As the father and son were talking, a middle-aged woman who seemed surprisingly young for her age, had entered the living room from the kitchen. She had long and wavy, dyed brown hair with blonde highlights, and was wearing a paint-covered white sweater, with similarly stained sweatpants.

“Oh my god, what happened to your arm!?” Michael’s mother quickly rushed over and attempted to grab his wounded forearm, but he swiftly dodged backwards.

He yelled “I just took a fucking shower! Don’t touch me, damn it!” Even if his veins sealed up swiftly, the injury still appeared extremely gruesome.

“Stop cussing! Mike, I think we need to take him to the hospital, look at that! Did you get shot?!” The blue-eyed woman shouted, as she pointed towards the holes in Michael’s arm, while forcing her husband to give his opinion.

“Hun, I can’t even see anything, so hold on a second… Let’s go into the kitchen, where we actually have lights that work!” However, it was at that moment when the mostly-naked, bearded man started coughing violently.

Michael complained “Oi, stop freaking out! I’m perfectly healthy! Ack, urp~…” He suddenly felt as if he had bugs crawling up his esophagus, and almost vomited, but instead just belched uncontrollably.

Then a few dozen glowing green wasps started flying out of his mouth, as he choked violently. He yelled “Shit, run, what the hell are you idiots just standing there for?!”

Unfortunately, it was already too late, because both of his parents had already been stung dozens of times by those hornets. They didn’t even have the chance to realize what was happening before their bodies were paralyzed.

His mother, Debra, was originally allergic to ‘normal’ bee-stings, so it wasn’t surprising that she was the first to die. Her throat and face had swelled up until the point where she wasn’t even recognizable anymore, as she fell onto the carpet and started bleeding profusely from her mouth, eyes, nostrils and ears. On the other hand, his father’s flesh seemed to melt away, leaving nothing but a rancid puddle of glowing green gunk. The bones remained, but that was all.

While Michael was still trying to process what he just witnessed, he heard several explosions and shrill screams coming from the television behind him. Ignoring the strange, dying wasps, he turned around and watched the chaos unfolding downtown.

The reporter screamed “What is that?! Dear God! Zambies! They’re comin outta the houses! Fuck this shit, we gotta get the hell outta here! John, no~! Ah~, help~! No~, I don’t wanna-ugh~!”

As he witnessed the beautiful brown-skinned woman having her throat torn out by a police officer, with bloodshot eyes, Michael let out a long sigh. Even though he couldn’t ‘see’ them, the spirits of his parents had been swiftly sucked into the center of his back. There were also hundreds of other wisps of all different colors, converging into his torso from all over the city. Not only humans, but all sorts of animals and plants were dying constantly, especially during such a catastrophic event.

After stepping over his mother’s corpse, he slowly walked over to the kitchen table and picked up her cellphone. It was vibrating, and by the time he managed to slide the ‘answer’ button across the screen successfully, it was too late.

Thus, he had to call his brother back. Michael didn’t cry, scream, or seem to lose his composure at all; it was as if he wasn’t even fazed by the horrific scene that he had just experienced.

“Hey, Adam… Yeah, they seem more like ‘Thirty Seven Days Afterward’ style zombies, rather than the gimpy ones from ‘The Crawling Dead’. Yup, our parents are already gone… No, they got stung by bees. Anyway, you’re at your college now, right? Okay, steal a car or just like, gather up as many of your smarter friends as possible and go north. Meet up with John, Butter and Kitty in Buffalo, then head up into Canada; either that or you could take your chances with a flight to the UK… I think your best bet is probably somewhere really cold and without many people around. You always said you wanted to go to Sweden, hehehe~… Who knows? My plot-armor is probably pretty strong, but this ain’t a fuckin T.V. show. More than likely, Baltimore is gonna get nuked before the outbreak of whatever the hell this is, has a chance to spread. The government’s been preparing for this kinda shit for a long-ass time now. If I can somehow survive, I’ll see you again someday… one way or another. I love you, be careful, and… have fun?” After having that relatively short conversation, he hung up the phone and placed it back onto the table.

Even under such ridiculous circumstances, Michael still gave into his OCD and had to wash his hands a few times with soap. Then he went downstairs, heading into the back of the basement, dropping his towel onto the concrete floor.

The naked man picked out a pair of grey boxers and a baggy white t-shirt, from his closet and turned around. There were several bicycles, a shelf, a few old televisions and random other things that were packed into the room; however, everything had been completely smashed apart and pushed towards the eastern wall.

He muttered “Welp, you know it’s the apocalypse when the giant demonic rat in your basement, transforms into some kinda big-ass dragon-mouse… Ugh, I feel bad that I’m not more emotionally unstable about the sudden and traumatic deaths of my parents. It’s probably because they started telling me that they were going to die eventually, when I was like three. I never cried when any of my grandparents or other relatives died either… I actually didn’t feel sad at all? Am I a sociopath? Nah, I had plenty of mental breakdowns in my life so far… Anyway, I guess it’s because I don’t really believe in death being ‘permanent’, so it just isn’t quite as depressing for me. Sigh, I’m talking to an unconscious rodent-reptile…”

‘Violet’, still had a furry mouse head, but her body was around the size of a grizzly-bear and covered with thick, purple, draconic scales. Down her spine were plenty of dangerous spikes, and ram horns were coming out of her temples. Those powerful arms and legs seemed comparable to a tiger, and when she opened those glowing crimson, serpentine eyes, she growled “Fucking cunt…”

Michael smiled wryly, muttering “Yeah, fucking cunt… The world’s ending; not even slightly surprising, but things are gonna be getting a little irritating from now on.”

There were banging noises coming from his neighbors houses, along with some gunshots and explosions in the neighborhood. The startled dragon-rat yelled “Bitch, fuck, shit!” and curled up into a ball, like an armadillo.

Since he had a feeling that the power and internet were going to be cut off soon, Michael ran over to his computer and looked up videos on ‘Youcylinder’. He also checked ‘Facenovel’ and other social media sites, to quickly find out as much information as possible about what was happening outside.

“So they’re saying the zombies are just people infected with a new strain of Rabies, caused by umm, rats, mice and cockroaches? Pretty cliche… Other people are reporting that the water supply is contaminated by fungal spores. Someone else said that a ‘dirty bomb’ was detonated in the harbor and is causing radiation poisoning. Ah, yep, they can’t nuke Baltimore now… Not sure if that’s a good or bad thing though. If they detonate any sort of large yield warhead under the current circumstances, it could cause the radioactive material to be blown far away. Of course, if they don’t~, the viral outbreak is just gonna keep spreading outwards. They’re trying to set up a quarantine, but that’s completely useless. For fuck’s sake, there’s only six-hundred thousand humans in the city, but how many millions or billions of mice, rats and roaches are there? Hahaha~, I should probably masturbate a few more times while I still have the chance, cause there’s usually no porn during the apocalypse…” Even under the threat of imminent peril and disaster, Michael’s priorities didn’t change.