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The plane wreck was nowhere to be seen, invisible in the sea of trees. Perhaps if it had been burning he would have been able to see some smoke, but the night’s rainfall had quenched any fires. The pond where it had crashed was a couple of miles away, but the little clearing was too small and...

Perhaps discretion really was the better part of valor, or maybe it was just Gus’ well-honed self-preservation instincts keeping him alive once again. Whatever it was that drove the fire lookout to stay in his shelter, it kept him safe. Gus would not see hide nor hair of the monster throughout...

The first shot, hurried and one-handed, went wild. The slug sailed high over the woman’s shoulder, smashing through one of the reinforced-glass windows. The boom of the shotgun was agonizing within the confines of the tiny tower, but the painful ringing in his ears would be the least of Gus’...

“Hmm,” said Cammie, finishing off her second apple. Standing up, she started to pace back and forth in the little shack like a caged animal, flexing and stretching her fingers. Those black nails of hers had definitely gotten longer. There was no way they’d been that long when she walked in, was...

The radio crackled and spat with static, but no response came. The connection seemed even worse than before, perhaps due to the worsening weather. Cammie gazed at the radio with interest, watching quietly as he spoke into the receiver. When no response came, she smiled, showing off a set of...

“Thank you!” she exclaimed, hurrying to the mini-fridge. “Gosh, I’m so hungry. I’ve been hungry all day, really. Guess I must have forgotten. Because of the crash.” Cammie looked positively giddy with excitement until she opened the fridge and saw the contents. Her face fell, taking on an...

Cammie seemed to have forgotten all about her injury, having been distracted by examining her long, painted nails. Had those black talons gotten longer in the past few minutes, or was it just a trick of the light? Surely they hadn’t been that pointy before. “Oh, that’s fine,” she said. “Don’t...

Placing the skull down gently on the table, Cammie leaned back in her chair and regarded Gus with an almost hungry eye. When he mentioned his nickname, she let out a soft giggle, as though he’d said something funny without realizing it. She reached down to give the skull one more flick, spinning...

The woman reclined back in the chair, gazing wide-eyed around the room. Her gaze lingered on the radio for a few moments, but she turned back to Gus when he asked for her name. She frowned, hesitating for a moment. “My name?” she repeated. “Oh, of course. My name. How silly of me. It’s, uh...

“Weird? Mhmm, yeah. I guess. I don’t know much about bears. I guess you would, living out here in the woods and all. I dunno, maybe it wasn’t a bear. Sure looked like one, though. I didn’t get a good look. I was, uh, hiding. Rattled. You know how it is. You seemed pretty worried about bears...

The woman frowned, seemingly a bit disappointed when Gus admitted that he wasn’t part of a rescue squad. Stowing the flare pistol in her pocket, she followed him back up the path. “Got caught in the storm,” she said. “It came out of nowhere, you know? Lost control, got caught by the wind, the...

The bush rustled again, and a human hand popped out from behind. It waved desperately, shining a bright white in the harsh LED beam of Gus’ light. “I’m here!” called a woman’s voice from behind the bush. “I’m here, don’t shoot!” A blonde woman stood up, glancing around nervously and squinting...

The trail to the pond, overgrown at the best of times, had been rendered almost impassable by the storm. Downed trees had to be navigated or climbed over, the ground was slippery with mud, and landmarks that had previously pointed the way were nowhere to be seen. The thick fog and increasing...

Whether Gus’ transmission had actually gone through or not was anyone’s guess, as the response was far too garbled to be understood. The storm, it seemed, was still causing too much interference...or perhaps he hadn’t installed the antenna correctly. Who knew? The weather certainly seemed to...

The radio hissed and popped with static, the poor weather still interfering with the signal. However, at least part of Gus’ broadcast must have made it through. The dispatcher’s voice came through over the static-filled air, almost unintelligible through the interference...

The training for the lookouts had been relatively brief, but had gone over all the usual repairs and maintenance that a lookout might have to perform. Replacing the antenna wasn’t a common thing, but it certainly wasn’t unheard of either. Being that the radio was such a vital piece of equipment...

Caution and common sense prevailed as Gus sat in his sheltered lookout station, waiting for the storm to blow over. It raged for hours, shaking and rattling the tower, but didn’t cause any more serious damage besides the freak accident with the window. During the course of the storm, he only...

The windows definitely weren’t supposed to shatter, not even in the harshest of storms. They were reinforced glass, after all! All the tales of windows blowing out in storms had been “back-in-the-day” talk from salty old veterans, told in the same breath as stories of killer bears and giant...

Gus sat and waited, and the storm raged on. Several minutes later, a faint red light would streak up into the sky from the east. The red glow, visible even through the heavy rain, flew up from the trees before arching down and vanishing once more. It looked to have launched from a couple of...

It was nearly impossible to hear the voice on the other end through all the static, but a few words managed to come through. Between the storm and the interference, though, communication seemed nearly impossible. SHHK-pond-SHHHHHHK-crash-SHHK-following-SHHHHHK-injured-SHHHHHHK- The signal cut...