Everyone remembered it like it was yesterday. Christmas, 1999. The more technophobic branches of society were busy fearing Y2K. Some apocalyptic events due to a computer bug.

Everyone wished they were that lucky. A quick death via the Walmart version of Skynet. What a time to be alive.

But no. Instead, the apocalypse came in the fashion many were unlikely to actually believe. Everybody's religious until actual angels are spotted. That's what happened. And then, people disappeared. Remember all those religious texts about The Rapture? God's chosen people ascend to the heavens and the rest of us are left behind to confront the apocalypse via legions from Hell.

Hundreds of millions of people around the world vanished in an instant. Which in the grand scale of things is already problematic enough. But it's not the people that was the problem. It's what those people were in the middle of doing, at the moment of being connected to God's Wi-Fi.

Vehicles crashed. Multiple infrastructure services, and resources collapsed for a couple of weeks. And generally the world shut down for most of a month. This isn't including things like mass panic, small civil wars, and generally idiocy that tends to occur when people assume it's the end of the world. You know, the usual.

Eat your heart out Y2K.

Then supposedly there would be several years of societal collapse and destruction before the second coming of Jesus.

"Well, Jesus never showed up. And neither did Satan or any demons. So I'd say we're in the clear." Parker said with a grimace. The irony wasn't lost on him.

"That's what I'm saying." Vinay agreed.

The pair continued scanning the various things around the room. In the 25 years since The Rapture, science had truly taken the wheel. Our differences were much more trivial than figuring out what actually happened that day. At least to learn why they each wore a cryptic symbol on their heads from that day forward.

Parker remembered the hours after it scratched itself in on him. A fun thing to occur immediately after losing your family. His mother and brother vanished, his father was killed when their driveless truck hit a retaining wall.

Vinay didn't fare much better. Famine visited his part of the world when much of the local farming community got deleted. Most of his family who didn't disappear starved.

"You know the thing that gets me." Vinay began, as they began working on the large skeleton in front of them.

"Hmm? What's that?" Parker agreed as they let the AI program begin reconstructing the odd symbols they found in the clothing.

"It didn't just take Christians."

Parker sighed. "I kinda' assumed that. The whole world doesn't believe in the same things. That'd just be vanity to think that."

"I know." Vinay continued. "Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims. Mormons."

"Exactly. The whole world got affected. Plenty of people told me their loved ones and friends got taken. Even people who didn't believe."

"So what does that tell you."

"Angels, God, or not..." Parker assumed. "It picked us at random."

"Like tending to a crop." Vinay explained as he checked the scans of the clothing. The symbols matched language used in the symbols on their foreheads.

"What does it say?" Parker asked from the skeleton.

"Do not harvest." Vinay paused. "Not fit for consumption."

The reveal was only a couple of years earlier. But the world erupted in confusion yet again at its translation.

"We're just food for them." Parker theorized.

Vinay continued reading what he could see. "We don't necessarily know that."

"If it was a rescue, you'd say it was a rescue. Unless we're talking tuberculosis, there's usually only one other meaning for the word 'consumption'."

Vinay grimaced at the idea. "We're the flock, they're the shepherds. Did I get that right?"

"Close enough." Parker brushed off. "So what happened to this guy? Thought they weren't able to be killed."

"You'd think that." Vinay said as he checked a work tablet. "Turns out being hit by a 747 at cruising speed does the trick."

They both looked over the shattered bones. The fanged jaw slack and broken. The wings that had been reduced to fragments.

"World's largest bird strike." Parker answered.

Violeta, their team's photographer, circled the body incessantly. She was busy snapping photos of the bones for later research. With new technology, came new chances to investigate past discoveries. She was there to document it all. She wasn't a fan of banter however; and so she continued silently despite their observation.

"Everything that comes in here just suggests what we keep talking about." Vinay said as he rested against a counter. "We're just food."

"What concerns me." Violeta spoke. "Every child born has the mark too."

"Not fit for consumption." Parker repeated.

"Yes." She said before setting her camera down. "But what if someone is born without it? After all this time?"

"...Be prepared." Vinay said as he looked at the bones again. "Because I think they're coming back."

Little bit of eldritch horror. Just a little. r/Jamaican_Dynamite