Seneca Rebel

BUCK NEIGHED AND snorted along through the night with Dom and me mounted on his back. I sat in front with Dom’s arms loosely wrapped around my waist. I don’t know what I had been so worried about; horseback riding was amazing. We didn’t even have a saddle, but because Dom had spent a lot of time on farms when he was growing up, bareback riding just seemed to come naturally to him. And he made sure that I was comfortable with it, too.

We were wiped out, delirious really, when we finally made the decision to stop and sleep. By that time Dom estimated that we were about three hours by horseback from Anika’s farm. Dom had the kind of nature skills that didn’t exist in LA, and it was a good thing he did. He scaled a young hickory tree with a shaggy bark that made it tricky for him to get traction, but he was determined. He managed to snap a low hanging, long branch and climbed back down with it, which he stripped and bent to hitch Buck to a much skinnier tree. We posted up under the grandest hickory within a stone’s throw of Buck and were out cold within minutes.

***

Morning dew woke me with a shiver across my shoulders, my neck hairs stood straight as a mohawk. My back was surprisingly warm, though, and I realized that I was nestled into a full-on spoon with Dom. Somehow we had found each other to cuddle up tight as we’d slept. I didn’t want to move, but I knew we had to keep moving. My stomach gurgled and growled, but Dom’s was even more insistent, sounding like a monster shouting, “Feed me, dammit!” It helped to know that, once we got to Anika’s, we’d be able to eat. Buck was raring to go which he let be known with a dramatic snort. We laughed, but the joy fizzled fast as reality set in. The second I tried to stand I felt an insane pain in my inner thighs. Oh— the trials of a city girl after her first time bareback riding. I clenched my jaw to suck back the excruciating ache and climbed back atop Buck for more. And we were off.

A thunderstorm pushed in shortly after dawn. At first it was magical, intoxicating, even. Deep colossal booms and sheets of water pounded down from a sad, pearly sky. We opened our mouths wide to the downpour. I hadn’t seen rain in at least ten months, and even then it had been nothing compared to this. But the novelty got old real quick. We were cold. Heavy clothes chafed against our skin. Jeans felt more like sandpaper than denim. My soaked hair stuck in clumps like chilled noodles to the back of my neck. And good ol’ Buck, whose coat was heavily

Seneca Rebel

caked with kicked-back mud, needed a bath even worse than we did. The rain magnified his barnyard stench times a million. Buck’s hooves stuck in the earth and he had to work overtime with each step to pull them from the suction of gooey mud. The more we wished for the rain to stop, the harder it pelted down. We clung to the image of sipping on some steamy soup under a blanket by a fire. It seemed like such a distant dream during those three hardcore hours.

Based on Dom’s flexer calculations, we still had about two hours to go when we heard a far off hiss. It wasn’t the drones, I was sure. No, this time my body burned with the premonition of poison. A teeth grinding, acid on flesh nastiness was coming our way, a swarm of some sort of insect. But how could they be out in a storm like this?

“What is that?”

Dom pulled back on Buck’s neck and made a clicking sound that told him to stop. We looked behind us. A giant, contorting mass of airborne blackness headed straight in our direction, but even as I blinked the haze of rain from my eyelashes, I couldn’t make out what it was.

Dom tensed up, “No, no, no!”

Buck sensed a threat and started frantically tossing his head. I knew this couldn’t be good. The auditory toxicity closed in fast.

“Hold on, Doro! Heeya, heeya!” Dom dug his heels into Buck, who neighed in distress and flared his nostrils into the air. Buck darted through the mud with all his might. I held on tight around his neck, a column of solid muscle. I peered over my right shoulder to see exactly what was on our tail. Through the unrelenting, machine-gun spray of rain that blasted me in the face, it became apparent— they were mosquitos, thousands of them.

“Heeya, heeya!” Dom pushed Buck harder and harder, but it was too late, the bloodthirsty army ambushed our heads, swarming in formation like a helmet. Buck flipped out, Dom and I were thrown to the ground and he trampled out of there.

“Run! They’re deadly!” Dom screamed.

I swatted as the pathogenic pests formed a thick barrier around my face, up my nose, in my eyes, my ears, landing on my face and hands. I was as disgusted as I was scared. There was nothing I could do– I choked on rain and bugs that flew into my throat. “Dom!” I tried to scream out to him but it was muffled. I felt tiny pricks all over me, poison surging into my muscles. A metallic taste formed in my mouth. I lost my balance and, as I heard “waowaowaowao” and saw streaks of black, I succumbed to the virulent attack and dropped like a rag doll.