I sat with my back to the water tank and stared at my hands. The wraps were frayed along the knuckles. The skin was tougher now. The bones felt ready. A new weapon would be nice, but a simple pitfall or a row of spikes wouldn't cut it against a skinless. It moved too fast, and if it missed the trap by a step, it would still reach me. I needed something that didn't care where it landed. Something that caught it.
'I'm gonna need to hold it, not try to kill it with the trap.'
Hold it long enough for me to finish the job with my hands.
I pictured the way the skinless moved—light on long limbs, quick turns, a leap that came out of nowhere. A cage would be too heavy. A pit would be too slow. A snare could work, but a neck loop would be a gamble. If it missed, I'd be dead.
'A net could work, probably...'
If I could drop a net over it—fast—and tie the net to four corners at once, the lines would pull in different directions when it struggled. The more it fought, the tighter it would hold. I could anchor lines to things that would not move: a railing, a door pillar, iron rings on an old wagon, anything I could scavenge.
I stood and paced the attic, counting steps, thinking of knots. I had seen pictures of old hunting snares in a school book once, but nothing like this. Still, the idea was clear enough: a net above, a trigger below, four anchor lines, and a heavy weight to snap the net down the instant the trigger tripped.
'Rope, nails, hooks, a weight, and something to hang the whole thing from.'
My pack was gone. Most of my tools had burned, snapped, or gotten lost in the last fight. I would need to find everything again.
I took a last drink. I checked the chalk circles at the trap door and the thin ring above my sleeping spot. I listened for husks and heard only the wind.
Then I went scavenging.
ººº
It took almost the whole day.
I moved through empty rooms with sun slanting through broken windows. I pried iron rings from an old door. I pulled a length of wire from a shattered frame and coiled it around my wrist. I found a dull handsaw and a hammer with a loose head. In a burnt store I found a small gimlet, the hand drill kind; it was red with rust, but it turned. In a child's room I cut bedsprings loose, the coils singing like angry bees. I didn't need the springs, but I needed the straight steel hidden in the frame. I bent and broke until I had four thick pieces the length of my hand. Stakes.
Rope took longer. I cut curtain cords from two houses, and from a third I found a long rope tied around a cracked bathtub. It smelled like mildew, but it held. I rolled it up tight and slung it over my shoulder. I grabbed a spool of twine and tied it to my belt. Nails came from a crate tipped in a cellar. They were bent and mixed with old straw. I straightened the worst of them with the hammer.
I found a dented kitchen scale and a sack of sand turned to clumps. I filled two small cloth sacks with sand and tied them shut. Weights. I took a pair of cracked shutters for slats. I pried the hinges and kept the pins.
By the time I got back to the attic, the light had gone red at the edges. My arms ached from carrying. My hands were tired in a way that felt honest. I set everything down in a line on the floor and sat with my back to the tank. My stomach hollowed out and growled.
I hadn't killed any scavengers today. I had no meat. Boiling water would do nothing for hunger.
'Sleep. Eat tomorrow.'
I didn't light the hob. I didn't want the smell creeping out the cracks. I wrapped a blanket around myself and lay on the boards. The house creaked. The tank hummed soft.
Sleep came fast.
ººº
I dreamed of the track behind school, the one with the cracked lane and the weeds. Aiden stood in front of me, bouncing on his toes, hair pushed back with a band that never stayed. He grinned like he always did before a spar.
"Hands up, Luke," he said, shadowboxing in the air between us. "Elbows in. Show me what you got."
We moved slow at first, then faster, laughing when our feet tangled and we both tripped. He stepped left, I stepped wrong, he tapped my shoulder, and I felt the line from heel to knuckle anyway. The sun was warm. The air smelled like cut grass and chalk. He talked about feints and counters and how to break rhythm just enough to land the next thing. His voice rode the wind like it belonged there.
"Again," he said, breath fogging in cool morning air that didn't sting. "Again."
I woke with the word in my ears.
ººº
I built the trap in my head first, then in the attic, then in the street.
In my head, it was clean. In the attic, it was clumsy and loud. I cut a shutter into narrow slats to make a frame, bored holes with the gimlet, and sewed twine back and forth until I had a net the size of a door. It wasn't pretty. Some knots were tight, some loose. I re-tied the worst of them and pulled each line until it creaked. I added cross lines so it would spread without folding. I tied the corners to rope and measured four equal lengths from the center. I tied in the sand weights so the net would drop straight.
I drilled tiny pilot holes into the straight steel and bent the ends into hooks with the hammer head and my foot. Two snapped. I made four more. My thumb throbbed. I wrapped it and kept going.
I made a trigger from two hinge pins and a short piece of slat. One pin sat in a notch. The other pushed against it from the side. If a foot kicked the slat, the pins would slip, the notch would free, and the weight would drop. I tested it with a slap of my hand. It worked on the floor, but the floor did not leap like a skinless.
'Good enough.'
At first light I moved three streets over. I chose a narrow run between two buildings with balconies. I could string the net above and anchor the lines in four corners. I could stand in the middle and not smell my own door. The wind there ran straight. That would carry my scent one way and not back to the attic.
I hauled up the net with rope and swore under my breath when it snagged on a nail. I climbed halfway up a balcony and used the hammer to knock the nail out. A husk wandered on the far side of the square and didn't look up. I froze. It wandered on. I kept working.
Two anchor points were easy: iron rings set in a wall for long-gone shutters. The other two took more time. I set my steel stakes into cracks in old stone and drove them with the hammer until they did not budge. I tied the corner lines to all four anchors with knots I could untie with a tug.
I reused a broken laundry line to hold the net up. I ran the line over the balconies and around a beam like a pulley so the weights would pull the net down fast when the trigger broke. I tied the laundry line to the hinge-pin catch and wired the catch to the slat low to the ground. A trip line ran across the center of the street, ankle height.
I stepped back and looked up. The net hung like a shadow. The ropes ran true. The weighted sacks waited like patient fists.
'It might work. It has to.'
I swept loose grit into the cracks so the slat would sit low and be hard to see. Then I waited.
The sun moved. Wind hissed through broken tiles. Twice I saw husks. I stayed still and let them pass. The first day ended with my stomach hollow again and my mouth dry from breathing slow.
I came back the next morning with a scrap of meat in my pocket. I rubbed it on my sleeve and threw the piece toward the middle of the street. The smell was nothing like fresh, but it was something. I checked knots again. I ran a hand over the slat and made sure it still caught true. Then I waited.
Midday carried ash like snow and made the street a white stripe. No skinless. A dog's skeleton fell from a roof gutter when a beam gave way and landed with a dry clatter. I flinched. Nothing came to look.
A second day passed. The light turned thin and mean. Fatigue wore the edges off my patience. I counted breaths. I recited footwork steps in my head. I thought about Aiden telling me to keep my hands up. I almost pulled the net down to try again somewhere else.
Then I heard it—the soft, quick rake of claws on tile.
Not far. Close enough to feel. Above and a little to my right, over the roofs at the end of the lane. I stood very still and let the sound repeat. The claws paused, then started again, faster. A shadow skimmed over a broken chimney and vanished. I couldn't see its eyes, but I felt the way it tested the air.
'Now.'
I walked out and stood in the middle of the street where the two buildings opened wide to the square. I raised both arms and waved them like signals. Then I jumped, twice, hard, making noise on purpose. My wraps flashed white. The little scrap of meat still lay near the trigger.
The raking stopped. A breath held in the dark.
I shouted and slapped my chest.
It heard me.
The skinless slipped over the roof edge and crouched on the ridge, all exposed muscle and bone—dried and dark red—corded tight. Black veins snaked across every surface like ink under glass. Its arms were long and ended in six-fingered hands tipped with sharp claws that clicked on tile. A long black tongue unfurled to taste the wind. Its eyes were milky and blind, but the way it turned its head told me it could hear my heartbeat and smell my sweat.
It chose the most direct path.
It ran low along the ridge, claws ticking in a hard, quick pattern. It cut the angle and sprang from a cracked gutter, crossing the air in a stretched arc. The muscles along its ribs fluttered dry. The claws opened like six knives. It didn't look at me; it listened for me and scented me.
I did not run. I did not throw. I did not lift my hands.
I let it hear me.
I let it want me.
I stepped back half a stride and set my heel on a chalk mark I'd hidden in a crack. The skinless' shadow grew large and sharp. Its six-fingered hands brushed the balcony edge like a swimmer's at the wall.
It dropped.
Its feet hit the street.
Claws raked forward.
The trip line snapped.
The hinge pins slipped.
Above us, the weights fell—
—and the net came down.