Salticidae (13 page)

“They were the same spiders I saw jump from the Old Man. How can they be so large? Where do they come from?”

Musa sat in the swale and rubbed some of the decomposed vegetation onto his body. “Come in here and dirty yourself up. It will help mask your smell. I do not know if those beasts can track by scent or not, but it is better to be safe.”

“You’re not answering my questions, father.”

“I realize that, Shumba. I do not really have an answer.”

“But you spoke of demons from long ago come back to haunt us. Have you seen these demons before? Why have they never been spoken of to me?”

Musa now ordered his two men to keep a watch in the trees while he spoke to his son. It did not go unrecognized that of the ten men who had started out on this journey, only four now remained, including himself and his son. “I have never seen them, Shumba, nor has anyone for a long time. There were stories when I was young, but they were told as warnings to the young children of our ancestors, and no one truly believed them. Except for the elders, who had sworn their own fathers had battled the beasts long ago, and rid the jungle of them.”

“Then why did you say they have come back, if you thought they never existed. I don’t understand.”

“When you told me what you saw, I remembered how the elders swore they were real, and how they described them in such detail. I always wondered if perhaps the stories were rooted in legend. Your own descriptions were too close to what I’d heard before. And yet, I never told you these stories, nor have any of the other men in the tribe. The stories haven’t been told in decades. We have had no need for them since I was a boy.” Musa chuckled as he patted his son’s head. “There have been too many real horrors to warn you of in recent times. I have seen too many boys and men whipped and beaten, shackled as slaves in the mines, even killed because of their lighter or darker skin. What would we be the point of frightening you with make believe monsters when we see the men with guns and Jeeps on the roads everywhere. Yet, your descriptions are exact, and I fear now the elders knew the truth of these stories.”

Shumba, now covered in rotting vegetation like his father, picked up his spear again. “Is there a way to kill them?”

“I know how to kill a little spider, of course, but the stories never spoke of how the big ones were defeated. The whole point of the stories was that they were unbeatable, to keep children from straying from the villages.”

“
Then how come we’re walking to the top of the Old Man to help the people there? You don’t have a plan?”

Musa flicked his
hand through the fallen fronds, came up with a clenched fist. He opened it and revealed a tiny beetle with a yellow and orange carapace, two long antennas that trailed down the length of its body. The insect remained frozen for a moment, then began to run toward his fingers. Musa closed his fist before the insect could escape. He clenched tightly, and when he opened his fist the beetle was smashed into a puddle of green and yellow goo.

“If it is flesh and blood, it can be killed.
” He wiped the dead insect on his knee. “This is what we do, Shumba. We are hunters, and we are good at it. But more importantly, you must remember we are not like the men who hunt
us.
We do not hurt maliciously.”

Shumba looked up at the sky and noted the darkness beginning to wash over the sky. “I will fight, father, but I do not think we will be much good in the dark against these spiders.”

“Yes. We are losing light, and must find some shelter.” He looked around, scratched the stubble on his chin. “I have a sense of where we are, and there should be old huts not far from here. Whether they still stand or have rotted away…who’s to say.”

“And if they’re gone…then what? Sleep outside with these things?”

“Son, even if we had shelter, these things would get us if they wanted.”

One of the men came out of the trees, spear raised. “Musa, there is something coming!”

Musa jolted upright, cocked his head. Yes, he could hear it, the stampeding crash of multiple legs tearing through branches. “Quickly, Shumba, up! Head to where the trees are the most dense. With hope we can lose them in the tangles where they cannot maneuver as well. Let’s go!”

All four of the men ran, ducking into the shadowy undergrowth just as two striped spiders
emerged from the trees, crawling down into the swale where they went still, watching the jungle around them.

***

As the sun set, the jungle began to cool. Okapi, elephants, peafowl, duikers, clawless otters, parrots, toucans, and several species of ape and monkey made their way to their dens and nests. In their place emerged cats, wild boar, crocodiles, rodents, and of course millions upon millions of insects which busily consumed the jungle biomass.

It won’t be long before the bats came out to play, thought
Benon Kani, as he rode in the passenger seat of the small two-door sedan. Bats were good eating; he was itching to test his shooting skills and try to get some dinner. Beside him, his driver, a man who rarely spoke these days due to an incident where he’d had half of his tongue sliced off, steered the car through the trees as if he knew of some mystical path invisible to the naked eye. In the backseat sat two young boys smoking cigarettes. Each one carried a Kalashnikov.

Kani fingered the rib bone he wore around his neck. He’d torn it from the insides of a diseased Pygmy many months ago. He could still hear the man screaming, but to him it
was a peaceful lullaby. When he closed his eyes he could see the man on the ground beneath his mighty boot, pleading, begging Kani not to take his wife and son, himself ignoring the pleas as he ordered his men to rape the woman and behead the child. Kani held the man’s eyes open with a knife and forced him to watch it all. “Your kind is filth,” Kani told him. Then, with a smile, he drove his hunting knife into the man’s side and tore open a wide gash. He jammed his hand in, got hold of the man’s ribs, and with his foot still holding the dog down, yanked and yanked with all his might until he heard the man’s ribs crack. He twisted and snapped the bones until the man’s eyes rolled back in his head and the pain took his voice away. With a last mighty yank, he ripped the man’s rib bone from his body. It was many minutes before the man swam out of unconsciousness, at which point Kani had his men put torches to him, burning him alive.

It was
, he felt, a beautiful memory. Kani’s men now referred to him as Skeleton Man, a moniker that he was more than happy with. This also had to do with his past.

Before Kani had come to lead the GRC, he had been raised in the farms of Uganda, where his father had been the village witch doctor. His father had shown him the way of black magic, how
to use it to vanquish enemies just by staring at them. The magic gave one strength and knowledge beyond that of mere humans. Kani had stolen men’s souls and purified much of the land with this magic, but there was still much more to be done. The Almighty God had declared his people the rightful rulers of this land, and through his magic and his might, he would take it back.

Skeleton Man. Yes. He relished the name.

He let go of the rib bone and instructed his driver to stop the car. “Wait here.”

Kani stepped out into the darkening jungle
. He could smell smoke nearby, but not from one of the many fires that dotted the jungle at night as various nomadic tribes cooked their dinners. No, this smelled of burning rubber and plastic.

There, not too far away, was a decline, and around it the trees were knocked over. He walked toward it carefully, hand on the pistol in his waistband. He noticed now how the trees leading up the mountain behind him were also disturbed, the branches broken and the trunks marred by something large that had obviously crashed into them.

He looked over the edge of the decline, further down toward the understory of the jungle, and saw one of his trucks flipped on its back, a cloud of dark smoke drifting up from the engine. A green beret lay just a foot away from it, against a tree.

“Snake Eater,” he whispered. Just the man he’d come up here to see. Snake E
ater was one of his better captains, but he was often easily distracted by the whores they captured on their raids. What they hell had caused him to drive into the tree? And where were the others?

He looked behind him,
back up the inclining jungle floor that lead to the upper montane. There was hardly a path to see. Navigating to the clearing above was almost impossible.

He walked carefully down the grade and squatted next to the smoking vehicle, picked up Snake Eater’s beret. It was smeared
with thick blood that had started to congeal. First he sniffed it, knowing that his magical powers often allowed him to see into the past and future. But the blood gave him no visions. Instead, he wiped his finger on it and painted ribbons of the blood across his cheeks. He would let Snake Eater’s soul tell him what happened when it was ready.

In the distance a monkey screeched, breaking his concentration. No matter, he’d figure this all out soon enough. H
e got back in the car and instructed his mute driver to keep heading to their destination.

Whoever had killed his man and ruined his truck would pay for it. Only this time he wouldn’t rip the
guilty party’s ribs out; he would cut the man’s face off and remove his skull piece by piece.

***

An hour later, Derek, Jack and Banga were nearing the top of the mountain, flashlights now in hand as the sky faded to the shade of a deep bruise. The chirping of crickets and buzzing of tree beetles became almost deafening. Despite copious amounts of mosquito repellent, all three men were constantly swatting the bloodsuckers from around their ears.

“I’m starting to wonder if all the Malaria pills are gonna have any effect,” Jack said. “I grew up in the New Hampshire woods and I know mosquitoes, but this is ri-goddamn-diculous.”

Derek stopped walking, waved his flashlight around. “Yeah, I’m done. Let’s set up the tents. Banga, how’s this place look for a bivouac?”

“
You mean to sleep?”

“
Yeah, to sleep. I’m getting eaten alive.”

Banga swept his gaze around, pointed uphill. “We are almost there. Few more minutes.”

“Well, let’s hurry this show up.”

Jack took his phone out of his pocket again. “Hang on, we’re pretty high up now, lemme see if this works.” He held the phone up and checked the bars. With a sigh he put it back in his pocket. “You know, you’d think the phone companies would have enough
towers set up around the world to avoid this problem. We’re in the two thousands, right?”

The three men resumed their hike, moving with grunts as their bodies finally succumbed to the day’s fatigue. Jack hoped they’d find at least something at the top of the mountain that would justify this excursion. He was pretty sure Derek would rip him a new asshole if they’d come all the way up here for nothing.

Again, he thought of the flare they’d seen, thought of the gunshots they’d heard, thought of the strange phenomena with the hippos in the trees. If they didn’t find anything at the top then one thing was for sure, the Congo was the most mysterious place on earth. Maybe there was a story in that at least?

“Mushrooms,” he muttered.

“What’s that?” Derek asked. The photographer’s breathing was gruff.

“Nothing. Complaining. So tell me, Derek, how’d you get
started in photography?”

“A fortune cookie told me to buy a camera. Figured I’d better not tempt fate.”

“Hardy har. But really”

“
How do you think I got started? Same way you did. I got an itch. No offense, man, but I don’t feel like getting into a boring conversation right now. My fucking heart feels like it’s going to explode and I could use a cigarette.”

“Just trying to kill time.”

“Well if you happen to find a weapon to kill it with, do me a favor and kill me first.”

“Sirs?” Banga said.

Jack and Derek stopped, watched as the guide stepped beyond a wall of bushes and disappeared.

“Well, follow him,” Jack said. He ushered
Derek through the bushes, and they both emerged into a small clearing. What they saw stopped them short, flashlights lighting up the scene. An overturned Jeep lay a few yards in front of them, its tires bent and flat. Beyond it, a series of troop and bunk house tents lay flat on the ground, supports ripped from their casings. Only one remained half erect. A wealth of supplies was tossed about on the ground as if a burglar had been looking for something important. Two semi-automatic machine guns were among the debris. Backpacks, coils of rope, hardhats, shovels, pickaxes, lanterns, stores of food and clothing were everywhere, as if a bomb had exploded. And speaking of explosions, Jack finally swung his light around and saw a crack in a large rock wall jutting from the ground. Charges and wiring ran from the hole, trailing back into the mess. Boulders still lay in small heaps on the ground in front of it.

A mining camp.

“Where the hell is everyone?” Derek asked. He moved around the Jeep and started kicking the damaged supplies with his foot. “There’s tons of food here, some first aid kits, guns…” He bent down and picked up one of the machine guns, smelled the barrel. “This thing has been fired.”