chapter 3

(Let me know if there are any cities or countries in particular you'd like to hear about!)

The Parkway RV Resort & Campground in Orland, California, one of several RV stops in the city, once served as a stop-off point for happy vacationers in mobile homes and trailers, many of them families on their way to see some of the natural majesty that northern California has to offer--towering Redwoods, crystal-clear lakes, stunning views and vistas, long hikes through national parks and wilderness. Essentially, taking in all of the majesty that nature could provide.

Then the Lipomass arrived, and nature turned very nasty, very quickly.

Now, the city of Orland had gone from a thriving community of seven thousand people to a Lipomass-ridden ghost town. Families had found themselves trapped by the stuff in their homes, and vacationers had felt it creeping up their legs in their RVs. Now, brown meaty moss almost an inch thick covered the roads, sidewalks and gardens, with huge, formless masses of flesh bulging out of crumbling houses and crushed, wrecked RVs and trailers. The immense mass of the doomed residents and vacationers had torn through brick, drywall and metal as surely as if they were mere cardboard. The blobs gurgled and sloshed quietly in the afternoon sun, occasionally twitching and sending ripples of motion through their flesh. Once, they had been human, whole families. Now, they were little more than globs of lard--no limbs, no heads, no genitals, and only the vaguest semblance of sentience trapped within them. They knew what had happened to them, and were aware of their current predicaments, but could do nothing about it. In that sense, their gurgling and growling could be considered a cry for help... help that would never come.

The Parkway RV Resort was located on Newman Road, a major thoroughfare leading in and out of the city. When the Lipomass hit, panicking residents had attempted to flee via both Newman Road and I-5. Neither of them fared very well, but Newman Road had been hit first and hardest. A tractor trailer, owing to its frantic driver trying to get away far too quickly, had flipped onto its side and covered both lanes of the road, blocking all traffic attempting to escape in the same direction. The people unfortunate enough to be there at the time found themselves trapped, with a flipped-over truck ahead of them and a tidal wave of Lipomass behind them. Screaming parents and crying children alike were all engulfed by it as it covered them and their cars at a frightening pace. All that remained now of the disastrous escape attempt were a few abandoned cars half-sunk in Lipomass and dozens upon dozens of hefty globs of lard. They were even in the storm drain adjacent to the road and the fields beyond, marking where people who had tried to flee on foot had been cut down. Other than the blobs, all that remained of the humans they once were were some personal artifacts; discarded shoes, teddy bears, suitcases, medals and wedding rings. Tiny mementos of the world the Lipomass had swallowed up.

In the town of Orland itself, things are no better. There, if ground space isn't taken up by Lipomass, it's taken up by blobs. They are everywhere--in the streets, oozing out of buildings, even bulging up out of manholes. Their quiet gurgling and sloshing combines to form a constant background noise. In a way, the blobs almost sound satisfied, like they're gurgling with content in a manner similar to the purring of a cat. But, of course, they are anything but. They see nothing, but they feel their immense weight and the sun's heat. They hear their new forms glorping and squelching. And most of all, they remember. They remember being pinned to the ground, trapped, the cold, meaty Lipomass holding them in place. They remember growing so big, so heavy, tearing through their clothes and bursting through their walls, floors and ceilings. They remember the screaming being silenced as one by one, the residents of Orland were blobbified.

And now Orland, California, sits silent, joining so many other towns in the U.S. and beyond that fell completely to the Lipomass. Not one of the town's seven thousand residents escaped. They now lay in their ruined town, the feel of the Lipomass and the weight and noise of their new forms serving as ever-present reminders of what put them there.