Scavengers by Cynthia Echterling

What does it mean to be human? It is one thing for anthropologist, Thomas Martin, to study the savages who live in the ruins, eating rats, garbage and their own dead. It is quite another to become one of them and survive. Scavengers is a post-apocalyptic story of devastation and rebirth. It may have been a war as the government claimed, an accident, a natural disaster. No one remembered, but generations later, the descendents of the North Americans, long in exile in South America, return to the devastation. From the ruins of past glory, they rebuild their cities surrounded by walls to keep out the savage descendents of those who were left behind. Officially classified as subhuman, these survivors, eke out a living, hunting vermin and wild dogs. Now, many live off the government surplus, dumped outside the walls too keep them at bay. Fear of dregs and disease keeps people in this city and under government control. Dr. Thomas Martin,is determined to learn the truth about dregs, obsessed with the idea that dregs are fully human, brings a scavenger into the lab for research and proves that dregs are capable of speech. In so doing he sets off a chain of events that uncovers a government conspiracy and forces him to escape into the ruins. His lab technician, Paul Raymond and former lover, anthropologist Catherine Fuller work to find the truth about why the Institute for Medical Research wanted Martin dead and work to foil the plans of the Institute and the Militia to take care of the dreg problem once and for all.