Salticidae (9 page)

This is not what I need right now, Janet thought. She was not here to try and solve a civil war, she was here to extract gold and get back to Cape Town where she could relax on the beach with a beer before driving home in her
Maserati. Like her father always said, the world’s problems were not theirs to solve. It’s every man for himself.

“
Tell you what, Gellis,” she sighed, “how about I pay you with a plane ticket. No one’ gonna take that from you. Then you can go anywhere you want. Get that rope secure and I’ll keep that promise.”

“And what of my wife?”

Janet didn’t respond. She’d never figured Gellis to be a married man. Truth was she didn’t think about him much at all. “I didn’t know you were married.”

“For seven years. She is my love.”

“Well, I suppose I could get you two tickets. But look, this is still an employer employee relationship, got me? Don’t think I care too much about your problems. We’ve all got problems.”

“I suppose so.”

A few seconds passed. Janet found the silence to be worse than the conversation. Staring at Moyo’s quietly rasping body was creepy. “So your wife…she, uh, like a housewife or something?”

Gellis finally popped back out of the crack, one end of the rope in his hand. “No, she does not do much of anything, in fact.”

“What? She lazy or something?”

“I do not wish to talk about it. The rope is ready.” He threw it over the edge and waited until it settled. “I don’t know how far down it goes but if it can get us to a lower leve
l somehow we can try to find the water again.”

“Way ahead of you,” Janet said.
“Give me the light. I’m going first and I want to see what’s before me.” She took the headlamp from Gellis and secured it tightly.
She sat down on the edge of the pit, wrapped her leg around the rope and let it fall over her right foot. She put her left on top to create a support system and lowered herself down. Her headlamp threw circles of white on the dark rock surrounding her.

With a grunt, Gellis came down above her, Moyo piggybacking him. Janet hoped the rope would hold all three of them, otherwise they’d fall to an unknown death.

The going was slow, and every few feet Janet would look down the center again and try to see the bottom, but even her headlight was swallowed in a blackness so deep she might as well have had her eyes shut. The rope chafed her palms and the muscles in her legs grew tight and tired. She was in good shape but hadn’t expected to be climbing down pits when she’d agreed to head this project. When she got back home she was going to have to hit the gym some more.

She dropped another two feet and heard something that made the hairs rise on her neck.
She waited with bated breath, hoping against hope she’d heard wrong. Hoping it was just Gellis’ movements above her echoing off the rocky walls of this tunnel. Hoping it was just more scurrying cockroaches or a colony of bats. It grew more distinct now, and her hope died as the
thudda thudda
of marching feet became apparent.

“Shh,” Gellis whispered.

“Oh fuck,” she whispered back.

She looked down, let her
headlight trace the inner walls of the darkness below her. One hundred and eighty degrees behind her, on the opposite side of the pit, she saw them down below, coming up fast.

Hordes of
giant spiders, clinging to the walls, racing up in a shadowy wave that defied anything else in the animal kingdom.

***

The paths through the rainforest were marked in ways that only Shumba and his tribe could discern. A marker here spoke of a good place to lay a snare, a marker there warned of unstable terrain. Shumba’s tribe was one of only a few that had chosen to live so high up and so far away from the Wild East in recent years, pushed further into the jungle by the rampant fighting and genocide. Sadly, even this high up in the mountains where there still existed a semblance of unchartered evolution, the jungle revealed the passage of more civilized trespassers. Cigarette butts from Uganda and Rwanda (often times smoked by the guerrilla rebels), a plastic fork from the bag lunch of some naturalist who thought he was saving the environment, and even old rusted bikes from traders trying in vain to lead white missionaries to wildlife and vista views. Many times these traders simply robbed the tourists. Other times, they met their end at the hands of rebels. Sometimes both.

At the front of the marching line, Shumba’s father, Musa, moved quietly through the foliage
, the muscles on his back taut like coiled vipers. He was one of the better trappers in the tribe and had gained much respect over the years from the other men. Shumba was proud to have him as both a father and mentor.

The sun seemed to have reached its apex now and was beginning to slide
lazily down again. Here, the light filtered through the trees and cast the world in a tint of royal blue. Patches of mist danced in front of the men as they walked, and at certain times appeared to glow around their spears and machetes as if they’d been enchanted with old magic. Shumba paused for a moment to scrape dark sap from a crooked tree. The amber was beginning to harden already and change color. He played with it as he moved, rolling it into a perfect sphere. His father had once made him a large ball the size of his head for kicking and throwing in this fashion. The children of the tribe played with it still, and when it rolled along the ground, it swirled with brilliant colors of ochre, magenta, sapphire and gold.

When they reached the edge of the cliff, back where Shumba had seen the flare, his father called him forward.

“Show me where you saw the creatures?”

Shumba pointed toward the Old Man, and explained
once more how the monsters had leapt down into the forest. How their legs had seemed to keep them stable in the air and allow them to float gracefully. His father did nothing but nod, and then waved his men forward. They advanced along the edge of the cliffs, keeping just inside the tree line as they made their way to the mountaintop. Soon they were walking outside of their normal hunting radius, though it was not entirely uncommon to come out this far for food during droughts. Shumba spied a few old nets woven from liana that had been left to rot and wither in the rains. The vines, tight and strong when first cut, withered quickly in the damp atmosphere. It seemed some days that Shumba’s sole purpose in life was to rebuild huts and nets that had suffered demise from the elements, and would no doubt suffer demise again in just a few days.

“Stop!” Musa’s hand went up to alert the line of men to stay put. Shumba could not
fight his curiosity, however, and inched his way up to the front of the procession. He found his father kneeling over one of the elusive gorillas that roamed the tops of the mountains.

“What killed it?” Shumba asked.

His father looked up at him, annoyed to see him standing so close when he’d been told to remain still. But Musa was a man of prudence, and yelling at Shumba right now would do no good. Instead, he stabbed a finger at the two large holes in the gorilla’s chest, and traced the way the animal’s frame was sunken in. “Something has sucked its life away. Something very hungry and dangerous.”

“What is that thing?” Shumba pointed to the rope of silk trailing back into the jungle.

“It is a warning to us. Something has come back to reclaim the land. It will eventually destroy us all, I fear.”

***

The river ran
brown with mud and stank of rotting biomass. In the trees along the banks countless birds of bright yellow and white flitted from the branches down to the water for a drink and then back again. Derek, Jack and Banga passed under overhanging branches thrumming with fluttering butterflies, trekking toward where the land rose at a more manageable grade to the top of the mountain. Their feet repeatedly sank into the mud and only came loose with strenuous yanking and the sounds of suction.

Derek was laughing. “I can’t help it. It sounds like wet farts.”

“Stinks like it too,” Jack said.

Banga instructed them to cross the river at a point where it was shallow. “Take of
f your shoes here, and move fast.”

“Why?” Jack asked. “There alligators or something in there?”

“No, but there are…what is the word? Tiny bugs.”

“Like mites?”

“Yes, like that. They bite and give you a rash.”

“
The dreaded Candiru, right?” Derek looked genuinely scared. “You know, those things that swim up your dick?”

Banga looked confused, shook his head. “I never hear of this.”

“They’re in the Amazon,” Jack explained. “But if something swims up your dick here I’d just keep running and screaming. Just be sure to take a picture of it first so I can use it in the article.”

“My dick would make for a good story. Oh the sights it’s seen.”

Banga, now holding his sandals, began to walk on his own across the river. Jack and Derek both waited to see what would happen to the guide, but other than the water rising up to his knees, he crossed without problem.

“Well, shit,” Jack said, “here goes nothing.”  He took off his shoes and stepped into th
e water. It smelled of sulfur and rotting vegetation, and was cooler than he’d expected, but it was not unpleasant. His toes slid through layers of slime on the bottom and a small fish rubbed the back of his knee but he too made it across without incident.

Derek followed behind
, computer case cinched tightly up to his shoulder blades, and when all three were on the other side, they donned their shoes again and resumed their walking along the river bank. When the river widened again, Jack stopped once to comment on a small boat that appeared to be abandoned.

“Fisherman,” Banga explained. “Many boats like this these days.”

“Why’d they leave it?” Derek asked. He snapped a photo for good measure.

“Probably, I think, the fisherman was killed?”

Derek stopped shooting. “Killed? By what?”

Banga shrugged. “Gunman. One of the Rebels. Hard to tell. Many gunm
en rob the fisherman, but if the fisherman have nothing to give, they kill him.”

Now Jack felt the hair on his arms rise. “Kill him for what? I mean, if he has nothing what can they take?”

“Depends. Maybe clothes. Maybe tools. Maybe they just do it for fun.”

“And what if these gunm
en come after us?”

Banga held up his rifle. “Either we hide, or fight, or give them money.”

“I’ve got, like, seventeen bucks on me,” Derek said. “Will that save me?”

“
It depend on the gunman.” With this, Banga continued walking.

Derek turned to Jack. “He’s entirely way too calm about this shit.”

“Yeah, he’s on a different plane.”

“Like some kind of pygmy high plains drifter.”

“But think about it, the guy lost his kid. He’s probably a little steeled inside. Wouldn’t you be?”

“
Steeled for what, is what I want to know. There’s a disconnect in that guy’s eyes. He’s gunning for something.”

“It’
s the same look as everyone else in the Congo, mon frere. Better get used to it. C’mon, let’s catch up to him.”

The
y jogged to their guide. None of the men spoke as they moved, now keeping a watchful eye for the possibility of bandits. Even though they’d been told white men were rarely harassed as much as the locals, mostly due to the fact they could pay their way out of dangerous situations, they still felt like they were being watched. Banga crouched a few times to judge the terrain up to the mountaintop, each time insisting they move further down the river bank. Eventually, the quiet guide unslung his rifle and cocked it, waved back to them to stop walking. “This is where the hippos swim,” he whispered.“We must be very quiet and stay as far away as possible.”

“Should we climb up into the jungle here?”
Jack was sweating.

“A few more meters and then yes, we will go up. Move slowly.”

All three finally rounded the dogleg they’d spied earlier, and Derek once again took his camera out of his bag to prepare for shots of the mighty river beasts. When the new stretch of river drew into view, they saw the gray backs of the hippos in the water. Like boulders in a quarry.

“Damn, they look big,” Jack said.

Derek snapped a photo, checked the picture and took another. Banga motioned them forward again, reminding them to move quietly.

“What’re they sleeping or something?” Jack asked. He couldn’t help but notice none of the animals were moving; they just sort of
drifted like inflatables in a pool.

“Something is wrong,” Banga said.

“Wrong how?”

“Wait here.” Slowly, Banga waded into the water, his gun in front of him, inching closer to a couple of the large animals.

“What is he nuts?” Jack said. “If he dies I don’t know how the fuck to get out of this jungle.”

There was no answer from Derek, who seemed to be in that elusive
out-of-body zone only photographers can find when they’re shooting. Jack could have gone through Derek’s pockets and the photographer wouldn’t have noticed; he was after that perfect shot.