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This is my first time being alone with Scrap. Of all the men here, he’s closest to my age. Late twenties to my twenty-years-even. He’s also the smallest of the men, but that doesn’t mean he’s small. He’s six feet and packed with lean muscle. His head is shaved on the sides, and he wears what hair he has in a styled faux-mohawk that he’s dyed blond. His eyes are a vibrant green, and they look stunning against his caramel skin tone. There’s a slight Hispanic accent to his voice.
“Nah,” he says, leaning a hip on the workbench. Its surface is covered with a rubber mat, I guess so small parts don’t roll around and get lost. “It’s a snare gun. For that pelican you and Doc saw.” He pats the rifle, looking like a proud papa.
Up close, I can see the different finishes. The part that goes against your shoulder is a matte black, but the part that juts down for you to grab onto with your opposite hand is a shinier black with finger grips and a trigger. The barrel-cone-thing is gray, and there are supporting rods along the inside that look like thin PVC pipes.
Scrap indicates the wide mouth of the cone. “You load the net in here and push it in little by little. Then you slide the four weights into these channels.” He taps the four PVC pipes in turn. “They click into place, and that’s how you know they’re locked and loaded.” Hefting the big rifle up to his shoulder, he aims it, netless, at the wall of tires. The gun is huge and looks heavy, but Scraps arms are solid and support the thing like it weighs nothing. “The grip here holds the air charge.” He twists the hand-grip thingy, and it slides free to lay cradled in his palm. He tilts it to show me the metal nozzle inside. “This cartridge is 500 psi and will launch the net fifty feet. If you need to go further, you can attach this portable air compressor here.” He points to the place where the cartridge had just been released. “Just have to adapt the air compressor so you can wear it on your back.” He pats a squat tank on the workbench.
“Only drawback is you have to load the net each time. I’ve got a commercial net gun with interchangeable net cones, so you don’t have to stop to poke the net back in, but those only give you a range of, like twenty feet, max, and the nets are small.” He shrugs. “This’ll be better for something up in a tree or flying by. Just have to have good aim. Which, I do.”
“Wow. So you, like, made this from scratch?”
He pulls a face that says,no-way.“Nah. Cobbled it together from other shit—uh, stuff—I had on hand. Didn’t machine any parts or anything. That woulda taken me all week.”
“Well, it’s really cool. And it’s okay to swear in front of me. Everyone else does.”
He grins. “Fuckin’-A, then.” He lowers the rifle to the bench and says, “Wanna take it out for a test drive?” He waggles his brows suggestively, and I can’t help laughing at his antics. I wasn’t sure what to make of Scrap at first, but I’m starting to see he’s an amicable, flirty guy who doesn’t take things too seriously.
“Sure,” I say, all cool, when inside I’m squealing with delight. I love stuff like this. I used to play paintball with my brother, and my family would have these Nerf wars in the back yard where we’d make cardboard shields and body armor. “Can I try it?”
“You bet. We’ll set up some targets.”
Scrap shows me how to load the net, then piles supplies into a canvas-sided, rugged-wheeled cart. With the rifle, air compressor, and a few tools in tow, he leads the way out the back door of the shop. I follow him along a trail with switchbacks that descends to a wide, flat, gravelly area closed off on three sides by dense forest, a cliff, and a rocky pond. We take turns shooting at old milk-jugs filled with water set on top of metal barrels and wooden sawhorses. The rifle has a satisfying kick with the 500 psi cartridge, but when you hook up the air compressor and set it to 1,000 psi, it’s a bit much. By the time we hear Shep’s dinner bell, I’m pretty sure I’ll have bruises in the crook of my right shoulder. But I’m not complaining. Target practice with Scrap is the most fun I’ve had since riding the zip line with Doc the other day.
“So, you’re going to try and capture the pelican?” I ask Scrap at dinner. When I chose to sit with him, you could practically see his swagger triple in size.
I blow on a spoonful of savory venison stew to cool it. “When Jud and I saw a bird that didn’t belong in this area, he just shot it.” I remember Jud challenging me after he felled the heron.“You gonna tell me I’m an asshole for killing this thing?”But I didn’t think he was an asshole. I’m not some shrinking violet who thinks hunters are brutes. My dad used to hunt. And my brother went with him sometimes. I liked when they would bring home quail to eat. I figured Jud had his reasons for shooting the bird, and I told him as much. Even after knowing him just a short time, I knew the Judge of Eagle Peak was fair. It might not be everyone’s type of fairness, but it’s fairness in some form. “Why try to catch it alive? Why not just shoot it like the other one?”
Scrap takes a swig of beer. “We need it alive so we can find out why these southern birds are showing up around here.”
“Couldn’t it just be, like, some kind of migration, or something?”
Scrap shakes his head. “Nah. Not at this time of year, not when we haven’t seen any around here all summer. Rev says these—” He makes a circular motion with his spoon hand. “Herons and pelicans, if they were migrating, we’d see flocks of them, not just one or two.”
“Yeah, Rev said he thinks something’s going on. Something…dark, I guess?” I make it a question and shrug, not sure what there might be to fear from a couple of birds.
Scrap nods, looking uncharacteristically serious. “Rev’s got a good sense for that kind of thing.”
I frown. “So, even if you catch one of these birds, how would that give you answers? I mean, it’s not like you can talk to a bird and ask what it’s doing here?”
“Yeah, but Rev can spend time with it and sort of, like, feel it out, and Jud? He said the heron made his Gift work. So, he’ll want to spend some time with it too, see what else he can learn.”
I blink at what Scrap just revealed about Jud. “He didn’t tell me the heron made his Gift work. I thought that only worked for people.”
“Me too, babe. Me too.”
“So,” I wave my fork in concentration. “If he shot it, that means, it was…bad?” How can a bird be bad or good or stand in need of any kind of judgment?
Scrap lifts a muscled shoulder. He’s wearing one of his trademark ribbed tanks even though it’s a bit chilly in the lodge, tonight. Methinks he might be showing off his guns for my benefit. “I guess. Not my job to question the Judge. All I know is Rev gave him hell for offing the heron and says he wants the next bird alive.”
Scrap changes the subject to music, and we talk about the bands and styles we each like. He’s unique among the guys in the way he makes me feel like a normal girl again. He makes me feel like I’m hanging out with—maybe even flirting with—a normal guy. None of the other men here are the kind of guy I used to be interested in before the Virus. Except Scrap. I could see myself gravitating toward someone like him at college. He’s someone I could have had fun with and let off steam with. A peer. A…friend. I sneak a peek at his tan, muscled arm so close to mine. A friend with benefits?
After dinner, Scrap tells me to meet him back in the common room in an hour. He has something he needs to do. I take advantage of the free time and seek out Grim in his camper. I bring him plates of food at breakfast and dinner most days, but the brief embraces and kisses we steal in those moments aren’t nearly enough.
I feel a little guilty for knocking on Grim’s door while I’m waiting to take Scrap to my cabin, but that doesn’t stop me. The ache in my middle when I think of how much I miss Grim is too much to bear. I don’t know if I’d go so far as to call Grim my favorite, because that takes away from the others, but there’s a depth to what I feel for him that hasn’t bloomed yet for anyone else. Jud and Doc come closest, and I miss spending time with them, too, but not with the same ache I feel for Grim.
The camper creaks with heavy footfalls as Grim moves toward the door. My insides swoop like a leaf caught on an autumn breeze at the prospect of seeing him again.
The lock clicks undone from the inside, and the door creaks open the barest sliver. Grim never opens the door wide. His skin is deadly to the touch. Even though he always has layers on, he takes extreme precautions to protect the others. That’s why he spends most of his time out here in his camper, eating and sleeping apart from the everyone else.
