Fly

"FLY"
By Joshua Bone

I awoke suddenly, sensing in my subconcious that something was not right. Almost by reflex I tightly gripped the hand of my wife, who was seated next to me on my left. As the last remnants of a restless sleep were cleared from my mind, my senses began reporting as to the source of my discomfort.

I could tell by the queasiness in my stomach that we were flying through heavy turbulence. Through the tiny window on my right, a greasy black sky was raging. Hailstones spattered messily against the Plexiglas, and jagged yellow streaks of lightning pierced the darkness regularly. By the light of those violent flashes, I saw something which worried me greatly.

The small private jet in which we were flying was cruising sickenenly low over the mountainous jungle canopy. The tops of giant trees were blurred but visible below, not more than fifty feet away. Jagged rocky peaks, nearly suffocated by the rainforest which grew up their slopes, actually towered over us on both sides. I braced myself nervously, half-expecting our little airplane to slam into one, but still we flew on.

"Jack..." Rachel’s voice had a quiver in it. "The pilot says he can’t fly any higher in the storm. I could tell he was nervous when I asked him about it. I’m scared, Jack." I said nothing but squeezed her hand. I didn’t want her to see my fear, and I knew if I said anything my voice would betray me.

Rachel and I had been married in Mexico two weeks earlier. A honeymoon on the beaches of Lima, Peru had followed, and now we were headed across the continent to a new home in Buenos Aires. The wonderful memories of the previous weeks filled my mind, and temporarily distracted me from the angry sky above and the menacing jungle below.

There were six other passengers aboard the jet. Probably business men, judging by their dress - I knew none of them. They all seemed tense as well. White knuckles gripped the armrests, and one man vomited. The young man across the aisle from us was frantically trying to call someone on his satellite phone, but the thunderstorm was blocking the signal. I peered anxiously out my window again, looking as far forward as was possible, trying to get advance warning if we were about to hit something.

A massive lightning bolt directly behind us illuminated the whole valley for a second. By the flash I caught sight of something which even today sends chills down my spine, although at the time my confused mind refused to process it.

Something was glinting, sparkling. It hung in mid-air like criss-crossed telephone wires, directly in our path. The pilot apparently saw it too, for the plane began climbing crazily to its right, causing another round of vomiting from the same man, and knocking the younger passenger’s satellite phone across the aisle and under Rachel’s seat.

A massive impact, stronger than any force I had ever imagined, stretched my body out on both sides of my seat belt. My cheekbone slammed into my left knee, causing reality to flicker for a moment before cutting out altogether.

I awoke uncomfortably for the second time that evening, with a killer headache and a very confused sense of position. I was still sitting in my seat, still buckled in, but my understanding of down and up had changed dramatically from two minutes before. The nose of the airplane pointed skyward, making its interior a tall, hollow cylinder perhaps seven feet in diameter - the airplane’s floor and ceiling now served as walls.

To my relief, Rachel was still beside me, visibly shaken but alright. The same could not be said about most of the others. Four of the passengers were obviously dead, apparently killed by loose objects in the impact. The other two
survivors were already out of their seat belts and climbing down to the rear of the plane, where we were.

"What happened?" asked Rachel, trembling.

"We crashed." said a middle-aged man with a trickle of blood flowing down his chalk-white face.

"Into what, though? We’re thirty feet off the ground!"

She was right. Through the windows we could see the barely-visible forest canopy behind sheets of rain, and quite a bit further down than was comfortable. I remembered what I had seen just before the crash. "I think we’re stuck in wires or something. If you stand still you can feel the plane swaying." My voice was cracking.
I was in a daze and shaking badly now.

"Has anyone checked on the pilot yet?", I asked.

"He’s dead. I saw him through the cockpit door." The reply came from the other survivor who had just dropped down to our level. He was a burly man in his thirties, and he seemed remarkably calm. "Let’s see if we can’t get out of here. We’re lucky the plane hasn’t caught fire yet."

The man, whose name was Jim, wrestled with the emergency exit door and forced it open. He stuck his head out in the rain for a few moments, then pulled it back in and swore. "I’ll say we’re stuck in some wires - take a look!" I reluctantly stepped over to the horizontal doorway. In the darkness it was hard to see
exactly what had happened, but what did meet my eyes was a puzzling sight.

Our jet was badly tangled in a twisted mish-mesh of wire or rope - what it was I could not discern. The left wing had broken completely off, and was solidly stuck a little further down in the same knot. Questions filled my mind, and answers were scarce. What had we flown into? As far as I could see, the wires stretched out up and down, left and right. I was not aware of any major telephone lines running through the mountain jungles of Peru, and even if there were... No. This was more like a giant net than anything. Apparently it was attached to the hills on either side of us - perhaps an eighth of a mile in length. I gave up trying to make sense
of it and ducked my quite soaked head back into the upended jet.

Jim volunteered to find a way down for us. The three of us - the middle-aged man whose name was Bill, Rachel, and myself - stuck our heads out to watch his descent. The intertwined cords were close enough together that at first he had little trouble. About ten feet down, however, he appeared to be having problems. We saw him struggle for a few seconds - it looked like he was getting himself snarled in the mesh.

"I’m stuck." Jim sounded hoarse. "Don’t come down just yet - you might get caught too. Some of the ropes are sticky." At that moment the airplane started vibrating, then rocking wildly. We all grabbed onto whatever solid object we
could find nearby. More cursing came from down below, followed suddenly by a piercing, almost inhuman scream of terror.

A black shape, nightmarish in form and movement, was quickly approaching Jim. A body the size of a Volkswagen, and eight long and spindly legs, it crawled with perfect footing and ease from cord to cord, never missing so much as a step.Its movement through the rain and hail seemed both surreal and fantastic. At this point my mind waged a ferocious but unsuccessful war against my senses.

I tried for a moment to disbelieve the horrifying sight before me. I tried to wake up but my eyes were already open. Despite my efforts I could not get rid of the impossibly large spider that had apparently caught Jim and all of us it its web.

Rachel screamed, and Bill’s face went from white to a deathly grey. By now we were holding on for dear life as we bounced up and down from the creature’s movements. The beast swiftly and fleetingly tip-toed its way to the struggling human ensnared in its trap, and with a quick jab of its fangs instantly cut short Jim’s scream. His body spasmed violently for exactly two seconds - then it was still. The oversized arachnid slowly and methodically spun a cocoon of spider-silk around the body and carried it out of sight.

Rachel was sobbing gently when I pulled my dripping head back inside. Bill had a look of incredulous horror on his face, and was stuttering almost incoherently about a "h-huge sp-spider." I wondered if he was going to start crying as well. I tried to comfort my wife as best I could, while I considered our options.

The spider couldn’t reach us as long as we stayed in the jet, but unless we moved we would just be delaying our inevitable deaths, succumbing eventually to hunger and thirst. We had the dead passenger’s satellite phone, but it certainly wouldn’t work in the thunderstorm, and it was unlikely to work anywhere in the steep valley in which we were located. We had to get down somehow.

Jim had said that some of the strands of spider-wire were sticky. That fit in with what I knew about spiders - they weave their webs with both sticky and non-sticky threads, memorizing which ones to step on so they don’t catch
themselves in their own traps. We obviously did not have the benefit of knowing which was which, but was there any way to tell?

I had an idea. In an emergency kit on the wall of the airplane, I found, among other things, some flashlights. I explained what I had in mind to the others. Bill seemed enthusiastic about anyone other than himself trying their luck with the web, but Rachel was unsure. I had to try it, though. I ripped squares of fabric from some t-shirts that had spilled from a suitcase in the crash, and stuffed them in my pockets. Then I tied the flashlight around my neck and climbed warily onto the first cord that Jim had stepped on - I knew it was safe.

It was slippery and wet, but not sticky. I kept a grip on the airplane door for steadiness while I searched for another wire to experiment with. Bill and Rachel were keeping an eagle’s eye out for the monster, but it was not around at the
moment. I took a cloth out of my pocket and touched it to the closest thread. It didn’t stick. I tried another cord, and this time it stuck fast. That was what I was looking for: I shined the flashlight directly at it, and then at the safe cord on which I stood, high above the ground. There was a notable difference between the two varieties - the sticky cord was shiny, gleaming brightly in the glare, while the safe kind was dull and didn’t reflect the beam. I then turned the beam downwards at the web. Every dangerous spider-wire between myself and the ground was suddenly reflected back at me.

I had to test two more things - the strength of the glue and the strength of the threads. While hanging tightly on the airplane door, I gave a mighty yank on the rag. It was so firmly fastened to the web that it ripped in half in my hand. The gooey substance on the cord was like superglue. I then pulled out my five-inch
hunting blade and gave a mighty slash. The sticky strand cut away easily, and I jumped back into the airplane.

The thunderstorm had moved on to new and better places, but the time was approaching midnight and the darkness was almost complete - the full moon was hidden by an overcast sky. The vibrations from my last movements had set the
spider in motion again somewhere else on the web, judging by the slight tremors that we felt. For an hour we felt his movements, but only once did I catch sight of him, and then only for a few moments. He was busy above us wrapping up a small
form - a bird, perhaps - that had just blundered into his trap.

At the darkest hour of the night, when the glue-threads reflected the brightest in my flashlight beam, we decided to make our move. I told Rachel I loved her, and I wished Bill the best of luck. We each outfitted ourselves with a
flashlight and a knife, and I also emptied out a backpack and put the satellite phone in it. We made a plan: we would make a break for the trees below, with Bill on the left, Rachel on the right, and myself in the middle.

I jumped out first, with them close behind. With flashlights dangling around our necks, we lept from cord to cord, avoiding the shiny ones as best we could. A large piece of Jim’s coat still hung from one of those - a grim reminder of the need for caution.

About fifteen feet down, I could feel the creature coming. It was another fifteen or twenty feet to the rainforest canopy, and presumably another twenty feet to the ground below that. With the rocking motion of the web, our descent
became twice as difficult. In the corner of my eye, I saw Rachel’s left arm get caught; with two slashes of her knife she cut the cord away and continued downward. Bill was not so lucky: he lost his balance and fell in such a way that both his legs were stuck and he was hanging up-side-down, screaming and flailing with his knife.

I could do nothing but keep moving. I could see the horrid shape fast approaching from the lower left, close enough to see all eight eyes reflecting off Bill’s flashlight.

If the brute had come straight for me, I never would have made it to the ground; as it was I was definitely pushing my luck. The spider made a quick detour towards Bill, who was thrashing wildly and yelling. I didn’t have the desire or
opportunity to watch the killing, but as with Jim I heard his scream cease abruptly. The monster did not waste his time wrapping him up just yet - he needed to catch me first.

I was about five feet from the trees when I grabbed a wrong wire with my left hand and was jerked off my feet. To my horror, my knife went plummeting out of its sheath into the darkness below. I looked upwards into the most hideous face that has ever been seen. The spider was far too close for my personal comfort. I saw a single drop of venom fall from its ugly fangs, glittering like a diamond in the air before splashing on my shirt, eating through the fabric and burning painfully on my chest. As the small distance between myself and Death quickly
diminished, I swung my feet forward and up, bracing my boots against the cord on which I was stuck and pushing with a strength greater than any I had ever known. A scream of pain escaped my lips as the skin of my left hand ripped off, but my arm was free and I quickly wriggled out of the boots which had fastened themselves to the accursed strand.

If it is possible for a spider to look disappointed, this one certainly managed it as I fell out of his reach. He stopped dead in his tracks and stared mournfully as tomorrow’s planned dinner tumbled from his snare. I twisted around in mid-air as I fell through the giant leaves of the rainforest canopy, painfully
crashing through the thick branches before coming to a sudden stop on the wet ground. My arms weren’t working very well, and breathing was almost unbearable. I could move my legs, though, and I was pretty sure I was alright.

Rachel jumped down from the lowest branch of the tree she was climbing down, still looking anxiously up to see if the spider would leave his web in pursuit. But all was silent - we were, in comparison to five minutes before, safe. When I
decided I was able, she helped me to my feet, and we embraced before looking for an open place to use the satellite phone (which had survived the trip downward in better condition than I had).

After a long and difficult hike, we rested at the top of a hill which jutted out above the jungle. While Rachel called for help, I leaned against a rock and rested. After a while the moon came out and illuminated the whole valley. By the soft light, I could see the beautiful but damaged web shining brightly, our plane stuck in the center like an oversized fly. The spider was hard at work now - apparently
taking the whole thing down. For hours I watched him pacing back and forth, deconstructing his loom.

Help was on the way, said Rachel - they knew our location from the phone signal. We held each other for warmth and comfort throughout the chilly night.

By dawn, there was no sign of spider, web, or airplane. A helicopter landed on the bare hilltop, and soldiers gave us blankets, food, and medical attention while loading us up in the chopper. Of course no one believed our story - they thought we were delirious - so we stopped trying. I had a broken right arm and a dislocated left shoulder, as well as several broken ribs, and I was in pain. As we lifted off, they gave me anesthetic, and I turned my face toward the window. The last thing I saw before passing out was the early morning sun, glinting off a
brand-new strand of spider-wire, sparkling in the valley.

The End