chapter 4

(Any cities or towns in mind? Let me know in the comments!)

As dusk fell, a light rain shower hung over the city of Birmingham, Alabama, causing steam to rise where it hit the pavement that had been baking under the hot sun all day. It also cooled the flesh of the thousands of blobs that littered the city, the rain running down their sides in rivulets and pooling next to them.

Outside the West Tabernacle Baptist Church on 27th Street, a school bus sat embedded in a tree, the words "Middle School" barely visible through the growth of Lipomass covering it. The bus's former occupants lay either inside the bus, their immense mass oozing and flopping out of the shattered windows and ruined doors, or just beside it in the street, wobbling and sloshing. The white clapboard houses that ran along the street lay in ruins, their blubbery behemoths of former owners occupying their remains. Cars lay crushed under the blobs in the streets and driveways, with thick growths of Lipomass dotted in between them. At the other end of the street, a house's wall gave way as a fresh blob burst out of it--a survivor whose luck had finally run out.

Inside the West Tabernacle Church, a young woman sat in a chair at the pulpit, tracing a pattern in the floor with her bare toe as she fiddled with a ham radio she'd found in the church's storm shelter. She picked up the microphone once more.

"Hello?" she said hopefully. "This is Claire O'Leary of Birmingham, Alabama. If anyone can hear me, please answer. I'm alone here, and I'm starting to run low on food." She paused. "Over," she added.

No response came. She sighed, got up and padded down the aisle to the church door, opening it and looking at the school bus.

It had been three days since she'd holed herself up in here, finally finding a safe place after spending so long on the run. She'd been living in Tuscaloosa when the Lipomass broke out. She'd been working as a cashier at a Chick-fil-A when it all started. In the panic that followed, Claire had been focused on only one thing, and that was getting out. She'd frantically sprinted the whole way to her house and loaded up on food and water, before leaping into her Chevy Tahoe and trying to escape via I-20. However, she'd been forced to abandon the car as she hit a massive snarl-up, with people abandoning their cars in droves.

Lost and alone, she'd turned tail and ran, through all the chaos, past the trapped people screaming bloody murder as their bodies swelled up obscenely. She ran and didn't stop running, not until she'd left Tuscaloosa. From there, she had simply wandered, not knowing where she was going, only that she wanted to get away from Tuscaloosa as fast as she could.

She'd wandered along eerily quiet stretches of I-20, filled with abandoned cars, and more frighteningly, humans in the process of being blobbified. She'd seen men, women and children alike all swelling up grotesquely, trapped inside vehicles, vestigial hands and feet poking out from their huge forms, letting out whimpered pleas for help as she passed... but, of course, there was nothing she could do. Even if she'd had the strength to pull them free, the risk of becoming trapped herself was just too great. She'd already had a close call, which had caused her to lose both her shoes.

Finally, she'd found herself in Birmingham, holed up in this church. It seemed impossible to believe that this blob-filled wasteland had once been a great city. Many a time, Claire had considered giving up and joining them. They did seem rather peaceful out there, and it couldn't be worse than hanging on and waiting for help that would never come.

Biting her lip, she stepped outside, towards the school bus.