rebarbative
[ree-bahr-buh-tiv]
1. causing annoyance, irritation, or aversion; repellent.
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Walt waved his hands wildly.
There was nothing else he could do.
They had run out of bug spray long ago, and the cloud of insects seemed
to know it. Individually, their high
pitched whine was simply annoying. But
with the great cloud of them, it was maddening.
“God
damn these bugs!” He roared. The sound
of his voice scattered a few of them, but they quickly returned to their
original spot swirling around his head.
“It
could be worse you know.” Nancy said.
She only took the effort to swat away the tiny insects from directly in
front of her face.
“How?”
“These
are just gnats. But they could be mosquitoes.”
Walt
shuddered at the thought. The tiny
buzzing cloud was bad enough as it was, but adding in blood sucking bites to
the mix? She was right. It could have been much, much worse.
“Okay,
fair point.” He said. “But that doesn’t
mean I have to like this.”
“Trust
me, I understand completely.”
“How
much farther is it?”
Nancy
took out the map. They both hated having
to use the low tech variety. But, since
they were so far away from any kind of civilization, they had to rely on paper. She fumbled with it for a few moments before
finding what she hoped was their location, and then again when she thought she
found their destination.
“A few
more miles. I think.”
“You
think?”
“Yes. I think.
It’s not like there’re a lot of landmarks to go by around here.”
A few more
miles. He hoped she was wrong about the “few”
part. Walking through such a deep forest
while being constantly surrounded by gnats was not pleasant. He might have been able to handle the
walking. The forest was quite nice, and
afforded some impressive scenery. But
the bugs. Those horrid little things
made the trek far more troublesome than it should have been.
“Great. Do you even know where we are now?”
“Do you
want the hopeful answer, or the real one?”
That
told him all he needed to know. She had
no idea if she was reading the map right.
Which meant that, at best there were several more miles than she thought
there were. At worst, they could have
been in the wrong part of the forest and not know it.
Nancy
did her best to close the map neatly and stuffed it into the side pocket of her
backpack. She looked around at the trees
some more, waving away as many of the gnats as she could. The trees all looked the same, which made it
difficult to tell anything about location.
Still, she thought she had read the map correctly, even if Walt was not
nearly as hopeful.
“Hopefully
there’s bug spray there.” He said as the duo continued to march through the
trees.
“Wouldn’t
do much anyway. That stuff only keeps
bugs from landing on you. It won’t do
anything to keep these guys away, since they keep off of us.”
“Wonderful. Just wonderful. Remind me again why I signed up to do this?”
“The
saleswoman was really pretty.”
“Oh. Right.
Why didn’t you talk me out of it?”
“Same
reason.”
“Of
course.” The two walked in silence for a few more feet. “We’re going to get lost and die out here,
aren’t we?”
“No we’re not.”
“No we’re not.”
“How
can you be so certain?”
Nancy
pulled out the map again and scrutinized it some more. “Because I’m pretty sure that I see something
on the map. It means we’re on the right
track.”
“Good. Then let’s hurry it up.”
As they
walked, Walt felt something land on his arm.
He instinctively swatted at it.
When he looked at his arm, he saw bug guts and a tiny smear of something
red.
“Oh god
damn it.”
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Sorry, I don't really have much to say right now. Maybe next time.
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