”

Tentatively, Banga stepped in front of him, eying the mess blocking the path. “It look like a tree. Big one”

“Several trees,” Janet added. “Looks like the spiders are a little fatter than we thought. Must have knocked them down jumping through them. The whole damn trail is blocked.”

“They maybe
rotted,” Banga said. “The bugs chew holes into the bark and kill the roots.”

“
How do we get around it?” Derek moved forward and pushed his way into the felled treetop, now resting on its side. It was a dense barrier of branches and fronds. “We need a machete or something.”

“
No. We climb,” Janet said, pushing past him and lodging her foot into a branch. She hoisted herself up and steadied herself with a handhold on a different limb. “We can get through. The path is still on the other side. We just have to get through this mess first.”

“I can find a way through the jungle,” Banga suggested. “Find the path further in.”

Janet gave up trying to climb over and stepped down. “Bloody hell. This is going to be a workout. Maybe your friend here is right, maybe we should go around and meet up with it somewhere else.”

“Wait.
Hear that?” Derek cocked his head. A new sound was audible, somewhere in the distance, but getting louder and coming closer. A sound that may as well have been a trumpet blare from some mystical cavalry.

Janet heard it too, her eyes going so wide they nearly pop
ped out of her head. “Oh my God, it’s…”

Wide a wide grin, Derek grabbed Banga and hugged him. “It’s a fucking helicopter!”

No sooner did he speak the words than the trees around them began to bend outward, caught in the whirlwind of air coming down from above. And with a sound like a thousand beating drums, a helicopter swam out over the treetops and hovered above the field. Beaudette Mining Co. was stenciled on the side.

***

Too early in the morning for this shit, Dillan Hoffmeister thought. His head pulsed with a searing hangover and the ear-cupping headphones he wore certainly did not make it feel any better. He’d downed a coffee before takeoff but he’d forgotten to swallow the aspirin he’d pulled from the medicine cabinet. The tablets were still sitting on his sink at home.

If it had been anyone else yanking him out of his sleep he would have told them to fuck off and gone back to bed. But when Stephen Beaudette had screamed at him through the
phone to wake his ass up, he’d jumped up like a military cadet. Such was the life of being on retainer for one of the wealthiest men in South Africa. A little headache was worth suffering through to stay on Stephen’s good side, and more importantly—on the good side of his wallet.

The conversation had been short:

“Fly your ass into the Congo and find my damned daughter.”

“Is everything okay?”

“I hope so. Maybe she has bad reception on the SATphone, or maybe she’s being raped by those filthy pygmies.”

“She went into the Congo alone?”

“Of course not. What type of businessman do you think I am? She went with Winston and his men but I haven’t heard one bloody peep from any of them. So get your ass over there and find her. Radio back when you have some information for me.”

Stephen had given him the coordinates, hung up.

Now, however many God awful, headache-throbbing hours later, Dillan glided over the misty treetops of some remote jungle wilderness that time had forgotten, praying Janet was okay. Not just because he had no intention of bringing bad news to such a powerful man as Stephen, but because he still harbored fond memories of the two dates he’d been on with Janet a couple of years ago, and how he’d planned on someday giving it another shot.