If you are asleep when the first carrion scavenger lays eggs and eats a bit of flesh without waking you, within minutes more flying bugs will arrive to lay, and in less than two hours your entire body can be covered. The saliva from their mouthparts has a numbing effect, so people sleeping deeply rarely notice.
Species evolution is a marvel. The original carrion scavenger was no bigger than a needle tip. Now it can grow much larger. Later, they become chubby, and because food is scarce they are no longer picky. They will eat anything that contains energy.
In the past, carrion scavengers only laid eggs on corpses. Now they lay on living people. A female flying carrion scavenger is about the size of a mosquito. Once she lays on a human body, a thousand eggs can hatch into tiny wriggling larvae that reach needle-tip size overnight.
Jing Shu understood these carrion scavengers all too well. They were her nightmare. Within three days they mature. Females become flying bugs that seek food and new places to lay.
Males keep growing, longer and larger. When the species has enough food, they store energy. When the species lacks food, males become rations. They do not become flying bugs. In the fifth year of the apocalypse, Jing Shu survived on male bugs.
This species is powerful for a reason. It is ruthless to itself.
The other day, when Shangguan Jun tormented that community auntie, he had dunked her in a pool of polluted water full of carrion scavengers. Those long, writhing bugs were males. They constantly ate, serving as mobile stored rations for the species, ready to sacrifice themselves when needed.
In her previous life, Jing Shu never slept without wariness, terrified of being bitten or having eggs laid on her.
Wang Qiqi posted: "@everyone. Auntie Liu from Building No. 3 was egged by carrion scavengers last night. When she was found today, her whole body was crawling with them, and only a skeleton remained. Reminder: be vigilant when you sleep."
Wang Cuihua sent a voice message: "I put up a mosquito net. It was useless. My face was covered in bites this morning. Does anyone have gauze? I need another layer over the net."
[Fat Girl No. 25]: "We traded away every scrap of cloth for work credits. If I had known, I would have kept some!"
Wang Qiqi added: "The five people who went missing from the community a few days ago are still unaccounted for. They may already be dead. If there is no news after seven days, I will apply for death certificates. Then we can enter homes with no surviving relatives and inherit what they left. Old rules: I take triple share."
No one objected to Wang Qiqi anymore. He had led the community to meat and water.
[Feng No. 3]: "Great. I can go find some bowls. Mine were crawling with maggots today. If they were not white, I would have thought they were carrion scavengers."
The news channels also ran nonstop reports about the danger of carrion scavengers. The science channel finally got to crow a little. "See. Carrion scavengers are going to rule the world and become the top of the food chain. At this rate, within three months all other life and resources will be under their domain."
Somehow, many carrion scavengers had flown into Jing Shu's villa as well.
Thankfully, the villa had frogs and Xiao Dou. Jing Shu also placed several frogs in Grandma Jing's room. After Wu You'ai left, Third Aunt Jing Lai moved into the villa for a few nights too. Everyone felt the outside was far too unsafe. Now there were patrol cars outside the villa and armed police on duty 24 hours a day. Until the leader of Zhetian and the second-in-command Shangguan Jun were captured, the patrol cars would not leave.
Every day Jing Shu sent them some boiled water. A pint of gratitude prevents a ton of resentment. Small favors were enough.
Lately, Jing An had brought home several poultry from the Livestock Breeding Center to raise. The center had been hit by a disaster. Dozens of birds had died in a single slipup because carrion scavengers laid on them. Some connected households had failed to care for their animals, and entire pigs and cattle had been eaten by carrion scavengers.
The infection spread to other poultry with terrifying speed.
So they brought the animals home to raise. Conditions at home were better, and crucially there were fewer carrion scavengers.
All the dead poultry were tagged with numbers. Whoever was responsible for a death had to answer for it. Quite a few households with ties were demoted on the spot, and their recommenders were punished as well.
Yes, to get into a Livestock Breeding Center or an agricultural base you needed a recommendation. If you made a mistake and could not cover the loss, your recommender paid.
"Dad, we need sealing strips and all kinds of adhesive," Jing Shu said, pointing at the cucumber blossoms in the yard. "The tempered glass has to be truly gapless, and the doors and windows perfectly sealed. Otherwise these crops will suffer. There are places the frogs cannot reach, and once eggs are laid, it will be a disaster. We also need to prepare for next year's torrential rains. I do not want red nematodes flowing in."
"Fine. Leave it to me. I will find a way to get some," Jing An said, thinking it through. He would have to ask Old Liu for glue again. He really did not want to contact those colleagues of over twenty years. He had seen their true faces clearly enough.
For now, they would spray mosquito repellent over the entire villa. Wasteful or not, they would use it. When it ran out, they could plant herbs and mix their own later.
Su Lanzhi was under heavy pressure. In the other twelve districts of Wu City, most of the mushrooms cultivated by the Planting Industry R&D Management Department had been eaten by carrion scavengers. She feared her own department would be eaten as well. Fortunately, Jing Shu had placed several hundred frogs at the department. They had constant air conditioning and clean water. That alone kept the crops safe.
Right now Wu City consumed more mushrooms than anything else. No matter how bad they tasted, they cost few work credits, and with no other choices people had to eat mushroom rice.
But mushroom cultivation also involved mold, which carrion scavengers loved. No matter how staff tried to defend against them, more than half the harvest had been eaten. In the coming days, feeding Wu City's population would be a problem.
Very few households still had grain in reserve. If rations were cut for a few days, who knew how many more would die.
On that same day, Minister Niu Mou invited Jing Shu over and pre-ordered almost all of her second batch of frogs, and even wanted to reserve the third batch.
The second batch counted a little over a thousand. Jing Shu left two hundred with Su Lanzhi's department, and the rest went to Niu Mou. In exchange, Jing Shu received 500 work credits, 300 kilowatt-hours of electricity, 200 bottles of mineral water, and a favor owed by Minister Niu Mou.
Water was so scarce now that even Minister Niu Mou could not boast about two bottles per frog anymore. He scraped together other goods. In total, the 300 kWh plus solar could keep Jing Shu's home powered for a few months, saving a stash of gasoline that would have gone into the generator.
Jing Shu did not care much about how many bottles of water she received. What she needed was a legitimate cover story. From now on, when she pulled out mineral water, people would know it was bartered from Minister Niu Mou, which was better than having a study stacked with hundreds of cases and no explanation.