Death Valley - (A Fall Out Boy Apocalypse Fanfic)

Prologue

PROLOGUE

On the 23rd of January in the year 2013, a huge black cloud descended on a small town in the desert named Death Valley. Concerned, the locals phoned the state policemen, who alerted several scientists. The meteorologists dismissed it as a rain cloud, probably one of the biggest in the year. The locals were prepared for the storm of the month, many choosing to stay home. It was not until later in the day did the meteorologists discover that the cloud wasn't normal. It hung in the air, motionless, not affected by the dry, harsh wind coming in from the desert. Upon further investigation, the meteorologists found something highly unusual: the black cloud wasn't a rain cloud after all, but a huge, pulsing swarm of what looked like wasps.

Alerted, the meteorologists called some of the most reknown entomologists. They intoxicated the large swarm by gassing them, and when the large black cloud fell out of the sky and rained on the little town of Death Valley, the scientists sent volunteers to clean the mess up. The wasps were then sent to a laboratory in the city. There, the entomologists set upon investigating the wasps, trying to determine their species, and where they had come from. What they found made them uncomfortable - the swarm of wasps was indeed the biggest ever discovered, and the wasps themselves were unusual - the entomologists had never seen anything the likes of them. Measuring 4 inches, the wasps had long, shiny black bodies. Their stingers were curved and barbed, probably poisonous, according to Dr Zelda Freeman, one of the entomologists. The entomologists decided to dig a little deeper by experimenting on them.

That was when it all started to go wrong.

The wasps weren't intoxicated from the gas after all, and they were one of the most aggressive species ever discovered. In a matter of minutes, the laboratory was in pandemonium, and the two surviving entomologists, Dr Lisa Fletcher and Dr Indra Suresh fled for their lives, but neither made it far.

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On the 24th of January, a few state policemen visited the entomologists' lab for a daily report. What they found raised the hair on their hands and neck.

The team of 9 entomologists were only down to 7, and the 7 were a sight to behold. All of them had dark purple bruises around their necks, and the flesh of their bodies were swelling, turning blue like the skin of the dead. Their eyes were red, unseeing, but what scared the policemen most were the barb-shaped hooks protruding from every inch of their skin. When they heard the policemen, the 7 entomologists attacked.

Only one of the policemen managed to flee, a Brad Johnson.

Little did Brad know that he hadn't left the laboratory alone.

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Lisa Fletcher took the next flight to her hometown Mercy Falls, Minnesota, infecting her family, her neighbours, her sister and her brother-in-law, who left for New York on that same day. Lucy Searles and her husband, Melvin Searles, infected a total of eight people upon reaching New York.

Indra Suresh boarded an airplane straight to his hometown in Sri Lanka, infecting three flight stewardesses and the rest of the passengers sharing his cabin.

Brad Johnson drove to the town of Pahrump, Nevada, stopping for cold coffee and hot pancakes at a restaurant on the way. He infected the sexy waitress, the burly chef and two locals from Spring Valley, Nevada. These two would later infect a grocer, a barber, and a few people on the streets of Spring Valley.

And the cycle continues.