Panic, sharp and cold, seized Alex. He was trapped between two kinds of predators: the monster that lurked in the shadows and the men who represented the normal world he could no longer afford to be part of. The voices on the radio were getting closer. He had seconds to decide.
Without another tough, he broke from the cover of the aspen tree and sprinted across the clearing. His feet, heavy in his hiking boots, tore trough the damp soil and crushed twigs underfoot. The fifty-yard dash to the base of his tower felt like a mile. Every step, he expected to hear a shout from behind him, the command to freeze. Or worse, the sound of something impossibly fast closing the distance.
He reached the steel ladder and didn't slow down. He grabbed the rails and started climbing, his muscles screaming in protest. His careful, quiet descent was a distant memory, replaced by a frantic, clumsy scramble. His boots banged against the metal steps, each impact a loud CLANG that seemed to echo for miles.
"They're going to hear me," he gasped into his radio. "Elara, they're going to hear me."
"Just keep climbing, Alex," she urged, her voice strained. "Don't stop."
He was about the third of the way up when he heard the men's voices, no longer through the radio, but directly. They were at the edge of the clearing he had just run across. Alex froze, pressing his body as flat as he could against the steel staircase, praying his dark green shirt would blend in with the forest behind him.
"See anything, Mark?" one man asked.
"Nah," another replied. "No tracks over here but a few deer. It's like the guy just vanished into thin air."
Alex held his breath. He could see them now, two men in ranger uniforms, carrying rifles and packs. They were standing near the aspen tree, their backs to him. One of them pointed a flashlight at the trunk.
"Hey, look at this. Weird carvings."
"Probably just some kids. C'mon, let's keep moving. We've got another mile to cover before we circle back."
The men moved on, their voices fading as they were swallowed by the dense woods. Alex waited until he was sure they were gone, his heart beating a frantic rhythm against the cold steel. He had a window.
He started climbing again, moving faster than he thought possible. Adrenaline surged trough him, burning away his fatigue. He hauled himself up the last few steps and scrambled through the trapdoor into the relative safety of his cabin. He slammed the heavy door shut and slid the thick steel bolt into place. The sound was the most comforting thing he had ever heard.
He laid on the floor for a long moment, gasping for air, his body trembling with post-adrenaline jitters.
"I'm in," he finally managed to say into his radio. "I'm back inside."
A wave of audible relief came from Elara's end. "I thought... I heard them. I thought they had you."
"It was close," Alex admitted, pushing himself into a sitting position. He was safe from the search party, at least. But now, alone again in his tower, the other greater fear returned with a vengeance.
He reached into his pocket. His fingers closed around the small, crucial piece of evidence he had managed to grab before he ran. He pulled it out and laid it on his desk under the lamplight. It was the tuft of a coarse, black hair. It was stiff, almost like bristles, and looked nothing like the fur of a bear or any other forest animal.
"I got something," he told Elara, describing the strange hair to her. "It's proof. Real, physical proof."
"Proof of what, Alex?" she asked, her voice weary. "Proof that there's a monster out there that no one will believe us about? What good is it?"
She was right. The hair was useless as evidence to the outside world. But for them, it was everything. It changed the game.
"It means it's real," he said, a new hardness in his voice. "It's a living, breathing thing. And if it's alive, it can be stopped."
He stoop up and looked around the small cabin, his eyes no longer seeing a sanctuary or a cage, but a fortress that needed to be defended. The creature had promised to destroy his tower. It had threatened him personally.
"We cant just wait for it to come back," Alex declared. "From now on, we get ready. We make a plan. We think of every possible way it could try to get up here, and we find a way to stop it. No more hiding. We're going to fight it."