Salticidae by Ryan C. Thomas Page B

began to scream at it in hopes it would just go away.
    He could see where the jungle sloped down now, heading to the lower montane level, and then out into the open fields where he’d be able to gun the motor and leave this thing in the dust.
    Throwing caution to the wind, the man crashed through a series of vines, snapping them like brittle bones, and let the truck begin its nose dive through the trees, its tires barely touching the ground as it sped down the sharp grade. Tree trunks flashed by the windshield and he thought for sure he would hit one head on and go through the windshield like a rocket. But God was on his side, as He was for all of his people, the GRC, the rightful rulers of the Congo. God had chosen him to live.
    The spider continued its chase, all eight legs stampeding with such fury it spit up dirt in its wake like a motorbike. It climbed through the thickets, legs wrapping around limbs, jumping from tree trunk to tree trunk, then running on the ground again as it followed the truck down the steep hill.
    Now, finally, the inevitable: the truck hit a large root and slewed sideways, flipping over, throwing the man in the green beret into the air with a velocity that turned everything he saw into a blur. With a white flash behind his eyes, he hit an epiphyte-covered tree root and heard his own backbone snap, felt the vertebrae rip through the skin of his torso, felt his kneecap explode in tiny shards. The truck continued to crash into foliage, barrel-rolling farther into the deep blue hues of the Congo, but the man came to rest as a bloodied human pretzel up against a bush radiant with orange blossoms.
    He looked up and waited for the giant spider to come and kill him, but it was nowhere to be seen. Had it gotten tangled in some vines? Had it lost sight of the truck as it spun out of control?
    The man tried to move his legs, tried to stand, but it was no use. His back was nothing but a bag of gravel, and the pain nearly made him pass out. “At least, I beat you,” he said. “You cannot kill me, demon, for I am the Snake Eater, and I am fear and death incarnate.”
    He started to laugh, an action that sent waves of nausea and agony through his body. But he couldn’t help it; it was funny to have beaten such a beast.
    He stopped laughing a moment later when he looked into the tree limbs twenty feet above him, and saw, crouched on the lowest limb, black eyes watching him with intense indifference, the eight-legged beast.
    Seconds later, the Snake Eater’s screams echoed throughout the jungle.
     
    ***
     
    A thousand feet below, Derek, Jack and Banga were working their way up the steep mountain side overlooking the river, using liana to haul themselves up, slipping every now and then on loose soil. The sunlight began to wane as the trees folded back in over them, shrouding them in the deep myrtle world of the rainforest’s midlevel canopy.
    They all heard the gun shot at the same time and stood still.
    Jack knuckled sweat from his upper lip. “Should we be scared of that?”
    Ahead of him, Banga scanned the darkness of the inner jungle around them. “No. Not yet. Too far away.”
    “It’s not the distance that scares me but who’s doing the shooting. Maybe poachers or whoever killed the hippos.”
    “Could be whoever shot the flare,” Derek suggested. “Maybe a distress shot, or a warning of sorts. You said the gorillas attack people, Banga.”
    Ban ga nodded. “Yes. But very rare.” He kept his eyes on the treetops, mulling something over.
    Jack’s next thought was that it could be something more nefarious, perhaps one of the militant cadres that ran rampant in the Congo. Why they’d be in the deep jungle, he didn’t know, but it wasn’t exactly uncommon to hear of them skulking around the lower levels weeding out the Pygmy tribes for slave labor. Even though he knew foreigners were fairly safe, that avoiding trouble usually just involved the nuisance of forking over some euros or dollars, it