Backwoods

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“Hey, McGillis, you know that twenty percent chance of storms you said the National Weather Service predicted for today?” Andrew Braddock called into his hand-held radio as from overhead, a crooked lash of lightning slapped across the underbelly of thick, low-lying rain clouds. “I’m going to go out on a limb here and say they were a little off. Over.”

The only response that came back was a low, ominous grumble of thunder and a garble of static through the Motorola Talkabout. Not that Andrew had expected anything else. A good forty miles from anything and at least half that deep into the dense forests of the rugged Appalachian foot hills, he hadn’t been able to raise either Ted McGillis or Dean Allcott, the pair of forestry technicians he was working with, for the better part of the last two hours.

The thunderheads that been distant fixtures all day long, smoke-colored peaks rising among those of the Appalachian foothills, had finally filled the sky like a heavy, steel-grey shroud. Andrew could smell the rain, crisp and almost metallic, even before the first fat droplets plopped down through the pine boughs and tree crowns, spattering against the plastic dome of his hard hat, a bright orange thing that matched the mesh day-glo vest he wore. They were hideous, but necessary if he hoped to distinguish himself from a deer or elk through the sights of a poacher’s rifle. And in the particular corner of southeastern Kentucky in which he currently stood, poachers were more than just a potential threat, they were pretty much a guarantee.

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