Insurrection (Nevermore #1)(18)

And to cause fear among their enemies.

“Remnants!” he snarled at his team. “Pull back! Fast!”

Josiah barely had time to dodge an attack before a giant, diseased creature grabbed him. Twisting, he turned back into a bird to fly off. He almost didn’t make it. The Remnant swatted at him with a speed that was inhuman—their gift from the Drabs.

No wonder there had been so little activity here on his arrival. The Remnants must had beaten them to it and killed everyone at the base. Their specialty.

Once they had a target, they executed all with extreme prejudice. And without hesitation. Young, old. It didn’t matter. If it breathed and had blood and protein, they made it dinner.

“It’s an infected zone,” he warned his team. “Retreat!”

Mia cursed. “What about the others?”

“If they’re here, it’s too late for them.” They’d already been eaten from the looks of the gore around him.

He didn’t bother to report how much blood, bone and other things he saw strewn about the facility and grounds. That was the thing about Remnants, they were extremely thorough with their slayings.

Not just because they were messy eaters, but because it was a psychological game they played with their enemies. Designed to frighten and intimidate. To mentally debilitate anyone they might face in a fight.

The thought made him sick to his stomach. If only he could do something to help the poor bastards. Both those who’d been caught here by the Remnants, and the Remnants themselves.

Unfortunately, the disease that had created him and the rest of the Scraps, had also created the Remnants. And to his knowledge, there was nothing to be done to cure them.

Larger and faster than the humans of old, the Rems were also highly intelligent. As in IQs that made Stephen Hawking appear average. There was no telling what the Remnants would have been capable of achieving if not for one serious drawback to their disease ... it left them with a rare form of anemia and a vitamin deficiency that caused them to crave raw, fresh meat to such an extent that they’d eat any live protein source they could lay their hands on.

Even other people.

Which unfortunately caused a rare brain disease related to Kuru that resulted in tremors and a neurodegeneration that would ultimately kill them. Sadly, they would all eventually die in miserable agony with something none of them had wanted to contract.

Thanks, Drabs.

The gray bastards had left the once great human race with barely anything that was recognizable.

Disgusted, he headed back to his men.

The moment he reached them and transformed, Mia grabbed his arm with a panic he understood all too well. She’d lost her younger sister and father to a Remnant attack, and had only escaped because her father had sacrificed himself so that she and a small group could launch a helicopter out of their nest. Her sister had been snatched right out of the seat beside her as they launched, and her last sight of her family had been the Remnants tearing them apart.

To this day, she had nightmares from it.

“Did they scratch you?”

Josiah shook his head. “I’m not infected.”

“You sure?”

“We’ll know by morning. If I start to eat one of you, shoot me.”

Unamused, she grimaced at him. “Believe me, it’ll be my pleasure, Commander.”

“Just remember to tie my shoelaces when you bury me.”

Mia rolled her eyes at their old zombie joke. Which wasn’t too far from the truth. If only the Remnants were zombies. At least then they’d be stupid.

And slow.

But even once the neurodegeneration kicked in, the Rems could live for years with their genius level IQ, and their superior strength and reflexes that would rival Olympic athletes. That was what made them so lethal. Like Josiah and his Scraps, they wanted to reclaim the earth, too, and they were the ones making problems for the rest of them, as they kept going up against the Drabs directly and threatening their authority.

Only if the Remnants took it over, they’d use the rest of them as a food source, since the Scrap uncontaminated flesh was what they needed to prolong their lives and stave-off the eventual madness that came with it.

Their own flesh didn’t have the same nutrients in it. Apparently, whatever had caused the mutation to them had also destroyed whatever it was they needed to ingest. That little nugget only existed in the flesh of the Scraps and Drabs.

Lucky them.

So, like the Drabs, the Remnants captured as many of the Scraps as they could in an effort to use them for experiments to see if they could find a cure for their own disease.

And when they couldn’t find that gold nugget of happiness, they ate them.

If the Remnants could score a Relic—humans with pure, untainted DNA—then it was a stellar day indeed. Relics were the holy grail of all creatures. About as rare as finding a unicorn in a pink tutu, dancing on the third Sunday of the sixth month during the light of a full moon.

No one had seen or heard of one in decades. They were thought to have all died out long ago.

Sighing, Josiah glanced around his gathered team. “Sorry, guys. The risk is too high now. Between the Drabs and the Rems ... we need to cut our losses and get back to base.”

With a reluctant sigh, Mia and the others nodded. “Understood, Commander.”

They might understand, but it didn’t make it right. They’d lost an entire team today. No one liked that.