Salticidae by Ryan C. Thomas

actually die from it seemed a cruelty beyond measure.
    Bang ! The man fired a shot into the air. All the tribesmen flinched at the sound; all the boys in the truck snickered.
    Musa finally laid down his weapons and took a knee. He looked up at Shumba with eyes resigned to an inner peace. It was the look of a man prepared to die for his son, and his men. When you lived in the jungles of the Congo, which had been thinning over the years through war and corporate deforestation, you awaited this day. Shumba’s heart began to race so fast he could barely breathe. He lay down, and so did the others. Here was the moment they‘d feared, the moment where they would die like so many other Pygmys in the Congo, murdered in the deep jungles. What would become of their bodies he did not want to speculate. He’d heard stories of these gunmen defiling corpses in horrific ways, including wearing dead infants around their necks like medals and even eating their flesh.
    No, he thought, this was not happening to them. He would at least gi ve a final fight. Shumba saw that his father was even now slowly inching his hand back to his spear. 
    “You! ” The man singled out Musa’s friend, Amuzati, an older tribesman with gray hair and scarred legs. “Stand up. Now!”
    Amuzati rose, his hands up to convey submission. He looked to Musa for help but there was nothing that could be done right now.
    “Come here. Move it .”
    The aged Pygmy walked with fear toward the smoking gunman. He began to speak: “Please, I do not-–“
    Crack! The gunman moved fast and without thought. The bullet went into Amuzati’s right temple and exploded out the left side under the ear. His body fell in a ragged heap to the ground, bits of brain congealing on the grass under his face. The boys in the back of the truck laughed and then, as if they’d seen this show before, ignored the body and lit up cigarettes, taking long puffs.
    Shumba felt tears forming in his eyes. He prayed for a way out of this, for something to come and save them. He did not want to end up like the boys in the back of the truck.
    The gunman kicked Amuzati’s lifeless body away from him, spit on it like it was a disease. Then, taking a small knife from the sheath on his belt, he bent down and cut off Amuzati’s nose. He put it in his mouth and chewed for a few seconds, relishing the crunch of the cartilage, before spitting this into the grass. Again, the boys laughed. Blood ran freely from the hole in Amuzati’s dead face, joining the stew of brains under his body.
    Slowly, Musa slipped his fingers around his spear. Shumba, watching through tears, knew his father was going to make his move. He would do the same, and hope the others in the tribe followed suit.
    But there was no charge. Instead, the man on the M60 fired a round into the ground in front of Musa, c ausing him to roll over as dirt spit up into his eyes.
    “You th ink we don’t watch you?” the man asked.  “We see you reach for your little weapon.” He laughed and racked the slide on his gun. “Now, you, come here.”
    Musa didn’t move. Nobody did.
    “If you come here I will spare the little one.” The man aimed his gun at Shumba.
    But Shumba did not want to be alive if it meant becoming a prisoner, for no doubt being spared meant becoming these men’s property. Worse, it likely meant the death of his father. “Don’t go.”
    “You are my son. How do I not save you?”
    “We die together. Please.”
    They were both crying now, Shumba out of fear and Musa out of love. “You are already older than your years, my son. But—”
    Crack! Another gunshot. This from one of the boys in the back of the truck. Several feet away, another tribesman, Muyamba, now lay dead with a hole in his head leaking blood onto the ground.
    “The boy is next. Unless you come to me, you rodent.”
    Finally, Musa stood, looked down at his son and told him he loved him. Shumba cried, pleaded for his father not to walk forward. He took