Seneca Rebel (The Seneca Society Book 1) (24 page)

"That’s an understatement."

He moved in next to me. Plunged his face into the water, submerging his head for five, ten, fifteen seconds... at twenty he flung it out, sending a fan of icy water into the frigid air, "Woooooha!" He vigorously rubbed at his head and face that had taken on a stubbled, rugged hotness. It made me feel less like the warrior I’d been all of twenty minutes before, and more like a girl. Just a girl. But I wasn't just a girl. How did he do this to me? I blinked hard to bring my brain back from Mars. He put his hand in the small of my back, making my return from outer-space that much harder. "You all hydrated and ready?"

"You know it. I take it you have a new transportation plan?"

"Do I ever. We'll be off our feet within an hour." He said with confidence.

In just under an hour we had trudged through Shenandoah National Park. The rocky and frosty sapphire terrain of the Blue Ridge Mountains was draped in a soft gray-blue sky. It was the middle of the day but the sun wasn't shining. It was muted, as was our mood, in anticipation of a long, frigid winter.

Dom and I were lugging ourselves along as we descended the chilly foothills. Evening began to roll in. I could smell a campfire but couldn't see it, or even another soul. We were starving, cold, sore. My face stung, fingers raw and numb.

And then, just as Dom and I hit our last peak, the sight of a sprawling pasture below us boosted our moods. We rushed down the hill and stood side-by-side, resting our elbows on a white post and rail fence. We watched some horses nibbling on stubbles of yellowed fescue grass poking through the hoarfrost. The one closest to us lifted his head, ears pointed curiously in our direction. "That big guy there, he's a bay." Dom said.

The fairytale-like scene of beauty and eloquence profoundly moved me. "And I thought horses were extinct."

"That's what they tell you in Los Angeles, eh?"

"Not exactly, but we definitely don't have horses."
 

"Well, you're not in LA anymore, Dorothy. Ready?"

"Ready for what?"

"To hitch our ride." Without missing a beat, Dom hopped the fence and turned back to offer his hand. Without a thought I hurdled the fence by myself. We were on their side of the fence now. Dom and I stared down the horse that seemed the most intrigued by our presence.

"How about we call him Buck?"

"Works for me. I hope Buck doesn't bite."

Dom chuckled as if I were kidding. I was only kind of kidding. "Are you sure about this? I don't know–"

"Man, you really
are
a city girl. Time to get you a good dose of horse country."

"I think maybe we should find a flighter I can get us into."

"Way too risky. This way we can cut through the backwoods to Anika's farm near Charlottesville." Dom slipped into a slow, confident walk towards Buck. He went right up to him and extended the back of his hand to the horse's nose. This richly dark brown beauty had big black eyes and a warm, strong spirit. I folded. Dom was right. He would be a great addition to our roller-coaster mission.

46

B
UCK
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 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.

47

"H
ELLO
,
SWEETHEART
. Y
OU
are safe."

My vision made a slow dissolve in with fisheye distortion. I felt like I'd been riding a rowboat in the ocean. "Ughhh..." I squinted my eyes to make out a petite woman in her seventies kneeling next to me. She had long hair the color of soap suds and wore an oversized, beige Egyptian shirt with a pair of supremely worn-in jeans. It nauseated me beyond belief to look around, but I had to figure out where I was. Oh god– the room spun. I dry heaved, nothing in me to vomit but foam. The woman held a bucket up to catch it and rubbed my shoulder, "You're okay, you're okay. It's almost passed."

I felt like death. How did this happen? Why couldn’t I see properly and how did I end up on this floor? The last thing I remembered was riding a horse with Dom. I mustered up just enough energy to mutter, "Dom?"

"He's just getting tea in the other room with Josie."

We must have made it to Anika's ranch.

"I'm Anika." Yesss– my blessings were too great to count. Anika was good people, I knew it immediately. Normally it would take me some time to come to such a verdict, but this inherent goodness just emanated from her pores like raw garlic. She held a washcloth to my forehead. "Thank you," I mouthed, with barely any sound.

"Don't speak, Doro. Save your energy."

I rolled from the fetal position onto my back, which felt stiff as a board. I let out an agony-drenched sigh. My vision cleared to see beyond what was directly in front of me. This was the exact scene I had daydreamed about on our ride through the storm. Underneath an exposed beam ceiling, a fire crackled between two picture windows that framed a sweet little secluded farm. I was wedged into a comfy, worn brown corduroy beanbag.

"Doro, you're awake!" The sound of Dom's voice made me feel safe even though I was thoroughly incapacitated. He pulled another beanbag up next to me, sat down in it and reached toward me with a cup of tea. "Drink this."

I weakly lifted my arm. It was heavy and limp as a pile of wet laundry. I moaned in discomfort.

"I got it." Dom put the red ceramic mug to my lips and tilted it as he warned, "It's hot."

I blew into it and sipped the most glorious peppermint rooibos that ever was. It streamed down the back of my throat, warming me up and washing out the sour taste in my mouth. The fog behind my eyes started to burn off.

"You were poisoned, sweetheart." Anika said lightly. "I've given you an antidote that should move through your system and have you back on your feet shortly."

"We made it, Doro." Dom's face lit up with the assurance that we were still on our path, just overcoming some heavy set-backs. "This is Anika, and Josie."

Anika got up and took a seat on the sofa next to her partner, Josie. I hadn't even seen Josie come in. I tried to smile to show my gratitude. It seemed to send a wave of good grace down my spine. I managed to take the tea from Dom. "I don't understand."

"Remember the mosquitos?"

Did I ever. I scrunched my lip and quivered in disgust with a little nod.

"S.O.I.L. They're fighting dirty."

"How? I thought I’d made us untraceable."

"I'm almost positive we were hunted down by a swarm programmed to find our blood. Seneca has our blood samples and the mosquitos were only attacking us but not the horse. It's a trick ripped right from the pages of the swarm warfare field manual."

Biological warfare. On me. Once again, I wasn’t surprised, but I was upset to be the brunt of such a disgusting attack.

"What sickness?"

"Your saliva tested positive for synthetic Novuleria." Anika didn't try to pad the truth for even a second. I hadn't heard of Novuleria before, but it didn't sound good.

"It's a man-made disease with a specific purpose. Disorient and kill." I was repulsed, but man, so fortunate that it hadn’t killed me. I've never been the vengeful type, but someone definitely just had claimed exclusive billing on my hit list.

"Gregory Zaffron. He's a demon."

"Truth."

I could almost feel the cleansing process working its way through my bloodstream, and replenishing cells with the fire to burn down the malevolent Gregory.

"You, Doro Campbell, just conquered a battle of biological warfare."

Thanks to Anika, I had. But things still didn't make complete sense. I mean, Dom was fine and I was a bloody mess. "How did you slide by?"

"Dumb luck. My blood deterrents to mosquitos were established when I was a little kid and my parents took us to Africa for six months. If I hadn’t been immune we would have been left in the woods for the raptors to feast on."

"On that note, let's eat." Josie chimed in. Josie was a unique-looking woman with mesmerizing features. Her sparkling lime eyes and caramel complexion glistened by the flames. I'm sure she looked younger than she actually was, which, if I had to guess, was about sixty. She had the same buzz cut as Dom, something we all joked about. She wore a white linen house dress, tan handmade moccasins and gold stud earrings. She told us about her interesting melting pot of genetic heritage: Native American, Irish, Korean, Russian, French, South African and East Indian. And those were just the ones she was aware of. Her vast culinary repertoire reflected just that. While we’d been talking we could smell something tremendous being "whipped up," as she put it, for dinner. I picked up notes of turmeric and cinnamon waltzing with the cozy scent of crackling wood. We didn't have fireplaces in LA since they’d been outlawed before I was even born, but good home cooking was something I’d had almost every night. My mom is a spice master and that was just another thing about her that I missed in my Senecan life. To have this heartwarming treat of a dinner after the unmerciful treachery we'd just experienced was almost more than I could stand. I decided to offload all the negativity and anger I'd accumulated, and soak up new energy from this beautiful home where we were being surrounded with nothing but love.

Dom helped me to the dining table on the other side of the room, made from a fallen tree on their land. It had been hand-carved and sanded, and I ran the tips of my fingers along its smooth but imperfect surface. Anika and Josie brought us curried sweet potato and black bean chili, slow cooked southern greens with roasted citrus beets, corn bread, honey butter and sweetened minty rose water. Everything Josie made came from the land they lived on. The glorious smell made me sit up straight and I almost felt like myself again.