If you are asleep when the first carrion scavenger lands and lays eggs, taking a tiny, numbed bite of flesh without waking you, within minutes more flying adults will be drawn by pheromones to the same spot to lay, and in less than two hours your entire body can be covered in a living, wriggling blanket of them. The saliva from their mouthparts has a potent, evolved numbing effect, so people sleeping deeply rarely notice the initial invasion. It's a silent, biological ambush.
Species evolution is a terrifying marvel. The original carrion scavenger from before the collapse was no bigger than the tip of a needle. Now it can grow to the size of a grain of rice, then larger. Later, when well-fed, they become chubby, grub-like, and because overall food is scarce, they are no longer picky. They will eat anything organic that contains energy, wood, paper, cloth, mold, and of course, flesh.
In the past, carrion scavengers only laid eggs on corpses, a clean ecological role. Now they lay on living people, a shift from decomposer to parasite and predator. A female flying carrion scavenger is about the size of a large mosquito. Once she lays on a human body, a single clutch of a thousand eggs can hatch into tiny, wriggling larvae that reach needle-tip size overnight, burrowing and feeding.
Jing Shu understood these carrion scavengers all too well, with a knowledge born of horrific intimacy. They were her decade-long nightmare. Within three days, the larvae mature. Females metamorphose into flying bugs that seek new food sources and new hosts to lay upon.
Males keep growing, longer and larger, becoming sedentary nutrient stores. When the species has enough food, they store energy as fat. When the species lacks food, males become the emergency rations for the females and larvae. They do not develop wings. In the desperate fifth year of the apocalypse, Jing Shu had survived for weeks on a gruel of boiled, tasteless male bugs, a memory that still turned her stomach.
This species is powerful, dominant, for a reason. It is ruthless even to itself, a perfect engine of survival.
The other day, when Shangguan Jun had tormented that community auntie, he had dunked her in a pool of polluted water teeming with carrion scavengers. Those long, writhing, pale bugs were males. They constantly ate whatever drifted into the water, serving as mobile, living stored rations for the species, ready to sacrifice themselves when needed. A chilling efficiency.
In her previous life, Jing Shu never slept without intense wariness, her skin crawling, terrified of being bitten in her sleep or having eggs laid on her. She had worn multiple layers even in the heat.
Wang Qiqi posted in the community group, the text grim: "@everyone. Tragic news. Auntie Liu from Building No. 3 was infested by carrion scavengers last night while sleeping. When she was found this morning, her whole body was crawling with them, and only a skeleton wrapped in skin remained. Reminder: please be extremely vigilant when you sleep. Seal windows, use nets, check yourselves."
Wang Cuihua sent a voice message, her voice strained: "I put up a mosquito net. It was useless, too loose. The things crawled through the weave. My face was covered in bites this morning. Does anyone have any fine gauze or spare fabric? I need another sealed layer over the net."
[Fat Girl No. 25]:"We traded away every last scrap of cloth for work credits last week! If I had known this would happen, I would have kept some! I'm using tape to seal the window cracks now."
Wang Qiqi added, his tone businesslike: "Also, the five people who went missing from the community a few days ago are still unaccounted for. Presumed dead. If there is no news after seven days, I will apply for official death certificates. Then we can legally enter homes with no surviving relatives and inventory what they left behind. Old rules apply: I take a triple share for organizing and processing."
No one objected to Wang Qiqi's cut anymore. He had proven his value, leading the community to meat and water through his resourcefulness and connections. His leadership tax was accepted.
[Feng No. 3]:"Great. Maybe I can go find some spare bowls in those apartments. Mine were crawling with maggots today from a bit of leftover rice. If they weren't white, I would have thought they were carrion scavenger larvae. I almost threw up."
The official news channels also ran nonstop warnings about the carrion scavenger danger. The science channel host finally got to crow a little, his voice a mix of grim satisfaction and doom. "See. We told you. Carrion scavengers are going to rule the world and become the new apex species. At this reproduction and adaptation rate, within three months all other animal life and unprotected organic resources will be under their domain."
Somehow, despite their defenses, many carrion scavengers had found their way into Jing Shu's villa as well, drawn by the warmth, moisture, and life.
Thankfully, the villa had its own ecosystem of defenses: the insectivorous frogs placed in every room and Xiao Dou, the mutant chicken, who patrolled with a voracious appetite for anything that moved. Jing Shu also placed several plump frogs in Grandma Jing's room. After Wu You'ai's abduction, Third Aunt Jing Lai, shaken, had moved into the villa's guest room for a few nights too. Everyone felt the outside was far too unsafe. Now, with the added security of patrol cars outside the villa and armed police on duty 24 hours a day, a condition of Yang Yang's ongoing operation against Zhetian, they had an extra layer of protection. Until the top leader of Zhetian and the second-in-command Shangguan Jun were captured, the patrols would not leave.
Every day Jing Shu sent the officers on duty a thermos of boiled water or some simple fried dough sticks. A pint of gratitude prevented a ton of potential resentment. Small, consistent favors were enough to maintain good relations.
Lately, Jing An had brought home several chickens and ducks from the Livestock Breeding Center to raise privately, as per his allowed quota. The center itself had been hit by a disaster. Dozens of precious breeding birds had died in a single night because carrion scavengers had infiltrated a poorly sealed ventilation shaft and laid eggs on them. Some connected households who had taken animals home to raise had failed in their care, and entire pigs and cattle had been eaten alive from the inside out by scavenger larvae.
The infection, once started, spread to other poultry in the center with terrifying speed.
So they actively encouraged employees to bring animals home if they had secure facilities. Conditions at Jing Shu's home were better, sealed, air-conditioned, and crucially, had active frog predators. There were visibly fewer carrion scavengers.
All the dead poultry at the center were tagged with inventory numbers. Whoever was responsible for a death had to answer for it, the loss deducted from their future work credits or rations. Quite a few households with connections had been demoted on the spot, and their recommenders were punished as well, losing prestige.
Yes, to get into a coveted place like the Livestock Breeding Center or an agricultural base now, you needed a strong recommendation from someone with influence. If you made a catastrophic mistake and couldn't cover the loss, your recommender paid a price too. It was a system of mutual responsibility.
"Dad, we need more sealing strips, the high-density foam kind, and all kinds of industrial adhesive," Jing Shu said one evening, pointing at the delicate cucumber blossoms in their indoor hydroponic trays. "The tempered glass panels in the greenhouse section have to be truly gapless, and the house doors and windows need perfect seals. Otherwise these crops will suffer. There are corners and crevices the frogs can't reach, and once eggs are laid there, it will be a disaster. We also need to prepare for next year's torrential rains. I don't want red nematodes or worse flowing in through cracks." Her planning was always months ahead.
"Fine. Leave it to me. I will find a way to get some," Jing An said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. He would have to ask Old Liu from the maintenance department for glue again. He really didn't want to contact those former colleagues of over twenty years; he had seen their true, selfish faces clearly enough during the early chaos. But for his family's safety, he would swallow his pride.
For now, as a stopgap, they would spray the last of their commercial mosquito repellent over the entire villa's exterior seams and vents. Wasteful or not, they would use it. When it ran out, they could plant pest-repellent herbs like lemongrass and mint and mix their own solutions later.
Su Lanzhi was under heavy pressure at work. In the other twelve districts of Wu City, most of the oyster mushroom harvests cultivated by the various branches of the Planting Industry R&D Management Department had been devastated, eaten by carrion scavengers that thrived in the warm, humid, mold-rich growing halls. She lived in fear that her own department would be next. Fortunately, Jing Shu had quietly placed several hundred of her frogs at the department weeks ago. Combined with constant air conditioning, which slowed the bugs, and clean water misting, which the frogs loved, that alone had kept their crops relatively safe so far.
Right now, Wu City's population consumed more mushrooms than anything else. No matter how bad they tasted, they cost few work credits, and with no other reliable choices, people had to choke down mushroom rice or starve.
But mushroom cultivation also involved inevitable mold, which carrion scavengers loved. No matter how the staff tried to defend with nets and poisons, more than half the city's total mushroom harvest had been lost to infestation. In the coming days, feeding Wu City's remaining population would be a severe problem.
Very few households still had private grain in reserve. If government rations were cut even for a few days, who knew how many more would die from starvation or the riots that would follow.
On that same stressful day, Minister Niu Mou himself summoned Jing Shu to his office and pre-ordered almost all of her second batch of frogs, over a thousand, and even wanted to put a deposit down for the third batch. The crisis had made her frogs a strategic commodity.
The second batch numbered a little over a thousand. Jing Shu left two hundred with Su Lanzhi's department for ongoing protection, and the rest were sold to Niu Mou for distribution to other critical food production sites. In exchange, Jing Shu received 500 work credits, a small fortune, an allotment of 300 kilowatt-hours of electricity added to her villa's grid account, 200 bottles of mineral water, and a personal favor owed by Minister Niu Mou, an intangible but potentially invaluable asset.
Water was so scarce now that even a minister couldn't boast about his earlier offer of "two bottles per frog" anymore. He had to scrape together a mix of goods. In total, the 300 kWh of electricity, combined with their existing solar panels, could keep Jing Shu's home powered for several months, saving a large stash of gasoline that would have otherwise gone into the generator. It was a smart trade.
Jing Shu didn't care much about the exact number of water bottles received. What she truly needed was a legitimate cover story. From now on, when she or her family pulled out a bottle of mineral water, people would assume it was bartered from Minister Niu Mou in exchange for frogs. That was far better than having a basement study stacked with hundreds of cases of water with no plausible explanation. It normalized their relative plenty. In the apocalypse, a believable source was as important as the resource itself.