Norman ignored Ralph’s jibe, too panicked to care. “I… I thought they were just… just patches of lichen or spots of lighter rock. But something moved out there!”
“Who? What are you talking about?” Sam asked.
Norman shuddered, then finally seemed to collect himself. He waved them all back toward the boulder. By then, Maggie and Denal hovered a few steps away. “I’m not sure.” He led them back, but this time stayed well away from the rock and whatever lurked behind it.
Sam remained at the photographer’s side. The dark stone on the far side of the rock lay in shadows. Streaks of quartz or white gypsum ran in streams up the nearby cavern wall. “I don’t see anything.”
Norman reached a hand back toward the others. “Gimme one of the lights.”
Denal moved up and passed the second flashlight to the photographer. Norman clicked it on; light speared the inky gloom.
Sam twitched back in shock. It was not veins of quartz or gypsum that ran down the walls. These pale streaks flowed, streaming down the walls to pool at its foot. Even now, rivulets started spreading across the floor toward the gathered party. Sam shifted his own lantern. “Spiders…” Each was as pale as the belly of a slug and had to be a hand-spread wide. There had to be hundreds… no thousands of them.
Ralph stepped back. “Tarantulas.”
“Albino tarantulas,” Maggie moaned.
The army continued its scurried march. Scouts skittered to either side of the boulder. A few paused where the rock was damp and steamed slightly from Norman’s morning relief, clearly drawn to the warmth.
“It’s our body heat,” Sam said. “The damned things must be blind and drawn by noise and warmth.”
Behind him, Denal started gibbering in his native Quecha.
Sam swung around. The young Indian was gesturing in the opposite direction, toward the far side of the gold path. Norman turned his flashlight to where Denal pointed. As another flank of the army streamed down the other wall on pale, hairy legs, Sam suddenly had an awful sensation crawl up his back.
Sam arched his neck, raising his lantern high.
Overhead, the roof was draped by a mass of roiling bodies, crawling, mating, fighting. Thousands of pendulous egg sacs hung in ropy wombs of silk. The students had stumbled into the main nest of the tarantulas… and the army of predators was hunting for prey. They were already moving down the pillars, as if the carved figures were giving birth to them.
The group scattered from under the shadow of the monstrosity, fleeing back to their campsite.
As they retreated, Sam studied the huge spiders. Dependent upon the meager resources found in these caves, the tarantulas had clearly evolved a more aggressive posture. Instead of waiting for prey to fall into webs, these normally solitary spiders had adapted a more cooperative strategy. By massing together, they could comb the caves more successively for any potential sources of a blood meal, taking down larger prey by their sheer numbers—and Sam had no intention of being their next course.
“Okay, folks, I think we’ve overstayed our welcome,” he said. “Gather our gear and let’s get the hell out of Dodge.”
“Where to?” Maggie asked.
“There’s a path through these caves, right? Those Indians who forged it must have done so for a reason. Maybe it’s a way out. Anyone object to finding out?”
No one did. Five sets of eyes were still on the encroaching tarantulas.
Sam slipped the gold dagger into his vest and collected his grandfather’s rifle. He gestured to the others to collect their few possessions. “One flashlight only,” he said, as he led the way down the path. “Conserve the other. I don’t want to run out of illumination down here.” A shiver passed through Sam at the mere thought of being trapped, blind, with a pale army of poisonous predators encircling him. He tightened his grip on his rifle but knew it would do him little good if the lights went out.
Norman followed with the flashlight, glancing frequently behind him.
“As long as we keep moving, the spiders won’t get you, Norman,” Ralph said with a scowl.
The photographer still kept an eye on their backtrail. “Just remind me… no more bathroom breaks. Not until I see the light of day.”
Sam ignored their nervous chatter. It was not what lay behind them that kept Sam’s nerves taut as bowstrings, but the trail ahead. Just where in the hell would this path take them?
Unfortunately there was only one way to find out.
As they proceeded, Norman mumbled behind him. “Lions and tigers and bears, oh my…”
Sam glanced back, his brow furrowed in confusion.
Norman nodded to the gold path. “Sort of reminds me of the yellow brick road.”
“Great,” Ralph groused. “Now the fruit thinks he’s Dorothy.”
“I wish I was. Right now I wouldn’t mind a pair of ruby slippers to whisk me home,” Norman grumbled. “Or even back to a farm in Kansas.”
Sam rolled his eyes and continued onward.
The remainder of the long morning stretched into an endless hike, mostly at a steady incline. Legs and backs protested as the cavern system led them higher inside the Andean mountain. If not for the lack of food and the growing exhaustion, Sam might have better appreciated the sights: towering stalagmites, cavernous chambers with limpid pools that glowed with a soft phosphorescence, cataracts that misted the gold trail at times with a welcome cooling spray, even a side cave so festooned with lacy crystals that it looked as if the chamber was full of cotton candy. It was a wonderland of natural beauty.
And everywhere they went, the carved pillars marked their way as grim sentinels, watching the group pass with unblinking silver eyes.
But as amazing as the sights were, the memory of what lay behind them never fully vanished. Breaks to drink from the stream were often accompanied by worried glances toward the rear. So far there had been no sign of pursuit by the tarantula army. It seemed they had left the spiders far behind.
Slowly, the morning wound to afternoon. The only highlight was a brief lunch to split a pair of Milky Way bars found stashed in Norman’s camera case. Chocolate had never tasted so good. But even this small taste of heaven was short-lived, and only succeeded in amplifying everyone’s hunger. Tempers began to grow short and attitudes sullen as they marched through the afternoon.
To make matters worse, a sharp pungency began to fill the cavern’s normally crisp air. Noses wrinkled. “Ammonia. Smells like the ass end of a skunk,” Sam commented.