The Hunter (Prelude)

It was late in the evening, and Buddy Cates was driving his truck down a dark Arkansas state highway. It was only the beginning of winter, but the days were already getting shorter. His headlights were the only source of light in the thick darkness between the dense trees. He’d gone to his small town’s only bar to watch the Razorbacks. He’d stayed later than he’d planned, and he hoped his wife wouldn’t be too angry. He put more pressure on the accelerator.

The truck’s radio had been busted for years, so he drove in silence. “She can’t be too mad,” he thought. “It’s not as late as it feels, and it’s not like she’s waiting on me for dinner or anything.” There were no streetlights, and his headlights bounced off the thick trees as the road curved back and forth through the woods. “Not nearly as late as it seems,” he though. “I bet I even have time to stop for beer at the gas station. No plans tomorrow, so I might as well…”

BOOM

As the truck rounded a curve, it collided hard with something in the road. Buddy didn’t see it coming and was rocked violently in his seat. The truck spun left, he jerked the wheel right, the tires spun for a moment but then caught, and he flew off the road. He grazed a large tree and came to a stop. The windshield was cracked. Several lights on the dashboard were glowing angrily. There seemed to be something splattered on the windshield. HIs cab light wouldn’t turn on, though, so he couldn’t be sure.

Buddy was shaking and needed a moment to regain control of himself. Taking a deep breath, he reached over, opened the glove box, and pulled out a flashlight. Stepping carefully out of the truck, he examined it with his small beam of light. The hood was smashed. There was a nasty crack in the windshield, and… blood. Lots of blood. For the first time in his life, Buddy wished he had a cellphone.

He turned and tried to look down the road. It was too dark to see much of anything, but at the edges of the illumination provided by his flashlight, he could see something slumped and not moving. “Hello?” he called softly. The word seemed to vanish into the trees as soon as he spoke it. He walked cautiously forward, keeping his eyes (and light) on the thing in the road.

Soon he was close enough to know what it was. He had hit a deer. This wasn’t the first time, but it had been a while. Buddy took a deep breath and then exhaled and let the tension ease out of his shoulders. This certainly wasn’t how he would have chosen for the evening to go, but he had insurance, and he wasn’t hurt. This was normal. Everything was okay.

He reached down to pull the deer carcass off of the road, when he noticed that it was still breathing. A weezy gurgling sound was coming from its throat. It wasn’t moving, though. Probably a broken neck. Only it’s eyes seemed to have any mobility, and they focused intensely on Buddy. “Sorry, pal,” said the old man. “I guess you got the worst of this.” It seemed that the only humane thing to do would be to put the deer out of its misery.

Buddy had kept a small revolver in his glove box for as long as he could remember. As a deer hunter, it was common to injure an animal with your first shot and then need to finish it off at close range later. He also sometimes used it to shoot at the hogs that would occasionally show up in his backyard. And, to be honest, he liked the feeling of safety it gave him when he was driving alone at night. He wasn’t as young and strong as he used to be.

His heart rate was almost back down to normal as he walked back to his truck. “At least I’ll have a good excuse for being home late,” he chuckled. He would finish off the deer with a quick shot to the head, pull it off the road, go home, drink a beer, and then deal with insurance in the morning. Not a totally uncommon Saturday evening.  Everything was okay. Except it wasn’t.

When he got back to the truck. Everything looked exactly as it had when he left it except for one important detail. The keys were missing from the ignition. He felt his pockets, but he knew they wouldn’t be there. He knew he had turned the car off but left the keys in the ignition like he always did. He looked in the floorboard, but no luck there either. He took a step back and was shining the flashlight’s beam at the ground immediately under the driver’s door when his arm exploded.

He couldn’t say which he processed first: the sound or the pain. A gunshot cracked the silence, and his left arm immediately transformed into a white hot pain the drove him to his knees. “What’s happening?” his brain screamed. He didn’t have long to think about it, though, because another shot rang out, and the tire near his head popped. Buddy’s adrenaline kicked in. Despite the pain he rolled over, got to his feet, and ran around the edge of the truck and into the woods.

The trees were thick, and he had dropped the flashlight back by the truck. All he wanted was to run as fast as he could, but it was slow going. The underbrush, dead branches, and uneven ground all slowed his progress. He was terrified of tripping and falling on his hurt arm. He steadied himself with his right arm against the trees and moved as quickly as he could.

It didn’t take long for a deeper panic to set in. He had no idea where he was or where he was going. It wouldn’t be daylight for many more hours, and he knew he was bleeding a lot. He had tried to move side to side and not just in a straight line in case he was being following. And who the hell was shooting at him? None of this made sense. Nothing was okay. Buddy began to get tears in his eyes.

Eventually he slowed to a walk. The pain in his arm was so intense that it was making his vision blurry. He was wheezing, and his legs were on fire. He stopped, sat down with his back to a tree, and listened. He could hear normal forest noises, but nothing to indicate that anyone or anything was following. No heavy footfalls or snapping twigs. No rustling leaves or bushes.

“What do I do?” Buddy thought. “Oh God. What do I do?” He was descending quickly into hopelessness and getting frantic. He was shaking again. He looked to the left and then to the right. As he did, something caught his eye. In the distance, through the trees, he could just make out what looked like a flicker of light. He stared as hard as he could but couldn’t make out what it might be.

Since walking toward the distant light seemed to be the only alternative he could come up with to just sitting under the tree and bleeding to death, he decided to pursue it. He eased himself back to his feet and started walking cautiously toward the faint glow in the distance. As he walked, he tried to think about where he might be. Buddy had grown up in the area and hunted a lot of the land. He should be able to roughly triangulate himself, but he hadn’t been paying enough attention while driving or running. His brain wasn’t thinking clearly. He had no idea.

As he got closer to the light, he could make out more of the area. What he had seen was a single bulb on the outside of what appeared to be a very primitive hunting cabin deep in the woods. During deer season, hunters would come out and stay in a place like this for weeks at a time. There was a fire pit, an outhouse, a rusty old game hanger, and… a rusty red pickup truck! Someone was there! Buddy’s hope was renewed, and he rushed forward.

He had almost cleared the treeline when his foot hit the bear trap. It had been covered in leaves, so he wouldn’t have seen it even if he’d been looking. He was pretty sure he heard his leg snap, and he had passed out before he even hit the ground. The rest of Buddy’s life would only appear to him in fragments. He was so exhausted and had lost so much blood that everything felt like a dream.

He felt the pressure on his leg release. He felt himself being dragged. He opened his eyes long enough to see someone in camo overalls, boots, and a brown jacket with a hood. He felt himself hoisted upside down. Everything was spinning. He tried to say something but he didn’t know where to begin… and his mouth didn’t seem to be working anyway. The last thing Buddy Cates would see in his life was a hunter walking toward him with a splitter.