J. J. White

Dr. Karen Wilkins wasn’t about to abort the expedition because of the simple setback of her colleague, Dr. Pembroke, contracting malaria. There has been too much time, trouble and resources invested in this study and she wasn’t going to throw three years of research away. Dr. Pembroke had the same series of inoculations she had before they set out for the Chachapoyas region of the Peruvian rainforest in search of a new species of carnivorous spider, so it wasn’t her fault that his shots didn’t take.

She motioned for the native Peruvian guide, Chachera, to walk behind the tent with her to talk.

“Here,” she handed him some money. “This will pay you for your help. Do you understand?”

The short, dark haired, Incan, nodded.

“I want you to take Dr. Pembroke back to the hospital. He is sick, very sick.” She placed her hand on her forehead to imply fever. Take him back. I will stay, Okay?” Karen pointed to herself and then the ground.

The Incan nodded. “Okay, okay,” he said, and began walking Dr. Pembroke toward the trail leading to the river where he had anchored his Pequepeque canoe.

She knew the risk she took by staying in the jungle by herself. There were hundreds of ways to die out here, be it from man, animal or insect.

Three days earlier, with Dr. Pembroke and their guide, they set up camp in the area where they discovered a lair of the chicken eating spiders. The spiders were given the fantastic name because of their predisposition of killing chickens in the local villages and dragging the carcasses into the jungle to devour.

When Karen first heard of the huge spiders she assumed they were of the Aranea order of arachnids known as paphobeteus, but after years of research, she determined it was a species of unknown origin. This meant she could fulfill her dream as an entomologist to name a new species after herself, Wilkineteus. With Dr. Pembroke out of the way, this would now be a certainty.

As darkness set in the rainforest came alive in a cacophony of screeches and howls. The spiders were nocturnal, so she set the night vision cameras on two hour timers hoping to catch them in their mating ritual. As she peered through the lens she spied the only female spider in the lair gnawing on a lizard that was wrapped to perfection in silk webbing. With one bite, the spider removed the lizard’s head with her three inch jaws. The spider was the largest of the three in the lair, at least 15 inches in diameter, and it carried a silk egg sac on its back, no doubt filled with hundreds of eggs soon to develop into her eight-legged children.

After a dinner of Spam and potatoes, Karen threw dirt on the fire, lit the lantern and stepped into the zippered entrance of the tent. Even in the enclosed tent she slept under mosquito netting as a precaution. The unbearable heat made wearing just a t-shirt and underwear a necessity to prevent dehydration.

She pulled down the large zipper on the tent tightly, to keep out even the smallest of creatures. She knew that the smallest were sometimes the deadliest in Peru. In her haste to retire, she failed to notice that the zipper on the tent didn’t latch. There was now a three inch gap in the entrance available to many species of small insects, snakes, and perhaps even larger creatures with the ability to manipulate even the most complex man-made devices.

Karen drifted into a deep sleep, despite the din outside the tent. She began to dream of the award ceremony back at Notre Dame, as the regents announced the new species named in her honor.

With morning came silence. Since she slept perpendicular to the tent entrance, the first thing she noticed was that the zipper of the tent was open a full foot more than where she had left it the previous night. The second thing she noticed was the large, black, chicken eating spider on her chest. It was the female, the egg sac swaying on her back.

Karen stayed calm. She knew any sudden movement on her part and the giant spider would attack and inject her deadly venom with its one inch fangs. She had read all of the stories of these particular spiders killing animals ten times their size and weight. Just a small amount of their venom would paralyze and eventually kill large jaguars and sea cows. After their prey was dead, the chicken eating spiders would rip their prey apart to reach the life sustaining nutrients of the blood.

She lifted her hand slightly to prepare to knock the Frisbee sized spider off her chest, but as soon as she moved, the spider turned to watch her arm. When she let her arm drop back, the spider turned back to focus on Karen’s eyes. It inched closer to her face. It was so close; Karen smelled its wet hair and the rancid odor of rotting flesh on its breath. The spider clamped its jaws together making an ominous clicking sound that made Karen’s heart race.

She watched dumbfounded as the egg sac swayed from side to side on the back of the spider as each of its eight legs moved up the frightened researcher’s chest. She felt a rush of adrenalin as she slapped at the spider. The spider sensed Karen’s movement and plunged her fangs into the panicked prey.

Karen jumped out of the netting, unzipped the tent door, and escaped into the bright sunlight, where suddenly she felt flush and instinctively grabbed her neck where the spider had struck. Her muscles in her legs constricted to the point that she could no longer walk. She toppled over near the edge of the clearing that her guide spent so much time excavating, four days ago.

As the venom circulated through her system, her body went limp. In one excruciating last effort, she rolled over on her back and saw the azure morning sky. She turned her head to see a huge mound of fire ants less than an inch away. Some of the ants were exiting the mound to attack the intruder. Karen thanked God that the venom prevented her from feeling the pain of the acid injecting ants. The last thing she saw before passing out, was the female spider racing across her body, its spinneret spewing silk web over her as fast as it could be produced.

Much later, Karen woke from her drug induced sleep and focused on the ant mound until her senses returned. She kept her head very still so as not to alarm the fire ants. She wondered why she was still alive. Shouldn’t the venom have killed her? She turned her head to look up and saw that it was dusk. Had she been unconscious all day or perhaps several days? Her muscle control returned, but she still couldn’t move her legs or right arm. Her left arm was free, but the hand hurt so badly that she felt she might pass out soon.

She wanted to scream for help, but didn’t know where the spider was. She lifted her head slightly and gasped. Her entire lower body was wrapped mummy style in the spider’s silk web.  God, she wanted so badly to yell for help.

Then she saw the spider. It was in the middle of a huge web strung between the tent and a large tree. It seemed to be asleep. Karen turned her head slightly to the left to look for something sharp to cut into her silk bindings, but stopped moving when she felt the sting of several fire ants biting her cheek. She muffled her screams for fear of waking the spider.

When the spider snapped its jaws reflexively, Karen noticed blood on its mouth. Her blood, or was it the spider’s blood? She moved her left arm up slightly, but the fire ant hill blocked her view. The hand hurt enough that she assumed it might be the source of blood in the spider’s mouth. With one great effort she lifted her arm into view and screamed hysterically when she saw her hand. The spider had eaten all of the flesh off of her thumb, leaving only the thin bone sticking out.

The spider woke from the scream and raced down the web and onto Karen’s wrapped body. It stopped on Karen’s breast and once again stabbed her victim’s vulnerable neck with its fangs, injecting the venom which would soon put Karen back into her catatonic state.

“You bitch!” Karen yelled at the retreating spider as it climbed back to its resting spot on the web. “You goddamn…” Karen’s voice drifted off as she began to black out. She wondered again why the spider kept her alive. Couldn’t it kill her and still eat her? Don’t they always kill their prey before they eat them? Why?

She woke the next morning to the sight of the spider attentively watching her as it fumbled with the egg sac, now resting on Karen’s abdomen. Karen watched in horror as two and three inch newborn spiders poured out of the egg sac and crawled toward her. Then it occurred to her why she had been kept alive all this time by the spider… fresh meat for her babies.

Suddenly, hundreds of small spiders flowed out of the sac, covered every exposed part of Karen’s body… and started chewing their dinner.

“You’re not going to keep me alive for your babies!” Karen yelled as she rolled her body from side to side trying to knock the spiders off her. “You won’t!”

She rolled on her left side despite the excruciating pain of the razor sharp jaws of the army of infantile spiders cutting into her skin, and threw her head into the fire ant mound, swallowing as much dirt as she could. The dirt and ant concoction choked her, but she managed to eat another mouthful. Just as she hoped, the ants ferociously attacked at the inside of her mouth. Her tongue swelled from the thousands of ant bites. Karen lowered her chin to her chest until the bloated tongue cut off her air supply, effectively stopping the pain, and sending her off into the glorious escape of the deep sleep of death.